Heads and tales

Some suppose them to be Romano- British carvings from about 1,800 years earlier. Others insist that they’re more in the any-prize-on-thestall style, Town Moor Hoppings circa 1968.

The discovery was followed by reports of werewolves and of weresheep – the two should not, of course, be confused – by things that go thump in the night and by all manner of unexplained phenomena in Hexham and elsewhere.

It’s a case for our old friend and prolific author Paul Screeton, a sort of consulting detective (as was Sherlock Holmes) on matters mythical and mysterious. Heads of engagement, we discuss the latest book – a 100,000- word blockbuster, he insists – over a couple of pints in Darlington.

It should not be considered a world exclusive, however. A piece about the book has already appeared in Wetherspoons News, since it is one or other of that pub company’s two Hartlepudlian outlets that he supposes most of it was written. Not a word – a slight mystery in itself – has made the columns of the Hexham Courant.

They won’t touch it with a 10ft broomstick. Paul claims to have no idea why, though it may be something to do with his joke about what you call a sheep tied to a lamppost in Hexham.

(It’s a very old joke.) His other books include a diverting tome on railway folklore – the great steam engine reserve, and all that – on urban legend and on the bloke (from Horden, allegedly) who went around eating dominoes and became doubled up.

His work on the Hartlepool Monkey has never been out of print since being published in 1991, but it’s as a sort of supernatural historian, a ghost writer of substance, that he excels.

The Hexham Heads, at any rate, were examined at Newcastle University by Dr Anne Ross, an expert on Celtic Britain, who declared them genuine. Des Craigie, a gentleman of Hexham, claimed that he himself had made them a few years earlier.

Dr Ross, who lived in Southamprton, subsequently encountered werewolves in her bedroom at dead of night. A werewolf, explains Paul, is a creature with a human head and lupine body, or possibly vice versa.

“It’s something that has form, but not complete form. “You don’t find werewolf s**t in your house,” he adds, helpfully.

Readers can probably work out weresheep for themselves.

He’s now 66 – “When you get to 66, you don’t worry if people think you’re a bit weird” – formerly worked on the Hartlepool Mail, remains chairman of the Friends of Seaton Carew Station (which may need all the friends it can get).

He first investigated the Hexham Heads in the 1970s, felt drawn back to them, talks of a feature-length film.

“I don’t know who’d play me, I hope not Richard Gere,” he says.

Despite all his efforts, despite blockbusting out all over, he can’t trace the Heads’ whereabouts. He’s convinced, however, that the garden at No 3 Rede Avenue was the site of a Celtic shrine.

The search will continue. Heads may roll even now.

• Quest for the Hexham Heads is published by the Centre for Fortean Zoology Press (£14.99) and is available through Amazon.

SO it is to be something of a books page, not unexpectedly for this time of year, and from Aurum a nicely produced volume called Britain’s Lost Breweries and Beers (£25).

Since there are quite a lot of Britain, and an awful lot of lost breweries, Vaux alone represents the North- East. The Sunderland brewery’s closure, in the summer of 1999, really did have men blubbing into their pint pots.

“It’s a typical tale of our times,”

concludes author Chris Arnott. “City whizz kids putting shareholder interest above the needs of customers and of communities, of old-fashioned paternalism being undermined by those seeking to make a fast buck.”

The paternalists were the Nicholson family, Sir Paul not only Lord Lieutenant of Durham, but Sea Knight’s jockey in the 1964 Grand National.

They produced beer like Double Maxim – named after the Sunderland- born inventor of the automatic machine gun – and Samson, after the hirsute chap who pulled the temple down around his ears.

There was even an ale in acknowledgment of the Russian linesman who helped England to victory in the 1966 World Cup final, though for some slow-mo reason Vaux didn’t produce it until 1998.

Much Vaux memorabilia is kept in what once was Richie Morgan’s double garage, now a brewery shrine right down to the cutlery from the Marie Celeste works canteen. It includes a tray with the slogan “Good beer, good cheer, right here”. For many thousands, it was.

You know what they say about London buses?

The same goes for Beano Books.

They’ve sent the 2013 annual, the 75th, in which Dennis the Menace, left, appears more recalcitrant than ever – these days he even uses “Knickers” as an expletive – and a football-mad character called Ball Boy is inspired by Jarrow Colliery. Then another arrived. Now there are three. The Oxfam shop in Richmond may shortly expect a special delivery of its own.

YORKSHIRE’S getting a good press, or at least a very prolific one, of late. Mike Fox has produced Top 10 of Yorkshire (Great Northern Books, £9.99), a collection that may necessarily be subjective.

The white rose county’s best cricketer is reckoned Sir Len Hutton, for example, ahead of FS Trueman and, in third place, Sir Geoffrey. He is unlikely to agree. The best Yorkshireborn footballer is said to be Gordon Banks, Cloughy just second.

Guy Fawkes comes only second in the list of York’s most famous, behind the Olympic swimmer Anita Lonsbrough.

Captain James Cook is Middlesbrough’s most famous and the greatest Yorkshireman, too.

Aysgarth’s are reckoned the best falls, Hawes the North Riding’s most scenic market town, Reeth just the sixth prettiest village. Ernie Wise is the best Yorkshire comedian. Chubby Brown’s sixth, the Chuckle Brothers tenth. They always did say it was grim oop north.

LAST week’s column was greatly enthusiastic about the Ritz Cinema in Thirsk, celebrating its centenary, though perhaps mistaken to say that it had “acquitted a balcony” in 1927. Since the balcony had never been charged in the first place, it’s possible that it had been acquired.

We were rather puzzled, however, about the sci-fi film Looper that was showing the night we were there. Interviewed in The Observer, the actor Robert Powell clearly disagrees.

“Pure escapism. I love the suspension of disbelief involved,” he says.

Mind, The Observer can’t be right all of the time, either. Following its November 11th piece on elevation for Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, Sunday’s paper carried apologies both for a wrong photograph and to Dr David Jenkins, a former bishop, for once again misquoting his remark about the resurrection being much more than a conjuring trick with bones.

The correction also referred to the archbishop-elect as Justin Webb.

Justin Webb is a BBC Radio 4 presenter who may never in his wildest dreams have envisaged being Primate of All England. We look forward to the correction’s correction.

MEMO to the new archbishop: conducting his last service before retiring from the East Richmond team ministry, the Reverend Geoff Spedding recalled that after 42 years in Church of England ministry no one from the diocese had asked him how many souls he might have helped save. There had, however, been a call to ensure that he’d left the curtain rails intact. “Sometimes,”

said Geoff, “I wonder if we can see the wood for the trees.”

Potentially better news, however, from Christ Church in New Seaham, on the Durham coast, where the car park overflows and vehicles are parked half way down the street as I head up the hill one autumnal Tuesday evening. A banner on the church hall gate explains everything. “Slimmers’ World,” it says.

...and finally, the Telegraph’s obituary on Leo Blair, Tony’s dad, recalled how Blair senior had shared his son’s night of triumph at Sedgefield in May 1997 and then, the following day, written a note of congratulation to him at 10 Downing Street.

It was shakily signed “Your beloved pa”, passed to the correspondence unit and misread.

The reply began “Dear Mr Pa”. It thanked him for writing to the new PM, regretted that it was something that No 10 was unable to deal with and suggested he try the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, instead.