John North: Reynolds' Quaker shake-up

MR Glen Reynolds, a fascinating chap with a tremendous tale to tell, has invited us to talk about his new book. That's a different story altogether. It contains words like eschatology, ontological and consubstantiation; phrases like "metaphysical dynamic of gnosis" and a paragraph which begins "From the above it is clear..."

Or not, as the consubstantive case may be.

Though publishers bid eagerly one against t'other for the rights, Glen will perhaps understand - and undoubtedly forgive - if we return to that business a little later.

He was born (as the book tells us) in London - a thin, unconfident child who was bullied at school, prayed "ritually" for relief from a hostile world, joined the Young Socialists at 12 and the Young Communist League a few years later, had the Morning Star delivered "to the safety of my suburban home" and watched with awe "the anarchy of the punk movement as it shocked and spiralled in and out of the news".

Now he's 45, still he supposes with something of the Angry Young Man (if not the punk) about him, is a Labour member of Darlington Borough Council, is on the national list of prospective parliamentary candidates despite vehement opposition to the Iraq war, has three degrees and is not just a Quaker but a mover and shaker - a Friend, as it were, in high places.

Until recently he was also international development advisor, world travel but expenses only, to the Bishop of Durham.

He's also a marathon runner with a personal best of three hours 20 minutes, has written two novels - so far unpublished - overworked as a libel lawyer for both Private Eye and for the Daily Mirror, gave the latterly celebrated QC George Carman his first libel brief, enjoyed high life and Low Life in London and ended, lonely and depressed, on a psychiatric ward.

It was a chance at last to establish if the story of Private Eye's legendary legal tussle with Granada were true, the one in which Granada's letter of complaint ended with the suggestion that the nature of their claim for damages would depend upon the nature of the Eye's apology and the nature of the Eye's apology was "**** off".

Granada sued; the Eye won and prominently reported the victory. "In view of the foregoing," the account ended, "the plaintiffs have now taken the advice previously afforded to them."

"True?" echoed Glen. "Of course it was."

After qualifying he had worked in the East End for an "absolute bastard" of a boss whom he fantasised about shooting, moved to a lawyers' in Soho Square - where FA people now make their bed and lie upon it - and himself discovered Soho's hedonistic pleasures.

On one occasion, police had to cordon off the square after he received a death threat followed by a suspect package; on many others he fell into the Coach and Horses, the Gay Hussar or the Old Colony Room ("the most exclusive restaurant in London").

On the Mirror he rather conveniently worked in the next room to the celebrated campaigning journalist Paul Foot, who died last week, and first met Robert Maxwell in the lift.

"You should join our pension fund," said the perceived villain whom Private Eye dubbed Cap'n Bob.

"I'm quite sure he didn't intend to defraud the fund," says his former night lawyer.

The Coach and Horses was most infamously frequented by the late Jeffrey Bernard, who wrote a terrific tabloid column called Low Life and became the eponymous hero of a play called Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, a theatrical euphemism.

"I was introduced to the pub by a senior Private Eye journalist," Glen recalls. "He told me to be very careful because for a lot of people, it became their graveyard."

One of his first jobs was to run up and down Old Compton Street, fetching insulin needles for the diabetic Bernard.

"He was one of my idols in a way, I loved how he could combine work and pleasure to such an extreme. What was sad was that he could have a diabetic attack and everyone would assume he was drunk."

Other regular associates (as the bibulous Bernard would have put it) included John Osborne, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. Princess Anne dined at the Old Colony Room.

After ten years, however, he gave it all up, or it him - "I had attended too many funerals, I decided to get out".

In 1982 he'd married a Quaker from whom he is now divorced and was also attracted to the movement best known for its long periods of silence, became warden of the Friends' Meeting House in Darlington while completing his PhD.

Once or twice, he insists, he'd also been mistaken for George Reynolds - "People thought I was coming to talk about Darlington Football club, not some bunch of religious fanatics in Skinnergate."

The new book, to which (as promised) we return, will attempt to take Quakerism out of the Meeting House and into the market place, to challenge conventional belief and to inspire radical thinking.

