MAurice Cullen, the North-East's best-loved boxer, has died from a heart attack. He was the pitmen's champion and the people's, and he remained a Shotton Colliery lad and enormously proud of it.

Cullen, who was 63, had had a quadruple heart bypass operation in 1998. He won the British lightweight title five times until losing to Ken Buchanan in 1968, fought a ten round non-title bout with world champion Carlos Ortiz but never made the sort of money for which, unashamedly, he hoped.

"Promises, promises," he always said. It could have been the title of his autobiography.

We'd last met in January last year, at a workmen's club which sold Buchanan's. "I'm not drinking any of that," said Maurice, and laughed as he did so readily.

Mickey Cullen, his father and first manager, had been a jobbing heavyweight - "7/6d for six rounds, thirty shillings for ten" - often fighting in the booths at Durham Big Meeting.

Maurice, a good Catholic, had little interest in pugilism until he was a 17-year-old miner, convinced of his ability after an unscheduled contest against a local likely lad who refused to stop swearing in the street.

His first amateur fight was at the NCB novices championship in Spennymoor Town Hall; on April 8 1965 he won the British lightweight title for the first time, beating Dave Coventry at Liverpool with his father's St Christopher sewed into the back of his boxing shorts.

Proud Shotton folk gathered in the Officials Club to present him with a gold watch; Maurice remained as unassuming as ever.

"Cullen," The Northern Echo observed all those years ago, "reacts to his boxing success with the glee of a young boy hitting three bull's eyes at the fairground and winning a china dog."

Principally he was renowned for his fleetness of foot and for his jabbing left - "straight as a pit prop," said one paper, "Shotton's one armed bandit," said another - though it was with a right-hand blow that in 1966 he retained his title against Terry Edwards, at the New St James Hall in Newcastle.

"Cullen wins with a right!" acclaimed the Echo headline, and found an exclamation mark to honour the occasion.

"It proves that his right hand isn't just for scratching," said Arthur Boggis, his then manager.

He went 44 professional fights before being stopped, and blamed gastro-enteritis when he was, but - unlike Sugar Ray Robinson, his hero - earned as little as £200, before expenses, for a non-title contest. He'd train in a gym at Blackhall, run up and down Shotton pit heap, make ends meet between times by working on a building site or as a lifeguard at Crimdon. Inevitably, the champion made a splash there, too.

"Probably he'd have been better off as a Cockney," said Terry, his elder brother and trainer - and a heavyweight, Maurice might equally have added.

Ken Buchanan had five times floored his 30-year-old opponent before knocking him out in the 11th - "Cullen appeared to be feeling the weight of his years," said the Echo - though he continued boxing until 1970.

After working in a chemical factory in Hartlepool, he became the fastest milkman in east Durham. In retirement, he continued to keep fit. In 1998, however, he'd collapsed while out running. "The cold wind just knocked me over like a left hook," he'd told Backtrack.

"It frightened the life out of me. I really thought I wad done for."

Four days later he underwent surgery at South Cleveland hospital in Middlesbrough, addressing a congenital defect among men in the Cullen family. Terry has also had a quadruple heart bypass.

In January 2000, however, the ever-agreeable Cullen had pronounced himself "as fit as fire" - back running, skipping and punishing a punch bag and wishing they could do the same for arthritis. The cardiac surgeon had also personally escorted him to X-ray after noticing the state of his hand.

They discovered multiple fractures. "All those years of hitting fellers built like stone walls," said Cullen. Ironically, it was his right.

Dave Ogilvie, the British Boxing Board of Control's North-East chief inspector, said yesterday that Maurice had been the gentleman of the ring.

"He was honest, reliable, would help you at the drop of a hat and was still proud to take his Lonsdale belt anywhere he was asked.

"He was both a great champion and a great friend."

Fellow fighter George Bowes, from nearby Blackhall, said: "Maurice was a quiet lad away from the ring but everyone knew he was a proper gentleman.

"I saw the Ortiz fight and was convinced he'd done enough to win it, but you had to be very special to win if you were from the North-East."

The funeral is expected to be on Thursday.

Maurice Cullen's most controversial fight was in April 1966, against Frenchman Roger Younis at the New St James's Hall.

Referee Tommy "Seaman" Watson, a pre-war British featherweight champion from Newcastle, who at the time ran the Eden Theatre bar in Bishop Auckland, stopped the contest in the second round, though Younis appeared to be unhurt.

After ushering Younis back to his corner, Watson then left the ring.

"The crowd went almost completely silent, both boxers were stunned," said the Echo.

Seaman Watson continued to pull pints but never again refereed a boxing match; Roger Younis made the most of what little English he knew.

"Referee - mad," he said, and in two words established a template for generations of sporting Frenchmen yet to come.

A referee of altogether saner credentials, our old friend George Elliott - also the World Champion ticket seller - is 65 today.

George continues as a Sunday morning whistler, and not one unnecessarily to bring the lads to book. (Unless, of course, it's the pension book.)

"What he might lack in speed he makes up in understanding," says Tom Waggott, secretary of the Wear Valley Sunday League.

"At this time of year we tend to lose a few referees" - mostly to do with Saturday night and Sunday morning - "but you can always rely on George."

He is also a long-serving committee member and assistant secretary at Shildon FC and organiser of the annual Darryl Stobbs Memorial Trophy.

"I prefer to talk the lads through the game, and to keep it going, rather than showing cards all the time," he says.

"I can't remember when I last sent someone off but it's a good few years. I like to think we talk the same language in the end."

A couple of beers are planned in the Timothy Hackworth at Shildon from around 1.15pm today. It would be good if old friends good join us.

Back to Arthur Ellis, a referee of perhaps greater pedigree but a brother under the skin.

Arthur had had charge of the violent 1954 World Cup quarter-final between Brazil and Hungary - still known, to answer last Friday's question, as the Battle of Berne.

Ellis sent three off, one of them a Hungarian MP, and might have dismissed several others had he had eyes in the back of his head.

In a later match, he'd asked the Hungarian if he'd suffered any domestic punishment after the incident. "In Hungary," said the gentleman, "we do not punish Members of Parliament."

It's different over here, of course.

John Briggs in Darlington today seeks the identity of the chap who scored for Raith Rovers on Saturday, for Berwick Rangers the previous week and has played for almost every Scottish League team but never in the Scottish or English Premierships.

Something of a judicial matter, this - and more in Friday's column

Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2001