Where there's a way, there was Will

WILL Hay's death notice appeared on April 19, 1948, alongside that of Dave Barnaby, another familiar entertainer of his day. Barnaby, indeed, had appeared with Lily Langtry in the 1910 Royal Command Performance before Edward VII, though it's thought that Mrs Langtry amused the king more greatly.

It's Will Hay, however - chiefly remembered for his portrayal of a bumbling schoolmaster (or a potty porter) - to whom we turn.

Like Jimmy James, featured hereabouts for the past two weeks, he was a Stockton lad, born in a two-up two-down in Durham Street, near the railway station.

Though his father was a disciplinarian, warning him to stay away from the "dens of iniquity" that were music halls, young Hay became familiar, walking his black and white pet rat around the town.

He hoped to join the military at the outbreak of the First World War, was rejected because of his piles, joined Fred Karno's Army instead and later worked with sidekicks called Albert and Harbottle.

Where Will Hay shone brightest, however, was as an astronomer. In 1933 he observed a brilliant white spot on the multi-mooned planet Saturn which ran rings around other stargazers. He made the front page of the Daily Mirror - "Comedian's big discovery on planet; Will Hay beats America" - wrote a learned book and became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Assorted Pioneers and Voyagers now continue the exploration at rather closer quarters. Where there's a way, there was Will.

Everyone knows, of course, who made the record Stars Fell on Stockton, and the 1960s number one hit of which it was the B side. Someone may even be able to explain why.

THE alignment of stars and of the blessed borough of Stockton on Tees prompts reflection upon the proposed demolition of Billingham Forum and of the most tortured interview in the column's elastic experience.

It was with the monocle-wearing comedian Fred Emney, appearing there in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a poor man's Up Pompeii. Whatever might have happened on the way, arrival proved embarrassing.

The comedian wasn't amused. Every question would be answered monosyllabically, or with the observation that rarely had he heard anything more inane. In exasperation, we finally asked the old farceur what, if the sandal were on the other foot, he would write about himself.

"I would say that Fred Emney was a big, fat, miserable overpowering old sod," he said.

We did.

Next day at 7.25am the bedside phone rang at home. "Emney here," said the characteristic voice, though how he'd come by the number remains a mystery. "That," he continued, "was the finest piece about me that I've ever read." The miserable old sod had come good at last.

THE Jimmy James games were started by someone's recollection that one of his stooges was the hangdog Hutton Conyers - named after a village near Ripon which James had seen signposted from the A1. Conyers' catchphrase, we said last week, was "Are you trying to put it round that I'm barmy?" - to which James's usual response, recalls Ian Forsyth in Durham, was "Why, were you trying to keep it a secret?"

Since we have been pondering what's in a place name, Ian also remembers his favourite moment from Brain of Britain when Robert Robinson - in a round, inevitably, from the south of England - asked which new town was named after a famous miners' leader.

After a sarcophagal silence, the question master threw it open. "Is it," someone tentatively ventured, "Milton Keynes?" Ian envisages the scene down the colliery row, Mrs Keynes shouting up the stairs. "Howay our Milton, yer'll be late for the backshift." Milton Keynes, of course, was management.

WE all make mistakes, though, not least the one frozen in time by the Rev Val Towler's four year-old granddaughter Charlotte.

Val's minister of the United Reformed Church in Barnard Castle. Charlotte accompanied her to a Good Friday service at the Richardson Hospital, helped give out the hymn books and that sort of thing, was asked if she knew what special day it was.

"Oh yes," said Charlotte, "it's when the nasty men hurt Jesus and made him wear a crown of prawns."

What probably comes, suggests Val, of having disciples who were fishermen.

THEN there's Arthur Stephenson, his memory mobilised by last week's front page story of the work experience lad who inadvertently found himself in the dock at South Shields magistrates court.

In 1960, Arthur - "dark haired, handsome, always in bother" - was PC 336, stationed at Bishop Auckland (your worships). One perishing December morning he was duty officer at the old magistrates' courts in Bondgate - "the yard outside a mass of frozen defendants, witnesses and the usual odds and sods who'd drifted up from the wooden cafe in the Market Place, all milling round the open boiler room door to keep warm against the wintry blast coming up the hill from the Batts."

"Uncle" Bob Middlewood presided, Fred McWilliams - fondly remembered - was magistrates' clerk, Supt Thomas Oliver Pringle ("known as Top, smothered in Bay Rum aftershave") the police prosecutor.

The first job was to swear in a new special constable. "Call William Smith" - or some such name - ordered Mr McWilliams.

Stivvy called him. "A muffled, apprehensive, shivering figure presented himself in front of me and I ushered him into the warmth and dazzling lights of the court room."

The arrival's name confirmed, the clerk ("with his usual bedside manner") ordered him to take the book in his right hand, promise that he would well and faithfully serve and so on and so on, so help him God.

So help poor old PC 336, it wasn't until they were outside again - "Congratulations," he said, "you can now drink in the police club" - that he realised something was dreadfully wrong. "I'm here as a witness in a bloody motoring case," said Smith. "I don't want to be a policeman, hobby bobby or otherwise." The other William Smith was sheltering near the police garage and hadn't heard his name called.

Trembling, Arthur re-entered the court. Rollocked in triplicate, he rose nonetheless to become an inspector - and at Stockton, too, where still he tells the tale.

"If the other Mr Smith had kept his mouth shut," he says, "he might now have been on a police pension, too."

SO another one ends, room just to mention that Stars Fell on Stockton was the flip side of Wonderful Land by The Shadows but not for Mr Eric Smallwood's special offer to buy an acre of the moon for £15. 99. More of that when - with Sharon and the ineluctable death notices - the column returns five days before Christmas.

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