AS a follow-up to last week’s Royal Memories, which commemorated the Queen becoming Britain’s longest serving monarch, photographer Ian Wright in Las Vegas has sent these two pictures of Elizabeth and Prince Philip arriving at Darlington’s Bank Top station on October 19, 1967.

In a packed day, Her Majesty had just opened the Tyne Tunnel and Billingham Forum, and was now coming to Darlington to celebrate the centenary of it being granted borough status by her great-great-grandmother, Victoria.

Ian was the Echo’s photographer stationed on platform four exactly where the royal train came to a halt to let the royal couple alight. They appeared at the door, but there was so much happening on the platform that they didn’t know which way to look. So Ian captured them doing a double-take.

Ian showed his photographs to his editor, the legendary Harry Evans. “You’ve printed it the wrong way round,” Harry said, dismissing the double-take as a single fake.

But Ian pointed out that the duke’s handkerchief is in his top pocket on the right on both pictures, so proving that there had been no cheeky reversing.

“It was a one-off, spontaneous moment, and they are both laughing their heads off,” says Ian.

He has another memory of the moment. “Just as the train was coming to a stop, one of the ushers opened the doors, and the corgis jumped out,” he says, “and one of them did a pee on the platform.”

MEMORIES 241 told the fantastical tale of Professor George Norton, the descendant of nobility who was a magician, sign-writer, Army officer, multi-linguist, tattooist, inventor and killer who ended up living in a council house in Crook, where he died in 1953.

It was a long story. But it was well read – we’ve heard of one nonagenarian in the district who still has an artistic tattoo on her arm that the professor did when she was 17.

Since then, two more pieces of evidence of the professor’s extraordinary life have turned up. The first is the professor’s business card which is in a tattoo museum in Dover – we think that is Dover in Ohio in the US.

And the second is a postcard, which is also now in the US, showing the professor in tattooing action. “It’s definitely him,” says his grandson Paul Carter. “My youngest uncle is the spitting image of him.”

WE’VE got loads of fascinating follow-ups to bring you after our recent stories about Cockerton and the Stanwick area. Next week, hopefully.

But there’s just room to put you out of your misery concerning the mystery vehicle in Memories 243.

Graham Harland was one of many who offered the same identification of the van in Cockerton. He said: “Tom Piggford's van was a Commer Express Delivery Van – it was the Routes Group’s commercial brand based on the Hillman Minx saloon car. This 1390cc/47bhp van was a cut above the competition and was produced until about 1958 when it was replaced by the Commer Cob.”

Commer, of course, is derived from the original name of the manufacturer: the Commercial Car Company.

Our car-spotting contingent may care to turn their eyes to today’s front cover, which is a postcard of the Great North Road running through Catterick Village. Is anyone clever enough to identify either of the two roofless vehicles outside the Angel Hotel on the left of the picture?