Is this hat on a pole art - or just another fine mess?

A SCULPTURE to commemorate comedian Stan Laurel's Bishop Auckland connection is planned for the town centre - but critics insist it's definitely no laughing matter.

The copper sculpture, thought to be costing around £20,000, will consist of a large bowler hat on top of a pole.

"It could just as easily represent Steed from the Avengers - or even Oliver Hardy," says Dr Bob McManners, chairman of Bishop Auckland Civic Society.

Town centre manager Derek Toon is also unconvinced that a hat is the best way to get ahead. "I'm not saying it's good art or bad art, but I'd like it to have been something more representational," he says.

"We want something which will divert the tourists off the A68 before they reach Scotland. I'm not sure that this will."

Another fine mess, or simply up the pole? "It's one of those things which could look awful but it could look very distinctive and unusual," says councillor Barbara Laurie, chairman of the public arts sub-committee of Bishop Auckland town centre forum.

"It does requite a bit of imagination, but a bit of courage as well."

The sculpture will be on the site of the former Eden Theatre, where the comedian's father was manager in the early 20th century.

Led by Groundwork West Durham, plans are in hand to transform Eden Theatre corner with swathes of red and yellow concrete to represent theatre seats, a few steel benches and other art work.

Artist Graham Robinson, who has done other work in the changing town centre, is believed to have offered four options for Eden Theatre corner - only one of which involved Stan Laurel. North Shields already has a Stan Laurel statue, by Washington-based sculptor Bob Olley.

John Nuttall, of Groundwork West Durham, says that conditions of the grants for the sculpture "don't comply" with a figure of Stan Laurel.

"It has got to be on a pole so that people don't climb on it. It could well turn out to be a shelter."

It's possible, however, that there may be a later statue of Laurel, who briefly attended King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland - perhaps, says Coun Laurie, characteristically scratching his head with one hand while pointing at the sculpture with the other.

"The idea for the sculpture has altered several times. Originally it was on four spindly legs, which we didn't like. The terms of the funding are that it has to be an original work, so it couldn't be a statue. People will come to look at it, it's certainly not dull."

Dr McManners, who himself wears a great many hats, claims that the bowler could also represent Charlie Chaplin, George Roby or Stanley Holloway. "I would prefer a statue or a two-dimensional figure in a typical stance. This doesn't shout out Stan Laurel to me.

"I don't think that anybody knew about this. They say that if they don't use the grant money they'll lose it, but sometimes losing it is the better option.

"It all seems in the spirit of giving people a good laugh, but I don't know if they'll be laughing with the hat or at it."

Stan Patterson, Grand Sheikh of the Bishop Auckland-based Hog Wild Tent of the Sons of the Desert - the Laurel and Hardy appreciation society - says that they only heard of the plan a month ago.

"We are very disappointed we weren't consulted earlier. It has always been our dream to have a statue of Stan Laurel in the town centre, preferably on Eden Theatre corner, and this would have been the ideal opportunity.

"For all that they finally showed us the drawings, we get the impression that it was all cut and dried. We don't think it's funny at all."

SUB-titled "A little book of nicknames", Goldenballs and the Iron Lady has been published by Oxford University Press (£9.99) and is already so out of date that they thought Bonking Boris was Becker.

Entries with a North-East ring include Beefy (Botham), Wor Jackie (Milburn), the Sultan of Spin - Peter Mandleson has probably been called worse - and Robocop, after Middlesbrough mayor Ray Mallon.

Mayor Mallon also reckons he's been called much worse, both as polliss and politician. "It wouldn't bother me if it were never used again, but the headline writers like it and it helps when you're trying to get a message across," he tells the column.

A media survey, he adds, discovered that while hardly anyone in the south had heard of Ray Mallon, most suggested "that bloke in Middlesbrough" when asked about Robocop.

Andrew Delahunty's book claims that the Press invented the nickname "after the remorseless crime fighting cyborg in the 1987 science fiction film of that title". It's a drawback, says Mayor Mallon, because people expect Robocop to be 6ft 6ins tall - "five foot nine-and-a-half is a bit of a disappointment".

The explanation, a little less than coincidentally, is identical to that which appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames, published last year. Same author, too, and much of the same content

That was just a little bit bigger book of nicknames, that's all.

LAST week's soliloqual piece on Stanley Holloway and the missing monologue prompts an intriguing query from Barry Wood in Sacriston - was the great entertainer born in the former east Durham pit village of Thornley?

The case is so far inconclusive, though it seems certain that Holloway's mother died and was buried there.

Thanks to further detective work by John Briggs in Darlington - old Robocop would be proud of him- we discover that Holloway's parents ran Holloway's Travelling Theatre and were staying at the Black Horse in Thornley when Mrs Holloway died.

Determined that the show must go on, her husband arranged a funeral service in St Bartholomew's church, where she is buried.

The story is confirmed by Dave Cook, a former Thornley miner who runs a website chiefly about the adjacent village of Wheatley Hill. David regrets, however, that he won't personally be able to check the churchyard - he lives in America.

Though reference books give Stanley Holloway's birthplace as Manor Park, London, Dave suspects that the truth is much nearer to home.

Ian Worthington, who runs a Thornley website, is also on the case. A Thornley problem, and any assistance most gratefully received.

THE column a week previously had cause to mention glamorous pre-war actress Madeleine Carroll, a relative of former Darlington mayor and recent autobiographer Bill Stenson.

John Briggs's researches have discovered the 1933 feature film Sleeping Car - starring Ivor Novello, Madeleine Carroll - and Stanley Holloway. The world grows smaller by the day.

SPACE precludes details, but Kevin Richardson in Evenwood asks us to include a note of thanks to the six different good Samaritans who came to their aid when the family car conked out near Walworth Castle - pretty close to the middle of nowhere - shortly before midnight last Friday. It was still 2am before they got home, anxious that appreciation should be recorded. "It made it seem," says Kevin, "that the world wasn't such a bad place, after all."

...and finally back to Bishop Auckland, where the resourceful Simon Gillespie at the Grand Hotel asks us to mention that the pub's Children in Need contribution tomorrow will offer four of their seven real ales at £1.50 a pint, with 50p from each going to Pudsey Bear. Cheers.