Better than just OK

OK, yah? It was among the North-East's best known bus companies, if not always a transport of delight - there were some pretty dodgy double deckers - then an ever-reliable one.

The company ran from 1912 until absorbed by Go Ahead 85 years later, counted up to 200 vehicles when the fleet was all in, operated across the region and had the battle wounds of many a bus war to prove it.

David Holding's newly published history, happily combining the commercial and the convivial, is written almost from the stance of backseat driver. For nearly 30 years he was a regular on the OK's celebrated and ever-immaculate service from Bishop Auckland, through Nevilles Cross to Newcastle.

He lived in Chester Moor, alongside the old A1, lectured in transport management in the city, owned a car but saw no good reason to get it out of the garage. "At the end of the day I'd be settling down in my seat on the bus, watching all the people stuck in queues in their cars and thinking what fools they were," he confesses.

If late from the office, the OK would stop if he flagged it down. If he were in danger of oversleeping his stop, the conductress would gently wake him.

"The company philosophy was that the OK was there not just to provide a service for those unfortunate enough not to have cars," he writes in the foreword. "It was a high quality operation which people would choose and prefer."

It is thus appropriate that when we meet in Bishop for a coffee and a threepenny ride down memory lane, both of us have travelled by bus. "I have my pass, why waste it?" asks David, now 64 and north regional manager of the Confederation of Passenger Transport - the bus operators' trade association.

The company was founded by Wade Emmerson, an Evenwood businessman and garage owner and one of many Emmersons to carry that family forename. For the purposes of the book there are Wade Senior, Wade Junior and Young Wade - now in Guernsey - the last in the OK bus queue.

Back in 1851, however, the Evenwood census recorded that Wade Emmerson was a joiner, freeholder, part-time village constable, assistant overseer and collector of rents. Emmerson, added the census approvingly, had "never been bankrupt or kept a pub etc."

Originally the Gaunless Valley Motor Company, it became OK in 1928 when Emmerson agreed to operate the Newcastle service jointly with Eddie Howe, from Spennymoor.

Wade Senior had served in the First World War, heard American servicemen use the term OK, considered it undoubtedly brief and quite probably to the point.

Chiefly they became known for the Bishop Auckland to Newcastle service, on which clippies remained to the end, and for the run from Bishop to Evenwood, once shared with three other companies and latterly with Lockey's.

There'd be four buses an hour - three OK, one Lockey's. "I wouldn't say there was a stand-off between the two companies, but it was never a very cosy relationship," says David, now also a Chester-le-Street district councillor.

The company had started, however, by running between Bishop Auckland and West Auckland - when up to 20 rivals were vying for the same passengers.

Until 1963, the OK also ran to Woodland, in west Durham, where a second bus - based in Middleton-in-Teesdale - would continue the journey to High Force, then as now a popular destination.

Legend has it that, during the formidable winter of 1947, the Middleton bus became stuck for several weeks in a snow drift, prompting so many angry comments in the Teesdale Mercury that shoppers with ration books weren't able to get down to Middleton for essentials that Wade Senior began legal action.

"I've combed the Mercury and can find no record of the litigation," says David. "When finally they dug the bus out, Emmerson had a film made so they could prove all the effort they'd gone to. He asked the Mercury for a donation to be made to his favourite charity."

The book details both OK's history and some of its characters, men like Billy Henderson - still remembered for his ever-present brown dust coat and flat cap - who drove for Howes until in his 80s.

"He'd drive coach tours for Saga and be the oldest person on board," says David.

He tells also of the boxes of blood plasma which, regularly on the five past four from Marlborough Crescent bus station, the OK would carry from Newcastle General to Bishop Auckland general hospitals.

"How many operators," he asks - not unreasonably - "would be entrusted with that?"

The depot near Bishop Auckland market place was opened in 1938 and finally closed last year. Once multi-coloured, the nearby bus station is now an almost uniform Arriva turquoise.

David Holding still believes, however, that the region is well served by its buses. "Believe me, the people who complain should live elsewhere."

Richly and nostalgically illustrated, his book's going to carry thousands of North-East bus travellers wistfully back in time. OK? OK

* David Holding will be signing copies of his book at Bishop Auckland Town Hall between 11am-3pm on Thursday, October 4 - when they expect an array of OK memorabilia to be on show.

