YOU can now all stop peering back in time. For the great Clock Face crisp-bag mystery is solved.

It all started when reader Joe Appleton brought in a query from regular slurpers of the town-centre Wheatsheaf pub who had been strenuously arguing about what time was indicated on the famous old crisp firm's clock-dial logo.

This logo dominated old four-penny bags, while the clock was shrunk inside the O character of the Clock Face title on slightly-larger five-penny ones.

I'm informed by my scouts that the district's entire taproom scene has been rocking around the clock with wild guesswork since Joe submitted the timely yedscratter. Every possible permutation has surfaced.

But now, two customers of this column, Bert Millington of Dawson Avenue, Sutton, and 'Owd Manorite' of Widnes (he prefers anonymity) have come up with proof positive.

The crisp-bag time . . . wait for it . . . registered seventeen minutes past one (1.17). It's an obscure time of day, to say the least -- but could it have had any significance in the history of the crisp company or the town in general?

Owd Manorite kindly forwarded two mint-condition packets to prove the point. And Bert Millington writes to say that he still has a specimen packet, complete with contents, which is now more than 13 years old!

"It's a full packet of beef-and-onion crisps with a 'best before' sell-by date of June 6th, 1987," he reports. "Incidentally, the contents are still crisp inside the bag."

WHICH certainly speaks volumes for the quality of the product turned out by that late, lamented Clock Face company.