John North: Ducking and dining

AMID all the heavyweight letters in last Saturday's Guardian were a missive about Nelson Mandela's favourite pickle - Mrs Ball's Chutney, apparently - and a brief, sad note from the Rev Tony Bell.

"Why do I no longer see penny ducks?" he pleaded. "The best I ever tasted were from a butcher's in West Hartlepool."

Born and raised in Greatham, near Hartlepool, Tony was a curate in Peterlee, had charge of parishes in Stockton and at Byers Green, near Spennymoor, worked for the Teesside Industrial Mission and is shop steward - or the ordained equivalent - of the clergymen's branch of Unison.

That he no longer sees penny ducks may not be entirely unconnected to the fact that since 1996, he has been Vicar of parishes near Chesterfield, in Derbyshire.

In for a penny as always, the column has not only discovered them in effortless abundance - sitting ducks, as it were - but made a great feast of them, piled high and handsome like faggots from Ferrero Rocher.

Inflation has hit the penny duck, of course, but they remain - on a majority vote - a flavour to savour.

Mr and Mrs Briggs having been prevailed upon to go out for a duck around the shops of Darlington, they returned with 15 from five different outlets at a total cost of £4.77.

Mr Ralph Wilkinson at 22 Coniscliffe Road, the award winning town centre bar, had also been persuaded to lay on a few accompaniments - but claimed never before to have heard of a penny duck.

"I haven't seen these for years," someone else said, drooling. Neither, of course, had poor Tony Bell.

Thus tempted, the conversation turned to Shippam's meat paste, to potted meat and to polony from Thompson's Red Stamp Stores.

Ralph's originally from Rushyford - "the posh end of Chilton," he said. When posh folk in Shildon asked for penny ducks, they always insisted that they were for the dog.

These, of course, are strictly ducks out of water. Known as savoury ducks since the Middle Ages, and still sold under that name in the five shops from which John and Lynn Briggs emerged heavy laden and triumphant, the chief ingredients are said to be pork and pig's liver, though it's probably wise not to investigate too closely.

The phrase about knocking the lights out comes to mind, however.

Elsewhere, the preferred term seems to be faggot, from the Latin for "bundle together". There's even a Good Faggot Guide and a National Faggot Week.

Britain's "Faggot family", the Doodys from Wolverhampton, were chosen earlier this year at a function in the Savoy Hotel after answering relevant questions and taking part in faggot role play.

Faggot Week was launched at Liverpool University, where apparently you can learn all sorts.

At No. 22 - two little ducks, appropriately - Ralph Wilkinson offered lovely chutneys made by his chef Adam Atkinson and Adam's mum Mary and also a singularly unimpressed opinion.

"You know when pork pies are a day or two old and have started to congeal a bit. That's what these are like," he said.

Barmaid Sarah Jones thought them visually off putting but wonderful to the taste, ace chef Jonny Edwards - coincidentally in attendance - compared them to coarse pate.

"Dress it up a bit, called it canard du centimes and you could bang it out for a fiver with a bit of lettuce," someone suggested.

"I'm working on it," said Jonny, fast polishing his reputation at the Bridgewater Arms at Winston, near Barnard Castle.

Sadie Gwynn Jones, Jonny's Australian cousin, also had a duck filled platter. "I've come all the way from Sydney for this?" she said, enigmatically.

Appetite reawakened, Tony Bell is planning to bag a few ducks when next on a missionary trip to home territory.

"They were glorious," he recalls wistfully. "My mother used to fry them with anything going, and in those days they really were a penny, I think."

So what else does he miss about the North-East. "Well Durham Cathedral most of all, but also the scenery and the quarter of Stockton High Street which they stole in the 1960s."

Penny ducks? "I'm just delighted to learn they're alive."

FURTHER to last week's piece on "Little Ireland" - the hamlet of Gordon Gill, near Evenwood - Nelson Dunn in Evenwood sends a 1923 poster from the Empire Theatre.

It wasn't, he adds, one of the Moss Empires. This one was owned by the Etherington Brothers, also of Evenwood.

"I remember as a boy leaving the Empire and the sound of monkey nut shells being trodden on could be heard in the next county," says Nelson. "I've never been so close to paradise since."

LEST we forget, Middlesbrough memory man Creighton Carvello has two entries in the new Alternative Records Book.

The first is for reciting 17 digits after seeing them for just two seconds on a screen - too late for the book, he recently cracked 18 - the other for his extraordinary recall of FA Cup final facts from 1872 onwards.

Once a psychiatric nurse and now a wedding photographer, he knows every venue, scorer, result and referee - over 4,000 facts. The previous holder had committed 2,000 facts about baseball.

The Guinness book used to feature him, too, but seems rather to have overlooked lads like him. "It's great," says Creighton, "to be remembered."

ANOTHER little book, memorable for different reasons, retired teacher Daphne Clarke kindly brings in her self-published and attractively produced anthology of poems about children.

Called Childhood in Kaleidoscope, it's full of affectionate poems about family and innocence, the result of a chance remark at Richmond Methodist Guild.

Daphne, a pillar of the United Reformed Church in the North-East, had been giving a reading. "Why don't you do a book?" someone said...

It's £4.95 from Ottakar's in Darlington or from Daphne at 56 Frenchgate, Richmond, North Yorks DL10 7AG.

LAST week's note on Hartlepool historian Sir Cuthbert Sharp, said by Queen Victoria to have been the ugliest man ever to attend her court, has elicited more information - but, sadly, no picture - from Tim Purvis in Sunderland.

Sharp, a prominent literary figure, became Collector of HM Customs in Sunderland, was on good terms with Sir Walter Scott, became deputy Provincial Grandmaster of Durham Freemasons, founder member of the Sunderland Beef Steak club and - among many other handsome achievements - an excellent billiards player.

Tom, in turn, is trying to discover which literary character recited verses from Crumlinwaller and the Mewlinwillwodd to the narrator. For once the Internet can't help; our readers surely can.

IT must be 30 years since, somewhat improbably, we were invited by the head beater to the shooting tenants' end of season party on the Arkengarthdale estate in North Yorkshire.

The estate was owned by Sir Joseph Nickerson, boss of Cherry Valley Ducklings in Lincolnshire; the do was at the Buck Inn in Reeth; the problem was that the head beater hadn't told the boss man whom he was inviting.

Finally made aware of the spectral at the feast, Sir Joseph wasn't best pleased. "Buy them a drink, give them a couple of ducklings and send them orff," he demanded.

Chastened and recompensed in equal measure, we headed early back down the dale. There'll be more issues to duck next week.