'Rusting relic Amos must be scrapped'

THE Cross Keys, in Hamsterley, always was a quiet sort of pub, or at least it was until the night that Captain Mark Phillips dropped by and decided that he really was going to have to ring the lady wife.

“No,” he insisted – time and again – “I simply can’t get home.” The conversation ended abruptly; they did say that Her Royal Highness had a bit of a foot-stamping temper on her.

It was like a scene from George and Mildred and, almost inevitably, had been overheard. Just as inevitably, someone told the John North column.

It was 1976.

Perhaps not as colourful as more recent revelations concerning members of the Princess Royal’s extended family, it still caused much consternation at Buckingham Palace.

Letters of the off-with-his-head variety passed between Palace and Echo editor. The boss, ever-supportive, replied that if Capt Phillips wished to exercise the royal prerogative, he might be better to avoid using public telephones in west Durham public houses.

The matter was dropped. So, fairly soon afterwards, was the gallant Captain Phillips.

IN its five-days-a-week incarnation, I wrote John North from 1970-77, during which time a clapped-out old paddle steamer called the John H Amos berthed, beached, on the Tees at Stockton.

Locals thought it an eyesore.

“Rusting relic Amos must be scrapped,” read a mischievous headline, and that was 35 years ago.

Then as now, the intent was as much to entertain as to inform, though – like the royal equestrian fearing the high jump – there were some genuine exclusives.

Probably the best was when a friendly freelance photographer, walking near High Force, stumbled across the filming of advertising for the hitherto top-secret new Ford Fiesta.

For some reason it was being suspended by ropes from the top of the Teesdale falls. After the following morning’s column, the Fiesta hit the rocks. “It’s very embarrassing,” said a spokesman, as the company brought forward the launch several months.

We paid the photographer £25 for his pictures. It mightn’t have been very much, not even in 1976, but for the John North column it was a king’s ransom – a princess’s, anyway.

LADY Starmer was among Darlington’s best known and best loved personalities. Jungle was perhaps a little further down the social ladder. He was leader of the local Hell’s Angels, a man of generally good heart but of wholly intimidating appearance.

They met, a little unexpectedly, at the junction of Duke Street and Larchfield Street, Lady Starmer’s Rover in collision – as they say – with Jungle’s Harley D.

As poor Jungle came round in the middle of the road, he may have become further disoriented by the sight of an elderly lady in pearls – so that’s what they meant by the Pearly Gates – staring anxiously down at him.

They became the most improbable of friends, Jungle a regular visitor to the best sofa in Lady Starmer’s posh west end home. It was another exclusive, though Lady Starmer asked for it not to be written until after her death. Her wishes were respected.

CHIEFLY, however, the John North column was what Autolocus – Shakespeare’s Autolocus – termed a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. There was the Darlington garage which advertised for a car cleaner – “must have O-level maths” – the Sunderland shipyard which put up a notice urging any worker wanting more than two dinners to tell the cook in advance, the decision by Durham County Fire Brigade to introduce cockles, that well-known aphrodisiac, to the firewomen’s menu. “They’re horrible,” one said.

A favourite, headed “Christmas benefits”, was pinched from the notice board of Cockfield WMC: “In future, associate female members will be treated the same as men. Both will start at 65.”

We offered congratulations to Mrs Stout for winning a Durham Weight Watchers’ competition, noted with regret that Wear Valley councillor Tommy Hall had been locked, despite noisy protestation, in the lavatory at the Elite Hall, in Crook – “We thought it was the plumber fixing the pipes,” they explained – and that the landlord of the Royal Oak, in Harrogate, had annoyed local Campaign for Real Ale members by asking 50p for pie and peas. They moved the meeting elsewhere.

At Ramshaw, in west Durham, the Bridge Inn reopened disastrously after long closure and major refurbishment.

The meal was terrible, the column’s intro still remembered in those parts. “It wasn’t just the walls of the Bridge Inn that were freshly plastered: so, sadly, was the chef.”

