As Durham Cathedral holds a memorial service for Sir Peter Ustinov, Keith Seacroft, who managed Sir Peter's visits as Chancellor to Durham University, recalls his activities in the city and the North-East.

ONE of the first things Durham University had to do when it chose Sir Peter Ustinov to succeed Dame Margot Fonteyn as its ceremonial head, was to commission a new set of Chancellor's robes.

We asked Sir Peter, who was in Thailand at the time, for his vital statistics and he duly arranged for someone to visit him at his hotel to take the measurements. The task began amid confusion and they had to send out for a new tape measure, but eventually Sir Peter was handed a set of figures. He recalled afterwards: "The dimensions of my head appeared to be slightly less than those of my chest, and I feared that the effect of becoming Chancellor was already taking its toll."

Happily, everything was sorted out and Sir Peter was installed as Chancellor in Durham Cathedral on May 7, 1992, wearing his scarlet habit, black and gold gown and sumptuous gold-edged mortar-board with its heavy, wide, gold tassel that he likened to a luxury windscreen wiper for keeping his glasses clean. The headgear is designed for taking off and putting back on again several times during the degree ceremonies - the "Doffings" - and in his speeches Sir Peter would sometimes refer to the assembled academics as a collection of Doffers.

His address at the end of each degree ceremony was the icing on the cake of a very proud day for mums and dads and the graduates themselves. Durham believes that no other UK university chancellor could come anywhere near Sir Peter for the level of participation in ceremonies and - literally - personal contact. He shook some 30,000 hands in conferring degrees over his 12 years as Chancellor and presided at nearly 200 ceremonies. He would say: "When I first came here, a couple of professors took me on one side and said 'Look here, Chancellor. We have to sit here in any case, so please don't mind us. You can give the same speech over and over again.' I told them that if they thought that, at my age, I could remember what I'd said last time... "

Whenever he could, Sir Peter visited the academic departments and colleges of the university. He spoke at a student-organised conference on the prospects of world peace in the new millennium and once recorded a part as a voice on the radio for a student play. He always enjoyed meeting students, and was particularly moved when the university renamed its Graduate Society, the most international of its student bodies, as Ustinov College in his honour in 2003.

He also learned more about the North-East through a range of other visits and activities. One of these was to the labs of the police national training centre at Harperley Hall, near Crook, which specialises in scientific support skills for crime investigation. As a celebrated Hercule Poirot on film, he naturally found it fascinating and he was proud to tell audiences around the world afterwards that an imprint of his ear was now among the UK police forensic records - a fact that would deter him from taking up a career in burgling - or at least illegal eavesdropping.

The Chancellor provided the commentary for a video on the 900th anniversary of Durham Cathedral; he gave a talk on cities to the North-East Civic Trust, and although unable to take up the invitation in 1993 to perform the re-opening of Bishop Auckland Town Hall, with extensive new facilities for the arts, he sent a personal goodwill message. He did open the Cheshire Home at Crook, where he met a Durham student who was one of the residents. The young man had impaired hearing and found it difficult to follow deeply-pitched voices. Sir Peter simply switched into a high falsetto to continue the conversation. In 1995 he addressed a conference on meeting the European Challenge, organised by Durham County Council, to focus on ways of maximising young people's career opportunities in the context of Europe.

He had a particular affinity with Stockton, where Durham University has developed its second site, now called Queen's Campus. Sir Peter first visited the Teesdale redevelopment project when it was a sea of mud during the building work in 1992. He left his hand-print in wet cement for a panel that now forms part of the wall outside the Holliday Building. He returned many times to see the campus grow to its present-day size, with nearly a fifth of the university's undergraduates and increasing research activity.

In the early years of the campus, the university held degree ceremonies in Stockton Parish Church, where several hundred of Sir Peter's graduation handshakes took place, and where he conferred honorary degrees on North-East figures such as the environmental campaigner Angela Cooper and botanist David Bellamy, and on others from further afield such as Olympic oarsman Matthew Pinsent and the writer and medic Sir Jonathan Miller.

In Durham he was delighted to see the building of the Gala Theatre. With the help of staff at the city council, he undertook a site visit in a wheelchair, which by then he was using to get about when away from home. He sat on the stage as work teams carried on fitting out auditorium. He spoke admiringly of the whole project, particularly the level of comfort in the backstage facilities, which he said would compensate actors for the dreadful conditions they endured at many traditional theatres. At the beginning of this year we were exploring possible dates for him to return and perform at the Gala.

Years before his link with Durham, Sir Peter had been at the theatre in Billingham. He remembered taking a brief stroll outside the stage door one evening when he heard a noisy group of youths approaching, rather menacingly. Apprehensive, he turned round trying to calculate if he could regain the stage door before the risk of trouble. But as they overtook him, one of the youths, obviously familiar with the actor's cartoon voice-over work, shouted; "Hey lads, look, It's Dr effing Snuggles," and they all gave him a very affectionate cheer.

Today, the university and region pays tribute to Peter Ustinov with a service in Durham Cathedral to celebrate his time as Chancellor and his values, particularly his stand against prejudice and his encouragement of studies into the history and nature of prejudice at universities throughout Europe.

We remember a man who was famous throughout the world for an enormous number of roles - writer, director, performer, raconteur, UNICEF Ambassador-at-Large - and who described his journeys back to Durham and the North-East, as the "flights of a homing pigeon".

* The service for Sir Peter Ustinov is at Durham Cathedral today, 2.10pm for 2.30pm. All are welcome.

* A public display of photographs and other material relating to Sir Peter Ustinov as Chancellor is on show at Palace Green Library in Durham until November 21.

* Keith Seacroft is head of public relations at Durham University.