In an enlightening book, former mayor Bill Stenson tells of his nocturnal adventures boarding up broken windows.

THROUGH a glass darkly, former mayor Bill Stenson has written a book about his shattering experiences - the chap, knocked up by the polliss, who for more than 40 years has been boarding up windows in the middle of the night.

"I don't know why but for a lot of that time I seemed to be the only person who did it," he tells the column. "We covered half the North-East. There were weekend nights when I was never in bed."

Once resplendent in the ermine robes of Darlington's first citizen - he boarded up Bishop Auckland railway station while wearing a dinner suit - Bill the Builder remains more familiar in work clothes, even now that he's turned 70.

While fixing a fireplace in the Mayor's charity shop, he even discovered a customer trying on his jacket. "The chap said that the charity shop must be in a terrible state, selling rubbish like that.

"When my wife heard about it she destroyed the jacket and told me I should be ashamed of myself, especially with being Mayor of Darlington at the time."

Born in Ovington, between Richmond and Barnard Castle, he was given sixpence a week to pump the organ at nearby Forcett parish church but broke off halfway through evensong after not being paid for a month.

"I got four weeks money and a good telling off from the Vicar, but he saw the funny side and put up my wages by twopence."

Bill and his brother also had goalkeeping trials for Newcastle United, when (he says) Scottish manager George Martin tried to diddle them out of their expenses.

"I told him I'd go to the newspapers," says Bill - a familiar ploy in later life, though it was others who went to the press in 1965 after he was involved in an altercation in the Red Lion during his first council campaign, thus giving new meaning to the phrase about fighting an election.

Much of the book, however, offers a window on the dark side of the world - the irate neighbour who demanded he use a rubber hammer, the time he was blown through one plate glass window of Bainbridge Barker's department store while trying to fix another, the night he was called, bed and boarding, to Bolton.

His business now gets far fewer breaks, however, since the introduction of town centre closed circuit television. "I would say crime has been reduced by 80 or 90 per cent. I still get calls from the police but in any case, I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for it now. In a way I welcome the cameras, but they've done us a lot of harm."

Approaching 40 years as a Conservative councillor, he contemplates a follow-up book on his life in local government.

"I used to tell a lot of these stories, all true, when I was speaking as mayor and thought it would be a good idea to write them down," he says.

There's still light to be shone upon a few of the ladies and gentlemen of the night but, admits Bill, he has to be careful about naming names. You don't want your windows putting out, do you?

* Night Owl, perfect for bedtime reading, is published by Inscribe Media (£7) and available from Ottakar's bookshop in Darlington or via the author on (01325) 468249. Once production costs have been covered, proceeds will go to Cancer Research UK and to the Alzheimer's Society.

LOCAL celebrity that he is, Bill Stenson may not be the family's biggest name - his grandmother's sister was blonde bombshell Madeleine Carroll, among England's leading film stars in the 1930s.

Grandma - "a good looking woman as well," says Bill - lived at Aldbrough St John, near Scotch Corner. Madeleine Carroll was born Marie-Madeleine Bernadette O'Carrol at West Bromwich in 1906, working as a French teacher and hat model before her stage debut in 1927.

More than 40 films included the Alfred Hitchcock classics The Thirty-Nine Steps and Secret Agenda.

Though described on one of the websites as "the epitome of English glamour and grace", she became an American citizen in 1943, settled near Paris after the war and died in Marbella in 1987.

Bill Stenson never met her. "I very much wish that I had."