It was while we hoofed to the harness racing - My kingdom for a horse, as Richard III is said in similarly straitened circumstances to have exclaimed - that Mr Philip Owers pulled up in his motor car.

Mr Owers, aged 45 and long grey haired, kept goal for Shildon and for lesser teams like Darlington, Bishop Auckland and Hartlepool.

"Get in you dozy devil," he said, and may never have made a more crucial interception.

Wednesday evening's meeting was at Howe Hills Farm, said to be at Mordon in Co Durham and - if correctly located - only a mile and a half off the 213 bus route from Darlington to the Back of Beyond.

Howe Hills Farm, in truth, is three miles further on, guarded by two lions on the gateposts and by a feller wanting a fiver.

Mr Owers went off for his tea. As a harness racer might observe, it's good that one of us can stand the pace.

Officially it was the North-East Standard Bred Association, colloquially the trotters. Like Del Boy and family, harness racing is trying to better itself.

Though the first recorded race was at Alexandra Palace in 1879, it was another 118 years before it was officially recognised as a sport and therefore eligible for Lottery money. Not, of course, that they've had much.

"It seems that it always goes to football, tennis, flat racing - everyone except us," said Richard Wigham, a Spennymoor councillor.

They hope to open a permanent hard track in Co Durham - like the one at Green Hammerton, near York - and have had talks with several local authorities.

"This is a people's sport," said Richard; Royal Ascot it's not.

Like many people's sports, however, it depends heavily upon betting. Though the crowd can't have been 200, seven bookies (one called Dobbin) stood around depreciatively, their home town on the board beneath their name.

One had thought it worthwhile to travel from Flookburgh, near Cartmel, others from Evenwood and Spennymoor, a fourth from somewhere called Betting Without.

There's a district of York called Heworth Without. It's probably somewhere near there.

"You could say that the attraction is gambling but a lot of people who come don't gamble at all," said NESBA chairman Brian Smith.

"It's also the speed, the atmosphere, the closeness to the horses and the fact a working man can still keep a trotting horse on his allotment."

A decent horse might cost £1500, he reckons, a sulky - a cart, that is - perhaps £500 and a harness £300.

Wednesday's meeting was to raise funds for Bishop Auckland General Hospital's diabetic laser appeal - charity begins at home, said the chairman - and Howe Hills farmer John Wade had returned the £300 field fee for the fund.

Mr Wade, familiarly generous, is himself a National Hunt trainer, though most of his charges were enjoying a holiday, only one due at Sedgefield's summer meeting the following day.

"I'm a bit old fashioned. I believe hosses deserve a rest," he said.

Other sponsors included Trimdon Labour Club, that well-known people's friend, and a company called Racefit which makes "equine supplements" - "Tyropower, helps combat stress", "Natrozol for determination", "Tranquil - for excitable horses".

Excitable or not, they started behind a pace-making car, drivers as laid back as possible, £200 to each of six heat winners, £400 for the final.

Two were won by 20-year-old Vicki Gill, a ponytailed blonde from Nun Monkton, near York, of whose infancy it is said that she was walked out in a sulky, not a pushchair.

Vicki, whose father is a trainer, has been driving competitively since she was 15, won three races at a meeting near Durham last week and is tipped for great things.

Boxed in as surely as Harry Houdini, she escapes with the same dexterity. "You just sit and sit and wait for your chance," said Vicki. "It's what gives you the buzz, and the crowd as well."

There appeared to be some exceedingly close finishes, though the column is uninitiated into the mysteries of gambling and had no cause to trouble the gentleman from Betting Without.

It was a pleasant evening for all that. Like the North-East Standard Bred Association, it's just good to be back in harness.

l Details from the British Harness Racing Club, Burlington Crescent, Goole, East Yorkshire DN14 5EG.

Jack Amos, no relation but still a canny feller, reports new problems for Geoffrey Boycott. Jack's in Willington, his brother ("our young 'un") in Dewsbury.

For donkeys' years their young un's local was called The Park. Then they changed it to the Sir Geoffrey Boycott, in deference to The Great Man.

Now it's the Park Tavern again. Trade had suffered, it's claimed, because of the gentleman's rather old-fashioned views on how to handle a woman.

"They burned the pub sign and have the ashes in an urn behind the bar. The television came and our young 'un got on Calendar."

The Boycott had been boycotted. Sic transit gloria, as doubtless they say in Dewsbury.

Eleven days after his seven-hour spinal operation, just as he promised he would, former Boro and Hartlepool midfielder Graeme Hedley has completed his two-mile sponsored walk.

Tuesday's mention of it prompted a call from Teesdale farmer and long-time Boro season ticket holder John Hodgson - "I used to be there when there were hardly another 4,000" - to show how medical times change.

John, from Selaby near Gainford, had the same operation - fusing bone from the hip joint into the vertebrae - in 1947.

Graeme Hedley was in hospital for five days, John Hodgson for five months - almost all the time in a fiendish sounding device called a plaster bed.

He was 21, laid up from October 17 to March 11, the plaster bed encasing what might be termed his back half from head to heel.

"I think it was the first time they'd done that operation in Bishop Auckland General. Like anything else you get used to it, and the nurses were very pretty.

"Ian Botham had much the same surgery a few years ago, and he was back on the golf course in a month."

After all that time, it was at least successful. He had a full farming career and hopes soon to be back golfing after a hip replacement ten weeks ago.

Graeme Hedley managed his walk comfortably, had a Coke in Billingham Golf Club, got a lift home. "I really feel great, it's a message for anyone frightened or doubtful about the operation," he says.

Proceeds will go to the Tees Valley Spinal Support Unit. John Hodgson's cheque's in the post.

Trepidantly back to Mad Frankie Fraser, only there seems to have been some mistake. Reggie Kray isn't in Broadmoor, as we said last week, but in Maidstone prison. It was Ronnie who did Broadmoor.

Unlike one or two other correspondents, John Milburn in Chester-le-Street - who points out the error - is fascinated by Frankie and friends and has bought the inside story autobiographies.

"I realise I'm open to the perennial accusation of helping criminals by buying their books," he concedes, "but whatever they've done, it could hardly be as criminal as my spelling."

Among the paper's cricket pictures recently was a shot of a silver-haired gentleman in the slips for Bishop Auckland firsts - club secretary Harry Smurthwaite. Like Keith Hopper, the chairman, Harry is usually restricted these days to second string duties. "On the day it was either him or me and he's younger," says Keith.

The chairman's 68, the secretary 64. "Harry," adds Keith "is the youth policy."

The Premiership club which had the suffix Fosse until 1908-09 (Backtrack, July 25) was Leicester.

Fred Alderton in Peterlee, one of those who knew that one, seeks - a bit intriguing, this - the identity of the Sunderland and England player, apparently known as the Singing Winger, who appeared on stage at the London Palladium.

More notes on that one on Tuesday