WITH his trademark idiotic grin and tousled hair, Stan Laurel earned lasting fame by landing his partner Oliver Hardy in "another fine mess" on stage and screen.

Nearly four decades after his death, the comic genius is still a global superstar, with fans around the world lining up to bid for souvenirs of his life.

A unique collection of photographs and documents tracing Stan's rise from humble North-East roots to the glamour of the Hollywood movies has created a stir among international buyers before it comes under the hammer on July 1.

Newcastle auctioneers Anderson and Garland are selling the slice of showbusiness history for Stan's only surviving male relative in the UK - his 82-year-old nephew Huntley Jefferson Woods, from Blyth, in Northumberland, whose mother, Beatrice, was the comic's younger sister.

As soon as the sale catalogue went on the Internet, Anderson and Garland received enough calls to persuade them to raise their original £5,000 estimate of the collection's value.

The photographs go back to Stan's unconventional childhood spent first in Ulverston, Cumbria, where he was born in 1890, and later at school in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, where his parents, Arthur and Madge Jefferson, were immersed in Arthur's melodrama company based at the town's Eden Theatre.

This was where the seeds of Stan's career were sown.

A natural showman, he neglected his studies at King James I Grammar School, preferring to entertain teachers with impromptu performances in the staff room, and was sent to Gainford Academy, near Barnard Castle.

He was fascinated by the theatre, and is thought to have taken plots for early Laurel and Hardy films from plots written by Arthur for his company.

Stan settled in the US around the time Beatrice had her son, who grew up fascinated by tales of his famous uncle's exploits, spending hours as a child looking at the family's growing collection of photographs sent across the Atlantic.

The family believe Stan may have seen his nephew as a child, but Mr Woods' only memory is meeting both comics in 1952 at Newcastle's Empire Theatre on their penultimate British tour.

Anderson and Garland's collectables specialist, John Anderson, said: "When Mr Woods came into our saleroom and invited us to see his collection we just couldn't believe that such a selection of memorabilia could have been sitting in a house only a dozen or so miles from our premises, unknown to all but a few of his friends and Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts.

"Altogether they comprise a unique archive of images of one of the world's best-loved comics and a man who never forgot his family in Britain in his rise to success."

Anderson and Garland is putting the collection on show on Thursday and Friday. The company is based at Marlborough House.