THEN as now, too, these columns were given to using biblical quotations, though it’s a cutting from the first Church Times of 1976 that provides the most vivid memory. “Correction,” it said. “Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and not Nazareth as stated in our Christmas edition.”

Perhaps that’s what prompted another reader to draw attention to Amos 9:6. “It is he that buildeth his stories in heaven.”

AWAY-days included a no-catch shark fishing trip off Maryport with the jolly boys from the Joiners Arms, at Hunwick – the single word headline said “Bores” – and a north-south rail journey from Thurso to Penzance to mark an earlier milestone birthday.

Passing Aviemore on the journey north, a Rip Van Winkle among American tourists finally awoke and asked if they were anywhere near Wolverhampon. The guard replied that they’d passed it six hours earlier.

“What Wolverhampton, Birmingham?” asked the drowsy traveller, emphasis all on the final syllable, and promptly went back to sleep.

On another railway occasion, I’d spent the night at Newcastle Central watching the departure of Magpie fans before the 1976 League Cup final at Wembley. There were bits of bother, even then. “If I don’t come back, you can have my North Eastern Railway whistle,” said a British Transport Police inspector.

I never did get that whistle.

BACK in the 1970s the column ran several competitions, too. Perhaps because, even then, the readership was getting on a bit – it manifestly is now – most of them involved older folk.

The first was the Veterans’ mile race, staged as part of the annual sports day at Black and Decker in Spennymoor. Old, old story, one or two really wanted to win. Most – whatever happened to Jimmy and Kitty Wallace, lovely folk from Peterlee? – were simply delighted just to be able to take part.

There was a Laughing Policeman singing competition and, most affectionately remembered of all, the Over 60s singing contest – Old Faces – held for two years at Evenwood Workmen’s Club.

Today it would be Over 70s at least. Over 60s are barely middleaged (aren’t we?) The contest packed 400 into the concert hall. “By my mind, any one of these ard folks could wallop the arse off the young uns,” said club secretary Norman Walker.

Then as now, too, the paper allowed me a little bit of linguistic leeway.

Jack Bailey, Evenwood lad himself, was third in 1976 with Sunshine of Your Smile. Sidney Richardson, from Delves Lane in Consett, was second with The Toilers.

The winner was little Jimmy Ward, a retired butcher from Ferryhill, who moved 400 people to tears with his rendition of The Holy City.

“I knew he’d win, he sings from the belly,” my dear old dad had remarked at the time.

Back then, they really did seem quite old. No need, one fears, to wonder where any of them is now.

JOHN North also marked the start of what the more celebrated call personal appearances, and what the rest of us suppose to be talks and openings.

There’s little better than a lively, receptive audience, little worse than one roused once-weekly from its slumbers and anxious to return whence it came.

One evening I spoke to the ladies of Brompton Women’s Institute, near Northallerton, an attractive village with a beck through the middle of the green around which Edgar Hoare’s geese would gaggle.

Brompton’s only problem was that the geese weren’t particularly toilet trained. There’d been complaints.

One of the WI members suggested we take a look outside – she probably didn’t say a gander – before darkness fell.

Mr Hoare had fitted his geese with disposable nappies. The story and subsequent pictures went around the world.

Sadly, the Echo library has pictures of the green but not of the scene, pictures of High Force but not of the first-born Ford Fiesta roped above the torrent. Like 46 years in journalism, the birds have simply flown.

Cause for alarm

Over the years, the column has been hot on the trail of numerous fire station stories.

THE firemen were getting a bit hot under the collar, and pretty much everywhere else, too. The watch room at Bishop Auckland fire station was just too warm for comfort.

ANIMAL MAGIC: Tom Guy and his fire crew rescued a tree-bound goat and, on a particularly frantic day, hauled a cow out of a ditch

“You could grow tomatoes in here,” they protested to brigade headquarters, a claim on which top brass rather appropriately poured cold water.

So they really did grow tomatoes – probably it was red watch – and the gaffers finally went into action on the air conditioning.

