Vin extraordinaire

THAT wonderful entertainer Vin Garbutt, of whom the English Folk Song and Dance Society once said that he should be prescribed on the National Health, has himself need of the medics’ ministrations.

“I’ve been off colour for 12 years,” the 69-year-old euphemistically tells a Christmas audience at Darlington Folk Club. “Has anyone got a defibrillator?” he asks at the start of the show. “If you have a spare ventricle, I’ll have one.”

In 2005 he had two major operations at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough to repair a heart valve. The surgeon, he likes to recall, looked at his notes and said there was a folk singer of the same name lived thereabouts.

“Not for much longer if you don’t get a move on,” said Vin.

In 2015 he suffered a severe attack of shingles which in turn triggered arterial fibrillation. Now the valve must be replaced, he thinks with the appropriate part of a pig. “I’m exhausted all the time, lack of oxygen,” he says before the Darlington gig, at the Copper Beech.

Between songs – the “bit of daft patter” for which almost equally he is renowned – he relates that the GP referred him to a consultant campanologist. Vin asked if the guy would fix his heart. “No,” said the GP, “but it’ll do wonders for your tinnitus.”

His hair resembles Samson’s before that unfortunate affair with Dalilah, his jumper could have been bequeathed by the late Bobby Thompson, his crack’s a cross between the Little Waster and the Big Yin.

Still he sings, still tells his jokes, still passes the old tin whistle test. “I always said that I wanted to go back to the Copper Beech before I go bald and look daft,” he tells his Christmas audience. “I made it.”

BORN in South Bank, the Slaggy Island of song, he started round the folk clubs when he was 15, turned full-time professional after an apprenticeship at ICI Wilton and still tours the world.

His father was a sergeant major, his mum an Irish Catholic. “Until things got a bit greener, she always thought a catalytic converter was an Irish missionary,” says Vin, himself a practising Catholic.

In 2001 he was awarded an honorary masters degree by Teesside University – an occasion for which there was still no noticeable hair cropping – the following year named best live act in the BBC Radio 2 folk awards.

Six years ago a film, Teesside Troubadour, followed his global travels – “Teesside’s most vocal champion,” it said.

He’s written many hundreds of songs, remembers most of them, struggles a bit when asked by an audience member to give them “It fell off the back of a boat”.

Vin and his wife Pat, the car driver in the family, live on a cliff top near Loftus. The song, avowedly true, concerns the time 20-odd years ago when a large container full of clothes fell off a ship en route from the Boro to Holland and was washed up, and duly looted, nearby. Chiefly it contained casual shirts and boys’ pants with a Super Mario motif.

There were T-shirts for the husbands,

Sweat shirts for the wives

And every kid in Skinningrove had underpants for life.

He’s introduced by George Armstrong. “Vin Garbutt,” he says simply, “is a genius.”

BEFORE the gig he’d looked and sounded old. On stage the transformation is instantaneous and amazing. “It’s the adrenaline, audiences always have the same effect. They’re fantastic,” he says.

“Most of them are the teenagers of the 60s and 70s and some of them have followed me all over the world. “I was in Australia last January and felt quite ill, but when I start singing I just forget it all. I love it.”

The following day he was due a further consultation at James Cook hospital, imminently expecting the summons to surgery – “there must be a suitable pig somewhere” – confident of a successful outcome.

“For Christmas 2014 the kids bought me one of those maps of the world with little brass tacks stuck in for all the places I’d played. The big gap was South America. I’d still like to sing there. I’ve slowed down massively, but I’ve hundreds of emails saying that whatever I do, don’t stop.”

His next appearance was at Normanby, maybe a mile from South Bank, a prophet honoured even in his own country. If ever there were a folk hero, it’s Vin Garbutt.

ANOTHER festive highlight was the lunchtime gathering marking the 70-oddth birthday of industrialist and philanthropist John Elliott, chairman of the Aycliffe-based Ebac group. Rumour abounded that it might also mark the long overdue top-up of his MBE, awarded almost 30 years ago. John insisted that it wasn’t the case and so, lamentably, it proved.

THE Santa Special on the Wensleydale Railway was hauled towards Leyburn by Joem, the world’s most gorgeous steam engine.

Aged one and three, the granddaughters loved it. Aged 35, their father loved it even more – but that was because, thanks to our friends at the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group, he not only had a surprise return trip on the footplate, but got to chuck a bit of coal onto the fire and to toot the whistle to boot.

Joem was glorious in Christmas tree green – British Railways green, more prosaically – the seasonally decorated coaches behind her labelled Prancer and Dancer, Donner and Blitzen. The three-year-old sang When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney, which in the circumstances seemed rather appropriate.

The trip’s just £15, inclusive of mince pies, mulled wine, Christmas tree biscuits, a decent present for the kids and the attendance of Santa and assorted elves.

“How do we know that Jesus weighed six pounds seven ounces?” one asked.

“Because there was a weigh in the manger.”

Up front, Santa-hatted driver James Pearcey and fireman Steve Kowal proved hugely hospitable to the great big boy who Santa Claus remembered. At Newton-le-Willows, Joem stopped to take on water while her passengers, the older ones, took on mulled wine.

At journey’s end, each party received a card, and a voucher for a free two-plus-two journey on a standard service – a real Christmas treat.

Tomorrow, Joem heads to NELPG’s Hopetown shed in Darlington for winter maintenance. Prospective travellers have no need to wait until next December, however. The world’s most gorgeous steam engine will be back on the Wensleydale at Easter.