LAST week’s column told how Yvonne Ridley, former Echo reporter and Taliban captive – the events were not contemporaneous – had set up a peafowl sanctuary in the Borders.

The neighbours, she admitted, mightn’t suppose it a feather in her cap, what with the amorous peacock’s penchant for “death curdling shrieks”.

Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland is nonetheless impressed by her magnanimity – and tells a dark story of what may only be supposed peafowl play.

Paul lives in Waldron Street, near the town centre. For getting on 20 years folk thereabouts have shared the neighbourhood with Perry, a nomadic peacock so popular that he even had his own Facebook page.

“He could be a bit noisy at times,” Paul concedes, “but no one has ever felt their blood, or their death, curdling.”

Even as bird brains go, of course, peafowl aren’t the brightest feather in the display – which may explain why, in season, Perry could frequently be observed showing off all that he had to a Sky dish.

Earlier this month, however, he mysteriously disappeared. The trail, if not quite cold, has gone decidedly quiet.

“Someone claims to have seen him being bundled into a car,” says Paul. “Someone else claims to know the perpetrators, but can’t name them for fear of hassle.”

Perry – a long-wordsmith might suppose it short for perry-grination – doesn’t belong to anyone so can hardly be reported stolen.

“It’s a real mystery,” says Paul. “We can only hope that they’ve done it for a few bob and sold Perry to someone who’ll look after him.”

At least Mrs Peacock has survived Cluedo. Mrs White, whatever the instrument of her demise, has had it.

IGNORING all that it says in the Bible – you know, a prophet not being without honour except among his own – John Culine spoke the other day to a senior citizens’ audience in Spennymoor. He went down very well.

Spennymoor lad himself – the birth certificate confirms that he was born in a caravan in Jubilee Park – John’s now national president of the Showmen’s Guild, the trade association for fairground operators.

North-East folk still call it the shows and, like the Windmill Theatre, they never closed. “We used to operate wartime black-outs in Queen Street,” he recalled.

“I know, we used to pinch free rides,” confessed one of his elderly audience, though it may not quite have been a case of what goes around coming around. Back then it was twopence a go, now it’s £2 50.

Originally the Van Dwellers’ Association, the Guild still represents around 4,700 families, still regulates historic charter fairs like those turned annually in Northallerton and Yarm high streets.

John recalled a newish bank manager in Northallerton arriving at work one Monday morning to discover the town full of the fair. “Who gave you permission to put all this here?” he demanded – as indeed Mr Mainwaring might have done.

“I don’t know,” said the stallholder, “but I think it was King John.” It was.

John Culine’s grandfather was a circus operator and knife and tomahawk thrower whose targets included Buffalo Bill. His grandmother was a high wire walker who in 1890 crossed Bridlington bay that way, earning £7 – “a lot of money in those days” – for the lifeboat.

Still he’s in Spennymoor – Tudhoe, anyway – still vigorously burnishing the industry’s image. Guild members, he insists, are respectable without exception. “I’ve nothing against the Romany gipsies, lovely people, but some of that stuff you get on television…

“I’ve had five daughters walk down the aisle and not one of them followed by a fireman in case her dress blew up.”

He’s 69, 13 times a grandfather, was appointed MBE and remains a town councillor. His presidency still has two-and-a-half years to run: for John Culine, as for the Windmill Theatre, the shows must go on.

FIVE hundred years ago, John supposes, his forebears were mummers – silent entertainers. “I guess that’s the origin of ‘Mum’s the word’,” he tells his audience and – something every day – Chambers confirms that he’s correct.

HE has statues in Bishop Auckland and in North Shields – the latter link rather less fleeting – but did Stan Laurel have Wensleydale connections, too?

The question’s raised by Peter Jeffries in Durham following mention of Hawes – or at least of the nearby Garsdale railway station – two or three columns ago. The answer, to the dale’s great surprise, is that he did.

The comedian’s mother was Margaret Metcalfe, born in Hawes in 1861 and known, by her own preference, as Madge.

Though the family had moved to Ulverston, Stan’s birthplace, by the time of the 1881 census, he is thought to have spent several holidays in Hawes – not least because of his father Arthur Jefferson’s nomadic theatrical lifestyle.

Alerted, Wensleydale champion Ruth Annison discovers a question and answer website run by Stan’s only daughter, 88-year-old Lois Laurel Hawes. The surname’s wholly coincidental: she married Tony Hawes in 1981.

Lois still has her grandmother’s birth certificate, confirms that Madge was indeed born in Hawes.

Though arthritis prevents her from signing fan photographs, she still answers questions as varied as the English football team her father supported – “None, there wasn’t much coverage in the Los Angeles Times” – to how he got his ears to wiggle.

“Imagine a line of fishing tackle which doesn’t photograph, is attached to the ears and is pulled gently from behind the camera.”

Happily accepting the bait, Ruth Annison now enthusiastically seeks to earn Wensleydale’s Laurels. A statue will surely follow.

...AND finally, we learn of the death of Kate Vallin, who in the 70s and 80s added much colour to life in these parts.

Kate was born male, underwent sex change operations in the 1960s, made national headlines in 1972 when her wedding was called off with minutes to go when the registrar ruled that she was still legally a man.

She worked as a hairdresser and as half of a drag act, the Drag-ons. “It’s not a blue show, but you wouldn’t bring the kiddies,” she said.

She ran the Market Tavern – now the Pennyweight – in Darlington, opened Kate’s Bar in Torremolinos and claimed to have seen lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, in the Flamingo Club in Darlington on the night of a notorious murder in the town for which another man was convicted.

Sutcliffe was a regular, said Kate. “He was conspicuous by the way he used to withdraw from everybody.”

We’d last met in 1988 when, home from Spain, she sank her savings into an elderly but by no means incredible hulk moored permanently on the Tees at Stockton.

Kate changed the boat’s name to Tugboat Annie’s, promised topless barmaids and “cock and hen” nights – but nothing slaggish, she insisted.

The logo was a rather large lady on water skis, unashamedly Kate. “I’ve been making waves all my life,” she said.

Her funeral is at 1pm today at St John’s church in Darlington.