John North: Nuisance value

WHAT with one thing and another, with world wars and battle sores, it was perhaps unsurprising that Arnold Hadwin's wet-eared entry into journalism failed to hold the front page in its thrall.

It was August 13, 1945, 60 years ago on Saturday, when he reported to Fred Jewell, chief reporter of this company's Bishop Auckland office. He was 16, and they paid him 15 shillings a week.

"They said it was only 15 shillings because for the first few weeks I'd just be a bloody nuisance," he recalls. "I resolved to be a bloody nuisance for the rest of my life; I like to think I've succeeded quite well."

Hiroshima had just been bombed, VJ Day appeared imminent. Fred gave him a copy of the Cinema Goer and told him to preview what was on at the pictures.

If there were much going on in Bishop Auckland, the following day's Echo - first with the nuisance - appeared not to have noticed, though there was the tab end of a paragraph about a Coundon chap being fined 40 shillings for having a cigarette down Chilton colliery.

For young Hadwin, however, it was the start not just of a remarkable career but of an inextinguishable passion - a man who still feels the undiminished thrill of a by-line ("You should wrap your hand in if you don't") and who produces a newspaper whenever his grandchildren visit.

"They probably think it's the fairies, but they still write letters to the editor," he says.

Halfway through his training he did National Service, exceptionally and indelibly with the Royal Marine Commandos, was posted to an Intelligence unit and wrote the official account of the six month tour of duty in Israel.

"They gave me a pencil, a notebook and a sten gun," he recalls. "It's amazing how many stories you get with a sten gun."

From 1951-55 he studied economics and politics at Oxford, gaining a BA in 1955, an MA two years later and becoming one of only two life vice-presidents of the university Tiddleywinks Society.

Possibly it was because he's got the result of the annual Varsity match in the stop press box of the Oxford Mail. "The sports editor went mad," says Arnold. "It took the place of the 3.15 at Newbury."

He became editor of the Northern Despatch in Darlington from 1964-73, edited papers in Bradford and in Lincolnshire, was awarded the OBE in 1982, has been president of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors, a member of the Press Council and held numerous other offices, lectured extensively and still trains journalists worldwide. What's more, or less, he gave me my first job. "The chief sub-editor and the chief reporter went berserk," he recalls with manifest relish. "They thought I'd finally lost my bloody marbles."

Small token of gratitude, we stand sausage, mash and a pint of Friar's Fancy in a pub near his Lincolnshire home, retire to his kitchen to drink Rington's coffee, to reminisce and perhaps even to romance.

The Rington's man comes once a fortnight. "I tell him I used to follow the horse and cart around to collect manure for my roses," says Arnold, ever the gardener. "I'm not sure he believes me."

He's changed a bit, but remains fantastically fit, incorrigibly active and unquenchably enthusiastic. Perhaps the most immediately obvious difference is that the pipe that seemed as permanent a feature as his nose no longer hangs from his lips. They used to call the angle jaunty.

He gave it up in 1992, while training journalists in Tanzania - part of an ongoing 15 year commitment to British Executive Service Overseas, a charity which offers volunteer expertise to impoverished countries throughout the world.

"I had to walk five miles to the nearest place I could get St Bruno and he kept saying his stocks hadn't arrived. Finally I thought bollocks."

He was a Spennymoor lad, Marmaduke Street, youngest of eight, his father a fitter and turner at the coke works. His grandchildren also ask what it was like to be poor. "We never thought about it," he says, "everyone was the same."

He left Alderman Wraith Grammar School with three distinctions and four credits in the School Certificate, unable to get a sixth form grant unless he wanted to be a teacher and turned to the inky trade instead.

At Alderman Wraith he'd dared to write critically about The Monitor, the school magazine - "pulled it to pieces" - a move which infuriated the editor but encouraged his fifth form English teacher. "I thought just maybe...."

The earliest library cutting about him - there may be others by him, of course, and not just what was on at the Tivoli - concerns his Durham County Council "adult education exhibition tenable at Ruskin College, Oxford." It was 1951.

"His success," the report concluded, "will be received with great satisfaction at the Spennymoor Settlement, where he has been a member."

The Settlement, still settled, promoted adult education, self-improvement, second chances and what might these days be called citizens' advice. Fellow members included Norman Cornish, the pitman painter, whose distinctive work still hangs on his wall.

If its activities were a little radical, its flag deepest red, then that suited Arnold fine, though he gave up Labour party membership when he became an editor and rejoined when he retired on his 60th birthday. "I have reservations about Tony Blair, but eight years ago he was the best thing since sliced bread.

"I think they want to be too respectable, especially economically respectable. Respectability is something that's never bothered me very much."

He was deputy editor of the Oxford Mail when the Despatch job came up. "They asked me to write what I thought about the paper. I took it to pieces, just like I had The Monitor."

It was The Northern Echo's evening sister paper, principally serving Darlington and south-west Durham. If by no means an ugly sister, a perception nonetheless remained that it wasn't the favourite child.

Arnold wanted big changes, not least that the editorial staff, which always had worked jointly for both Echo and Despatch, should be split. He had to convince both the company and Harold Evans, the Echo's already eminent editor.

"Harry said it would probably make sense, but insisted on having first choice from the staff who were already there. That was fine by me, I preferred two staff who wanted to work for the Despatch to four whose priority was The Northern Echo.

"As an editor I always tried to surround myself with talented people. It can create extra problems because they're more likely to challenge your judgement, but having yes men around you is in nobody's interests at all."