It’s one of my favourite fire brigade stories. There are lots, like the time the retained crew at Middleton- in-Teesdale were called to a huge blaze at the disused Cosy Cinema, performed heroically, but only after two of their number had been summoned from the Over 60s Club.

Rampant ageism, they reduced the retirement age to 55 after that.

There was the time the Wheatley Hill brigade was summoned from the Ugly Vegetable Show to pump out the floods, the wonderful occasion on which a Darlington crew halted the appliance as it raced off to a call to Haughton Road in order to offer me a siren-song lift.

To them it was a rubbish fire in every sense, to me a veritable blaze of glory.

For some reason, however, many of the best fire brigade stories seem to have happened in Reeth, that delightful little village in Swaledale.

There was the time that subofficer Tom Guy rescued a goat from up a tree, the occasion that Simon Coates lost out, 8-4, on the secret ballot firemen’s ball.

The best of all also concerned Tom Guy, the local garage manager.

In case of emergency, it was said, Swaledale folk didn’t dial 999, they rang Tom and asked what he thought best.

IT was the first Friday of December, 1986. In order to write a feature about the village, I was spending the weekend at the Buck Inn. Tom was in the bar.

The fire station, manned by 12 of the village’s 400 residents, was barely 100 yards away. They hadn’t had a call, not so much a smoky chimney or a goat up a tree, since September 30. There’d been but 17 shouts all year.

For reasons inexplicable, I bet Tom £10 there’d be a call before the weekend was out. Unsurprisingly, he accepted.

Saturday passed uneventfully. At 9.22 on Sunday morning, half-way through the full English, Reeth’s elderly fire engine passed the Buck before bewailing its way down the village.

“Cow in ditch, Grange Farm,” said the message, leading fireman George Alderson so excited that he hadn’t fastened his trousers by the time he got to the fire station.

It was a dry ditch between field and farmhouse, 2ft wide and 12ft deep. The cow had been there since 11 o’clock the evening previously. “I didn’t like to ring you then,” said Harold Brown, the farmer. “I thought I’d wait until you were up.”

Tom was quickly down a ladder to the bottom of the ditch, offering words of consolation – “Now then, lass” – into the silly moo’s ear.

“Which one’s Tom and which one’s t’cow?” asked a spectator.

“Tom’s t’one in’t ‘at,” said one of the other firemen, insubordinately.

Another suggested sending a second ladder down so that the beast might climb back up it. “They’re mekkin’ game of you lass,” said Tom.

The rescue proved difficult. “Now then you blokes,” said Tom. “You spent about two weeks once studying how to get a cow out of a situation like this. What did you come up with?”

“Not a lot.”

“Not the bloody cow, any road.”

Then at two minutes to ten, something quite extraordinary happened.

Another fire engine, then a third, could be seen hurrying up the bright December dale.

Tom sent someone back to their vehicle to find out what was going on. “Cow in ditch, Rawcroft Farm.

Message timed 9.43am.”

It was the first time in four years that the Reeth patch had had overlapping calls, and even that had been a fireman with his chimney alight.

They sent Richmond; Richmond got stuck in the mud. They sent Northallerton to haul out Richmond.

The second cow was up to the oxters in slurry. At least Harold Brown’s was home and dry. At 10.58am, thanks to an ingenious combination of chains, hoses, a JCB tyre jack, muscle and brain, Tom Guy and his boys finally brought the cow back to green pastures.

A few minutes later, a message arrived that Robin Stubbs’s beast at Rawcroft Farm, had been dug out of the muck, too.

Afterwards they drank Farmer Brown’s tea, washed the fire engine in the beck, wondered for the benefit of the attendant (and £10 richer) columnist what the beast might be called.

Someone suggested Lucky. “Nay, it’s us that’s lucky,” said sub-officer Guy. “Another 20 minutes and we’d have had t’bugger in’t slurry.”

Of all the myriad millions of words, of the tens of thousands of stories, it remains my all-time favourite.