How I beat Kate to a crown

And she’s already had her day in the royal spotlight.

ALREADY there was one queen in the family, Ferryhill Carnival 1950, and 17-year-old Shirley Temple certainly looked the part.

“Being carnival queen was a pretty big thing in those days,” she recalls.

“There was an awful lot of fuss, attendants, a beautiful dress made by the local clothing factory and being crowned by the local MP. The only thing that brought you back down to earth a bit was parading round town on the back of a lorry.”

Now, however, there’s set to be another queen – and this time a royal Temple. Shirley is a direct relation of Kate Middleton, whose wedding to Prince William takes place in the spring.

It seems unlikely, however, that the future Princess Catherine will ride to Westminster Abbey on the back of a lorry.

The bottom line is that Thomas and Elizabeth Temple, Shirley’s grandparents, were the future Queen’s great great grandparents.

Thomas was born in Guisborough, Elizabeth in Sheraton, near Easington.

They lived in Salvin Street, Spennymoor, where the head of the household was described on the 1911 census return as a farm hand.

Later he became a gardener and moved to Half Moon Lane, also in Spennymoor, where Shirley recalls regular visits, dressed in their Sunday afternoon best to walk the two miles from Ferryhill.

Can of tuna? Tin of pears? “Pears certainly, but maybe egg sandwiches.

They were just ordinary, humble people. Who’d have thought they’d be related to the future Queen?”

As Princess Catherine may discover, however, prominence can bring unwanted attention. “My teenage years were murder because I was Shirley Temple and everyone went round singing Good Ship Lollipop after me,” recalls Ferryhill’s finest.

“Being carnival queen made it worse. I was very glad when I married Ronnie, and could be called something else instead.”

RONNIE and Shirley Beedle, who doubtless have also heard many lines about the Beedles being about, live near Bishop Auckland – a little palace, it may truthfully be said, and with a cabinet full of royal souvenirs.

“I’ve always been a royalist, I think we should be very proud of what they do for us,” says Shirley, now married for 53 years. “They seem a lovely couple. I hope they’ll be as happy as we’ve been.”

She knew nothing of possible links to Kate Middleton, however, until visited by an assiduous Daily Mail journalist four years ago.

“She’d come up from London. We weren’t at home and she waited outside for hours. She said she’d come back to us, but things seemed to cool down between Kate and Prince William and we heard no more.

That’s when I started doing some online research of my own. I’ve been at it 18 months now.”

It revealed that Thomas and Elizabeth Temple’s daughter, born in Salvin Street in 1903, married Thomas Harrison, a coal miner from Hetton-le-Hole.

Their daughter Dorothy – Shirley’s cousin and Kate Middleton’s grandmother – married Ronald Goldsmith from Middlesex. “We’d visit them two or three times a year. Dorothy was two years older than I was but we were good friends,” says Shirley.

It was the Harrisons’ daughter Carole who married Michael Middleton.

Soon they’ll be royal in-laws.

Shirley, the last of the Temples, has never met Carole Middleton. “It would be nice one day to do so, but I’ll not be putting on any airs and graces or shoving myself forward.

“I don’t expect an invitation to the wedding. I’d like to go and watch but we’ll probably see more on television, and that way I won’t have to buy a new hat.”

“I didn’t even put our golden wedding in the paper because I didn’t want any fuss. This is really for my father who worked jolly hard for us all. I think he’d be very proud.”

Ronnie’s quietly pleased, too. “I guess,” he says, “that I’ll never be short of something to talk about down the pub.”

THE Beedles have two sons.

David has a coffee shop on the Gold Coast of Australia, Peter has a multi-award winning fish and chip shop off Cockton Hill Road, in Bishop Auckland.

Inevitably known as Chippy, he was also Cockfield United’s goalkeeper when repeatedly they won almost every minor football competition in County Durham in the 1990s.

“I thought they were pretty heady days. I never thought my mum would be related to royalty.”

Chippy off the old block? “Kate does seem very nice. They’d be welcome to look in any time for a fish supper,” he says.

So after chatting with his parents, we headed back to town for lunch – at Chippy Beedle’s, a dish fit for a queen.

THE other Shirley Temple, the one who never did get to be Ferryhill Carnival Queen, remains America’s best known child actress.

Born on April 23, 1928, she began her screen career at the age of three, her hair set carefully in 56 ringlets to emulate Mary Pickford. In December 1934, the film Bright Eyes, made especially to suit her talents, was released. Its hit song was On The Good Ship Lollipop.

