LORD Heseltine arrived in the region on Monday with his famous mane of hair a little thinner and whiter than in its luxuriant heyday, but still looking pretty impressive given it is now in its 83rd year. I know this because those who were there tell me that, crucially, he was not wearing a hat.

The Tory grandee has been sent north by the Conservative Government to bring the struggling Tees Valley industrial economy back to the boil.

This is not new. In the early 1960s, Durham coalmining was collapsing, shipbuilding on the Tees was holed below the waterline, and railway shops at Darlington and Shildon were shedding thousands of jobs. So in February 1963, the Conservative Government sent a Tory grandee north “to warm things up”.

He was Lord Hailsham who, despite only ever previously being seen in a bowler hat, turned up in a cloth cap. He tried to explain that he had left his bowler in his car in London, and had found Newcastle so cold that he’d had to buy a cloth cap to replace the one he’d been shooting in for 25 years.

It was a gift for cartoonists, who depicted the Eton and Oxford educated peer in a “Geordie cap”, and opponents, who condemned him for a condescending photo-stunt.

Hailsham and Heseltine are similarly flamboyant figures: Heseltine brandished the mace at Labour in the Commons in 1976, whereas at the 1957 party conference, Hailsham picked up a bell and rang out a deathknell for Labour.

In the spring of 1963, Hailsham came up with a list of plans “as long as a washing list” for the North-East. His list included the creation of airports, seaports, motorways, motels and a “regional council”. He wanted to establish “growth points” that would attract businesses because of their fantastic schools, hospitals and communications, and he wanted the rest of the region to become a “play-land” for holidaymakers.

And after a drive through Crook, Eldon and Bishop Auckland, he thought “a great majority” of south Durham could be pulled down.

Then he returned to London – and his bowler hat.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan fell ill and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas Home and the momentum drained out of the Hailsham Plan until it was killed off by the October 1964 election, which was won by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.

Although the North-East did end up with two airports – Newcastle and Teesside – all history remembers of Hailsham’s 1963 plans is a cloth cap. What will it make of Heseltine’s 2015 plans?

I WAS fascinated to read in Wednesday’s paper that the home of Ripon’s Victorian varnish-making family, the Kearsleys, was up for sale for £1.45m, which led me to discover that Ripon was proclaimed as Britain’s first – and possibly only – “city of varnish”.

In 1775, banker Daniel Williamson befriended a French Huguenot refugee who had made it to Ripon, seeking sanctuary from religious persecution on the Continent. In return for the kindness, the refugee gave Daniel the secret recipe for varnish – a strange concoction of gums, resins, oils and glues. So Daniel moved out of banking and into varnishing.

Soon, Ripon was the centre of a varnish industry, with companies like Kearsley’s specialising in hard-wearing coatings for locomotives.

Today, Williamson’s survives as the country’s oldest varnish house although Ripon’s lustre as a city of varnish has faded a little.

NOTE: Morris the cat is luxuriating by the radiator, soaking up the warmth and making himself at home, while Roger the rooster stands shivering outside.