I HAVE often wondered if our ancestors were the rough tough battling people they are portrayed as and this picture sent to us from Rheged seems to confirm my suspicions.

It would appear that the mighty Arthur's feat of strength, which led to his coronation as King of England, was to pull a sword out of a large slice of cheese on toast, not a stone as we had been led to believe.

Maybe it was a case of Anglo-Saxon misspelling and he pulled out a sword, which had become stuck in scone rather than stone.

With that and Alfred burning the cakes, it seems that the whole royal lineage is based on the vagaries of culinary disasters rather

than the ability to batter other tribes into submission.

The trouble with this cheese-on-toast theory is that it if becomes widely known, Cheddar will want to get in on the act of claiming to be the true site of Camelot, adding a third voice to the long-running dispute about whether King Arthur lived in Cumbria, or down in Cornwall.

Despite having no lakes to speak of, therefore being somewhat at odds with the Lady of The Lake side of the legend, Cornwall has generally had the best of the argument for tourism purposes, based largely on the fact that there is a river Camel in the county and a ruined castle on the cliffs at Tintagel.

Whether or not the Arthurian legend has benefited from Cornwall's ability to cash in on it is open to question.

I guess that Arthur, if he wandered down the main street of Tintagel village, might be less than amused to find his heroic court celebrated in such things as Queen

Guinevere's Hairdressers, Lancelot's Garage and Merlin's Magic Toyshop.