John North: The end of the pier showman

It'll be another eight hours before Phil leaves the theatre. Legendarily loquacious, Doddy loves the late night line up. The Crown Prince of Knotty Ash, a coalman's son still living in the house where he was born, will be 75 next month.

"He does it because he loves it," says Phil. "He has enough money to pack in but what's he going to do? He's physically fine apart from a bit of asthma now and again and he enjoys every minute."

"My life has been a series of tragedies, culminating in tonight," says Dodd, fond also of observing that most of his audience are waiting for a hip operation.

Phil, Shildon lad originally, isn't just there for the cheer, however. Himself the son of a much loved "old time" comedian - the late and lamented Bert Trusler - he is an avid collector of theatrical memorabilia and is writing a book on the laugh-a-minute days of high summer shows in Blackpool.

Fifty years ago, he recalls, there were 23 live shows between Fleetwood and Lytham St Anne's. "Now the few shows there are will often be half empty, yet here's a bloke of 74 who it's impossible to get tickets for.

"He's clean, he's certainly not alternative humour, there are no nasties and no bitter satire and he's packing them in. What does that tell you?"

Doddy spent three nights at the Civic. "We virtually sold out as soon as the brochures were issued in July," says Anne Watson of the council arts department.

After an hour's chat for the Blackpool book, he goes on stage at 7.30pm, takes a break three hours later - Anne Jones, his long time partner, also has a spot - and returns with vacuum flask and box of sandwiches. "You mean you haven't brought yours?" he asks.

The show ends at 12.40am - about par for a night shift down Doddy's jam butty mine - amid rumours that he pays the overtime bill from his own pocket. The council can't confirm it.

"This is like antibiotics. You have to finish the course," he tells Darlington, as he tells most everywhere on his one night standalone through Britain.

Phil Trusler, who now lives in Weardale, counts just two small groups who've left before the end - presumably, he supposes, to catch the last bus.

"We don't actually advise people that he goes on for ever, but most know that anyway," says Anne.

Augmented by his vast collection of Blackpool programmes, Phil's book - the end of the pier show, as it were - will feature affectionate memories of comedians like Norman Evans, Max Miller, Albert Modley and Frank Randle, all long dead.

"Nobody's done more Blackpool than Doddy, but when he goes that's the end of the line," says Phil, 49, whose first Blackpool show featured Tommy Cooper and Freddie and the Dreamers at the Queens Theatre in 1962.

He and thousands of others will doubtless be tickled, therefore, to learn that Ken Dodd is almost certain to be back at the Civic next year. "He just loves Darlington," says Anne Watson - this one could run and run.

Among others seeking an audience with Ken Dodd last Thursday was Sgt John Zissler of Durham Constabulary. The interest was professional.

Sgt Zissler, from Darlington's celebrated butchering family, is with the community safety department. Doddy has agreed to help promote a poster campaign, being launched in Co Durham in November, to raise awareness of conmen preying on the elderly.

"He's been absolutely excellent with us, no cost at all," says Sgt Zissler, who first saw the Scouse comedian 36 years ago at the London Palladium.

"Last year I took my own son and daughter, aged 13 and 15, to see him at the Civic and they laughed every bit as much as I did. The man is absolutely remarkable."

Jim Bowen, another friend of both Blackpool and Phil Trusler, announced his retirement from the entertainment industry last week after an unfortunate remark on BBC Radio Lancashire.

Bowen, whose 14 years as Bullseye compere attracted audiences of up to 18.9 million, flippantly called a black woman a "nig-nog" on Happy Daft Farm, his morning programme.

"I almost immediately apologised for it as, to say the least, it wasn't very clever," he said. "Sadly when a 65-year-old is employed, he brings with him a certain amount of baggage from his own era. It sometimes doesn't sit well in 2002."

Seventy three years ago this week, The Northern Echo launched the Nig-Nog Ring, a children's club, which within three months had 50,000 members - many of whom still have a Nig-Nog Club badge at the bottom of a drawer.

Nig and nog were Co Durham vernacular for boy and girl. There was also a hugely successful Nig-nog dance troupe. Times change.

Not a sound, alas, after last week's appeal for information on Thomas Alton, the amateur inventor from West Hartlepool who, in the 1930s, thought he'd perfected the penny in the slot wireless.

We are grateful to Tom Dobbin in Durham, however, for a 1980 Sun cutting about another great British inventor, Mr Arthur Harrington, from Darlington.

Mr Harrington, it was reported, was going to fire a mouse 2,000ft into space in his home-made rocket - "one giant leap for mousekind," said the Sun, though The Northern Echo had coined the phrase 24 hours earlier.

The mouse, called Anatole, had been bought for 50p by his 12-year-old son. The 3ft rocket was to be launched the following Sunday from the moors above Richmond, and the RSPCA weren't best pleased.

"Cheesed off," said the Sun.

A brief paragraph the following Monday reported that the space shot had been postponed. Mr Harrington, no longer inventing but still in Darlington, says he can't remember if it ever got off the ground but is pretty sure that Anatole didn't.

Though no longer an inventor, his head's still in the clouds - at 62 he's a an enthusiast for the paramotor, a form of hang gliding. Last week he flew from Darlington to Kirk Merrington, near Spennymoor, though it's unlikely that a mouse will be in the hand luggage.

"I'm working," says Mr Harrington, "on being able to take the dog."

Last week's column also concentrated on the rival claims of Trimdon Colliery (up here) and Ashton (in Northamptonshire) to be venue for the World Conkers Championship.

"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough," we somewhat belligerently suggested.

Conker conscientious, Colin Jones from Spennymoor had a go on the Internet instead - and as befits an international occasion, discovered a report on Reuters of Ashton's annual bash.

A conker, Reuters first explained, is the fruit of the horse chestnut tree.

The more southerly event is in its 38th year, attracts 4,000 village green spectators, 400 entrants from as far away as Australia, China, Ukraine and the US and has raised £200,000 for the visually handicapped.

Trimdon Colliery's championship has been going just six years, filled the bar at the Royal and attracted someone from Fishburn.

Brits swung both ladies' and gents' titles at Ashton, defending ladies champion Celine Parachon from France defeated early on.

Colin Jones, musing about the joy of sixers as a bairn round Croxdale way, suggests that Trimdon Colliery may have lost the claim to world domination.

Possibly they have, but you know what they say about little acorns - or horse chestnuts, anyway.

...and finally, the irrepressible Basil Noble, aged 88, rings cheerfully just a couple of hours after a cataract operation. "Into hospital at eight o'clock, home by half past 11," he says.

Using his already good eye, Basil - among Darlington's most familiar figures - quotes an ad in the Sunday Telegraph personal c olumn: "Blonde, beautiful, educated, 50; seeks 100 per cent commitment from very solvent gentleman, aged 50-100."

Though still eligible by age, he insists that he doesn't otherwise qualify. "The operation cost me £2,000. I'm solvent no longer."