John North: Roy on Tees, the reprise

MR Ian Luck, a wandering minstrel of the column's acquaintance, has looked in with an oxymoron - that is to say a CD described as an "authorised bootleg" - and thereby begun a trail of largely unrequited nostalgia.

The recently released CD is of Roy Orbison live at the Fiesta Club in Stockton on March 25, 1980 - Only the Lonely, Pretty Woman, the whole warbling works. Roy Orbison, said Ian, was the Mario Lanza of pop.

We bought it for a fiver, cheap at the price, but have paid a heavy toll in frustration.

The Fiesta in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the North-East's classiest night club. A picture in the library here (above) shows posters for Wee Willie Harris and Del Shannon, but there were bigger acts than Wee Willie, or even the original Del boy.

Everyone who was anyone could be seen at the Fiesta, and some (memory suggests) who were nothing very much at all.

Though the club had changed hands by 1980 - changed fortunes, too - it was owned in its heyday by brothers Keith and Jim Lipthorpe, who opened a still bigger Fiesta in Sheffield and had other entertainment interests on Teesside.

Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Jones, the Beach Boys and the Four Tops are all said to have thought Sheffield the best cabaret club in the world. Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, Frankie Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John all played Stockton, and Stockton won handsomely.

Shirley Bassey got £28,000 for a week's work; Frank Sinatra asked £75,000 for two nights but was declined with thanks. "I was a businessman, we'd have lost £40,000," Keith recalled later. Long empty, the building still stands on Norton Road. No longer a temple to the swinging 60s, it is being converted into a church and Christian centre.

Discovering what happened to the Lipthorpe boys, Mr Keith and Mr Jim as usually they were known, has proved altogether more difficult.

A chap who'd been a wine waiter there recalled the stars ("most of them were all right") but had lost touch with the Lipthorpes; many others who'd danced to the brothers' tune had no longer followed their steps.

On the Echo's "Tracer" database we even found an April 2001 request seeking "Jimmy and/or Keith Lipthorpe" from a chap in Gloucestershire who recalled happy 1950s days together in a band.

"We earned more in a week with the band than I did in a month with the bank. Remember the taxi with the bass on the back and drums on the roof, sore hands from plucking of bass and a clip round the ear from my dad for ruining my 'violinist's' fingers?"

Had he found them? "Unfortunately he died at the beginning of the year," e-mailed his wife in reply.

When the in-crowd thronged their clubs, the Lipthorpes' lifestyle reflected their success. Jim lived in a Spanish-style villa in Norton said to be "one of the most exclusive houses on Teesside" when in 1976, it went on the market for £42,500.

Keith had a manor house in Hartburn. In 1974, they had also opened Pharaoh's disco in a former school in Stockton, bought for £20,000 and fitted with a further £50,000 worth of 20th century Egyptology.

Eastern promise? It proved disastrous.

The Sheffield Fiesta had closed in 1974, debts put at £300,000. Norton Entertainments, of which Spennymoor businessmen Frank Kenmir and Thomas Adams were also directors, went into receivership two years later.

"Everyone thinks the Lipthorpe brothers were loaded, but I'm absolutely skint," said Jim.

Keith returned to accountancy, Jim became general manager of the Fiesta under new ownership.

In 1982, however, Keith and his wife Barbara opened Scruples in Regent House, Stockton, billed as "Too good to be true" and uncomfortably close to the Official Receiver's office.

In little over a year it was also in receivership, owing £156,000 to creditors. "It wasn't a disaster, in fact it was a very big success," said Keith, slammed by the registrar for "absolute negligence".

Both brothers subsequently managed pubs in Stockton, though Keith left the Vaux-owned Crosby's after 15 months.

"It was our view that he would be more suited to a lounge/bar style of pub rather than with young, trendy people," explained a brewery spokesman at the time.

It could hardly have been more cruel - but when life really was a cabaret, nobody did it better than Keith and Jim Lipthorpe.

