JOEY Brown-Humes will affectionately be remembered in legal circles: J E Brown-Humes it said on the brass nameplate in Bishop Auckland Market Place, though everyone called him Joey.

He also had a perhaps unsurpassable claim to local government fame, chairman for the past 53 years of Hamsterley Parish Council in west Durham.

Most of all, however, Joey - who died last week, aged 77 - will be recalled as one of the nicest men around, kindly even to us wet-eared young reporters once carving a name on the press bench at Bishop magistrates.

The evening paper called him J E Brown-Humes in those days, suffixed by the word "prosecuting" or "defending", though it was sometimes hard to suppose Joey adopting an adversarial position even to fulfil the law's demands. He was simply, unequivocally, one of life's gentlemen.

Teddy, his father, had also been a solicitor, clerk to Bishop Auckland magistrates and coroner for the Darlington district. Joey not only followed him into the legal profession, but remained after his father's death in Prospect House, Hamsterley, where he had been born.

On Royal Navy service during the war, he had entered Tokyo harbour on the day that Japan surrendered. He and Mavis, every bit as delightful, had been married for 48 years.

In 1961, the company his father had founded amalgamated with Dowling and Hewitt to become Hewittt, Brown-Humes and Hare. "Joey was eternally optimistic, always pleasant and courteous and looked for good in everyone," says Arthur Hare, his long time partner and friend.

Though he retired in 1989, he was still a regular visitor to the office. Most Tuesday lunchtimes - ever twinkling, eternally effervescent, physically hardly changed - he'd hold court with old friends in Bishops' Bistro.

Following a private funeral, a service to celebrate Joey's life will be held at 3.30pm today at St James's church, which also he'd served all his days, half a mile from Hamsterley Village

It's cruciform and pretty small. They'll never get them all in.