THE Temperance Seven are in the bar before last Thursday’s show begins. They appear not to be drinking dandelion and burdock.

Once there were nine of them, a rather clever play on one over the eight, formed in the 1950s by an eccentric bunch of Chelsea art students.

Now there are eight, none of them originals. Such are my camera skills, the unfocused photograph may suggest one or two fewer. The Temperance Six-and-a-Half doesn’t have the same ring.

Then as now they dress like an illustration to a Just William story: spats, smoking jackets, the sort of co-respondent shoes made familiar by the late Mr Brian Johnston.

The Northern Echo: Temperance Seven

The Temperance Seven on a 1950s LP cover

“Whispering” Paul McDowell, the original singer, had been a road sweeper and left luggage attendant and remains much the best remembered. “We behaved in the same silly arse manner to those who had employed people like my mother as maidservants,” his autobiography recalled.

He left the group in the mid-Sixties, may (or may well not) be remembered as Mr Collinson in Porridge and died, aged 84, last summer.

In 1961 they topped the hit parade with You’re Driving Me Crazy – producer George Martin’s first No 1 – followed by a No 4 with Pasadena and a couple in the lower reaches. They topped the bill (with Shirley Bassey) at the Palladium, appeared in the Royal Command Performance, gave temperance a quixotic name.

The music is mostly jazz from the Twenties and Thirties – “Twenties and Thirsties,” says Alexander Galloway, the present singer – the players like a sort of syncopated Sgt Pepper.

Venues these days are perhaps a little humbler – the 1066 Club in Hastings, Victoria Hall in Settle, last week at Middlesbrough Theatre.

“We’re the only orchestra to be making a comeback without ever having been there in the first place,” says the white-jacketed Galloway.

It’s billed as a diamond jubilee tour, coincidence because it’s also the theatre’s 60th anniversary. Middlesbrough Little Theatre group, with which was incorporated the Cleveland Literary and Philosophical Society, raised £54,000 to build it, the theatre opened by Sir John Gielgud on October 22, 1957.

“Where’s Middlesbrough?” the great man reputedly asked, when invited to do the honours.

The 484-seat theatre – “Little” outgrown by 1996 – is about half full for the Seven, none more enthusiastic than David Atkinson from Hutton Rudby who first saw them at Bridlington Spa in 1961 and has been smitten ever since.

David even has a comprehensive list of all the personnel changes there’ve been, reminiscent of one of those Old Testament chapters where someone begat someone else and they seem to have begatting and begetting for ever.

“They’re just great musicians and zany with it,” says David, who has also amassed a collection of 6,000 beer mats – tegestology, they call it – and much else of a brewery-flavoured sort.

The show’s greatly entertaining, sousaphone to saxophone, one or two of the admirable musicians so elderly that they walk like an elderly retainer in an Eric Sykes film.

Numbers include Oh Baby which, inevitably, rhymes with maybe. The idle thought occurs that “baby” may have no other rhyme – unless, of course, you’re Lord Barnard or scabies has a singular. Readers may know differently.

They head off afterwards to goodness knows were, but probably once again via the bar. Their website lists another dozen-or-so one-nighters for 2017; just two for next year.

One’s the Bedale Jazz Festival, November 26, 2018. Book now for the magnificent Seven.

THE Stokesley Stockbroker, a good friend of both David Atkinson’s and of the column’s, kept quiet until shortly before the event that he was the LibDem candidate for Pudsey. No matter that a Google search insists upon providing details of Pudsey Bear, it can be revealed that Mr Allen Nixon– now retired to Northallerton – managed a valiant third from five. And only 23,000 votes behind the second.

AGE UK’s monthly men’s breakfast will be held in the Market Hall tomorrow. It doesn’t explain why – despite being tellt and better tellt – familiar man about Spennymoor Paul Hodgson not only turned up last Wednesday, but dragged me along, too. Age UK formerly embraced Age Concern. Right now the No 1 concern is Hodgy.

BLIND Courage, the Rev Linda Dodds’s biography of her truly amazing father, was launched last Monday evening. There may not have been so many in Bishop Auckland Town Hall since they last came back with the Amateur Cup.

“I’m a bit taken aback,” said Linda. “People say they’ve never been to a book launch before. I’ll tell you the truth, neither have I.”

We wrote on May 9 of book and subject. Ron Johnston lost his sight at the age of five after a tooth extraction went horribly wrong, was appointed Oxfam’s North-East regional organiser from 500 sighted applicants, became Northern director, “reluctantly” declined the offer to launch the charity in Canada.

He held shorthand and typing records, lived for several years in London without so much as a white stick, never mind a guide dog, knew the Underground intimately. “I find that a bit incredible,” said Linda, which seemed a bit of an understatement.

Back home he formed the St Helen’s and Tindale Crescent community association, masterminded the building of the community centre – designed in Lego on the living room floor so that Ron could “feel” its shape – became a Bishop Auckland councillor.

His first municipal role was to inspect a sewage works. “Just the job for a blind man,” he liked to say.

He’d met Doreen, his future wife, when she delivered the weekly groceries for Home and Colonial (or someone.) The story made the Daily Mirror on their wedding day – “He liked the cheery sound of her voice,” said the headline.

He died in 1976, aged 51. His daughter, the future Church of England priest, recalled being furious – “absolutely livid” – with God.

The book, well illustrated, tells a story of fierce independence, guide-dogged determination and a passion to help the world’s starving and underprivileged.

“His reason for helping the poorer people of the world was very simple,” Linda told the town hall folk. “It was right.”

n Blind Courage is published by Memoirs Publishing (£12.99), and is available on Amazon or email reverend.linda@yahoo.co.uk

FINALLY, and since the column won’t be here next week, a very happy 80th on June 25 to our old friend Derek Foster, more formally Baron Foster of Bishop Auckland.

The town’s MP for 26 years – the only Commons member to be a Salvation Army member, too – Derek also had a decade as Opposition chief whip.

His baronial crest is said to include several heraldic jests, including an “auk azure” – one of the two blues, anyway.

Though Derek remains an active champion of town and district he has also been much teased hereabouts for wearing the same style of suit – save for Salvation Army serge – whatever the occasion.

His birthday suit – double breasted, pin striped – will doubtless be identical. A picture, please, if otherwise.