In search of Kate Adie

Kate's whereabouts, coincidentally, had also proved problematical a few weeks earlier for our old friend Colin Randall.

Colin, a Shildon lad who's now Something Very Important on the Telegraph, had arranged to meet the BBC's chief news correspondent in London, for a football fanzine series on celebrity Sunderland supporters.

"She is the journalist who confirms that a war, uprising or event is important just by turning up," he wrote of the familiar face in flak jacket and pearl earrings.

When the awesome Miss Adie didn't turn up for their chat, however, Colin rang the BBC. Two successive switchboard operators denied ever having heard of her. "How are you spelling that surname?" asked one.

Finally Kate rang apologetically, blamed London transport problems - it was never like that in Bosnia - and promised to buy the drinks in atonement.

Before the US atrocity she had been on leave, working on her autobiography - reputed to have earned her a £500,000 advance - and on a book on women in uniform. Colin was able to disabuse her of the notion that Sunderland football legend Len Shackleton was a supervisor at the Aycliffe munitions factory during the war.

Though she flew to America soon after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, little has been seen of her back home. "Viewers were left wondering why the star reporter wasn't covering the biggest story in decades," said the Sun.

A BBC spokesman said that Kate, 56 last week, was back in the UK. "We are hoping to arrange for her to cover events from a Royal Navy ship in the Gulf."

SO Colin got his rather belated interview, told of Kate's lifetime allegiance to Sunderland FC and about her joy at the 2-1 win over Newcastle United last November. She was in the St James's Park directors' box with Sunderland chairman Bob Murray, leaping up and down whilst all around remained fixed, forlornly, to their seats.

"It was a very weird feeling, like taking your clothes off in front of a crowd," she said.

The magazine Wear Down South also tells of her "youthful snootiness" about the rest of Co Durham. "I remember thinking how curious it was to see all these ancient buses full of supporters from Tow Law or Spennymoor or Crook. They seemed such far off places, somehow separate from Sunderland."

It perhaps explains her first outside broadcast for Radio Durham, from a Northern League match at far off Evenwood Town. The half time report went into much detail of fair weather and foul, coke works and co-operative stores, until finally the producer interjected in her earpiece.

"Yes thank you, Kate, but would you mind telling us the score?"

SINCE W H Smith's on Darlington railway station declines to be first with the news, it was with a month's back copies of the Church Times that we boarded the 5.24am to London. What churchmen might call a rood awakening.

Thus are we able to report that the Bishop of London's hamster has shuffled off the treadmill, that there is a lively correspondence over whether Worzel Gummidge may lawfully marry Aunt Sally ("surely there are two diriment impediments to such a union") and that the Rev Dr Peter Mullen is causing consternation over his views on self-defence classes for priests.

"If I now have to go on a personal safety course and learn about ju-jitsu and how to drop the rectory latch, when will I ever get any parish work done?" demanded Peter, again taking his long spoon to sup with printer's devils.

"Fantasy, not fact," replied the Rev Tony Bell, pillar of the clergy section of the MSF trade union and former Vicar of Byers Green, Spennymoor.

The highlight, however - somewhere around Newark North Gate - was the Rev David Wilbourne's brilliant, but sadly infrequent, diary column.

David, a former domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of York, is now Vicar of Helmsley, in North Yorkshire. This time he was recalling Cosmo Gordon Lang, an early 20th Century Archbishop of Canterbury who - a Scotsman born on Hallowe'en - retained a belief in the power of a good, industrial strength, archi-episcopal curse.

When a new hotel spoiled his favourite Highland view, Lang put a curse on it and, inexplicably, it burned down. When a bigger hotel replaced it, a similar misfortune befell.

Personally, says David, he'd welcome the assistance of a cursing bishop to help rid him of the "huge and hideous" black marble altar which dominates a side chapel in Helmsley parish church.

Without ecclesiastical authority, it was placed there 100 years ago by one of his predecessors. When the Archdeacon of Cleveland demanded it be removed, the Vicar - altar ego - flat refused.

"Eight oxen nearly spent themselves pulling the heavy marble slab here from Helmsley railway station," said the Vicar. "If you want to remove it, Sir, you can provide new oxen."

Now, however, David wants to use the side chapel as a hospitality area. "At the very least, the altar should be less prominent," he tells the column.

Cuss and make up, he may yet have to invoke the spirit of Cosmo Gordon Lang.

THOSE of us in the comminations industry are accustomed to a feckless few curses, of course, though none may have handled them as well as the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey.

Ramsey - Bishop of Durham, Archbishop of both York and Canterbury - had a note passed to him after preaching in a Co Durham village church. It simply said "Fool."

Years later, he re-visited the church and recalled the incident. "As Archbishop, I receive many missives where the sender has written the letter but forgotten to sign it.

"This was the first communication I received where the sender signed his name, but forgot to write the letter."

ONE of the diriment impediments to the Aunt Sally nuptials, incidentally, was that the groom was already married to Earthy Mangold. The Hexham and Newcastle diocesan newspaper Northern Cross reports - somewhere south of Peterborough - that at the Roman Catholic church of St Mary's, Blackhill, near Consett, the marriage of Elizabeth Grimes from Blackhill and Adam Lockey from Northampton not only passed without problems but was transmitted via the Internet to those unable to be present. A real wedding, a virtual first.

WITH what imprecations would Archbishop Lang - or indeed Michael Ramsey, who so greatly loved Durham's changeless charms that he retired to the city - have greeted the news that the grand old Duke of Wellington closes on Saturday.

Bass call it refurbishment; others evisceration.

We wrote four months ago of the threat to the Welly, a hugely popular and wholly unspoiled pub alongside the A1 at Nevilles Cross. Bass's plans to theme it as an "Ember Inn" were met by a 1,000-name petition and opposition led by Durham MP Gerry Steinberg. Predictably, it failed.

Colin Jones from Spennymoor paid a valedictory visit last week, discovered it heaving with people of all ages, savoured the pleasures of a good, simple toastie.

Afterwards he looked up Ember Inns on the Internet - "tailored to suit sophisticated 21st Century living" - and shuddered. The homogenised menu offered no greater comfort.

Regulars have been told that they must be out by 10.30pm on Saturday, so that staff can have a party - instead of a lock-in, a lock-out.

"The arrogance of the brewery is amazing, you'd have thought they'd want to thank us, not insult us. It's already like the Marie Celeste in there," says Don Watson, the retired psychology professor who helped lead the campaign.

The Ember rises from the flames on February 9, by which time Bass's highly-paid marketing men may have developed some slippery slogan to promote the new concept.

They appear not to have heard of one of the originals: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

...and finally, last week's note on the restored Zeppelin listening post at Redcar prompts Mr E Rolph - address unstated, age advanced - to send a faded copy of a First World War soldier's Ode to Catterick Camp.

Space, as ever, precludes the full works. Two verses must suffice:

There's soldiers living in the huts, it fills my heart with sorrow

With tear-dimmed eyes they've said to me "It's Scotton Camp tomorrow";

Inside the huts there's rats, they say, as big as any goat,

Last night a soldier saw one trying on his overcoat.

For breakfast every morning, it's just like Mother Hubbard

You double round the hut three times and dive into the cupboard;

Sometimes they give you bacon, sometimes they give you cheese

Which marches up and down your plate, slopes arms and stands at ease.

Catterick Camp, adds Mr Rolph, will have very greatly improved since then...

Published: Thursday, September 27, 2001