John North: A night on the tiles

A night on the tiles, as it were.

Though a motorway engineer not a journalist, Coun Ron Lewis was favourite.

The column, it should be remembered, is notorious for its incorrigible use of long words and neologisms. In Scrabble, the short answer's the key.

Before proceeding, however, a message for the photographer from one of the free papers who turned up at club chairman Sheila Atkinson's door and asked where her motorbike was.

It's the Scrabble club, not the scramble club.

They're a hugely engaging bunch, fewer men than women of letters, though 30-year-old council worker James Crooks has been champion for the past six years.

What's the appeal? "I just like it," said James, a man of surprisingly few words.

Rated "two hundred and oddth" in Britain, he is also champion of the Cleveland club where things are weighed more seriously. "Some clubs can be quite intense but here we play for fun," said Sheila. "In some Scrabble clubs you aren't even allowed to talk."

Invented by Alfred Butts in 1948, the game is now produced in 29 different countries, has sold more than 100 million copies and is in 53 per cent of British homes.

Darlington is one of 348 UK clubs, the word that it's among the most friendly.

They'd brought out the special board, like we used to open a tin of salmon in Shildon when there were folk for Sunday tea, though neither of us had played for donkeys.

It probably explained why both sets of letters were visible to the opponent.

"I trust him," said Ron, and thus made his first mistake.

Not least by telling use of the word "bandit", the column took an early lead.

"You're creeping ahead rapidly," said the mayor - a pedant, perish the thought, would have questioned the contradiction.

"You've got what we call a nice open board," said Sheila, a euphemism meaning "You're not much cop, are you?"

The mayor was heartened, however, to win a challenge on the word "nill" - "it's worse than council meetings, this" he said - and so elated to be allowed "fiz" that he stuck out the civic tongue.

"I'm glad the photographer's gone," he added.

Playing down table, club secretary Geoff Howe was also mightily pleased to find "blueiest" among the 240,000 words in Chambers' Scrabble dictionary.

James, who also plays the game on the Internet and against his computer and is a Carry On films buff, reckoned much of the skill lay in vocabulary. His best game was 721, he thought, his best word score 178 for "stewings", suitably trebled.

Sheila thought that getting seven letter words in the first six moves was the key.

On a convivial and highly enjoyable evening, the mayor came second but still wasn't lost for words. Scrabble rousing, undoubtedly.

*Darlington Scrabble Club meets every Tuesday in the Town Hall at 6.30pm and would greatly welcome new members. Details from membership secretary Anna Rudd (01325) 356932.

A sketch that stuck

RON Hails and associates have met in solemn conclave: it was indeed "Professor" Jimmy Edwards, they conclude - white smoke rising above Hart Lane - who gave to the world the term "British West Hartlepool".

The long running 1950s radio show was Take It From Here, in which Edwards played the doubtless lugubrious Pa Glum. The sketch was Night Train to British West Hartlepool, though what was so peculiarly British about the old place we have been unable to discover.

It's recalled, at any rate, in Roy Maddison's autobiography, principally an account of a lifetime in journalism but most evocative when recalling his seat of the pants schooldays.

He was born in a two up, two down in Hopps Street, Hartlepool, suffered chronic childhood asthma ("I sounded like a juvenile Paul Robeson"), attended Dyke House school - "lower division British West Hartlepool" - where the Harker gang could be a menace but weren't half as fearful as the teachers.

Paul and Fearon, the worst offenders, are described as a "Hammer horror duo" ready at the drop of an aitch forcibly to remind their young charges of the error of their ways.

Roy finally made West Hartlepool Technical School, entered the inky trade as an apprentice compositor on the Hartlepool Mail, loved cricket, supported Middlesbrough - perfidiously - and was passionate about English.

He drank in pubs like the Harbour of Refuge, simultaneously trying to avoid young Hartlepool gentleman like Captain Cutlass, Jimmy the Murderer and Eddie the Gent, who wasn't very gentlemanly at all - nor was Ducky Merryweather, but for different reasons entirely.

At 22, he became the Mail's sports editor, worked on several other North-East newspapers - never this one - and became a strong and successful editor.

Always anecdotal, often amusing, he also recounts a few proprietorial horror stories, but that's enough of that.

* The Madison Line costs £10 and is published by Hayloft, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria CA17 4EU.

SOLED and healed, our extraordinary old friend John Robinson is back from his barefoot ascent of Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain.

Now he plans to climb Snowdon and Ben Nevis in order to complete the barefoot set. "I hope I might be the first to do it," he says, with little fear of peak period contradiction.

The three hour assault caused few problems, insists the 56-year-old haulage contractor and martial arts expert from Shildon. A video company filmed his every step.

"I felt my thigh pulling a bit, but my feet were absolutely fine. There were some sharp stones, so I was quite pleasantly surprised," he says.

After the other mountains, he plans to walk coast to coast along Hadrian's Wall. His boots, of course, will be staying on the lorry.

JIMMY Edwards, 1920-88, was educated at Cambridge, won the DFC, suffered serious facial injuries when shot down over Arnhem and grew his trademark handlebar moustache to hide the scars.

He was a master of fox hounds, unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate, farmer, flier and polo player but is probably best remembered as the leader of the cane gang in the television series Whacko.

West Hartlepool grew up with the docks in the mid-nineteenth century, subsuming the village of Stranton, but merged with "old" Hartlepool - simply to become Hartlepool - in 1967.

The Cleveland Historical Society's website records "considerable animosity" - but not nearly so much as in 1974, when the borough was hijacked from County Durham by something terrible called Teesside.

STILL with show business, mention of Laurel and Hardy in the paper the other day stirred happy memories for Father John Caden, Sedgefield's Roman Catholic priest.

As a young priest in Sunderland, Fr Caden was also Empire Theatre chaplain - in which position he met many stars of the 1950s and remains close friends with Val Doonican.

Laurel and Hardy were there in 1952, part of a short farewell tour. Though non-Catholic, they chatted with the young priest for almost an hour.

"People said they were aloof but entirely the opposite was true," says Fr Caden. "They were probably the biggest act in the world at the time, but they offered a lesson in humility that I've never forgotten and often quoted."

The remarkable Fr Caden, until recently Tony Blair's tennis partner, celebrated his 80th birthday this year but remains conspicuously active around his parish.

Catholic priests can retire at 75. "I didn't think it was right," he says.

THREE weeks ago, we told of Mike Carr's fundraising efforts for the Freeman Hospital intensive care unit in Newcastle, in gratitude for saving his wife Elizabeth's life.

The response has been overwhelming, he says. "All sorts of people have stopped me in the street. One chap came in here with a brown envelope containing £50."

His charity auction raised £1,000, the football match £500. On Sunday, he tackles the Great North Run. Both Mike and Elizabeth, now fully restored to health after two weeks in a coma, work at Durham University's sports centre at Maiden Castle. He's on 0191-386-8180.

LATE news...the "British" question is put to Ken Gardiner, hugely familiar in Hartlepool. "I'm certain it was Tony Hancock," he says...