John North: Taking the biscuit

For 30 years it was simply Carole Archer's needlework tin; for two pins she'd have given it to the binmen. Now, however, the former corner shopkeeper and pub landlady hopes that the silver threads among the garden will provide a lucrative and unexpected twist to the latest just sew story.

In the 1970s, the tin held Huntley and Palmer biscuits. Carole's shop in Hurworth Place, near Darlington, sold any amount of them for around £1 - tin, biscuits, the lot.

Two weeks ago, however, she spotted front page paragraph in the Echo that similar tin depicting a prim and proper Victorian garden party had realised £423 at auction - and all because of what was going on half-hidden in the shrubbery.

The Huntley and Palmer website calls them "lewd images", though it may not be said that they are lewd and clear.

The company withdrew them when finally they realised that a designer had added unrequested (if not necessarily unrequited) detail.

Quite simply, it took the biscuit... Carole, for 25 years landlady of the Station in Hurworth Place and still living in Hurworth, took another look at the bottom of the garden and discovered two pairs of intertwined legs - neither, as a seamstress might say, wearing a stitch.

A pair of dogs were similarly having their day.

"You have to look very carefully for the mucky bits but there's no doubt about it," says Carole, 57. "I can't believe that in 30 years I'd never noticed anything unusual."

Now she, too, has sent the risk-it biscuit tin for auction, and hopes to be able to roll out the barrel.

Thomas Watson, the Darlington auction house, also looked carefully - "I'm going to have to get a bigger magnifying glass,"said auctioneer Steven Dewar - before discovering the hidden detail.

"Tins go quite well anyway but there's always a good market in the risque,"says Steven. "It's the behind closed doors scenario which goes back to Victorian times when sex was kept hidden and never mentioned.

"Unless you knew what to look for you wouldn't have noticed it. I guess some people had quite a surprise."

The lurid detail, says the website, was discovered by a "vigilant grocer". Associated Biscuits, which by then owned Huntley and Palmer, re-issued the design without the bawdy border.

Carole's tin is among 750 lots at Thomas Watson's auction next Monday - everything from china dogs to Rolex watches.

Her sewing kit, meanwhile, lives in a plastic tub instead.

Crumbs... ten bite-sized titbits you might never have known about Huntley and Palmer

* Founded by Joseph Huntley in 1822, the company employed 16 people 18 years later.

* By 1900, H&P employed 5,000 people on a 24 acre site in Reading - the world's biggest biscuit maker.

* The first Europeans to visit the holy city of Lhasa in Tibet were welcomed in 1904 with Huntley and Palmer biscuits. Scott of the Antarctic took some, too.

* For a century, until production there ceased in 1976, Reading was known as Biscuit Town, Reading Gaol as the Biscuit Factory - Oscar Wilde called it something else entirely - and the football team as The Biscuit Men. They're now, among other things, called The Royals.

* H&P's export trade boomed because they used tins, not boxes, to keep the biscuits fresh. Huntley, Boorne and Stevens was founded in 1872 just to make the tins. Production of "fancy" tins dropped dramatically in World War I, when H,B&S made 536,000 War Office hot water bottles instead.

*Specially shaped tins included a garden roller, a penny in the slot machine, a Huntley and Palmer delivery van and a sentry box with a German on guard. In 1913 the German suddenly became a Belgian.

* The annual Christmas catalogue featuring H&P tins is now almost as collectable as the tins themselves.

* Reading East MP Jane Griffiths is campaigning to have one of the two special trains which took biscuits from the factory to the main line returned to the town from a railway museum in Somerset.

* Reading museum hosts an H&P workers reunion on May 15 - officially to launch the www.huntleyandpalmer.org.uk website - at which biscuits made to the original recipe will be served. (Just like biscuits used to be.)

Bombing by Baedecker

SOMETHING of a blanket bombing, letters about the Baedecker Raids continue relentlessly to fall upon this office.

It began two weeks ago when the column recalled the raid which on the night of April 29, 1942 destroyed an engine shed in York.

The raids were so called, we'd suggested, because the Germans hadn't accurate maps and had to use the Baedecker Guide to the historic cities of England.

