John North: Hoppings mad

IT MUST be 30 years since we were at the Hoppings, an age when "wicked" still meant evil - youth appears now to have transmogrified it into the opposite - and "beanies" were something you ate with your chippies.

A beanie is now a prize, as in any prize on the stall. There are "prizes", which means goldfish, and "latest prizes" which means everything else.

Mostly, however, the rewards are stuffed animals - panther, panda, polar bear, pied warbler very likely - wearing a universal expression of ineffable docility and thus giving new meaning to the term soft toy.

There are third world countries whose Gross Domestic Product may chiefly depend upon the mass manufacture of such things and there are swains, homeward the hunter, bearing them in twopence ha'penny triumph whilst the damsel trots alongside with a go-to-bed look in her eyes.

Whether it is poacher or panda of whom the lady dreams between the sheets we are, of course, in no position to ascertain.

The Hoppings, eternally as in Hoppings mad, is the annual fun fair - savage amusements, some still say - on Newcastle Town Moor.

It's vast, about the size of Alaska and much more densely populated. By the end of the week, however, Alaska may have rather more grass.

Those rides which make the here today headlines, the demonic devices which plunge and lunge, clash and thrash, which by some centrifugal farce throw together their occupants like long johns in a launderette, may be the main attraction.

Gone the days when the super waltzer alone could sweep her off her feet, of the blood lust boxing booth and of canoodling beneath the caterpillar. Even the big wheel has come full circle, and has instructions in German.

There's something called a Drop Zone, which accelerates from 0-60 in 0.8 seconds, surges through 5.5g, decelerates through 2g - 2g or not 2g - descends at 60 feet a second and accepts euros.

There's the Chaos Afterburner, the Equinox, the Vertigo and the Mighty Mouse, in front of which is a notice discouraging those under the influence of drink or drugs, who are pregnant, suffer heart problems, are mentally or physically handicapped or under 4ft 6ins tall.

The caveat might easily have been extended to those, like the column, who are 6ft 2ins but simply have a yellow belly.

For most it is a badge of honour, a rite of passage. There are those who scream, those who might have found things more comfortable in the reception class at NASA and those who still essay a sedate and regal wave, as if in the gold coach down the Mall.

Mostly this multi-faceted masochism is £4 a throw in what without irony they call the happy hour. Crowds stare with horrible fascination, like they used to watch the inmates at Bedlam.

Beneath the screeching skyline, however, down at what are left of the grass roots, the Hoppings remains toffee apple traditional. Even the shuggy boats - the dear, dozy shuggy boats - still follow their sedentary course

Only the prices, and the giant hammers, have been inflated.

Hooking a duck, knocking cans off a shelf, throwing darts at playing cards are all now £1. You can still roll a coin but it has to be 20p. Coconuts are 60p but you buy them, not shy them.

A burger is £2, a flump - as in things that go flump in the night, perhaps - £1.20.

At the Exhibition Park entrance there's a great caravan of lucky gipsies, mostly called Lee, mostly claiming to have read Sylvester Stallone's hand. Perhaps the gentleman is superstitious. As if by some clairvoyant cartel they all charge £3 for around five minutes. There are queues. If this is palmistry, there's a fortune in it.

Beyond the gipsy caravans stretch great avenues of stalls, manned in ever concentric circles by youths wearing money aprons and looks of comatose vacuousness.

Where do they all come from? Whence do they hitch their wagons? What do they to prevent terminal boredom? Who's looking after the seaside?

There's also one of those things which used to be known as a freak show, but is now called Believe It Or Not as if in deference to the Trade Descriptions Act.

Inside, apparently, are Capella the two-headed giant from Cuba, a Russian called Alma who's half man half beast - some of the Northern League management committee may similarly qualify - a bee the size of a bird, a rat the size of a dog and a kitten with 37 heads, 48 tails and the key to Joanna Southcott's sealed box. (Well, that sort of thing, anyway.)

Amid this worldwide peep show there's also a sign that says "See Mr Big Mouth, from Hull."

So that's what happened to John Prescott.

It was Monday evening, 8-10pm, quiet in a cacophonous sort of a way, St John Ambulance camouflaged in yellow jackets, constabulary low profile.

There was no bother and no sign of it, though a fat lass appeared to be hitting her young man in the wedding present, as if demanding to know where her toothless tiger might be.

The bottom line on the bingo card was that almost everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. As they've been saying in Newcastle these past 100 years, the shows must go on.

A Judas who could never have fitted the part

JOEY Brown-Humes, whose death we reported last week, was an all-round sportsman as well as a solicitor and gentleman.

Arthur Hare, friend and legal colleague, recalled that in 40 years membership of Barnard Castle Golf Club, Joey's enthusiasm - hours of practice on Hamsterley village green - had sometimes outstripped his expertise.

In golf they call it shanking, apparently. "Joey sought so much advice from the pro that the pro ended up shanking, too," said someone else.

Peter Monk talked of Joey's part in the formation of Hamsterley's still active tennis club; Fred Mangles remembered both his old friend's days in the village football team and the occasion he was prevailed upon to referee the match against Witton Park.

"Even Joey's good nature was stretched by that one. You know what the Witton Parkers were like," added Fred. (We said that we didn't.)

Joey was born in Prospect House, Hamsterley, died there 77 years later and had been chairman of the parish council for an unprecedented 53 years.

St James's church overflowed for his funeral, Thine Be the Glory and all, Canon Trevor Pitt recalling that two months earlier, Joey had read the part of Judas in the dramatisation of the Palm Sunday gospel.

"No one on earth," added Canon Pitt, "could have been less appropriate to the role."

WITTON Parkers? One of those lads has just been elected Mayor of Durham. "I only played once for the police football team. They were the ones who could tell you about being dirty," says Coun Ray Gibbon, formerly the Ferryhill polliss. Ray was born in Park Row - "the posh end, they used to tell me"; his wife Margaret, the mayoress, is from up the road in Etherley. "It's a wonderful village and a wonderful honour for a Witton Park lad to be Mayor of Durham," says Ray, now in Witton Gilbert.

Jim Davies, his Witton Park born cousin - "second cousin, probably" - has just been elected a Freeman of the City of London.

The new mayor, coincidentally, also had regular dealings with Joey Brown-Humes - most memorably in the 1960s when a couple of Ferryhill poachers appeared before the village bench.

"There was no harm in them, just Ferryhill lads on a Sunday afternoon out, but we confiscated their nets - the rule was that if didn't bite you, you confiscated it - and took them back a couple of days later."

Joey, the prosecuting solicitor, wondered where the farmer was, lest the pair p leaded not guilty - and was advised of another local custom.

"Ferryhill lads don't plead not guilty," said PV Gibbon. "We have them far better trained than that."

ALL this talk of local boys making good inevitably turned in the pub to Shildon lads, than whom none are better.

There was Sid Chaplin, of course, and George Romaines - ever punctual on the One O'Clock Show - and George Reynolds, possibly, by proxy. But does anyone remember Gordon Peters?

He lived somewhere near the old Council School, was educated (like Tony Blair) at Durham Cathedral chorister school, had a bit part in the early Dads Arms and in the 1970s was suddenly given his own six slot comedy show on BBC1.

Unfortunately it was on Wednesdays at half past seven. Coronation Street won.

Now in his 70s, Gordon Peters is still entertaining, has a one-man "jester" show called Cap 'N' Bells and another of comedy songs. Swings and roundabouts as probably they say on the Town Moor, there may be more of him next week.