Len Watson, the all-round athlete who seemed forever to run and run, has finally leaped into eternity - a lovely man and a wonderful character.

He was 90, vigorously competed until ten years ago, still holds the world record - 4.13m - for the Over 75s long jump.

His secret, he insisted, was a noxious embrocation called Watson's No. 6, compounded to an old family recipe, poured deep from a dark red bottle and smelling like a pox doctor's back parlour.

Watson's No. 6. Aye, there was the rub.

It was for external use only, of course, and even then not to be entered into lightly, wantonly or whatever else it is they say about holy matrimony in the Book of Common Prayer. No-one ever knew what happened to Watson's 1-5.

Barry Parnaby, Len's long-time training partner, recalls being asked to rub some on to his mate's lower back during an attack of sciatica.

"There were seeds in it and all sorts," says the former Kelloe school caretaker, a bit bairn of 72. "I don't know what it was doing to Lennie's arse, but it near took the skin off my fingers."

It might similarly have sorted the sinuses.

Len was born in the Trimdons, where his father ran a painting and decorating shop and sold No. 6 like others might sell turps. "The miners would come in for ha'porth or a pennorth, especially when working the Trimdon Grange wet seam," he once recalled.

He was 5ft 6in, weighed nine stones and was built like a roll of barbed wire. He'd been a professional foot runner around the region's agricultural shows, played football for Durham City - "you had to be pretty canny to play for Durham in those days," says Barry - saw wartime service alongside broadcaster Alan Whicker in Italy and was sufficiently seriously injured in a shell attack to merit a pension. It didn't stop him.

For 32 years he was also a painter and decorator at hospitals in the Sedgefield area, became a dab hand at snooker and billiards but only really took off the long jump board after reaching his three score years and ten.

Alan Smith, once manager of Just Sport in Durham, recalled the 70-year-old Len coming in with a medal to be engraved.

"I told him I'd do it for nothing and because it didn't seem likely he'd win many more, I told him I'd do them all for free. He started fetching them in by the bagful."

He claimed a British record 14.4 for the Over 70s 100m, covered 200m in 31 seconds and held the British 400m record, a flying 77 seconds, trained with Barry Parnaby up and down Kelloe pit bank and on his own in the byways around Trimdon.

An inordinate amount of time picking dandelions in the hedge backs prompted unconfirmed suggestions of what the potion's principal ingredient might be.

"The trouble with retiring," he once said, "is that people expect to be given a walking stick at the same time as the pension book."

Even when doctors told him to rest for six months after a hernia operation, the old tough of the track was back running in eight weeks. Now that, he said, was Watson's No. 6.

When he was 80, Durham City Harriers awarded him life membership. "He was quite simply amazing," says Harriers team mate Brian Mackay, 61.

"I took him up a bottle of champagne when he was 90 and even though he wasn't very well, he perked up when he saw that."

"Fortunately I never had need of No 6. All I know is that a whiff of it could blow your head off."

For the past few years he has been resident in a care home in Bishop Auckland, where Barry would visit him regularly.

Just a few months ago they were talking in the pub ("Lenny still liked a drop Guinness") about the world record still unsurpassed.

Len was sportsman to the last. "If anyone breaks it," he told his old friend, "I only hope it's thoo."

His funeral is at St Alban's church, Trimdon Grange, at 11am next Monday. The secret of the elixir of youth is likely to be buried with him.

Harry Smurthwaite, another dear old friend, was posthumously named "Man of the Year" at Bishop Auckland Cricket Club's annual meeting on Friday.

Harry, who died on Barnard Castle golf course at the end of November, had been involved with the club for 40 years as player, coach, captain and secretary. It was the first time that the award had been made posthumously.

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer or more deserving feller. Harry lived this cricket club," says club president George Romaines.

The presentation was attended by his widow, Shirley, and by his son David, who travelled up from Coventry.

Another sad note, Alan Stewart reports the death in Australia of Brian Keating, Crook Town's centre forward in the 3-2 Amateur Cup final victory over Barnet in 1959. Brian, whose goal in the final took his season's tally to 30, was based at RAF Wilmslow in Cheshire and played seven games as an amateur for Crewe Alexandra.

Remembered in Sunderland as the Flying Gasman, Barry Dunn has taken over the Windmills pub in Seaburn - where this Friday's DJ is billed as former Darlington chairman George Reynolds.

This proves not strictly to be the case. "I'm doing the official opening," says George. "I still pull people in; look what happened when I re-opened Marks and Spencer's in Darlington."

He will, however, be inviting guests to choose their favourite 60s records.

His - and the question is answered without hesitation - include Please Lock Me Away, Who's Sorry Now and All I Want is a Chance.

"I can still sign 70 or 80 autographs every time I go to Sunderland," says George, born on Wearside. "It's only in Darlington they don't want to know."

Barry Dunn, 27 when he made his Football League debut, scored twice in 23 Sunderland appearances in 1979-80 and had short spells with Preston and Darlington. He will be 53 on Saturday.

Aidan Davison, the Close House lad who has kept goal for the Fox and Hounds in Shildon, for Eire and for half the Football League clubs in the land, remains philosophical about Saturday's much- televised Cup clanger against Blackburn Rovers.

Now with Colchester, 36-year-old Aidan insists it won't worry him. "I'm much too old and too ugly for that," he says.

And finally...

The first English batsman to hit a century on his Test debut both here and abroad - Andrew Strauss, as Friday's column noted, was the second - was Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji in 1896 and 1897. His first-class average of 56.37 remains the highest of any English batsman scoring over 10,000 runs.

John Briggs in Darlington today points out that free-scoring Gretna, averaging 3.5 goals every match, are on course for a British goals per game record.

Readers are invited to name the English club which presently holds the record, which was set in the top division.

Another goal, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 01/02/2005