"It's quite an explosive piece of research," he says. "In essence it will illustrate how the early Quakers who roamed the streets of Darlington were extremists, the reaction of locals akin to the invasion of a market town by latter day punk rockers."

It will also coincide with his own exploration of joining the Roman Catholic church. For him, he says, meetings at Darlington's Friends' Meeting House have become a "dry canal".

"I'm perfectly happy to say that discussions with the Roman Catholics have taken place and I have to think of the repercussions of that for me, but there isn't the vibrancy, the passion, the excitement.

"The Quaker faith used to be a form of spiritual communism, now it's become a middle-class comfort zone, lacking in any sense of radicalism. Silence has become elitist, a middle-class occasion. The only time that the working class experiences silence is for two minutes every Remembrance Day.

"There is something about Catholicism, about the roots of Christianity, which appeals to me. I long for the day when the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican church can talk about becoming a community.

"The churches which are growing are usually charismatic. There's nothing less charismatic than the Quakers."

His local government work has also proved encouraging. "At senior Quaker conferences we would spend half a day drafting a letter to Tony Blair. On the council I have arranged for pensioners to have smoke alarms fitted or for homes to be modernised. It's easier to change people's lives that way; most of the time I enjoy the cut and thrust of local government."

It had been a breakfast meeting in a Darlington caf, so much coffee that finally they brought mints with it - if not After Eight, then at least getting on for lunchtime.

Thereafter he was off to the town hall to check the mail. It had been the most enjoyable morning with a libel lawyer in a long journalistic history.

Revolution st the Globe

MORE on Fred Emney, the querulous comedian who - last week's column - appeared with Phil Silvers at Billingham Forum in 1976.

The Rev Harry Lee, retired to Consett, also recalls Emney in The Chocolate Soldier 20 years earlier at The Globe in Stockton - "notoriously difficult acoustics but no problem to Fred Emney" - prompting Harry to wonder if the Globe is still turning.

In the sixties it attracted pop music's top tenfold, The Shadows (memory suggests) recording Stars Fell on Stockton in tribute. "It should surely have become the Teesside Festival Theatre," says Harry.

After a spell as a bingo hall, the listed building has long stood empty and unloved. Now, however, there are plans to turn it into student accommodation, a food and drink bar and restaurant, shops and "a small performin g area".

Stewart Monk of Stockton-based developer Jomast says that it's a "biggish" project and that they hope to retain the stage. What goes around comes around, as probably they used to say at the Globe.

THE Friends of Beamish Museum's summer newsletter has news of another sadly neglected piece of history, Berriman's "unique" horse drawn fish and chip van which fried nightly in Spennymoor until the 1970s.

Still unrefurbished, the van has "gingerly" been moved from one museum store to another. We mentioned it a couple of years ago, a column which long since became yesterday's fish and chip wrappings. Sadly, nothing's changed.

THE buggeration factor, if the phrase may be excused, hit last week's John North. As several readers have gleefully pointed out, it wasn't the dying George VI whose last words are supposed to have been "Bugger Bognor". It was his father.

STILL with the monarchy, Maurice Heslop in Billingham has - like the fire alarmed mayor of Barnard Castle, reported last week - an extra reason to remember the Queen's garden party.

Accompanying his wife Joan among 8,000 guests earlier this month, Maurice had booked a hotel in Euston. The return taxi journey took an hour and 20 minutes and cost £30.

Greater London Council, it transpired, had chosen the evening rush hour to close Regent Street for a cavalcade of grand prix cars. "The effect was chaotic, everywhere was just gridlocked," reports Maurice.

"It would have been all right on a Sunday, but we couldn't believe that they'd do it at six o'clock on a weekday."

Obliged to travel along the South Bank and then to re-cross the Thames, the taxi driver insisted Maurice take a receipt. "You can send it," he said, "to that bloody idiot Livingstone."

... and finally, we are grateful to former Redcar and Cleveland council leader David Walsh for drawing attention to the "Don't be a benefit cheat" posters now appearing on Arriva buses in the East Cleveland area.

Good intentions notwithstanding, something may be lost in the translation, however.The posters are all in Welsh.