AS SID James might have said with his trademark dirty guffaw you can't beat a bit of Nookie.

Lady Penelope of Pensby was introduced to some this week and the Pub Column has to say she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Now before you get the wrong idea, let me clarify the experience related to her inaugural visit to The Nook, one of Liverpool's most intriguing pubs. Curled up in Chinatown, during the city's maritime heyday it would serve as a place for seafarers to spend all their wages on getting merry and later, er, on a bit of real nookie courtesy of the ladies of the night.

To an alehouse that was once a favourite with hacks before empty wallets and the politically correct made the dinner time pint a sin akin to putting Gary Glitter's brick back in the Cavern's Wall of Fame.

The Cornmarket on Fenwick Street is the building Hitler's Luftwaffe couldn't level in one of the oldest areas of downtown Liverpool. Its sumptuously intimate interior, a wealth of wood and leather, was a favourite with The Plod, legal briefs and newspaper scribes who would use it as the perfect place to exchange clandestine tips away from the beady eye of Mr and Mrs Scall, during lunchtime breaks from the dock at the nearby crown courts in Derby Square.

WHEN anyone this side of the river mentions Eastham and is not a Wirralyback (ie a natural born denizen of the peninsula as the Woolyback is to Wigan and the Maghullyback to Maghull) then bleak visions of oil terminals and grim industrial canals spring to mind.

But since Lady Penelope of Pensby arrived on the Pub Column scene a whole new side to this riverside village has been revealed. It is one of the Wirral's most ancient settlements, the "ham" part of its name derived from the Anglo Saxon for home. In the Middle Ages, a ferry service operated across the Mersey to Eastham from the 'Pool, the earliest being run by monks from the Abbey of St Werburgh.

IT'S a depressing sight watching the rising tide of pubs closing as the credit crunch bites.

This is while an unsympathetic government combats the so-called problem of binge drinking by chucking another four pence on the price of a pint. Which is about as constructive to ensuring the survival of our locals as nominating a one-legged man for a bum kicking contest.

Last year, 1,409 alehouses closed in this country compared with 216 in 2006 so you don't have to be Nostradamus to see the trends here.

So when one rises Lazerus-like to reopen its doors it's cause for celebration.

NO POOL. NO JUKE BOX. NO FRUIT MACHINE. NO FOOD.

To put such a sign at a pub entrance could be considered the commercial equivalent of placing a shotgun under the chin and blasting your brains out.

But there it is in gilt capitals on a bold red sign outside The Volunteer Canteen pub, in Waterloo. There is a post-script underneath which emphasises that there is PLENTY of good traditional beer to be had.

And, indeed, there is at this marvellous little boozer tucked away in Waterloo, a convenient goalie's drop kick away from the station one way, with the balmy sand dunes t'uther.

ONCE in a while, the Pub Column stumbles on an alehouse with which it immediately falls in love, a traditional British local where good ale and conversation are the watch words.

And its discovery was all thanks to faithful PC companion Lady Penelope of Pensby, who has a knack of being able to track down some of the best boozers in her Wirral homeland.

Indeed, no sooner had the information "Find quintessential ye olde pub" been punched into her data banks, we were off in FAB 1 to arrive soon afterwards in the ancient village of Greasby and the Coach and Horses pub.

Now, when we say ye olde, we mean very ye olde.

AS THE rest of Liverpool city centre reinvents itself, on Knight Street one place is unearthing its past and keeping hold of it.

The Grapes pub has been a favourite for some time, and especially since it was taken over by husband and wife team Anna Slater and Paul Agoro, in February, 2003.

Anna, originally from Herne Hill, sarf London, and Liverpool lad Paul, decided to take the plunge and move into the pub business after returning from a stint as teachers of English in the Chilean city of Iquique.

THE realisation that pubs and Yours Truly were set for a lifetime’s romance came one Christmas Eve at 16 years of age.

Our Kev and I had been grafting hard for seasonal pocket money on the local farm, and the older lads who worked there full time invited us along to make a hefty dent in our brown pay packets at the local, the Blue Anchor, on Aintree Lane.

AS YOU might expect, it being the eve of the clocks going forward and the start of British Summer Time, it was, as they say in politer terms, chucking it down.

Undeterred, the Pub Column, with faithful Wirral good pub sniffer dog Lady Penelope of Pensby on the leash, decided to stick to our original plan – to explore and hopefully discover the first pub for the new season worthy of a grand day out in the sun amid the verdant fields of Albion.

Sometimes it’s a tough task though.

SING along now: “Oh my Darlin’, oh my Darlin’, oh my Darlin’ smarmy swine,

You have lost the plot forever, to commit a ghastly crime.�

A puerile adaptation perhaps, but it’s as nothing compared to the insults many city publicans and “responsible� beer drinkers would have hurled at the Chancellor if he’d popped his head round the door of their locals after Wednesday’s budget.