Famous Amos in the eye of the storm

"It was horrific," reports Ian, from Darlington. "The air conditioning was shot, there was no television, no computers and no telephones. The emergency lighting was like a ten watt bulb at a football stadium.

"Sanford's not like Teesside Airport, more like a giant bus shelter - a place for getting thousands of people in and out."

Temperatures reached 110 degrees, tempers boiled similarly; elderly people fainted. For security reasons no-one was allowed in or out.

"Smaller planes had capsized and a glass wall looked like it was going to bend back into the building," says Ian. "There was no food, no water and we were totally ignorant of what was happening. It was like something from Iraq."

After 20 hours of chaos, however, the ever-faithful Red Cross appeared like the cavalry over the horizon - bearing abundant supplies not of fruit or water but of America's favourite chocolate chip cookie.

"It was surreal," says Ian, a tennis coach. "We're slowly being driven mad, amid desperate people thousands of miles from home and for some bizarre reason I found myself thinking of you."

The cookies? Where better than in a Red Cross parcel, Famous Amos to the rescue once again.

MORE famous by far, at least on this side of the Atlantic, the shop owning Doggart family has re-opened several departments in recent columns.

The company was founded in Bishop Auckland, branched throughout the North-East, and may now merit a memorial in the town where it was born.

Joyce Cooke in Marske, near Redcar, has given of her treasures to provide priceless further information.

Known in the Coundon area simply as "the Doggarts feller", Joyce's father worked for the store in Bishop Auckland. Among other things, she sends a biography of Arthur Robert Doggart (above), the founder - a man, records Charles Brown, who always gave a fixed proportion of Doggarts' profits to God and humanity and who lamented how difficult it was for a wealthy man to give generously.

"He gave as he worked, with all his might," Brown records.

A R Doggart came to Bishop Auckland from Glasgow in 1892, becoming hosiery and fancy buyer for a "static, old fashioned drapery business" which employed 45 people at Auckland House, on the corner of the Market Place.

The newcomer, adds his biographer, was quick on the uptake. In 1895 he took over the company.

By the 1930s, Doggarts had 13 shops throughout the old county of Durham, employed 1,200 people and traded far beyond its "Drapery and house furnishings" sub-title. The stores, says Brown, earned a reputation for fair dealing and generosity.

A R Doggart was also a committed Christian, became president of the Baptist Union, worked tirelessly for the church and against the twin evils of smoking and alcohol.

Brown clearly loved him. "As natural as he was sincere... as warm hearted and impulsive as a schoolboy... as warm as a summer brook rippling in the sunshine."

His conclusion is unmistakable. "A R Doggart was a saint."

ELSIE Harris worked at Doggarts in Darlington in the 1930s, remembers how they'd be sent to Bishop or to Stockton when the sale was on - return bus fare plus 1/6d for lunch.

She also recalls how a young man called Kenneth Richard ("a shining light in Darlington Operatic Society") started as an apprentice before she left to work for Luck and Sons.

Doggarts later opened a spanking new shop in Northgate, Darlington. In line with company policy of recognising talent from within, Kenneth Richard became manager.

Brian Ayre in Spennymoor, in Doggarts' head office accounts department from 1958-63, lists many former colleagues - some more affectionately than others - recalls how they'd be reprimanded for not wearing a tie and nearly sacked for playing three card brag in the canteen, tells how a hard up employee made ten Woodbines last a fortnight.

He also remembers Fridays and Saturdays before Christmas when, earning £4.13s a week, his duties included taking the £25,000 daily takings to the night safe at Barclays.

Brian's commendably cautious. "I wouldn't fancy doing it today."

COMPILING six multi-faceted columns a week, suggested last week's Gadfly, was akin to the labours of Sisyphus - he whom the gods condemned forever to push a damn great boulder up the hill, only for it to roll back on him when inches from the summit.

John Briggs in Darlington forwards numerous downloaded Sisyphus images - Jane Fonda inexplicably among them - while Tom Purvis in Sunderland creates a rather fetching clockwork Sisyphus, one of the rude mechanicals.

Rob Williams at Tyne Tees television not only send details of Sisy - a cissie, incidentally, was simply a corruption of sister - but of poor Tantalus, who suffered similarly.

Uniquely favoured among mortals by being invited to share the food of the gods, Tantalus abused their hospitality - forgot to bring a bottle, or something - and was immersed up to his neck in water.

When he bent to drink, the water receded; when he stretched to eat the luscious fruit overhead, the wind blew the boughs out of reach.

Classicists will be ahead of the game: hence the word "tantalising."

FOR reasons which need not be recalled, we'd also wondered if anyone could provide the explanation from Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia - wonderfully compiled and affectionately remembered -of how a magnet works.

Three redoubtable readers - anon, Marjorie Burton in Shildon and Tom Purvis, with thanks to the "Herculean" efforts of Sunderland library - have obliged.

Mee gives up almost four pages to the subject, makes a lot more sense than "Ask Jeeves" but still irritates Tom by having the entire ten-volume index at the back of volume ten.

Having sorted out magnetism, Mee remembers his audience. The piece at the foot of the fourth page is entitled "How to play leap frog."

THE piece a couple of weeks back about Reynolds News reminded Barry Wood in Edmondsley, north Durham, of the era of Thompson's News, Reveille and Tit-Bits ("usually to be found at the barber's").

Barry's barking up the wrong tree, however, to suppose that Black Bob - "a collie which seemed to spend most of its life rescuing its master or detecting crimes when not rounding up sheep in Scotland" - appeared in one of them.

As D C Thomson fans will recall, Black Bob was "The Dandy wonder dog". With incident prone master Andrew Glenn, he first appeared in text form in November 1944, continuing until July 1982 - an awfully long life in doggy years.

There were also several Black Bob books though Thomson's, ever canny, declined to call them annuals. They only appeared every two years.

... and finally, the heretical suggestion in last week's column that the "King James" bible might still be unequalled reminds Tom Cockeram in Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds, of the bible given him by the Rector of Middleham in 1935.

The inscription, Tom insists, was from 2Timothy3:16: "Do take heed: be steady with the reproof and correction as you return to support these columns."

It may not be 2Timothy chapter and verse, but offers chance nonetheless to thank all those who - by interest or input - so faithfully support these columns. Preaching to the converted, we return next week.

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