WHEN you are taking a beating and faced with the prospect of a plane trip to Northern Ireland to retrieve the seemingly irretrievable, it's good to see a friendly face emerge from the crowd.

Tony Blair certainly was taking a beating during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.

First, he was forced to make a screeching U-turn over new rights for homeowners faced with a burglar creeping through the bedroom window.

At the start of the week, the current arrangement - shoot a housebreaker, go to jail - was considered more than adequate by the PM.

Then Michael Howard, backed by Britain's top cop, Sir John Stevens, went on the offensive and it was all change.

A "clear signal" was needed to show the Government was on the side of the "victim not the offender', he conceded to hoots of Tory derision.

Next the Tory leader turned to Mr Blair's fabulously indiscreet Home Secretary. David Blunkett, it turns out, is not simply fond of a bit on

the side (another mistress emerged this week, this time from his days as

Education Secretary). He also likes a good knife in the back, at least where his colleagues are concerned.

Mr Howard took hold of the remarks made by Mr Blunkett, due to be published in a forthcoming biography, with zeal. Jack Straw? He had left the Home Office in a "giant mess".

Brooding Chancellor Gordon Brown, who Mr Blunkett was forced to playfully hug during PMQs? A 'bully". "He does not stop there", went on Mr Howard, grinning with menace. "He thinks that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is weak; the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry does not think

strategically; and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills has not developed as expected..."

Mr Blair, wondering when the cab would turn up to take him to the airport, tried to laugh off the jibes. At least he had not been described as having "something of the night" about him, a reference to Ann Widdecombe's famous assessment of Mr Howard's own reign at the Home Office. But he was rattled.

So thank goodness for the aforementioned friendly face. It was York's Hugh Bayley! A week earlier, when Mr Blair was being hammered about Mr Blunkett's alleged "fast-tracking" of his lover's nanny's visa, he had come to the rescue.

Would the PM join him in congratulating Rosie Garnett from York, who had taken a stand against drug dealers in her neighbourhood?

Of course he would, and it certainly took the heat out of proceedings for a precious minute.

So when Mr Bayley stood up, Mr Blair grinned broadly. But, far from

lifting the burden on Mr Blair's shoulders, he introduced him to a new evil.

Chewing gum.

"Not a road or pavement in any town or city in the country is not smeared and disfigured with great white blobs of chewing gum!

"Why do not manufacturers sell chewing gum in packets that contain a slot in which to put used gum; and should not the packets have a warning showing the penalty for dropping chewing gum in the streets?".

Mr Blair was taken aback. "I had not quite appreciated what a social evil chewing gum was until my Honourable Friend made that impassioned plea," he stuttered.

Irish peace process still stalled, despite his dash to Belfast.

His Home Secretary badly wounded. Fears over crime at an all-time high. And now chewing gum to worry about.

Updated: 11:15 Friday, December 10, 2004