The Anglo-Italian job

Edmundo Rossi was the Italianate icon of Rossi’s cafe, a canoodle parlour on a corner of Newgate Street in Bishop Auckland. His family had been in County Durham since the Twenties.

The cafe was a Fifties period piece – “the style of an Italian speakeasy,” Mr Neville Kirby once observed – beloved equally of Bishop grammar school pupils when the sexes were strictly segregated and of the town’s Amateur Cup heroes, to whom footsie was something else entirely.

It was also the venue, usually over a cup of Bovril and a dry cream cracker, of the morning editorial conference from The Northern Echo’s office down the road. Since his ear was far closer to the ground than ever ours were, Eddie took the chair.

The most affable of men, he is said also to have promised a Bishop Auckland cricketer – memory lapses his identity – a knickerbocker glory for every half century and uncharacteristically to have haggled when, 100 on the board, the player demanded two.

The place was dominated by an extraordinarily noisy coffee machine called a Gaggia – as with motor bikes, no one seems to have invented a decent suppressor for coffee machines – though not even Bill Oliver, our legendary photographer in Bishop Auckland, could persuade the camera-shy Eddie to be pictured alongside it.

The 1973 snap – a quiet news day, perhaps – may be of Lady Gaggia.

Rossi’s was demolished when they wanted to widen the road, Eddie and his family eventually opening another cafe in the Market Place at which Dr David Jenkins, then Bishop of Durham, became a regular.

Finally Eddie – inevitably a good Catholic – erected a plaque: “By appointment to the Lord Bishop of Durham.” Dr Jenkins was said greatly to have been amused.

SEARCH the archive for references to Rossi’s and none is more intriguing than a Gadfly column from March 1999.

Pat Green, then marketing manager of the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, North Yorkshire, was heading towards Eddie’s place for his morning coffee when his eye was caught by a “product recall” notice for Karma Sutra Sensual Massage Oil in the window of the local John Menzies newsagency.

The further news from John Menzies was that it might cause irritation to “sensitive areas of the body”.

An Internet check reveals that the stuff is still rubbing along quite nicely, however. “Unfastens pent-up emotions and lets passion bubble to the surface,” it says. Pat wasn’t much bothered. “I prefer Johnson’s Baby Oil, gently warmed over a scented candle,” he said.

WHATEVER the route, the Rossis were among thousands of Italian families – often ice cream sellers or cafe owners – who came to Britain around 1900.

Spennymoor had the Coia family, Easington Colliery the Rigalis, Bishop Auckland and elsewhere the di Palmas and Newcastle the Marcantonios, whose stop-me-and-buy-one empire became Mark Toney’s. East Durham had the Baldaseras.

Angelo Baldasera left Italy for West Hartlepool, bought an ice cream cart, quickly realised that where there was muck, there was money and would daily load it into the guard’s van at Hartlepool station to head for the pit villages around Wheatley Hill.

“Boss” Baldasera finally moved to Thornley, fathered ten children and opened six cafes, was known not just for his ice cream, but for his Bovril and cream crackers – clearly an Italian delicacy.

Arisilio, one of his sons, opened an affectionately remembered cafe and sweet shop in Wheatley Hill, once welcomed legendary cricketer Denis Compton. Aris called the premises Perpetua House. “A thank you to our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God, for perpetual succour and for the way the people of Wheatley Hill have made us part of their families,” he said.

He spoke little Italian, was renowned for his generosity, was also a poet. Aris Baldasera, indeed, may have been the only known poet to rhyme “eighty” with “tatie”, on the occasion that his wife reached four score years.

Elsie Baldasera did like her potatoes, after all. He moved to Darlington to be nearer his son Mike, still a Hear All Sides regular, and died in 1993.

…AND finally, a stroll around Cockfield last Friday evening suggests that long-nurtured plans to move to that west Durham village must finally be abandoned. The lady was never keen, anyway.

On the edge of the village green is a notice board displaying by-laws, the approximate length of the European constitution, for its order and governance.

Among them is the injunction that anyone singing on the green must desist forthwith if requested so to do by “any person annoyed or disturbed”.

There are those of us who sing endlessly, usually hymns. The first thing my future father-in-law noticed was a tendency to belt out “The day thou gave us Lord is ended” when in the bathroom at 7am.

If Cockfield is to ban singing, we shall just have to stay where we are.

A bum note on which to end.

Main attraction

PERHAPS the best known of all the Anglo-Italians was Peter Jaconelli – ice cream entrepreneur, osteopath, opera singer, long-serving local councillor, holder of the world oyster eating record and 6th Dan judo black belt, the man who taught Arthur Scargill.

Impecunious like most of the rest of them, Peter’s grandfather had walked from Italy to Scotland. He himself was sufficiently British to be conscripted, sufficiently wealthy to be the only squaddie to have a chauffeur-driven limo to take him home at weekends.

On demob in 1947, he was bought by his father a stall on Scarborough sea front in the days when ice cream was vanilla or vanilla. He’d recalled it – over an ice cream – when we’d chatted in 1989.

“One Bank Holiday Saturday, one of my competitors introduced a choc bar. It was unheard of and I was frantic. He had queues and I had no one.” Peter instantly invented strawberry ice cream.

He loved Scarborough, promoted town and borough assiduously, became mayor in 1970, posed for the splendid front cover of the 1980 holiday brochure – Peter’s the one on the left – liked nothing better than selling ice cream to holidaymakers.

He was 5ft 1in, topped the scales at 23 stones, lasted until he was 73.

Even his diets made headlines.

Apparently it was the Express: “Resort’s most famous attraction disappearing.”