AMONG the remarkable things about Bishop Auckland Methodist Church is that two of its most faithful members, Lez Rawe and Melvyn McConnell, taught me at the grammar school out the back. As will be appreciated, that makes them Very Old Indeed.

The Rev Keith Phipps, retiring after 35 years of ministry – the last ten as circuit superintendent in Bishop – is a remarkable chap, too. “A wonderful example of dedication and commitment,” Ralph Ingram told his farewell service.

Born in Islington, he worked in banking, spent his early ministry in High Wycombe, moved to Wearside, forsook Arsenal for Sunderland and had a decade as circuit superintendent in Northallerton and Thirsk before returning to County Durham.

When he came, the circuit had 14 churches and two ministers. Five churches – Ingleton, Lands, Ramshaw, West Auckland and Woodland – have closed. “It’s probably inevitable,” said Keith. “Villages lose the post office, the shop, the pub. It’s the Methodist church next.” The second minister went, too.

He earned a reputation for bad jokes and good sermons. Linda, his wife, calculated she’d listened to 1,645 of them – the sermons – and earned a round of applause for it.

The farewell gathering was also entertained by a group called Bishop Auckland Theatre Hooligans, acronymically BATH, who’ve spent eight years working with youngsters in Jamaica – Jamaica Difference, they called it.

Crucially supported by the Methodist church, they’ve provided proper toilet facilities at a nursery school. Perhaps inevitably, it’s now the BATHroom.

Keith, moving to Ripon, preached from a pulpit draped red and white and with a Sunderland black cat at the foot. More than 200 listened. Unusually, he didn’t crack a single joke – not even the line, customary on such occasions, that they’d only turned up to make quite sure he went.

Energetic, ecumenical, innovative, compassionate and reforming, they’ll miss him tremendously, nonetheless.

CANON Leo Osborn’s farewell service was held in Newcastle Cathedral the following Sunday, a vibrant affair with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and deans and bishops and bods.

For all that, things kept coming back to football. He’s an Aston Villa nut, owns every programme home and away since 1911, and retains a soft spot for Norwich City.

“A twin misfortune,” said Frank White, the acting Bishop of Newcastle.

“The wrong football team, the wrong cricket team (he meant Warwickshire) and probably born in the wrong century,” said Leo’s friend Dr Martyn Atkins, the Methodist Church’s general secretary.

Leo’s also a Methodist, chair for 14 years of the Newcastle upon Tyne district – Tweed to Wear – and chaplain to the Northern League for rather longer.

The cathedral was thronged, the service into extra time – two-and-a-quarter hours – the buffet excellent. In semi-retirement, Leo’s moving with his wife Charlotte to Oakham, in Rutland. With a senior railcard, Villa Park’s just £7 return.

THOUGH he now lives in Birmingham, where his wife Janet is a residentiary canon at the second city’s cathedral, former Northern Echo head librarian Peter Chapman held his 60th birthday bash on the Wensleydale Railway.

A splendid occasion it proved: afternoon tea, best china, diesels fore and aft on the scenic ramble from Leeming Bar to Redmire.

Fellow guests included the Very Rev John Dobson, Dean of Ripon, taking a breather before the consecration the following day of the new Bishop of Richmond, Ripon Cathedral’s first consecration since 1293 – and that, apparently, was of the Bishop of Galway.

“We’ve had to blow the dust off the orders of service,” said the dean.

Good also to see Fr Raymond Cuthbertson, Sunderland supporting former Vicar of Shildon, who recalled that in 1992 he’d won the Backtrack column’s quote of the year award.

We’d sat together at the FA Cup final, the “old” Wembley having benefitted from one of its periodic refurbishments. Raymond had returned from a trip to the gent’s. “£50m and you still have to pee against a wall,” he said.

Clearly 1992 was a vintage year.

*Peter Chapman, a technological groundbreaker in Darlington days, not only edits the Wensleydale Railway Association magazine Relay, but is organising Revolving Words, a Bedale-based railway literature festival from October 23-25. More details of that one on revolvingwords.com

FOUR days after the Big Meeting, extensively mined in last week’s column, I’m back in Durham to address the Age UK “gentlemen’s breakfast”. The crowd’s both smaller and more sober.

As if overlooked by the sweepers-up, there’s still an up-the-revolutionary on Silver Street, 9am and yelling at no one in particular. “The Tories are horrible people,” he shouts. “The Tories are the worst thing since sliced bread.”

It’s possible he means “best”.

The breakfasts are held in the covered market café, open to those aged 50 upwards, though it’s a bit disconcerting when you’re just about the oldest person at Age UK.

Grub’s £3.50, crack free, both excellent. The next breakfast’s on September 16, when they hope to have the bowel doc from the hospital. He’ll probably be a lot funnier.

MINERS’ Gala day had begun, as we noted, with bacon butties at the Voltigeur in Spennymoor. Ivor Harley (who may or may not be a motor bike owner) seeks a translation.

Well strictly it means “vaulter”, a French foot soldier who’d jump on the back of a horse in order to speed the advance.

The pub, however, is named after one of the 19th Century’s most famous racehorses – bred by Robert Stephenson at Hart, near Hartlepool, owned by Lord Zetland and stabled (with a couple of companionable tortoiseshell cats) at Aske Hall, near Richmond.

Voltigeur won both Derby and St Leger in 1850 and the following year beat The Flying Dutchman in a great challenge at York, possibly aided by the fact that Dutchman’s jockey was seven sheets.

There’s still a Great Voltigeur Stakes at York and a Voltigeur Restaurant at Redcar racecourse. One of the horse’s cannon bones remains in a glass case at Aske. They no longer keep tortoiseshells, though.

ANOTHER good start, we spoke last Saturday at the men’s breakfast organised monthly at the Moorcock in Eggleston by Barnard Castle churches.

It was a chance to re-tell the story of the Rev Paul Walker’s first sermon as curate of St Mary’s in Barney, an occasion on which he quoted Matthew 3:7 – “O generation of vipers, who hath warned ye to flee from the wrath to come” – and sat down again.

Others recalled Clarrie Beadle, a wonderful character who once told these columns that all that was needed to survive in Upper Teesdale was a good wife and a good muffler. “Luckily,” added Clarrie, “I have both.”

Clarrie, who died five years ago, had been a Methodist local preacher for more than 60 years, loved Teesdale so greatly that he rarely left its affectionate embrace.

At the Moorcock – very good breakfast; thanks – they remembered his being asked if he’d ever been to London. “No,” said Clarrie, “but I did once get to Darlington.”

...AND finally, a funeral service for Trevor Shaw – better known to many as the comedian Seth Shildon – was held yesterday at Wear Valley crematorium.

He was an old friend, featured last November in a column to mark his 50 years of laughing matter. “Trevor animates deadpan,” we said. “Not what you’d call high risqué – not blue-Brown, as it were – but by no means antiseptic, either.”

Like anyone playing North-East clubs, he’d known bad nights. At Dunston Mechanics in his early days, they’d only pay half the agreed fee. Trevor asked why they didn’t just pay him off at the interval.

“We thowt thoo might be better in the second half,” said the concert secretary. “Thoo wasn’t.”

He was a lovely man. Last laughs? More, with luck, next week.