The marvellous Culine

John Culine, the North's best known fairground man, received the MBE at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday morning. That afternoon he had a conducted tour of the Palace of Westminster with Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman. At night the family went on the Jack the Ripper tour.

"It was my daughter Victoria who wanted to do it," insists John. "It's just the show people, it's in your blood. You are what you are."

The what-goes-around-comes-around demands of the fairground industry also meant that his other four daughters, all actively involved, had to miss the investiture.

"It was Bank Holiday Monday the day before and it's the business we're in. I understand the problem," says John.

"In a way it solved a dilemma because officially you're only allowed three guests. It saved an argument about who could go and who couldn't."

Born in May 1947 in a caravan in Jubilee Park, Spennymoor, he comes from a long line of travelling entertainers dating back to the mummers and jesters of Tudor times.

In the 19th century, the Culines were rope dancers, equestrians, shooting gallery proprietors, clowns, strongmen and circus owners. One even threw knives at Buffalo Bill.

They performed in front of Queen Victoria and other crowned heads of Europe, but always remembered their place. Properly, the family name is pronounced Cu-lean. "We're not kings, we're not queens," the shows would begin, "we're the marvellous Culines."

Since 1977, however, John and his wife Davina - they met 40 years ago on Newcastle Town Moor hoppings - have lived in a luxurious static caravan at the end of an industrial estate in Spennymoor, the Co Durham town where the family caravan - horse drawn at the time - first rested in 1884.

"It's a free country, I just don't want to live in a house," he once said.

In 2004-05 he was Spennymoor town mayor, raising more than £20,000 - with the help of the Showman's Guild, of which he's full-time regional secretary - for the North of England Children's Cancer Unit at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

He's also a former Showman of the Year and was last week re-elected, unopposed to the town council.

The ceremony was conducted by the Prince of Wales, who'd clearly done his homework. "He asked me to tell him about my interesting family and particularly wanted to know about the audiences," says John.

"I told him that a lot of them had been members of his family watching my family. He just threw his head back and laughed. It was a wonderful, wonderful day."

The guild has bought him a miniature of the medal. "Every opportunity I get, I'll wear it, as proud as a peacock," says John. "I love my Showman's Guild and I love the community of Spennymoor and I hope this is an honour for them both."

Then it was time for Westminster and, Ripper yarns, for Whitechapel. For the marvellous John Culine MBE, the shows must go on.

Bruce Willis is a hard act to follow for Gazza

NEXT to a paragraph about a beer barrel (empty) being stolen from Builth Wells bowls club, the Brecon and Radnorshire Express carries a down-page story headed "Football legend visits Brecon".

The legend is our very own Paul Gascoigne, illuminating the Beacons as part of a training course run by a former SAS expert in preparation for the Dunston lad's film debut.

Clearly it's been arduous. He's been spotted, says the Express, in the Sarah Siddons, the Boar's Head and in Harleys night club. "He brought in a few punters," said Jill Moore, landlady of the Sarah Siddons.

Nocturnal diversions notwithstanding, Gazza - 40 on May 27 - claims to be twice as fit as he was when playing international football.

He was bawled out, though, for pointing a Kalashnikov AK47, happily unloaded, at a group of journalists.

The film's called Final Run, in which he is to play a heroic survivor battling alien invaders. "I've been training for two or three months now and it's been so hard," he says. "Me dad's getting me up at six o'clock every morning."

In advance of his 40th, however, he plans a short holiday - "I want to get tanned and look a bit like Bruce Willis".

After that, says Gazza, he'll also learn how to act.

Farewell to a Shildon lad

DENNIS Cree Turnbull, proud family member and proud Shildon lad, has died suddenly, aged 78. We'd featured him just two months ago.

It was Dennis, long in Darlington - "He was never very fond of it," admits Audrey, his widow, "he'd rather have been back in Shildon" - who'd solved the mystery of the battered World War I memorial to Pte John Cree, almost literally unearthed from Shildon Railway sports club.

Dennis was John Cree's second cousin and great great great grandson of another John Cree, the engine driver killed in 1828 when the boiler of Locomotion No 1 exploded near what is now Heighington station.

