NEXT to Lady Bracknell’s anxious exclamation – “A handbag!” – it may become history’s most celebrated reference to that indispensable accessory.

Vera Baird, QC, was in Newcastle city centre last month when Downing Street rang to ask why she’d not answered their letter and if she was minded to accept the DBE offered in the New Year honours list.

A mistake in the postcode, she’d never received the notification. The barrister renowned for thinking on her feet admits being taken back. “I’m only out shopping for a handbag,” she replied.

The award, equivalent to a knighthood, was for services to women and equality. The slight irony was that, had she been male, her spouse would formally have become “Lady”. Had she not been widowed 37 years ago, Dame Vera’s husband would have remained plain Mister.

The woman who became Northumbria’s first Police and Crime Commissioner in 2012 – and, many years earlier, County Durham’s youngest parish council clerk – tells the story cheerfully, admits that there’ve been plenty of cards from friends comparing her to sundry dames at Newcastle Theatre Royal.

“The Cabinet Office were very nice about it. I expect they’re used to getting surprised responses, but maybe not one like that.”

NOW 66, she was born and raised in Chadderton, Oldham, studied law at Newcastle, became a barrister in 1975, successfully acted in the early 80s for the Billingham residents campaigning against nuclear dumping, championed the miners, remains the only woman to be an honorary member of the Durham Miners’ Association, became Redcar’s Labour MP in 2001, was named Backbencher of the Year by Spectator magazine three years later and was Solicitor General when losing the seat in 2010.

It may truthfully be said that we knew her when she had nowt – or precious little, anyway – doing university vacation work for a public relations firm.

Her father was a paint sprayer in a cotton mill – “three times the size of a cathedral” – died from pneumonia when she was ten, his lungs full of paint. Her mother worked part time in the print industry, her paternal grandfather was a Welsh miner.

“I don’t want it to sound like we were brought up in a septic tank, but we had a toilet down the back yard and we really were pretty poor,” she says.

“My dad in particular was a wonderful bloke, never treated me differently from my big brother, but they did have to struggle. I think that’s where I first became aware of imbalance.”

She studied at what then was Newcastle Poly, met and married Labour Party activist David Taylor-Gooby, lived at Ludworth, near Durham, and in her mid-20s became clerk to nearby Shadforth parish council.

I recall writing a story in the 1970s about her campaign to protect fragrant orchids – “that’s the correct name for them,” she says – discovered on the reclaimed pit heap at Ludworth.

“They wanted to reclaim the reclamation, flatten it. I called in the Durham Conservation Trust who discovered bee orchids, even rarer. They wouldn’t even tell me where they were.”

Higher profile battles followed, including representing many Northumberland and Durham pitmen on criminal charges arising from the 1984-85 strike.

“Twelve North-East pitmen love one redhead almost as much as they love Arthur Scargill,” began an Echo story in August 1985, adding that the redhead in question was “single and sophisticated” and that if Vera Lynn were the forces’ sweetheart then Vera Baird was the darling of the miners.

Her second marriage had been in 1978 to Brian Baird, a Newcastle-based public relations consultant more than 20 years her senior for whom she’d worked in the holidays. He died the following year.

She became a QC in 2000, declined interest in becoming a judge – “being a barrister’s about the thrill of the chase”.

In 2010, however, she failed to dissuade magistrates from imposing a six month “totting up” disqualification after being clocked at 98mph on the M4.

Now the nation has two Dame Veras, the singer approaching her 100th birthday in March. “Even if she’s 100,” says the younger of the two, “she’ll still be a better singer than I am.”

Her CV’s formidable: is she? “I don’t think I’m personally formidable. I do think I’m quite innovative and perhaps creative.

“I’m not frightened at having a go at something which doesn’t seem to me to be right. I like people, I think I work well with them and I think I’m lucky to have a fairly cheerful temperament. I can encourage other people by constantly being fairly bright.”

The Redcar defeat in 2010, the 21.8 swing against Labour the country’s biggest, was one of her darker moments. “It was terrible. Every door we knocked on, they just wanted to talk about the steel industry; I don’t really like to dwell on it.”

The party was keen that she go for the new Police and Crime Commissioner role, a position to which eminently and in all ways she seems suited. “Theresa May (then the Home Secretary) was talking about it being a part-time job for a business person,” says Dame Vera. “I thought never in the world. That’s the way it proved.”

THE offices from which she leads a team of 16 are on a business park in north Newcastle. Waiting visitors might read Emergency Services Times or Police Life, maybe glance at leaflets addressing domestic violence or the minimum wage.

Her own office has helium balloons on the water cooler, perhaps a legacy of the Honours List announcement.

Her role’s wide-ranging, a bridge between police and public, with responsibility for the force budget and for its estate. Technically, the commissioner owns all the police stations.

“Northumbria Police are a good force, a very good force, I’ve been very lucky that way. The police are very powerful, sometimes with draconian powers, but my perception is that they’re now very accountable. I get on very well with the police.”

She retains teaching roles at several North-East universities, has written a number of books, contributes regularly to newspapers. The PCC website includes her thoughts on everything from women’s rights to the anniversary of the birth of Emily Davison, the suffragette.

That the DBE was for services to women and equality particularly pleased her. That women are becoming much more equally represented in public life is no less pleasing. When she was elected to Redcar, the North-East had just two other women MPs.

“There’s still a long way to go,” she says, “but issues like violence against women are much more talked about. People look out for it.”

What if, like the other Dame Vera, she were also approaching a century? That she enjoys good health, she says, is probably helped by a daily early morning run in Jesmond Dene, near her home. In 2015 she completed the Great North Run in two-and-a-half hours. “I like to think I’d still be helping good causes.”

In the meantime, she has asked to go to the back of the investiture queue – there’s a budget and a Police and Crime Plan to complete by the end of April – and has been given a Palace date in May.

By that time Dame Vera Baird QC will quite likely need a new handbag.