John North

Barbara Brown, his daughter, recalled a fun-filled childhood and family holidays in which Basil - bowler hat replaced by knotted handkerchief, rolled up trousers revealing ivory white legs - would take charge of sandcastle building like the chartered surveyor he was.

She remembered, too, his sense of mischief and his love of dressing up. Once he'd disguised himself as a tramp on the High Row and tried to tap fellow Rotarians for money - "some of them ran a mile" - on another occasion he'd been Santa Claus.

"You should know what I want for Christmas," a churlish child had replied. "I told you in Binns on Monday."

He was dedicated to family, community and profession, not least to measuring up houses ("usually in Bishop Auckland") on Saturday afternoons.

The Great Basilio appeared when he performed his conjuring act and Basil, said the Rev Robert Williamson, worked his magic on all of us, while creating the illusion that it was all very simple.

His father, added Mr Williamson, had wanted him to be a vicar or an auctioneer - "new meaning to the term bidding prayer".

He recalled Basil's "catalogue of campaigns", his professional projects which helped change the face of Darlington and of the North, his honeymoon 57 years ago when Basil ("ever romantic") had taken Joan to an auction of stirrup cups.

It was the sort of funeral address you wanted to stand up and applaud. If God's house had many mansions, as the familiar Bible reading proclaimed, we were invited to the belief that Basil would already be there, measuring them up.

We reported his death two weeks ago. He was 90, born in Newcastle but in Darlington since 1938, became a Royal Artillery battery sergeant major in the war and after it, was involved in a great many things, seriously and with infinite good humour.

Barbara also remembered the Civic Theatre pantomime - it was probably the Hippodrome in those days - in which Jimmy Clitheroe's "daft sidekick" had appeared on stage with a goldfish in a bowl, announced that he kept forgetting to feed it and told the kids to yell "Have you fed your goldfish?" every time he emerged.

Daft Alfie (for it was he) duly appeared again, infant voices drowned out by Basil's booming baritone.

While Barbara and her brother Christopher cowered in embarrassment, Alfie came to the front of the footlights and gazed down at the incomparable Basil.

"Ah," he said, "the biggest little lad in Darlington".

DAFT Alfie's goldfish gimmick sounds a bit like the "Elephant in a box" routine memorably perfected by the late Jimmy James, son of an ironworks puddler from Portrack, Stockton. It's hardly surprising.

Alfie was played by Danny Ross, who by reason of coming from Oldham, was usually billed as "The Oldham Comedian", whose catch phrase (apparently) was "Me dad's in pies" and who in 1961, was introduced to The Clitheroe Kid by Jimmy Casey, the radio show's producer. Jimmy James, a teetotaller who played a classic drunk, was Casey's father. Sixteen years after he died, aged 71, in 1965, Casey and his cousin Eli Woods reprised the "elephant" act, including a much-acclaimed appearance on the Royal Variety Show.

The elephant in the box can still be seen (or not, as the case may be). Casey and Woods, both still in Stockton, appeared with the Hiss and Boo Musical Hall Company at the Playhouse in Weston-super-Mare as recently as this April. The Beverley Sisters, forever in triplicate, were on the bill as well.

FRED Emney, recalled in last week's column, was another of those post-war radio stars - though probably not the Light Programme.

Tom Cockeram remembers him well. "Big, fat and scowling, he stood centre stage with his cigar in his right hand as a radiant young lady would run on to stand close to his left and put her arm around his waist."

There was a bit more to it than that, a punchline along the lines of "You've left your engine running".

Tom concedes that it mightn't sound much on paper. "On stage it brought the house down."

A WENSLEYDALE exile, Tom now lives at Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds, but still has The Northern Echo delivered every day. So does 73-year-old Florrie Bailes, from Knottingley - also in the West Riding - though she left County Durham 36 years ago.

"I'd never miss a day of it, a wonderful newspaper," she says with glorious loyalty.

Florrie rang about last week's column on the centenary of Browney Social Club, the village near Durham where she lived after marriage. "You forgot about the Jolly Boys," she said.

The Jolly Boys were an impromptu concert party, particularly when the turn didn't turn up. "Sometimes they got a bit kettled because it was a good excuse for a drink, but they were really nice singers and had some lovely outings," Florrie recalls. "All sorts went on at Browney Club in those days."

She'll be back home this weekend for the Durham Big Meeting. Bright and early behind the Byers Green banner, next Thursday's column hopes to report from there as well.

FLAGSHIP long beached, Dressers' store in Darlington remains boarded and bereft. Dressers' long familiar blue and gold carrier bags may be still be had, however - as the column this week discovered - at the Book Cellar, a discount bookshop off the Market Place.

"I bought a few and they rang to ask if I wanted some more," explains cheery owner Colin Wilson. "It was a ridiculously low price so I found myself with 300,000."

It may take an awful lot of books to fill 300,000 bags, however. "On current progress, I can retire when I'm 99," says Colin, a theory not to be discounted at all.

...and finally, while hoofing up on Tuesday evening to address the ladies of St Andrew's, Haughton-le-Skerne, we were intrigued by a sign outside a house in Haughton Road. "Sod the dog," it said, "beware of the kids". In the Highland Laddie afterwards was another notice. "Haughton Village Care Home, open day. Bouncy castle..." Ageless as always, the column bounces back next week.

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