RAY Mallon’s final civic duty as the Mayor of Middlesbrough was to present acclaimed artist Mackenzie Thorpe with a richly deserved lifetime of achievement award from his home town.

The outgoing mayor, who can talk not only the hind legs off a donkey but the front ones and the ears too, was generous in his praise of a man who, from humble beginnings, has used art to place the Boro on the world map.

Mackenzie could have knocked out a new exhibition in the time it took for Ray to complete his masterpiece of a tribute, delivered in the council chamber without a single note and splattered with a colourful mix of dates, names, and anecdotes that even the artist himself couldn’t have remembered.

The evening couldn’t pass without tribute also being paid to Ray himself for his 13 years’ service as mayor. Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald did the honours and Ray responded by thanking a number of people for their support over the years. To my surprise, one of them was me “for not bowing to the establishment” during the bitter years of Operation Lancet when he was accused of corruption as a Cleveland Police detective.

At the height of his “Robocop” fame, we’d given Ray a regular column and allowed it to carry on throughout his suspension from the force. And, yes, there was pressure from the establishment – from the Chief Constable downwards – to drop Mallon like a stone.

The then editor of the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough, who’d been in the editor’s chair a lot longer than me at the time, even joined in: “You’re going to end up with egg on your face, sonny,” he smiled, knowingly.

It was perceived we were taking Ray Mallon’s side, but that was never how I saw it.

All we did was to repeatedly challenge the length and expense of Operation Lancet – an inquiry which dragged on for four years and cost taxpayers £7m yet yielded no criminal charges. And we allowed a popular column to be written by someone who was innocent until proven guilty. To drop it, in my view, would have prejudged the inquiry.

In the end, with no criminality proved, Ray accepted disciplinary charges, insisting he was doing so to extricate himself from Cleveland Police so he could stand as the independent Mayor of Middlesbrough.

His 13 years as mayor, covering three elections, end this week and the Ray Mallon column continued for most of that time. “I don’t think I ever let your judgement down, Peter,” he said the other night.

No, he didn’t. And he hasn’t let Middlesbrough down either. The general view is that he’s done an admirable job in tough times.

Oh, and I’ve never had to wipe any egg off my face either.

WITH a delicious slip of the tongue, Andy McDonald (who, it turns out, is married to my old classmate from St Peter’s in South Bank, Sally Conway) began his tribute by recalling how Ray Mallon shot to fame as the champion of “zero hours policing”.

He quickly corrected the phrase to “zero tolerance policing”. Nevertheless, the seeds may have been sown. You can’t go giving David Cameron ideas so close to an election, Andy.

NOW he is at the end of his mayoral reign, I think it’s time to reveal how Ray Mallon was responsible for a Northern Echo front page story which was never published.

We had a scoop that Mr Mallon was going to stand against Peter Mandelson to be Hartlepool MP in the 2001 general election.

Imagine what a battle that would have been.

The deal was that the Echo would break the story and the Hartlepool Mail would get the first interview.

The page was ready to go – Mallon V Mandelson was the banner headline. But at 10pm, half an hour before deadline, he rang to say: “I’m not doing it. I can’t explain but I’m not doing it.”

I can’t repeat what I shouted at the time. Suffice to say a new, far less exciting, front page was rapidly produced. It was our understanding that Ray had been on his way to register as a parliamentary candidate when he was persuaded by the late Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar to go for the mayor’s job instead.

It is amid such twists and turns that history is rewritten.

THE biggest laugh of the evening went to Mackenzie who recalled being in New York and giving a speech in which he told how he’d grown up with “nowt”.

An American woman approached afterwards, seeking clarification. “Is that like TB?” she asked.