TWO weeks ago at Raby Castle, around 6,000 Durham area Freemasons and their friends raised £50,000 at a gala for one of their charities.

Though vigorous attempts were made to publicise it throughout the region, the event received fewer column inches than a WI coffee morning (and several thousand acres fewer than a WI calendar).

The media have been invited to Masonic events for several years. "They stopped coming when they realised there was nothing scandalous going on," laments Charles Marshall, Deputy Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Durham.

This Saturday at the Borough Hall in Hartlepool, the Grand Charity - the central benevolent body for England and Wales - meets at 11am to authorise distribution of over £1.1m to non-Masonic causes.

There'll be no fancy pinnies, no exposed calves and no closed sessions. The public is welcome to attend.

The column, no secret, was asked to both Raby revelry and Grand gesture and can make neither. We took Craft lessons over a pint in the Britannia instead.

"I think the only thing that's still secret is the means of communicating that you are a Freemason and even that's not very secret any more," says Mr Marshall, director and general manager of the former OK Motor Company in Bishop Auckland.

Once his enthusiastic Freemasonry was trumpeted in Bus and Coach Weekly - "I was absolutely horrified" - now there's even a readily available booklet, "Your Questions Answered", which addresses everything from the curious matter of the rolled-up trouser legs ("It can seem amusing, but like many other aspects of Freemasonry, has a symbolic meaning") to the elaborate initiation ritual - "a shared experience which binds the members together".

Hugger mugger? "Then why are we sitting discussing it in your local pub?"

Masonic literature describes the body as the UK's largest secular, fraternal and charitable organisation, teaching "moral lessons and self-knowledge through participation in a progression of allegorical two-part plays" - the famous three degrees.

Nationally, there are 330,000 members in 8,644 lodges, in Durham - between the Tees and Tyne - 10,500 members in 203 lodges meeting at 40 Masonic halls, and in Darlington, 14 lodges in the same hall, conveniently situated for the Brit and renowned for its roast beef. Darlington's oldest lodge, Restoration, was consecrated in 1761.

"There's still a lingering belief that we are somehow corrupt, that we raise all this money by foul means not fair," concedes Mr Marshall. "It's totally untrue, but you give a dog a bad name and it sticks."

Lex Thompson, a senior Darlington officer, insists that some "surprises" remain necessary. "We keep things to ourselves because it would spoil things for new members if they knew what was going to happen. It would diminish their enjoyment."

Before the 1930s, they reckon, the Masons built far fewer brick walls around themselves. The opening of Penshaw Monument - "largely Masonic" - was attended by tens of thousands; the consecration of the Barnard Lodge in Barnard Castle was so popular that the NER laid on a special train. Impending war suggested greater secrecy.

"Unfortunately, after the war there was a Grand Secretary who was happy to perpetuate it and the mystique which built up didn't do us any good at all," says Mr Marshall.

Since the mid-1980s, they've been trying to redress the balance. Mr Marshall says: "There were many years when every inquiry was met by a 'No comment', not a suggestion of a pint and a ham and peas pudding sandwich in the pub, but there's no doubt a lot of our own members revelled in the secrecy and the mystique."

Part of the attraction, he suspects, is the discipline. "It requires you, and I think teaches you, to treat other people as equals and to be treated as an equal. The rituals are, in effect, a series of plays designed to teach moral lessons and learned by heart, so that's another discipline.

"The joy of doing it well and of other people listening to it is absolutely great."

It was a most instructive 90 minutes. Brotherlike, we shook hands and went our separate ways.

* Details of Freemasonry can be obtained from Alan Hall, Provincial Grand Secretary, 8 The Esplanade, Sunderland SR2 7BH 0191-567 5635.

SWORN to secrecy about the outcome - "they threaten to pull your fingernails out," he says - the Rev Les Hann has recorded his contribution to The Weakest Link.

The Methodist minister in Weardale has a slightly disconcerting confession, however. "Anne Robinson was very nice to me," he says.

"A little smile kept curling around her lips. I think the cameras must point the other way when that happens."

He's one of 19 Weardale folk who've recently recorded the show, travel and hotel expenses all paid. "We really enjoyed it," says Les. "Nothing to be scared about at all."

AS charitable as the Freemasons but around for nowhere near as long, the Rotary Club of Easington and Peterlee held its 50th anniversary dinner last Friday.

It was an excellent evening amid good company, the vast amount already raised - around £500,000 in real terms - supplemented on the night by presentations of a defibrilator to Peterlee Town Centre and of large cheques to St John Ambulance and to the local Macmillan Nurses.

The club was formed by Easington butcher Tom Siddle and five others, peaked in the 1980s and now has 18 members. Membership is by invitation, they say - but new 'uns are very welcome.

IN company with a great harassment of jobbing journalists, we hiked the following day from Middleton-in-Teesdale to High Force and back.

Hardly any of the proceedings may be revealed, not because of an outbreak of false modesty among the fourth estate agents but because it's almost all unprintable.

We did hear, however, that there are now two rival North-East websites - at least one of them run from an unexpected source - dedicated to the unique pleasures of a good pork pie.

Teeth into that one, with luck, next Thursday.

OUT in the noonday sun, we were invited on one of summer's steamiest afternoons to judge the Darlington round of the Curry Chef of the Year competition.

It was at the College of Technology, where when Caxton was a kiddiwink we'd won £2 for topping the journalism course and bought 16 paperbacks with the proceeds. Memory suggests that the college also did a good chicken pie.

Now there's something called a telematics support unit, a key skills centre (deserted) and a performing arts centre, too.

We sought directions. It was in the mezzanine, said reception, though "Follow your nose" might have been more helpful. Chambers Dictionary says a mezzanine is "a room beneath a stage". Now a mezzanine appears a must.

Nine Asian chefs had had an hour to do their thing and to spice their mainbrace, supervised by Mr Neville Newmarch of the borough council's environmental health department.

"You know me, I'm never totally happy," he told them later, though Mr Newmarch may be unhappier still to learn that he is not the most dread of the environmental flying squad among the town's caterers.

There's another inspector, Irishman, who always runs his finger along the top of the door, and usually gets a dusty answer. "Oh him," they shudder, "holy terror, him."

The cookery competition had lots of rules, including one about making enough for two to three people which seemed to have lost something in the translation. Most would have fed the five thousand.

Several contestants also wore the look of frightened rabbits, so that you wanted to cuddle them and say: "It's not the environmental, it's me."

Me and the Mayor, anyway.

Others ignored the rules on anonymity, one an apparent refugee from a latter day journal ism course. "An explosion of traditional flavour and natural colours which will excite the taste buds and entrance the eyes," he wrote of his creation.

There was king prawn jhole and shat-kora lamb bhuna, shakenshah and phool gobi, the ubiquitous special rice alone in its familiarity.

Most were spectacularly good, clearly gainsaying what they say about too many cooks, though - unobserved by the environmental - one of the judges could be seen eating with his fingers.

A man not given to over-egging the pudding, Mr Newmarch said he'd been with the council for 23 years ("I've had a bit of experience") and that the lads' kitchens were "going in the right direction". Peter Bell, the college's executive chef, said they'd been very slick and exceptionally good.

Something to do with heat and kitchen, the column's watch battery died at 2.24pm, defied resuscitation and had to be replaced on the way back to the office.

The winner was Syed Hassain from the New Bengal Tandoori in Victoria Road. He goes forward to the North-East final, a hot favourite, if ever.