Fairground attraction

Unmoved by the movies, he persuaded teachers to screen something from the Hammer House of Horror in the school green room instead.

"I remember going around the yard like a barrow boy, selling tickets for 30p a time," Paul recalls. "We had a queue half way round the block, my first venture into entrepreneurism."

Class act, the head was clearly impressed. "I remember him putting his arm around my shoulder and urging me to stay on for A-levels," he says.

"I didn't. I was just so excited about leaving school, about going out into the world. I think entertainment was screaming me in the face."

Twenty eight years later, he'll back through the gates of King James I Community College in Bishop Auckland on July 9 - pulling a 90ft fairground trailer.

What goes around comes around, as a travelling shows man might say.

In last week's column, we featured the 400th anniversary of what for most of its life was King James I Grammar School. Paul, Shildon lad, will help provide the entertainment at the summer fair and reunion - his name duly up in lights.

"I hope they'd be quite proud of me," he says. "I've always been focused on entertainment. I strongly believe it's my destiny."

His dad worked in a garage, his uncle operated a waltzer. While other kids played football, he spent every weekend happily dancing to that hypnotic tune.

Now he's a fairground fanatic. If ever the generator conked out, the guy could power it on enthusiasm alone.

"The fairground has to be in your blood. It's not a job, it's a way of life," says Paul, 43. "I still love the smell of the diesel and of the candy floss, the music, the lights, the old fashioned golds and maroons. I grew up with it, I socialised with the fairground people, it just came naturally to me."

Though he was a professional rock and roll musician from 18 to 30 - 16 LPs, three times round the world - he was drawn back unresisting to the fair trade.

His first ride was a toddlers' roundabout; now he operates everything from shuggy boats - remember shuggy boats? - to a hook-the-duck stall, from a cup and saucer roundabout to a Fun House, housed in a 1975 B series ERF trailer that's believed to be the oldest still working.

"We have all the technology but people still love going back to basics. They're always going to want to throw things, to shoot things, to knock things over. I hope to be providing it for a very long time."

His wife Lucy Ann and seven-year-old daughter Katy, after whom the ERF is named, both help out. Another child is due in July.

We meet in the car park of the Eagle pub in a residential area of Eaglescliffe, near Stockton, where the showman's summer season begins today.

Over Easter they'll be at Hartlepool Marina, the following week make camp at a fair back in Shildon, though they'll return for the duration to their nearby house. "There's something very attractive about hot and cold running water," he says.

In and out of the Eagle, the landlord has told him of "one or two" locals who've been critical of a small fairground on their doorsteps. He supposes that 99.9 will be "excited" - and in case, by Sunday they'll be up the road.

"I think that's what I really love about it, the evolution, the here and gone," says the unravelling showman. "Bishop Auckland's only a one day visit, but it'll be lovely to go back to school."

SAVE for Stan Laurel, one of the more surprising things about Bishop Auckland Grammar School was how few nationally known figures have been educated there.

The head had wondered in last week's column about Peter Hampton, a Leeds United substitute in a 1970s European Cup final, prompting John Briggs in Darlington to trace the lad's career.

Hampton played 83 games in nine years for Leeds, went on to Stoke, Rochdale, Burnley and Carlisle and in 2001 received a vote of confidence as Workington's manager following which - night as day - he was sacked two weeks later.

One of the websites says he was the James Taylor of Leeds United - "the hair and the moustache, I mean. I don't know if he could hum a tune."

THOUGH last week's column gave fair warning of Carlin Sunday's eagerly anticipated approach, it wasn't enough for Stokesley.

A reader who simply signs himself I E Ridley reports being told by his local agricultural merchant last Thursday that the carlin consignment would be in on Monday.

Mr Ridley protested that it was at least 24 hours too late. Easter, he was told by way of explanation, was early this year.

He's distraught, poor chap. "For the first time in 70-odd years, save for the war and 18 months in the Midlands, we were unable to have our favourite supper dish - with pepper, salt and vinegar - on Sunday. "There will be tears; our calendar is shot to pieces."

NO rest for the Rest House in Shildon Rec, ever since the column a couple of weeks back tried unsuccessfully to become a reposer.

Firstly, an old painting of the Rec has sold for £10 on eBay - the "box diagram" from Shildon station signal box went for £50.

Secondly, a posse of European delegates was visiting the Rest House on Tuesday and Wednesday to see the activities of the Pilgrim Club for adventurous youngsters.

The upshot, says innovative leader John Cutting, is that a group of Shildon lads and lasses will visit Egypt in July and that 16 Egyptians will make the return trip in August.

Thirdly, we hear from dear old Dorothy Howard in Darlington, a former landlady of the Commercial (as was) in Shildon.

The Rec, she recalls, was surrounded by a wall about a foot high - "even I could have jumped it". One night she came across a council workman, dutifully padlocking the gates.

"I stopped to ask him what he was up to and he was quite put out. I could cost him his job, he said."

Homeward bound, but sleepless in Newcastle

THE last train home from Newcastle is two hours late and already I'm cold and soaking from a muddied monsoon of a match.

Porters being wholly absent from their Central Station, or at least unwilling to stick their heads above its Grade 1 listed parapet, a high visibility polliss risibly suggests putting in the time at a nightclub on the Quayside.

Do I look like Prince William, for heaven's sake?

His alternative is the Magic Flame, a kebab joint opposite the Centre For Life. The silent, sodden city, getting on Monday midnight, feels more like the periphery of death.

"You'll get tea and coffee until you can stop drinking it," says the polliss. "We don't sell tea and coffee," says the Magic Flamer, taciturn and suspicious.

The menu's on the wall behind the counter. I can't see that far. There are Salvador Dali prints on the wall; 90 per cent of the punters probably believe Salvador Dali to be one of Sir Bobby's least successful signings and they're all 20-20.

Guessing, I order a quarter-pound cheeseburger. It's not as unpleasant as the music: thump-thump-thump-thumpity-thump.

The warm-up has lasted just nine minutes; the rain still falling scornfully. How soon the flame of love can die.

Back at the station, sleepless in Newcastle, there's a plaque marking the 150th anniversary of the opening by Queen Victoria - they wouldn't have made her wait two hours - and a Centre For Life poster announcing that we share 53 per cent of our DNA with cauliflowers.

Right now, it feels like some bloody cauliflower's gone off with my half, an' all.

A chap's eating chips from the paper. The temptation to greed them, as the late Bobby Thompson would have said, is almost irresistible.

At least the waiting room's reopened, though they haven't switched on the heating, presumably not yet having been on the senior management course where you learn to do two things at once.

You know what they say about on no account going to sleep when in danger of hypothermia? I fall for five, fitful, fretful frozen minutes and, woken by the windy picks, find someone's pinched me briefcase - again - and even the polliss are low visibility now.

The train creeps in shortly after 1am, the conductor announcing how sorry he is. He sounds like a Geordie Gerry Adams. I ring Darlington to order a taxi half an hour hence. "We'll be there," he says.

The taxi's still 20 minutes late, the wind playing ring-a-roses (as it does) round the Victoria Road station portico. It's 2.15am before, cold feet and chilled heart, I fall fractiously into bed.

They tell me it's a cushy number, that's all.