ROY Orbison, the Big O, had had a busy month before landing in Stockton on March 25. After eight nights playing San Francisco and Los Angeles with the Eagles, he returned to LA for filming on March 11, flew to Frankfurt for a live television special, was back in the US to record an NBC show and then flew to Britain for a month-long tour which ended on his 44th birthday.

The Stockton performance, now digitally remastered and all that sort of thing, was recorded by a "fan".

After rather patently supposing "bootleg" to be the leg of a tall boot, the Oxford English Dictionary concedes the meaning illicit, or smuggled - originally liquor in the boot top.

By 1929, Variety magazine had diversified. "There is almost as big a market in bootleg disk recordings as there is in books," it claimed. Now it's the authorised version.

An error that's taking its toll

THE energetic Wendy Bowker, (right), Richmond-based gallery manager for "square sheep" artist Mackenzie Thorpe, is having a bit of a run-in with Ken Livingstone and Co.

In London on business, Wendy - a former prison officer who is also consultant to the Bad Girls television series - paid the £5 congestion charge but has still had a demand for it.

Though she has produced the relevant bank statements, Livingstone's crowd remain obdurate. "With administrative charges, it's gone from £5 to £138.94 and I'm just not paying," says Wendy.

"I'd rather go to Holloway myself. It would be good research, anyway."

Penultimate threat, she has now recruited her friend and local MP William Hague to attempt a bit of de-congestion. "If that doesn't work," Red Ken has been warned, "I'm bringing in Mike Amos."

A CALL from the Bishop of Durham's office about the hoary Sunday Times chestnut claiming that Auckland Castle is going on the market. "We've had one of the Church Commissioners here this morning," the female caller says. "He confirmed what we already knew, that it's a load of cobblers." There is a short pause. "Well, a load of rubbish, anyway."

WITH a note of thanks for support we don't recall having given, a jolly little book arrives from the Discovery Centre in Bishop Auckland on Customs and Traditions in the town.

There's paste eggs and chapel anniversaries, Carlin Sunday, Ash Wednesday, hoppings and hirings and, of course, Christmas, when the halls usually were decked with much that was home-made.

Particularly, however, we are taken by a description of the "Waits" "a kind of musical night watch who used to walk the streets during the winter season for the purpose of protecting the property of the inhabitants".

Nicholas Rutherford, it is said, was Bishop's last representative of the fraternity, though frequently incapable of doing his duty. On such occasions, his wife Betty would play the waiting game instead, though her tune was rather different from the old feller's mixture of time and tide:

Good morning, masters and mistresses all,

Our Nichol's drunk agyan, so ah's forced t'call.

They also serve, who only stand and wait.

PETER Cardno, whose last bus book proved so great a transport of delight that both first run and duplicate sold out, is awaiting delivery of another.

The last was on Scurr's of Stillington. The next recalls Wilkinson's of Sedgefield, known to its customers as Wilkie's and familiar - not least on breezy Blackpool runs - until 1967.

A bit late for the Christmas market - "it's just been one problem after another," says Peter - the book should still be at Sedgefield post office and other outlets by the end of next week. Catch it for £9.50.

* Another ticket to ride, Eric Hutchinson has produced a history of Venture Transport of Consett, once yellow clad and ubiquitous throughout north-west Durham and into Weardale.

No time yet to read it, but it's available from Waterstone's, WH Smith's in Newcastle and the MetroCentre, Consett library and C&G Models in Parkgate, Darlington.

...and finally, the winner of our "nickname" competition is Pat Bucke, who wins a bundle of books for Christmas.

Billy the Kid was William Bonney, the Crafty Cockney Eric Bristow, Old Slowhand Eric Clapton, The Girl With the Million Dollar Legs was Betty Grable, The Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner, The Grocer Ted Heath, Madge is Madonna, David Lloyd answers to Bumble, The Old Groaner was Bing Crosby and The Bard of Ayrshire Robert Burns.

For reasons of football and of festivity, the column is now having a break. We return on January 8.