Arnold redesigned it, empowered it, inspired and enthused it, made it (he says) a good newspaper in its own right and not just an appendage of the Echo. "It was a much more important part of the community than ever it had been. I like to think that people read it for some form of enlightenment."

Didn't he sometimes feel, however, that editing the Despatch had been like fighting with one hand behind his back? "I was taught in the Marines that if you had your hand blown off, it didn't mean you had to pack up, it just made the objective a bit more difficult to achieve.

"I was never conscious of fighting with one hand behind my back but I realised that it was a much smaller capital investment and that the Echo would always be more important. I never saw the Echo as something that was journalistically better than the Despatch."

Another cutting, a talk to the Teesdale group of Women's Institutes, records his characteristic call for greater community involvement. "The editor is only a fourpenny stamp away," he said. It was 1967.

His own community involvement led him to be a founder of the Friends of Darlington Civic Theatre - "we wanted it to be a proper theatre, not a plaything for the aldermen" - and of Hurworth Grange Community Association, where the lounge is still named in his honour.

"I think the key to being a good editor is being able to switch off," he says. "I think I did that reasonably well."

When finally the Despatch closed in 1986, he preferred not to mourn but to remember the good times. "I don't think any newspaper or any person has a right to go on for ever. The only time I felt sorry for myself was when Edna died, but that was a different problem."

Edna, also from Spennymoor, had been his wife for 50 years. She understood, he says, journalism had become her way of life as well. "Edna was the only person I ever wanted to impress."

Their two daughters are both senior media professionals, Julie with the BBC and Sarah, who also became an evening newspaper editor, at Cardiff University.

Still teaching internationally, he is also a parish councillor, fervent fisherman and cryptic crossword compiler, has an allotment as well as his extensive domestic garden, not only makes his own rabbit pie but, Commando training, skins and guts the rabbits, too.

Still a prolific writer - "unfortunately too much of it is obituaries of friends and former Marines" - he records recent delight at getting a one and a half column obit into the Stornaway Gazette. "It was wonderful, he hadn't lived there for 40 years. I think it's monstrous the way that many newspapers have abandoned proper obituaries."

Technology's embrace apart, what else has changed? "I can't for the life of me understand why people say they want to train to be journalists and then become television or radio presenters, which is crap. It's not journalism, it's acting.

"I'm not pedantic, I believe in simple communication, but we have such loose language nowadays - particularly at the BBC, which used to be the last word - that there are people who don't know the difference between 'less' and 'fewer' or "expect' and 'anticipate'.

"I also regret that so many newspapers are pre-designed, and that the stories have to fit in no matter how good they are. Journalism is being influenced by other factors."

Boy and man, the reunion lasts nearly five hours, could tirelessly have lasted the night. "I'll tell you what, I've never regretted a minute of these 60 years," says the man with the huge nuisance value and, by no means for the first time, we agree entirely.

Cutting a dical coat from humble cloth

SHAMBLING through the North Yorkshire countryside last weekend we came, almost by chance, upon the ancient church of St John, Stanwick, and upon a put down of which the most polemical politician would have been proud.

Stanwick is a hamlet at the end of a road to nowhere, roughly between Darlington and Richmond. Its great hall, now vanished, was home for 45 years until 1911 to Evelyn, the dowager Duchess of Northumberland. Her reign at Stanwick, notes a leaflet accompanying an exhibition this weekend, was marked by much the same solemn qualities as Victoria's over a rather larger kingdom.

In the church's south aisle lie effigies to Sir Hugo and Lady Smithson, the armour clad figure of Sir Hugo recumbent upon one elbow and looking suitably militaristic.

It is, says Plantagenet-Harrison's 1897 History of Yorkshire - kindly placed near the door - a "cumbrous piece of imposture."

Sir Hugo, it transpires, was a "haberdasher of humble birth" who made his fortune in business and apparently decided to cut his coat according to his cloth.

He bought Stanwick for £4,000, says the history, and the baronetcy for £1,095. "I suppose the flags above his tomb were remnants out of the old man's shop," it adds, disparagingly.

The history was left there by Pat Anderson, who has helped organise the exhibition into the great days of the Stanwick estate. "It just struck me as being so funny. I think it's important that you can have a giggle in church as well," he says.

Sir Hugo originally bought the old hall, fancied something a little posher, and had built the magnificent pile featured on Chris Lloyd's page yesterday. "He was indeed a draper but finally became Duke of Northumberland. I don't think they were terribly popular even then," says Pat.

Sir Hugo, however, may not have been the only one with hopes of grandeur. Pat's puzzled by Plantagenet-Harrison, too. "It does seem rather over the top," he says, putting up another put down. "I suspect his first name was Fred."

l The exhibition of the Duchess's Stanwick years takes place at St John's church on Saturday and Sunday.

SNCE a 72 pint barrel of beer is at stake, there are still five days to suggest a name for the Wear Valley Brewery's second ale.

The brewery, at the back of the Grand Hotel in Bishop Auckland, was visited by the Bishop of Durham. The first brew has thus been called Bishop's Blessing.

What of the second, preferably with a local connection? Suggestions so far embrace everything from sundry Durham bishops to the chap who drove the last train from Bishop to Wearhead in 1953. Mr John Taggart's proposal that the beer be called Lee Bowyer - "thick, rich and with a big head" - may have to be discounted.

Other ideas, by Tuesday please, to the email address at the top of the column or to me at the usual address.