No headpine

Jake was reputedly a comic cuts tramp of wartime years. Immaculate on parade, Dick Annand could be rather more dishevelled (let's say) at the front.

The soubriquet was first recalled, several days before this week's memorial service in Durham Cathedral, in a letter from Allan Newman in Darlington.

Despite his superiors' disapproval, said Allan, Capt Annand - a National Provincial Bank man as a civilian - insisted on digging with his men. "The DLI lads were great burrowers but Richard, ex-bank, was only enthusiastic and would finish up covered in clarts.

"All officers had nicknames, some more complimentary than others, and at that time a very popular strip cartoon was a filthy tramp called Jake. He became Jake and stayed so, and always chuckled at the memory."

The story, coincidentally, was also told by Major General Robin Brims in his eulogy at Monday's service. The DLI, said Major General Brims, were great miner soldiers. "Whenever his platoon created a defensive position he would take off his coat, roll up his sleeves and dig with his troops. He never asked a man to do anything he couldn't do himself."

Saluting "a very remarkable, special gentleman", the Major General also recalled Capt Annand's return from a particularly arduous mission - "he looked like he'd been in a fight with a wild cat" - how on a midsummer train journey, he'd wear his great coat fastened to the top so that no-one could see the VC ribbon, and the platoon sergeant's observation as his gallant commander kept returning for more grenades.

"It was like feeding strawberries to an elephant."

Not even the ever-dependable John Briggs, however, can find an image of the original Jake - or convincing evidence of his existence. The best bet may be a character called Poor Jake created in 1910 by American animator Winsor McCay - who also give the world Little Nemo and Phoolish Philip - and featured in a 1913 film starring Lou Chaney.

Was he merely a forerunner, a fake Jake? Before the column shuffles onward, can any reader help this gentleman of the road?

THOUGH doubtless there were more, the only other comic strip hobo sapiens who comes to mind is a character called Cecil, one half of the Waldorf and Cecil strip in the long gone Eagle comic (in which Dan dared).

Waldorf was the "boy-of-all-work" at Ghastly Grange, bullied by the villainous Grabber-Gribble. Cecil was the well spoken village vagrant who, of course, came good in the end.

We are also grateful to Shildon FC secretary Mike Armitage for sending to a good home the Beano left free in all rooms at the Dundee Hilton, which probably makes a change from a few bananas.

Familiar characters like Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger and the Bash Street Kids have been joined by newcomers such as Hugh Dunnit, Ivy the Terrible and Christmas Carole (who wishes it could be Christmas every day).

The biggest surprise for those of us who remember the Beano at 2d is the price flash on the cover. "At only 75p," it says, "you're laughing."

THEN there was Jake Thackray, who died on Christmas Eve 2002 and in whose fond memory a new musical - Sister Josephine Kicks the Habit - has a North Yorkshire premiere in May.

How many knew, however, that the sardonic singer's father was the Swaledale polliss - the Reeth police - that he was educated by Jesuit monks or that the outwardly engaging Thackray lived almost as a recluse?

"I think he was tormented to be honest. I don't think the Catholics did him any good," says Ian Watson, the musical's executive producer.

"He grew up with a vast amount of guilt, which I don't think his mother helped. Some of the songs were a bit mucky and maybe later the priests had convinced him they were wicked.

"He wasn't a very cheerful soul before his demise. He claimed to have written new songs, but no-one has ever found them"

Thackray was born near Tadcaster, gained an English degree at Durham University, and spent ten years teaching in France and England - a "mediocre" teacher, he once said of himself - before his singing and song writing talents were discovered.

A weekly regular on television programmes like The Braden Beat and That's Life, he also appeared on the Royal Variety Show and at the Royal Albert Hall but continued to play folk clubs as well.

Though his best known song remains Sister Josephine - and what a funny nun she was - several other compositions recalled his roots in the dale.

Molly Metcalfe was a mournful little ditty about the Swaledale way of counting sheep and about the poor lass who looked after them.

"A shepherdess is a word for a woman with a pretty pinafore and petticoats, with a complexion and a cleavage," he once said. "This woman was a sheep minder."

Go Little Swale, a sort of lyrical gazetteer, managed to name most of the hamlets within ten miles of Reeth:

Go lowly Swale, go headlong down

Down through your stony faced meadows,

Your scowling hills, your crouching towns

Go little Swale, and I follow.

Though once described as "the Yorkshire Noel Coward", his married life was spent in Monmouth - so secretively that Ian Watson, a friend for 30 years, lost touch with him for ten.

"He was a very private guy," says Ian, a Scarborough-based theatrical agent. "The silly sod never told me when he moved a few miles and no-one else knew, either." The Northern Echo's often compendious cuttings files have but one scant offering, a plug for Thackray's appearance at Thornaby Pavilion - and whatever happened to that? - in 1977.

The musical, sponsored by Masham-based Theakstons' Brewery - now returned to family ownership - has its debut at Helmsley Arts Centre on May 24, runs at Swaledale Arts Festival from May 30-June 2 and then begins a nationwide tour.

Begun by Thackray himself but finally written by Ian Mcmillan, the show is set in a "non-specific" North Yorkshire market square - "It might quite coincidentally look a bit like Masham," says Ian Watson - and its range of Thackray characters.

"It's a community of wild eccentrics, very compassionately dealt with," says Ian.

"Jake always said that North Yorkshire was his home and that that's where he loved being most. There was no other place we could begin."

JAKE the Peg had an extra leg. Rolf Harris not only sang about him, memorably, but played him - selling models on a stand - in the 1979 film Little Convict.

I had a dreadful childhood really, I s'pose I shouldn't moan

Every time they had a three legged race, I won it on my own....

Old Rolf, a former Australian junior backstroke swimming champion, arrived in England in 1952, was doing children's television shortly afterwards and six weeks short of his 75th birthday, remains in huge demand - not least for his highly priced paintings.

His other big hits included Waltzing Matilda - all jolly swagmen, like Waldorf and Cecil - Sun Arise and Two Little Boys, which not only became the 1960s' last number one but is also the official anthem of Hartlepool United FC, for reasons none has satisfactorily explained.

His 1993 top ten success with an adaptation of the Led Zeppelin classic Stairway to Heaven was even more unexpected.

One of the websites describes him as undoubtedly Australia's greatest ever export, another supposes that Jake was based on a real character, who worked in a laundry in Llandudno.

While that may be so much spin, who knows what may yet come out in the wash?

SPEAKING of 75th birthdays, incidentally, our old friend George Romaines - the Shildon wagon works man who became one of the first stars of the One O'Clock Show on Tyne Tees Television - passed that milestone on Tuesday. Still in Shildon, now only singing in the bath, he planned a quiet celebration - "these days a couple of pints and a sandwich is enough."

...and finally back to Durham Cathedral, and to the eulogy to Capt Annand. Major General Brims also recalled an incident in 1979 when Richard and his wife Shirley, a Durham magistrate, had been dining aboard HMS Bacchante on the Tyne.

Returning to shore, Mrs Annand slipped, fell into the river and was rescued by her husband - again with his jacket off, again perhaps resembling Poor Jake - who had at once dived in after her.

The resultant headline "VC hero saves wife" was OK, said Major General Brims, but the newspaper editor who wrote "JP ends up in river after shipboard party" nearly went into the Tyne after her.

Headlines are not the columnist's prerogative, alas, but as this one ends, "Jakes' progress" may suit the occasion admirably.