CHARLES Simon, the indomitable actor who died last week, remained until his last gasp a 40-a-day man. Dunhill King Size, an' all. Perhaps it's true what they say about smoking damaging your health.

"I've been smoking since I was a choir boy," he told the column 18 months ago.

"It's all a matter of luck. Either you're one of those who goes on living for ever or one of those who pops off early.

"My only advice is never to go near a doctor. He'll probably find 40,000 things rotting inside you and all you'll do is worry yourself to death, anyway."

Ironically, he himself was best remembered as Dr Dale in his fictional wife's radio "Diary" - shared every day with seven million listeners.

Simon also ran a Darlington repertory company for 15 years, married a corner shopkeeper's daughter, retained his Darlington solicitors but when last in town, in 1982, couldn't find his way from the Civic Theatre to the High Row.

"They'd put a bloody ring road in the way," he complained.

(Audrey Thompson, his secretary in the repertory years, had rung to say he'd changed. In those days, she said, it was 40 Players.)

A delightful chap, he continued in constant demand, not least for television commercials - if not 20 tabs, then throat tablets, anyway.

"All I know," he'd said, "is that I can earn more with repeat fees from making a commercial in one day than I can playing Hamlet at the National Theatre for a year."

He'd been in Milan filming another commercial when he felt unwell and despite the producers' entreaties to stay another week - "he'd been the life and soul of the party," says Vincent Shaw, his agent - returned home and died peacefully soon afterwards.

The old incorrigible was 93. It had got him in the end.

WHILST Mrs Dale's Diary was on the Light Programme in the 1960s, George Lambelle was on the North Home Service - "Voice of the North," he recalls, tutored at the time by the fondly remembered Harold Williamson.

"We'd send the tapes up by United bus from Middlesbrough to Newcastle. You couldn't trust the train, they'd up in Glasgow and be sent back via Bristol. Technology has changed."

Now freelance, he marks 40 years association with the BBC in September, but has recently made a couple of superb independent videos highlighting the campaigns to re-open the Weardale and Wensleydale railways.

He'd begun at the Echo's Newcastle office in 1955 under Tom Little - "also the music critic, he'd bring in his viola" - and made Radio Cleveland's first broadcast on New Year's Eve 1970.

"There was a bit of rivalry between us and Newcastle," he recalls. "We were both supposed to start on New Year's Day but we got dispensation to first foot a little early."

The videos - "written and presented by George Lambelle, produced and directed by George Lambelle" - record both setbacks and continuing high hopes.

"We're going to stick it out until it re-opens. There's no question of it not happening," says Gil Chatfield of the Weardale Railway.

John Blackie, up in Hawes, even talks of the line's restoration the 40 miles from Northallerton to Garsdale - "a big solution for a big problem." The Wensleydale video is available commercially from the railway.

Both also feature Merlin, the little tank engine that pottered around the Timothy Hackworth Museum in Shildon - or did until recently, when the boiler blew up.

George, who now lives in Bishop Middleham, near Sedgefield, hopes to make more films around the region. "I've never wanted to move away," he says. "I'm certainly not going to start now."

EVEN before the railways reached Weardale, John Wesley was there. It was May 26 1752 when he first preached at High House chapel in Ireshopeburn, an event to be commemorated on Sunday when local Methodist minister Les Hann, clad in the bible black and three cornered hat of the period, will himself ride to church on horseback.

Similarities end there. The indomitable Wesley had ridden across the high Pennines from Newbiggin-in-Teesdale - backwards, some insist. Mr Hann, facing front, intends riding the quarter of a mile or so from Ireshopeburn Literary Institute to the chapel.

"I'm assured that the horse is nice and calm, one of the gentler ones," he says.

"I'm not expecting to fall off, but I suppose if I did it would make a better story."

The column assures him that we wouldn't print it.

"Oh yes you would," says Les.

After the Ireshopeburn service at 3pm, a party led by Darlington Methodist District chairman Graham Carter heads over the hills to continue the celebration at Newbiggin, the oldest Methodist chapel in continuous use.

Unfortunately for the prospects of a good story, they're going by car.

LIKE Wesley, J B Priestley liked to get about a bit. In A Journey Through England - quoted in a new book of memories by retired Baptist minister Fred Stainthorpe - he described Shotton Colliery as the ugliest place he'd ever visited.

Fred, brought up in a colliery house with a netty out the back in Quality Row - "my father commented on the wryness of the name" - is now retired to Willenhall, in the West Midlands.

A little more on his book when time and space permit - and Shotton Colliery, of course, is much changed.

THOUGH it has long been argued that real men don't drink mild, they're selling an awful lot of it at the Aclet in Bishop Auckland.

Mild's weakest link is its name - images of Clark Kent before the transmogrification in the telephone box or of that winsome brat asking: "What's mild, mummy?"

It was a commercial for Fairy Liquid, but popular opinion was that it would have been hard to taste the difference. Had mild been on a beach it would have had sand kicked in its face; mild, in short, was what they drank down south.

Then someone at Banks's Brewery, whose parent bought and sold John Willie Cameron's, had a brilliant idea. Instead of calling it mild, defiled, call it Banks's Original. "It immediately took away the stigma," says Amanda Campbell, the Aclet's landlady. "Now we sell as much mild as bitter."

"It was an attempt to improve the image and sales have rocketed," says Wear Valley CAMRA's newsletter, announcing that May has cautiously been declared Mild Month.

In the Aclet, next to the Woodhouse Close housing estate, they're still a bit half-and-half. Cliff Kirkbride, out for a few lunchtime pints - "better than sitting round the house moping" - now drinks nothing else, however.

"It's a good session beer, doesn't knock your head off too early, but if it's looked after, any beer's nice."

Cliff Metcalfe remains a happy bitter man, though keen enough to try something different. "It's an acquried taste," he said, "but there's no doubt it's catching on fast around here."

The column, interests of research, tried a couple, too - helped by the fact that the Original sin was served in a Strongarm glass. They probably try something similar when weaning addicts off things harder altogether.

It was very pleasant, and on a warm day extremely refreshing. Give them an inch, and the North-East may soon be taking a mild.

...and finally, those with a Cleveland area telephone directory will notice that between Blair A (St Leonard's Road, Guisborough) and Blair A E (South Terrace, South Bank) resides Blair A C L, Myrobella House, Trimdon Station.

Last week the people at Myrobella House were informed by telephone that they had been specially chosen in their area to have £1,000 off new double glazing. "What sort of windows do you have now?" asked the caller, still on automatic pilot.

"Half inch thick, bullet proof," said the man at Myrobella House.

"And is there any external security at your house?" the canvasser continued, relentlessly.

"Two blokes 24 hours a day carrying Kalashnikovs," replied John Burton, constituency agent to Sedgefield Labour party.

Through a glass darkly, it was only then that the caller began to realise a possible problem.

"That's not by any chance Mr Tony Blair's house, is it..."

Whilst the young lady retains what may politely be termed a double glazed expression, John Burton tells the tale gleefully over dinner - and despite a £1,000 award, there'll be no new windows in Myrobella House.

Published: ??/??/2002