TREVOR SHAW, stage name Seth Shildon – honest – next week marks 50 years as a comedian with a celebrity night in his laugh-a-minute honour.

His funny business career began in County Durham talent contests, trod the workmen’s clubs, rounded the cabaret circuit, fell in with British army and for the past 25 years has chiefly had its feet under the table at what are known as sportsmen’s dinners.

Stand-up they call it these days, but there were times when he fell flat on his face.

“It could be the hardest game in the world, especially in the North-East,” he says. “If you have a bad one, you just have to wipe it from your mind. If you didn’t you’d go round the bend.

“The secret of comedy is to make the audience think that you’re telling the jokes for the very first time, that and never letting bad nights get to you.

“I’ve seen comedians physically sick in the dressing room before going on, or just endlessly smoking cigarettes because of the nerves. You won’t survive that way.”

Lovely bloke, he’s now 76, very funny, proof of all that they say about the old ones and the best ones. Trevor animates deadpan, not what you’d call high-risque – not blue-Brown, as it were – but by no means antiseptic, either.

For all that, he enjoys the occasional chance to play theatres, as he did a few years back as support for Joe Longthorne at Darlington Civic.

“Theatre’s different because people aren’t chiefly there for the bingo, or to get bladdered, they’re there for the show,” he says, though it meant that he worried about cleaning up his act.

“I only swore once and, honest, I debated with myself for ages beforehand. Eight hundred people in, but it was such a good joke, and it wouldn’t have worked without it.”

Basically it involved Bella and Beattie, exchanging the time of day on the two-holer at the bottom of the garden.

“Is your ****house working?” asks Bella.

“Nah” replies Beattie, “the idle bugger’s still in bed.”

Doubtless it’s the way he tells them. “It wouldn’t have worked with ‘toilet’ would it?” pleads Trevor.

No, we say, it probably wouldn’t.

HE was brought up in Cockfield, apprenticed at an engineering firm, did National Service, became a truck driver and in the 1960s would drink in the Raby Hunt in the nearby village of Burnthouses.

Someone played the piano. “The landlady wanted people to sing, but they wouldn’t until they’d had a few, and that was usually ten o’clock. She wanted someone at quarter-to-nine.

“I started telling a few jokes. It wasn’t uproarious, but I got one or two titters. I suppose I thought I could do it.”

Talent contests followed, half-a-crown an appearance. If Britain had talent even then, it took a long time for anyone to see it in young Shaw.

After 15 unsuccessful attempts he then won two in a day, the show business bright lights of Spennymoor dog track and Thornley Workmen’s Club, near Peterlee.

He changed his name to Tony Peters, joined a Tow Law-based troupe called The Four Echoes and was then half of a double act called Harry and Tony Peters.

“Hard? Oh aye. I was once paid off before I even got on. They’d had our singer on first and decided that was enough.”

On another occasion, Dunston Mechanics club on Tyneside would only give him half the agreed fee. Trevor asked why they hadn’t paid him off at the interval. “We thowt thoo might be better in the second half,” said the concert secretary. “Thoo wasn’t.”

HE was gaining confidence, and audiences, for all that. Soon it was time to fly the North-East nest. “My first gig was Lancaster and I went down a storm. It was only then that I realised how hard the North-East was.

“I was told that Wigan was really hard. It might have been hard by Lancashire standards, but by Sunderland standards it was Alice in Wonderland.”

The cabaret clubs closed with the bad-bet casinos; workmen’s clubs became redundant, too, or they only employed singers. Sportsmen’s dinners kicked in. Usually he shares a bill with a sporting celebrity, supporting ever more. Many have become friends.

Menu cards frequently described him as “northern”, as if by way of government health warning. One weekend he played Mumbles Bay, near Cardiff, on the Saturday night (“11 to quarter-to-midnight”) and Kilmarnock Football Club the following lunchtime. It seemed nothing to the Sunday when he entertained troops in Dortmund at lunchtime and played Tindale Crescent club at night. “That also included driving from Manchester Airport and a bit of tea back home,” he says.

An agent in the 1970s had also suggested a name change – “he said Tony Peters was too clubby” – and came up with Septimus Shildon.

“A few hours later he rang back and said it would have to be Seth Shildon, because people would call me Septic. I don’t know where he got Shildon from; perhaps he’d been looking at a map. Shildon was quite near where I lived. It’s a nice enough town, though, isn’t it?”

A WIDOWER, these days in Witton Park, near Bishop Auckland – near enough Shildon, an’ all – surrounded by boxes of souvenirs. His venues have ranged from Hampton Court (which couldn’t even spell Shildon) to Celtic Manor, from the Manchester United Former Players’ Association (“best pie and peas ever”) to our old friends at the Coundon and District Felons Society.

A 1970s engagement in Stonehaven – “as funny as a fortnight’s rain” – offered cabaret and a meal for £1. You can’t get a bag of chips for that now, says Trevor.

He’s worked with everyone from Gareth Chilcott to Mike Stewart, Alan Ball to Tom Graveney. (“A diamond,” he says)

Extra time, he’s also had television appearances in everything from Spender to When the Boat Comes In. “I was once killed in Black Adder, Alnwick Castle, half past seven on a February morning. Freezation.

“I used to drive 40,000 miles a year; insanity. Mentally I’m fine, but I don’t want all that driving. Now the biggest thing in my life is my three-year-old grandson; I get more sense out of him than anyone.”

He prefers what the Americans call neighbourhood concerts. “Bits and pieces for good causes, that’s the phrase. Just something to get me out of the house occasionally.”

Next Monday he’ll be back at Tindale Crescent club – Shildon two miles – for a golden jubilee celebration at which top table entertainers will include snooker player Willie Thorne, footballers Micky Horswill and John Anderson and cricketer Arnie Sidebottom.

Trevor will close proceedings, the last laugh. “Comedy takes years. I don’t know everything about it even now, but I know a lot more than I did. I haven’t made millions, but I’m all right, never really had the big break, but it helps if you live around Manchester and Liverpool for that.

“For the first 30 years you go on hoping you’ll be OK, for the next 20 you go on thinking you’ll be OK. I don’t often struggle now, not even in Sunderland.”

Papal bull

“SO then, Trevor, what’s your all-time favourite printable joke?”

“Well, I love the one about the Pope….”

“No, man. Printable.”

“Oh aye, it is. It’s my son’s favourite, too. Whenever he comes to a show he encourages me to do the one about the Pope. Never fails.”

Infallible, just like His Holiness, but necessary nonetheless that it’s abridged and paraphrased.

The Pope’s visiting England, the Queen and sundry VIPs awaiting at Heathrow when fog compels the flight’s last-minute diversion to Gatwick. There’s a bit of a flap. A Rolls-Royce is sent to Gatwick with instructions to get the Pope to Buckingham Palace double quick.

Half way up the motorway, however, the great man tells the chaufeur that he’s always wanted to drive a Rolls and asks if they can swap seats.

The Pope loves it, hits 140mph and is stopped by police. Amazed by the car’s occupants, the officer tells control that the vehicle he’s pulled over contains a very important person.

“What,” says the inspector, “even more important than the Commissioner?”

“Even more important than that,” says the polliss.

“Well who is it to be so eminent?” demands the inspector.

“I don’t know,” says the polliss, “but his chauffeur’s the Pope.”