Who wants to be a millionaire?

"Michael Knighton is the same as me. All he's done wrong is make money," says Reynolds.

The pair met at a Football League dinner. Since then the Quakers chairman has been vocally active on his new friend's behalf - including to Carlisle's evening newspaper and potential United buyer Brooks Mileson.

"George has made many telephone calls at all sorts of hours," says Mileson. "The most worrying was when he started to sing down the phone to me."

Reynolds is also said to have outraged Carlisle fans when he accused them in the paper of having a parish pump mentality.

"I don't know how they got together but they do seem to be acting as kindred spirits," says a Cumberland News and Star journalist. "He told us that Michael Knighton had been victim of the greatest miscarriage of justice he'd ever known."

George Reynolds - whom Backtrack found at Tyne Tees television, where three more programmes are being made about his colourful life - insists that he has no official involvement.

"Michael Knighton has had a very raw deal. They are trying to get him out and I feel genuinely sorry for him. He has put £8m into the club and now there's a conspiracy to take it over."

Scarborough FC chairman Malcolm Reynolds, no relation to his Darlington counterpart, has backed Brooks Mileson to take over at Carlisle.

Mileson, a former four-minute miler, is chairman of the Peterlee based Albany Insurance group which for six seasons has sponsored the Northern League. With Dublin based millionaire John Courtenay he is thought to be in talks with Carlisle's administrators.

Mileson became Scarborough's major shareholder two years ago and is credited with saving the club. "He is a man of substance and a man of his word," said Malcolm Reynolds.

"Without his intervention and financial input, well into six figures, Scarborough would have ceased to exist."

Since we made a big impression by sitting in the gateau at Spennymoor Boxing Academy's annual presentation, several others have done the honours.

There's been Mad Frankie Fraser, the well known Arsenal supporter, Ernie Shavers, who could box a bit and Ray Mallon, who talks a hell of a contest.

Each time the do was in a rather swish marquee at Whitworth Hall. On Friday, the column back in action, they were back in the crepuscular Copacana Room at Spennymoor Leisure Centre.

The trophies are vast, the sort that Pickford's take home in a pantechnicon and which live not on top of the mantlepiece but in an extension to the garage.

Though the club continues its remarkable record of producing national champions - Bradley Saunders celebrating his fifth - the principal reason for all that training seems to be so that they can lift the awards.

Jockey and former stable lads' boxer Scott Taylor from Fishburn was also there - still battling, still happy but still with a few more hurdles to clear after his calamitous fall several years ago.

Perhaps the night's greatest talking point, however, was how club secretary Paul Hodgson came by his black eye.

Hodgy has two versions. The first is that he was set upon by four six foot bouncers, single handedly putting them to flight and escaping with just the one slight injury. The second is that he walked into a nail whilst cleaning out the shed.

Knowing his aversion to work - they're considering a long service and good conduct medal down at the dole - Spennymoor is in little doubt that it was the former.

The following evening to the imposing Palace Hotel in Buxton, where the North West Counties League - they of Daisy Hill and Atherton Laburnum Rovers, of Castleton Gabriels, Fleetwood Freeport and the wondrously named Stone Dominoes - held their annual meeting and dinner/dance on the same day.

"Life and beauty animate its halls and corridors," the Buxton Advertiser had observed when the hotel opened in 1868 and things (by all accounts) had also got a bit animated at the annual meeting.

Something to do with booting out Bootle and blood (metaphorically, of course) on the Palace walls.

The do was excellent. The comedian told jokes about Wythenshawe - in the North-East the same gags would have been about Byker, or somewhere - the raffle prizes included ten rolls of wallpaper and they danced, some of them, until almost turning into pumpkins.

Our old friend Keith Hopper, meanwhile, continues to lead them a merry old dance in the NYSD cricket league - another 47 for Bishop Auckland II at Saltburn on Sunday took his seasonal average to 33.

Keith, who in younger days played both football and cricket for Durham County, was 69 in May and was talking of retirement.

We told him he couldn't possibly contemplate packing up until he'd played at 70. "All right," said Keith, "I won't."

Rather younger but still with much to learn, former Darlington striker David Speedie has been sent off in a PFA "Masters" tournament - billed as a chance to meet old friends.

The combative former Scottish international was representing Coventry City when he clashed with fellow Scot Ally Mauchlen of Leicester City.

"Speedie smashed me against the boards and I lost it," said Mauchlen, now manager of Barrow Town. Dismissals in six-a-side games are said by the Non League Paper, which reported the incident on Sunday, to be a "rarity".

Crook Town fans, however, may recall Speedie's Northern League debut a few years ago. He lasted five minutes before summarily being returned whence he came. Mr Speedie is 42.

Among the more surprising items of mail in recent weeks has been a cutting from the Echo of August 17 1939, neatly headlined "Newcastle United play the red."

"In view of the unsatisfactory showing of the numbers in the previous week's practice match," says the report, "the directors have decided that for the Jubilee Fund game against Gateshead on Saturday, the United players will have sewn onto their shirts a white disc showing the number in red."

More than 60 years later (as our correspondent rather gleefully points out) the Albany Northern League has just introduced a similar rule in an attempt to make numbers on striped shirts more visible.

Some things, said a league spokesman, may take just a little bit longer.

Though England's interest in the present global proceedings is over, the Subutteo World Cup - and John Briggs - still await. The other finals are in September.

John, in Darlington, bought four old Subutteo teams for £2 the lot at a car boot sale. They included a green and white striped side now identified as Donawitz FC of Austria, Inter Cities Fairs Cup finalists in the 1960s.

All his ten bob lots were auctioned on the Internet. Donawitz raised £39.50 - nearly £28 than that feller from Sunderland who sold his soul that way - the others £20 between them.

John scents a little big time. "When the Subutteo World Cup starts," he says, "I could be sitting on a fortune."

And finally...

The former Newcastle United player who became one of Gretna FC's most successful managers (Backtrack June 20) was, of course, Alan Shoulder.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites the identity of the first player to score in successive FA Cup finals at Wembley.

We're up for it again on Friday.

Published: 25/06/2002