The great Brussleton folly

Brussleton is a hamlet above Shildon, latterly promoted as the true starting point of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Brussleton Folly, familiar for many a mile, was a hilltop tower built by the Carr family in the mid-18th Century. Even from its lowest level, fair weather fans might perceive the Cleveland hills in one direction and the far Pennines in the other.

Soon after the Second World War, it was pulled down before it fell down. That Chambers Dictionary defines a folly as a "great useless structure" must not be seen as a reference to Gadfly or to any other character in the saga which is about to unfold.

Members of the cast:

George Reynolds: Then owner of the Dolphin coffee bar in Shildon and occasional thief, if not in the Premiership among the region's villains then certainly the first division (North). (Now chairman of Darlington Football Club, owner of George Reynolds UK and officially listed among Britain's richest men.)

Tony Hawkins: Same age as George, then living in a council house in Canterbury Crescent, Willington, and wanted by the police for failing to answer bail on a charge of burgling Middlestone Moor Co-operative Society. It was always Co-ops with Tony; probably he liked his bit divvy, and usually through the front door as if he'd popped in for a bag of sugar.

Gadfly: an innocent abroad, even when living in Shildon.

A polliss: reading the Beano (see right).

IT was turned midnight, 1970 probably. So long ago, anyway, that the telephone numbers still only had four digits and me mam and dad's (Shildon 2530) maintained a respectful silence during the hours in which all law-abiding people were abed.

George rang at 12.30am.

An old and constant friend, he has always been given to melodramatics. "Just supposing," began George, "that I know the whereabouts of Tony Hawkins. Just supposing that he wants to give himself up tonight, but that first he wants to meet you and tell you his life story. There's only you he'll talk to. Would you be interested?"

Fifteen minutes had passed. "Just supposing," I said with nocturnal nonchalance, "it sounds like it might be worth staying out of bed for."

"Meet me outside the King Willie in ten minutes," said George.

WHILST not so prominent an edifice as Brussleton Folly, the King Willie was well known, nonetheless. Men drank there and buses stopped there, though both were supposed to have been long home by one o'clock in the morning.

George pulled up as planned in his blue Thames van, a frisky Dolphin and a telephone number (Shildon 2779) painted on the side. Dolphin was his beloved Alsatian.

"Get in quick," said George.

"Where's Hawkins?" I replied.

What happened next has for some reason always reminded me of the classic scene from Hancock's Half Hour in which Kenneth Williams had inadvertently ejected himself from an aircraft and test pilot Hancock hears a strange knocking on the cockpit.

"Hello," says Williams, "can I come in?"

Hawkins' head emerged like a speculative tortoise from beneath the well worn proggy mat that covered the back of the van. "Hello," he said, "can I come out?"

THERE was a great story to tell, said George, and there'd be policemen everywhere. Best to get off the road at Brussleton and let Tony tell it as it was before, with witnesses, giving himself up to the constabulary.

"Tony thinks they'll beat the hell out of him if he goes alone and if I go they'll beat the hell out of the both of us. It's best you come as well."

We sat in the Thames van, where Carr's Folly had been. It wasn't the crime of the century, none of them were, but it offered good reason for not covering the juvenile court next morning. By 3am Tony had coughed sufficiently, and not just because of George's ineluctable cigars. Bishop Auckland police station was three miles away; it was time to hand himself over.

There was a problem. Seeking both concealment and theatrical effect, George had driven so far off the road that it was impossible to get back onto it. "Get round the back and push" he said. The wheels span like Peter Mandelson, the mud flew similarly, George hurled retrospective advice from the comfort of the driver's seat. Before the van had been extricated the two of us resembled England's second row on a filthy day at Twickenham.

At 4.15am we reached the police station, Winken, Blinken and Nod and still playing to the gallery. A lone constable, apparently little more than 15, half-slumbered behind the desk.

"Oh hello Tony, we've been expecting you," said the polliss, and returned to Dennis the Menace.

GEORGE was genuinely saddened to hear this his old friend and partner in crime had passed on. "There wasn't a bit of harm in Tony, a lovely lad," he said. "I remember once telling stories about him in the best hotel in the south of France, stopped to go for a pee and discovered that the whole room was listening. He never crashed people over the head, never did drugs or daft things like that, never did people's houses, only Co-ops." George, in truth, had a similar fondness for shopping at the Co-op, but only - as he likes to tell the story - after midnight. Now, perhaps penitentially, he banks there.

Once, he recalls, he, Tony and another man were breaking into a three storey Co-op when Tony became stuck on the window ledge and implored them to call the fire brigade.

The option seeming inadvisable, they broke his fall with a large number of egg boxes. Someone else, said George, must have pinched the eggs.

TONY, a happy family man, had been ill for some time. He lived latterly in Burnmoor, near Chester-le-Street, and was buried last Friday in his native Spennymoor. Unlike GR, I'd not seen him for ages. George is right, though. Though the board of the Co-op might not agree, he was a lovely lad.

And whatever anyone might think of George Reynolds, Tony Hawkins or of Gadfly, if that was as bad as it got 30 years ago then the North-East of England was a damn sight better, and a damn sight safer, than it is today.