As Shirley Temple Black she became, among much else, US ambassador to Ghana, head of protocol at the White House and organiser of Jimmy Carter’s election campaign.

She’s now 82, said to be in good health, but probably in no way related to the future Queen of England.

Curry houses in the hot-seat

IT MAY be the North-East’s oldest known joke, the one about putting a photograph of old soand- so on the mantelpiece in order to keep the bairns away from the fire.

At the New Bengal takeaway in Darlington, however, something seems to have been lost in the translation.

For seven years now, that admirable establishment in Victoria Road has had a large photograph in the window of me surrounded by a great deal of food. This, apparently, is meant to get customers through the door.

The picture was taken when last I was a judge at Darlington’s curry chef of the year competition.

Though there’s no hot-stuff caption to explain it, the New Bengal won.

Last week I was again a judge, joined by Alan Richards who’s the Durham County analyst and James Butterfield, head of the catering department at Darlington College, where the contest was held.

Mr Butterfield, who has a look of Gordon Ramsay about him, but is altogether more equable, had previously run a restaurant in Northallerton which took a bit of a howking from the Eating Owt column because of the racket from the radio.

Radio Gaga, we called it. “I think you liked the breakfast,” said James.

This time it was a healthy curry competition, requiring judges with healthy appetites, and followed a September testing by the council’s environmental health department of every chicken tikka massala in town.

Even without rice, the average had two-thirds the recommended daily content of fat, saturated fat or salt. Often all three.

This was meant to encourage better ways, the two who’d deep-fried their vegetables perhaps misunderstanding the concept of “healthy”.

“They look lovely, though,” said Alan, gallantly.

Seven entered, the New Bengal – again – joined by Little India, Café Spice, Spice of Life, Taste of India, Reema and the Garden of India, who’d brought a local celebrity in support.

Granville Gibson is a retired Archdeacon of Auckland, now chairman of governors at St Aidan’s Academy in Darlington and very likely one of the most honest, and honourable, men on the planet. We are old friends.

It was thus a little galling gently to be chided by someone from the council for talking to the gentleman, the clear insinuation that he could – as it were – be currying favour.

They can’t let any Tom, Dick or Ali in there, but the Archdeacon of Auckland?

Granville stood penitently in the corner, missing only a conical cap with a large D on it. The judges resumed their arduous deliberation: you know what they say about heat and kitchen.

They cooked in two shifts, the whole exercise occupying more than two hours, the judges not so much offered a glass of water, much less a nice bottle of Cobra.

The council chap clearly had a different agenda. “I’m just going out for some refreshment,” he said.

Each entrant had been required to write down his test dish and ingredients in advance. Only minor deviations would be allowed, said the rules, but goodness knows we all have one or two of those.

They were judged on hygiene by the experts and by the rest of us on taste, appearance, healthy ingredients and originality. Happily for several, there were no deductions for bad spelling.

The standard was excellent, none of the old bag boilers here. The candidates were visibly nervous, the judges remarkably in accord.

The unanimous and comfortable winner, not least because of the manifest thought and effort that had gone into it, was – again – the New Bengal.

Mian Uddin beamed, was asked how business was, raised his eyes to the college ceiling. “Hopefully from now, it’s better,” he said.

It was as we were heading back to work that he had an afterthought.

“Do you think I should get a new photograph?” he said.

Great faithfulness

DEREK Mansfield, organist for 35 years at St John’s church in Shildon, died at the weekend. He was 81.

Derek lived in Croxdale, ten miles north.

Frequently he’d travel four times a week for practice and services, in all that time – until his recent short illness – missing just one Sunday. “That was when there was a really heavy snow storm and my predecessor here urged him to turn back,” says the Rev Rupert Kalus, St John’s vicar. “His faithfulness was fantastic.”

We’d written of Derek last year when he and choir members Eric Pearson and Alan Richardson had celebrated their 80th birthdays at much the same time.

Derek, who’d previously been organist at St Mary’s in Belmont, Durham, had first played St John’s organ when it was in a church in Hull.

“I just love that instrument,” he said.

“I’ve always said they’ll have to carry me off that stool when I go. I’d never dream of giving up this job. It would be like cutting my right arm off.”

Rupert Kalus remembers a lovely man with a ready, oft-irreverent, sense of humour.

“He loved that instrument with a passion, played it magnificently but was a very humble man. He will be very much missed.”

A date for the funeral hasn’t yet been arranged. Inevitably, it will be at St John’s.