Big Lawrie is bigger yet, double breasted suit wrapped around him like a bespoke bivvy blanket, neck subsumed into necessarily broad shoulders, size 12s as Brasso bright as a guardsman's always should be. He's still a smart lad for 67.

His accent appears little changed despite 30 well heeled years in Hampshire, bluff and buoyant and Low Fell fashion. When he recalls his parents, "father" still rhymes with "gather".

It's good, says the genial Geordie of artless alliteration, to be back among people who understand what he's talking about.

The man whose surname so easily transcribed into Mackem Enemy, is back in Bishop Auckland where his football management career had begun, and where the affection is unequivocal.

Sunderland? "Why," says Lawrie McMenemy, "Sunderland was different."

He's in Bishop for the launch of an exhibition celebrating the glory days of amateur football, obliged to pay £50 for a taxi from Newcastle airport after the mate who was meeting him decided to watch the UEFA Cup match instead, and convivially holds court.

"The driver just wanted to talk about football all the way. He should have paid me," he grumbles, cheerfully.

Fallen in also are many of the Bishop Auckland team which in 1966-67 he led to a Northern League, League Cup and Durham Challenge Cup treble, recalling how the former Coldstream lance-sergeant could really put them through their paces.

"The first run he took us on I was physically sick afterwards," says retired Chester-le-Street dentist Bob Thursby - capped 17 times by England, three lions still burgeoned on his blazer badge.

"He didn't take any prisoners if you weren't giving your all but I'll tell you what he was, he was a good man manager," adds Bob.

"A big assertive man," recalls former centre half George Siddle. "He seemed hard but we had a lot of laughs. He could certainly hold the floor, certainly earn a lot of respect."

"I remember him once whacking me across the arse with a garden cane for not doing me press ups right," remembers Michael Barker. "I wouldn't care, I'd just done 25 and they were perfect."

Big Lawrie beams, a little lop-sided as always. "Aye, they were good days, them."

One of eight good Catholic kids brought up in a two bedroomed council house in Gateshead, he'd wanted to be a journalist, became in time a familiar broadcaster, still writes a column for the evening paper in Southampton.

"The white 'un, not the pink 'un," he says several times, as if real men don't write on pink paper, not even for the Southern Evening Echo.

Dreams of a journalistic career had been inspired by the photographs in the Evening Chronicle window in Newcastle, shattered when he managed just four O-levels.

"English was probably my best subject but I wasn't that good at any of them," he admits.

"I've met lots of journalists over the years and having seen how they earn a living, especially the national lads who arrive out of the blue and think they know it all, I think I could have earned a living."

Instead he joined Gateshead education department - "the town hall was the ultimate in those days" - signed for Newcastle United and, conscripted, for Her Majesty. In two years he became a lance-sergeant.

"National Service didn't do me any harm, I don't think it did anyone any harm, particularly when it came to how to face up a room."

A foot injury ended any hope of a professional playing career. He wasn't a great player, he says - the joke may be familiar - but he could stop those who were.

Instead he became a coach at Gateshead under former Newcastle left winger Bobby Mitchell and practical joking goalkeeper Jack Fairbrother, departed when the wages ran out - for neither the first nor last time in those parts - and joined Bishop Auckland in 1965.

The country's most successful amateur club had never previously had a team manager, the side picked by a committee who guarded zealously their rights, their status and their lofty prestige.

It was eight years since they'd lifted the Amateur Cup, however, and they'd become accustomed to its face. Perhaps, after all, someone could manage better.

Before the first home game McMenemy was giving a team talk when the door opened, a committee man walked through the dressing room, wished them all a good afternoon and left through the opposite door.

When it happened again and again, the committee en route to their little Kingsway eyrie - a sort of Can-you-see-us-in-the-box - the ex-guardsman put both feet down.

"Finally I told the trainer feller to go down and shut the door," recalls Laurie.

"There was a silence, no one had closed the door on the committee before, but it made a big impression, certainly on the players.

"I think they had an emergency meeting after that, but I was all right. I was never going to take any interference, however big or small the stage, but perhaps because they could see some success coming, they started to accept me.

"I've never known a committee to agree about anything, so how on earth they picked a team all those years, I just can't imagine."

After an indifferent first season, they played Blyth Spartans four times in the FA Cup first round in the autumn of 1966, finally beat them at Roker Park, held Halifax Town in the second before losing the replay 7-0 before a 14,000 crowd at The Shay.

"I was so annoyed that we'd been thumped, I told everyone to have a quick bath, get on the bus and out of it. We were half way back to Bishop before I realised we'd left Neil Abbott, the local reporter who'd come with us, still typing his story."

Bishops also lost in the Amateur Cup, to little known Skelmersdale. "They included two young lads called Steve Heighway and Brian Hall," recalls Lawrie. "everyone had heard of them after that."

Since it was the Amateur Cup, did it follow that they were all good, hand on heart, amateurs?

"Oh aye," says Lawrie.

Haddaway and the other thing, says the Backtrack column, with uncharacteristic temerity.

"Well, the figure £4 a week expenses sticks in my mind, but that was for matches plus training twice a week.

"There weren't a lot of bungs or anything, Eddie Doole who was treasurer was quite strict about that, but there was quite a lot of jealousy because we'd brought so many good players together.

"It was a bit like Chelsea now. You might have had the big names, but you still had to make them play well together."

Some of the players would come down from Low Fell in his elderly Morris Oxford, all right until it rained because the floor leaked. "I suppose there might have been a bit of fiddle there, because it wasn't costing them anything, but no one was making their fortune."

After the North-East treble, former Sunderland manager Allan Brown appointed him a coach at Sheffield Wednesday, presciently forecasting that the big man would have his own club within two years.

He steered Doncaster Rovers to the fourth division title, was sacked when they came down again and after Grimsby Town began a 12 year association with Southampton which included the 1976 FA Cup final victory over Manchester United.

Even then, even when Kevin Keegan was hypnotised from Hamburg, he missed the passion of the North-East. "Someone once said to me that in Newcastle they danced in the streets and in Southampton they danced in the kitchens. I'll never forget that.

"When I took over Southampton they were a happy, friendly, sloppy club. I made them a happy, friendly, professional club."

Back in Bishop Auckland, first time for 37 years, the players are delighted to see him and to reprise a team photograph - "I'm not kneeling, mind, they'll stop me sick money," says someone who'd better be nameless.

Michael and John Barker are there, Billy Roughley, Peter Cooke, Terry Kirkbride, the goalkeeper whose San Francisco rendition - "you'd have thought it was Tony Bennett, honestly" - made it the club song.

Singing the Two Blues, as it were.

Lawrie, now semi-retired - "bits and pieces, mainly charitable" - particularly recalls a carousing trip to Ivry-sur-Seine, Bishop's twin town near Paris, where two days after the team's arrival they were joined by Alderman Bob Middlewood, the committee man who fancied himself as Mr Bishop Auckland.

"He wore a black beret over one eye.

"By the end of the first night we'd no doubt how we'd won the war, he'd done it single handedly."

By then, of course, the selectors had been picked off. Lance-sergeant McMenemy was irresistibly in command.