Since then we have heard from Pat Woodward and Ian Forsyth, both in Durham, from Ernie Reynolds in Wheatley Hill, John Briggs in Darlington and from Mr A Richards, who lived though the York blitz and is still in the city.

The consensus is that the raids on Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich and York were a reprisal for allied bombing of the historic German city of Lubeck, though correspondents don't always agree among themselves.

The Baedecker Guide simply gave tourist information on each English city. "I'm sure the Germans would have invested in a full Ordnance Survey set before war broke out," writes Ian, wryly.

Pat Woodward lived through the raid on Norwich, 50 years ago last week. The Germans had perfectly good target maps, he confirms, some still preserved in the air museum at Elvington, near York.

In total the "Baedecker" raids killed 1,637 civilians and injured 1,760 others, destroyed more than 50,000 houses and - as Mr Richards's photograph confirms - the shed at York.

In the foreground is the Sir Nigel Gresley-designed A4 Pacific Sir Ralph Wedgwood, which suffered a direct hit.

When a former railway worker died recently in York, adds Mr Richards, Sir Ralph's nameplate was found in his garden shed - still with a bend in the middle.

"Should it be restored," he wonders, "or is it worth more in its present condition, in view of its rarity?"

The show must go on

JUST a day to go, and the attempt to bring grand opera to little old Spennymoor still hasn't hit the high notes. At the last count, the town hall had sold nine tickets.

It's hardly the fault of Bob Crowe, one of the "R3 Tenors", who last week drove down from Scotland, distributed 1,500 flyers and several dozen posters in a day - "I even went to Ferryhill," he reports - and anxiously awaits an encore.

Hartlepool born, family roots all over the Spennymoor area, Bob then had to haste back to the Highlands to perform before a group of wealthy American bankers at the celebrated Skibo Castle.

"I ended up singing Nessun Dorma at quarter to one in the morning, but it was good to be appreciated," he says.

Tomorrow night's show, seats in all parts, will definitely go on. Tickets - £8, concessions £6 - are available from Spennymoor Town Hall (01388 815276.)

Undaunted, the tenors play Hartlepool in September.

THE ever-enthusiastic Mr Ivor Shirley has looked in with details of a perhaps more "popular" musical event - Darlington's own Last Night of the Proms, a week on Saturday.

It's the eighth, turns the Dolphin Centre into something as close to the Royal Albert Hall as ever it's likely to resemble, involves a cast of hundreds and has raised many thousands for charity.

Mr Shirley, who has organised everything from bowls to the Teesside Harrier League, continues to promote the event despite retiring from the organising committee in 2002 - "the inspiration and driving force behind Music For Darlington," noted that year's programme.

Ivor the Engine Room, as it were.

The event bears many similarities to the perhaps better known original. "Some serious music before the interval after which it degenerates a bit," says Ivor, cheerfully.

"There'll be crackers, flags, all sorts of things going on. It really is a marvellous occasion."

The previous evening, May 14, more than 100 young musicians stage A Promenade for Youth, also in the Dolphin Centre. The Proms features the King's Division of the Waterloo Band, massed choirs from all over South Durham, a pipe band, promenaders and all the songs you've sung in front of the telly and always wanted to be there.

Proceeds this time to St Teresa's Hospice, Darlington MIND and the Corps of Army Music Trust. Ticket details on 01325 388406 or 01325 388424.

NEATLY entitled A Weekend to Remember, an event in Newton Aycliffe this Saturday and Sunday will stir memories of World War II - particularly of the munitions workers now known as the Aycliffe Angels. Already there's a bus load from Shildon.

It's been organised by the town's Scout Supporters Association, takes place from 1pm each day at their headquarters in Bluebell Way and hopes also to attract war veterans and members of the public.

In an attempt to avoid any further outbreak of hostilities, it will be opened by the mayors of both Newton Aycliffe and Sedgefield Borough councils.

"The SSA is going quite well, so this is an attempt to put something back into the community," says vice-chairman John Short.

Attractions include a pipe band, 1939 Pathe Newsreels, local singers reprising Anne Shelton and Vera Lynn, wartime fancy dress, memorabilia and classic vehicle and Army cadet displays - and a bar.

Members of the local Civil War Society will also be present in uniform. "I'm not quite sure what the relevance is," says John, "but like everyone else they're very welcome."