"I'd hoped to be able to find an OK bus but appear to have failed," says town hall manager Gillian Wales.

They also want to find Teresa Harrison, pictured above in the Echo in September 1997 after finishing her shift as the last of the conductresses on the Bishop Auckland to Newcastle service. Anyone know where she is?

A History of OK Motor Services (13.95) will be available from the town hall and tourist information centre or local book shops. Signed copies, with free postage and packing, can be obtained from David Holding, 6 The Dene, Chester Moor, Chester-le-Street, Co Durham DH2 3TB.

Amen Corner, local angle

Homeward from Bishop, we head for a lunchtime pint at the Fox and Hounds in Shildon - about 50 yards from the old family home and thus reasonably considered a local.

Closed for six months, it's been reopened as a non-profit making "community" pub - on similar lines to the once-nationally acclaimed Rookhope Inn, at the top end of Weardale.

Until it went into liquidation and returned to private ownership, the Rookhope was managed on behalf of the St Aidan's Trust by Chris Jones. On behalf of the Seymour Trust, he's now running with the Fox and Hounds.

At Rookhope he offered an old Morris Minor police car to ferry home those who'd had a few, arranged everything from flower arranging classes to Saturday night hula-hoop competitions, restored the old village bus, planned a brewery up the hill.

At Shildon they've already introduced jamming sessions for local musicians - not jam tomorrow, Mondays - plan to offer computer availability and to launch a "Fareshare" scheme to offer unwanted shop and restaurant food to voluntary organisations and to the vulnerable.

Just that morning, Chris had heard that they'd been given a 25-year lease, allowing many more funding possibilities to be explored. Much else is in the pipeline - "but I don't think Shildon's ready for hula-hoop competitions just yet."

AT a Quaker meeting, of all things - and much more of that on Saturday - we bump into Barnard Castle estate agent and surveyor George Gledhill, planning a pub and brewery of his own in the Teesdale town.

It'll be opposite the parish church, who weren't best pleased, on a site known locally as Amen Corner. It should open next spring.

George, who 25 years ago helped open the Collectors Arms in Darlington, supposes that the 1960s pop group of that ilk took their name from the Barney angle. It's doubtful.

The original Amen Corner is in London, near St Paul's Cathedral. There's another at the Augusta National Golf Club in America, the 11th, 12th and 13th holes so named in 1958 after some apparently "miraculous" play by Arnold Palmer.

Fronted by Andy Fairweather-Lowe, they became the first Welsh group to top the charts when If Paradise Was Half as Nice hit number one in 1969. We have been unable, however, to discover why they took their name.

If anyone can help, so be it.

THE Collectors Arms was also where the Darlington branch of the Campaign For Real Ale was formed. Last weekend, convivial as ever, the branch held its 25th autumn beer festival.

CAMRA champions proper cider, too, the Cumberland Arms at Byker - couple of miles east of Newcastle city centre - just named the region's first cider pub of the year. The Valley in Scarborough took the overall northern title.

Among those who'd travelled to Darlington was Brian Moore from Sheffield, said not just to be the world champion "beer ticker" - more than 40,000 different ales to his palate - but a champion tomato grower, too. It's the way that he waters them, he says.

All that clouds Brian's glass is his passion for Sheffield Wednesday, still without a win all season. "Is there any wonder," he pleaded, "that I sometimes like a drink?"

Brian Madden once ran a pub, too - the Ball Alley up near Stanley - but now works in Los Angeles. It's the grub, not the beer, that he misses.

Having read about it in the Echo, he now has Whitby kippers sent across the Atlantic and half-way across America - "breakfast every Sunday". His pork pies come from Manhattan ("just like Taylor's in Darlington"), his pasties from Florida.

"They're sent overnight at extreme cost, but worth every penny," he says.

Now he's wondering if anyone in the North-East airlifts "decent" black pudding, saveloys, haslet, pease pudding or even penny ducks. We'll pass on suggestions, par avion.

Problems resolved, Robert Luke's CD, about which recently we have been writing, is now available in the HMV Music Store in the Prince Bishops Centre, Durham, and at the DAM music shop in North Road. With not so much as a capital letter, it's simply called beach.

Rob - a Newcastle University music student who died, aged 19, in March - wrote, recorded, played and sang everything himself. The CD's his parents' tribute to a fine young man