IMPROBABLY, almost unthinkably, an extraordinary anniversary approaches. On Friday it will be – it would have been – a year since George Reynolds had his name in the paper.

“You know me,” says the celebrity safecracker and former chairman of Darlington FC, “I always did like to keep me head down.”

Last time ha appeared hereabouts he’d opened, on the outskirts of Durham, the first of what he vowed would be a chain of fast food joints called Georgie Porgie’s Puddings and Pies.

They’ve gone – “too many food shops” – replaced in Durham and in Chester-le-Street by e-cigarette stores called E-nigma. Variations include banana, blackcurrant, cappuccino, lemon grass and strawberry.

“Someone suggested doing this at ten o’clock on a Friday morning. At 12 o’clock I’d closed Georgie Porgie’s, in the afternoon I was stripping the shop and on the Monday morning this opened.”

When Napoleon decried England as a nation of shopkeepers, he probably didn’t have in mind George Reynolds – nor strawberry flavoured cigarettes, either.

THE old rogue is 78, sedulously single, shorn of the familiar comb-over – “I was victim of a hair raid” – but otherwise little changed. Whatever his colourful past, no one could accuse GR of robbing patter to pay Paul.

“I’m as fit as a fiddle, bouncing to go, still capable of the old one-two,” insists the man who’s now a High Street fighter.

In the year 2000, before the Darlington Arena fell metaphorically about his ears, he had a personal fortune estimated at £260m and was 112th in the Sunday Times Rich List. A dozen years later he was peddling pies.

“I was on the television 410 times in one year, had my name in the newspapers every day,” he recalls.

In Chester-le-Street he doesn’t so much keep shop as hold court – usually from a swivel chair behind the counter – though the style and the repartee are more reminiscent of the concert chairman at the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club.

A customer’s told that the kits are so simple even someone from Chester-le-Street can use them, another is urged to spend more money. “How am I supposed to afford another cruise?” George asks.

Clearly in desperate need of a nicotine alternative, an elderly lady last-gasps into the shop, says she’s struggled all the way up Front Street and is disappointed when they don’t have precisely what she wants.

“They’ll be in next week,” says George. “Come back, pet, and I’ll give you one for free.”

Behind the counter are copies of the glossy Direct Worktops brochure when the Shildon-based company employed hundreds and made millions.

There’s also a B&Q magazine in which the DIY chain’s thousands of staff are urged to “do a Reynolds.”

Characteristically, the one-time Midas insists that e-cigarettes can be the next golden touch and that – of course – he can vaporise the opposition.

“The turnover mightn’t be as big as Direct Workshops, but the profit margins are better. People think that I have a load of money stashed under the mattress – maybe I had but it’s all gone into the business. This time next year, I’ll be right at the top again. It’s my old motto: bigger, better, faster, cheaper: this can be as big as I want it to be, massive.”

Once a 40-a-day man – “them and the cigars, I smoked so much I had a fall of soot every six months” – he claims to have given up after seeing his 47-year-old father dying in hospital from a smoking-related illness.

“That was Woodbines, roll-ups. The doctor showed me his X-rays; his lungs were black. I stopped that night. Cigarettes are horrible, but this isn’t smoking; this is like boiling a kettle. My lungs were black, too, but they’re all white again now.”

SO why doesn’t he take things easy? “I knew a feller who retired at 65, did nothing and was dead within six months. Another one lasted eight months.

“If you don’t work, you sit in the house all day and become what’s called a couch vegetable. I don’t work for the money, I work for the aggravation. It’s the aggravation that keeps me going.

“I’m here eight o’clock in the morning until six at night, then I go home and work on our plans for the rest of the country. What else would I do? Why would I stop now?”

The conversation’s wide-ranging: the good old days of the GR Club in Shildon, Peters and Lee, the periodic spells at Her Majesty’s pleasure – “did you know I’d been made president of the Burglars’ and Safecrackers’ Association” – the profit and loss account at the football club, the familiar story of the Lambton lion. It may be that not even George believes that one any more.

For some reason the world’s biggest cabbage comes into the conversation, too, though it’s impossible to remember why.

AH yes, Peters and Lee. It was about 11am one winter’s night in 1972 and I was walking home from Tindale Crescent to Shildon when an elderly Thames van pulled up and a chap in dark glasses leaned out from the passenger side window to seek direction to the GR Club.

Since I’d be passing it, they invited me to hop in – they were the night’s cabaret and, of course, they were Peters and Lee.

Lennie Peters, born in 1931, had been blinded in one eye in a road accident when he was five and lost the sight of the other 11 years later, when someone threw a stone at him. Dianne Lee was 19 years his junior.

Unknown at the time, tThey’d been booked months earlier to appear at George’s club, a little place still known to older locals as Snow Plough Hall, because of its shape. Between booking and gig they’d hit No 1 in the charts with a song called Welcome Home.

George, not for the first time, paced anxiously outside. They were late. Dianne pointed out that they were number one in the charts and asked if they might have a little more money. George produced the contract. “How much does that say?” he demanded.

Dianne confirmed that it did, indeed, say £10 – and those were the terms on which the top of the pops played Shildon. Shildon won.

IF not quite “I care for nobody, no not I” his attitude remains defiant, nonetheless. “A critic’s life is an easy one, critics don’t have responsibilities. In this country it’s a criminal offence to work hard and be successful. People look down at you for being successful.”

We are old friends and – speak as you find – he has been a good friend. “Come back in a year’s time and see how big this is,” says George, but it’s unlikely to be another year before his name’s in the paper again.