"I once tried to find out something about the explosion in contemporary records," he'd recalled. "There was nothing about John Cree, but quite a lot about a cow that was killed."v Digging around the family tree, Dennis had had much more success with the 19- year-old soldier, laid to rest amid a snowstorm at All Saints graveyard in Shildon.

"There are no good wars but that one was terrible, slaughter," he said. "So many young lives thrown away, like John's."

The Shildon boys had painstakingly restored the memorial before giving it to Dennis.

A gentle and a very nice man, he died from a suspected heart attack - six months before their golden wedding, but quickly, says Audrey, as he'd have wanted. His car was in collision with a wall in Brinkburn Road, Darlington. His funeral is tomorrow at 10 30am at St Matthew and St Luke's church in Darlington.

DEATH, probably wisely, is a prerequisite for inclusion in Durham Biographies, the wonderfully informative series of profiles from the Durham History of Education Project which this week reaches Volume 5.

The newest collection of Durhamfolk runs from Bobby Thompson - not a true Geordie at all, but a pit deputy's son from Penshaw - to Beryl Davison, a courageous Shildon lass who became one of the first women priests.

The Church of England is also represented by Edward Maltby and Michael Ramsey, both former Bishops of Durham, and by Cyril Alington, a former dean, who - as earlier columns have observed - may have been the only poet in history to include both Shildon and Shiney Row in the first line. It was about Coronation Day, 1937: Shildon, Spennymoor, Shiney Row, Pelaw, Pity Me, Seldom Seen, What have you done for your King and Queen?

There are many more and we shall have more to say ere long. (Better late than never, as perhaps they say at Durham Biographies.)

In the meantime, the book, £10 plus £1.20 postage, is available from Professor Gordon Batho, Miners' Hall, Durham DH1 4BB, email gordon.batho@btopenworld.com The full set, great present, can be had for £25, plus a fiver postage. The sixth is already under way.

RETIRED but still conducting funerals, the Rev Peter Holland was in Darlington town centre last week after another farewell at the crematorium. Affectionately remembered as vicar of Tudhoe and of New Seaham, Peter's a Darlington lad originally, though now up on Windy Ridge - otherwise Woodland, in Teesdale.

While his wife was in Mothercare, Peter found a "rather fine" new bench, realised when engulfed by diesel and black smoke that the seat was about two feet from a busy bus stop - "Don't the planners think of such things?" - and, still dog collared, fell into conversation with a heavily laden stranger.

It touched upon public seats and upon losing weight before getting down to what might be termed the bottom line.

The woman asked him about his motions.

Misunderstanding, Peter replied that he was a gentleman of 70 and that he was slowing up a bit.

"No, not that sort, Vicar," replied his new friend. A fairly basic discussion followed before, still clutching her carrier bags, she toddled off again. Peter's unfazed. "As a prodigal son returning to his home town, I thank God for Darlo where priest and people can discuss such weighty issues together."

His letter's headed "Change and decay", the phrase familiar from the hymn Abide With Me. It's probably better than "Going through the motions", anyway.

STILL on matters ecclesiastical, it may be recalled that the departing Bishop of Jarrow told his farewell congregation in Durham cathedral that the North- East was the only place in Britain where a bishop might be referred to as "Pet."

In the Durham diocesan newspaper, the Rt Rev John Pritchard also recalls a well-intentioned (and well-received) compliment. "Eeeh, we do like you," said a lady after the service. "You're just so ordinary."

SINCE today's the day when Trimdon hears the big news first, there are likely to be quite a few blaming the war in Iraq. It was not, we regret to recall, Tony Blair's first big mistake.

That was much earlier when, as a keen young MP, he received a letter from someone in Piercebridge, a pretty place west of Darlington, on the state of the footpaths, or something.

His office replied that Piercebridge was in the Bishop Auckland constituency, not Sedgefield, and suggested they contact Bishop MP Derek Foster instead, It wasn't, still isn't. A nice lady at Darlington town hall confirms that all the villages around the town - and north of the Tees - are still in the Sedgefield constituency.

"Think of it as a doughnut. Darlington's the hole in the middle and Sedgefield's the pastry," she helpfully suggests. Too late, alas, for Tony Blair.