STAGE-STRUCK as always, the column two weeks ago recalled the heady days and starry nights of Club Fiesta, in Stockton.

It all clicked with former Northern Echo photographer Ian Wright, now long part of the Las Vegas scene, who in the late 60s also took pictures for the Fiesta magazine.

On one occasion, however, he’d done 200 10x8 publicity prints for the chart topping American group The Four Seasons, for which lead singer Frankie Valli had negotiated a twelve-and-a-half per cent discount.

Job done, unhappy Valli demanded a further cut. “It’s called Good Luck Money, a New Jersey gesture of friendship,” he said.

Ian stood firm, supported by club co-owner Jim Lipthorpe. “You’re returning here later this year,” he told Valli. “This good luck money is reciprocal, I take it?”

Annoyed, Valli told his roadie to pay up. “I’m putting an ad in Rolling Stone magazine,” he told our man. “You’ll never work for American artists again.”

“Ah,” says Ian, “how wrong he was.”

ROY ORBISON, a frequent Fiesta visitor, was reckoned by Keith Lipthorpe the best act ever. Ian agrees. “The greatest solo artist of the era and the nicest man you could ever hope to meet.”

Ian also recalls Big O’s visit in April 1967 when, emerging from the shower at the Billingham Arms hotel, his usually immaculate quiff more greatly resembled a Beatles' cut.

Barbra, his second wife, was so taken with it that Orbison kept the Fab Four fringe until his death in 1988.

Barbra Orbison, says Ian, now lives in Malibu next door to George Harrison’s widow, Olivia – with whom she travels the world. They’re known as The Millionairesses, says Ian, which doesn’t really seem surprising at all.

IAN also sends a picture, and a story, of Adam Faith – “always the happy Cockney chappie, open with the press and friendly to his fans”.

In 1965 he’d been at Club La Bamba in Darlington, staying in digs at Mrs Oakley’s in Orchard Road and with Ian’s former Gladstone Street schoolmate Howard Condor – later one of Joe Brown’s Bruvvers – in his backing group, the Roulettes.

Ian duly presented his pix to Don Berry, the Echo’s chief sub-editor, who – he of little Faith – returned them with the suggestion that they’d been printed back-to-front. The singer’s parting was on the wrong side.

Ian checked the negatives, again sought out the singer, got a word from the tonsure. When he was young, Faith’s mother had always combed his hair in front of a mirror. His mother was left-handed.

It was the parting shot.

THESE days Ian spends several months a year lecturing on cruise liners about his life photographing the famous. The image is of him in front of a shot of Mick Jagger, taken at Newcastle City Hall in 1973.

A few weeks back he was again telling the story of the night that The Beatles played the Globe in Stockton – November 22, 1963, the day that JFK was shot – when an English voice interrupted.

“I was there, too,” said former Cleveland Council leader Paul Harford, 50 years ago a member of Middlesbrough YMCA.

None knew of Kennedy’s assassination until leaving the theatre, second house. “The first thing I heard above the noise of 50,000 Beatles fans in the High Street was the sound of the parish church bells ringing,” Paul recalled. “It wasn’t for the Beatles, but in honour of the slain President of America.”

Ian’s researched it and can find no evidence of any other church reacting similarly. “It would be fascinating to know if any of the campanologists are still alive,” he says. Is there someone with whom still it rings a bell?

THEN there was The Palladium of the North, the tag with which Shildon Workmen’s Club was sub-titled in the 70s and with which few, save the Lipthorpe brothers, might have argued.

The club secretary, effectively the impresario, was Peter Murphy – who by happy coincidence celebrated his 80th birthday two days ago.

For £30, Peter had booked a promising young comedian called Les Dawson, took a call from Keith Lipthorpe complaining that Dawson was also at the Fiesta and that their contract stipulated no other venues within 30 miles.

“Funnily enough,” said Peter, “so does ours.”

Others included Acker Bilk, Eric Delaney and Del Shannon, though the American singer almost didn’t make it after being refused admission.

“I’m top of the bill,” said Shannon.

“They all say that,” said the doorman.

Shildon Club hosted Limmie and the Family Cooking when they were No 1, the Fortunes when they were No 2, Paper Lace – “don’t mention Paper Lace” – when they sang Billy Don’t Be a Hero five times and pretty much ran for their lives thereafter.

Chiefly the star turns were booked through Jack Fallon, a London agent – “telephone number Mayfair 1736” – with whom Peter had become friendly.

They hosted West End singer Edmund Hockridge – County Durham’s ladies reluctant to let him off stage – booked comedian Mike Read, thought he’d let them down until a battered builder’s van pulled into the car park.

Peter recalls it over a piece of birthday cake. “He’d broken down at Wetherby, slipped a night watchman a fiver and borrowed the van to make sure he got here. It wouldn’t happen today.”

The American singer Solomon King played Shildon, too – “£30 or £40, something like that” – rang after landing at London the previous evening to ask if he could have a lunchtime practice session with the club’s organist and drummer. “That’s a perfectionist,” says Peter.

The Palladium of the North, alas, has long since been demolished. “Workmen’s clubs have changed,” says the new octogenarian, “but they were great days while they lasted.”

HITHERTO perhaps most widely acclaimed as runner-up in the Richmond’s Got Talent contest, self-styled rapper granny Daphne Clarke has now appeared on The One Show twice in recent weeks.

Fame at last? “You’d be surprised how many people are talking about it,” says Daphne, 82.

The BBC’s interest is in other people’s writing, not – on this occasion – hers. After first raising the issue in the Echo, Daphne has become a champion of all those reputedly generous souls swamped daily by begging letters from charities.

After her studio appearance prompted “shoals” of emails, the BBC sent a crew and other guests to her home in Richmond. The six-minute slot took four hours to record.

“It was absolutely fascinating. I’m collecting all the charitable letters and stuff I get in the next three months. There’s going to be a real bumper bundle,” says the indomitable Daphne.

Some other publication, meanwhile, has inadvertently described her as a “sports-mad oxygenarian”, a neologism with which she is so taken, she’s asked Oxford University Press to include it in a future dictionary.

Definition? “Getting on a bit, but still full of energy,” says Daph, and darts off to challenges anew.

...AND finally in this star-studded column, we told a few weeks back about bumping on Darlington station into avid autograph hunter Julie Boyce, en route to a Saturday night stake-out in Newcastle.

Having first bagged Mike Amos, she also snapped up Dara O’Briain, Olly Murs and Chris de Burgh – “all fantastic” – but found the comedian Alan Carr no laughing matter at all. “Totally horrible,” she says.

Still, back in the city a few days later, she turned a corner and bumped into the entire Newcastle United first team. Every one of them happily signed up. “You never can tell,” says Julie.