After almost 90 years between them of being the men in the middle, Terry Farley and Peter Willis were again the centre of attention on Saturday night.

The dinner which honoured their whistle-blowing service to football refereeing was at Bishop Auckland Town Hall: that it was in a room devoted to Laurel and Hardy was, of course, coincidental.

Big Peter, an ex-polliss marking his 65th birthday, had been brought up in Newfield - three miles along the road - and recalled travelling to the Town Hall to watch the wrestling.

"The Royal brothers, kidology," he said, perspicaciously.

John Morton, receiving a 15-year award, had had a spell as a Town Hall bouncer in the 1960s - "Toft Hill lads at one end of the room, Witton Park lads at the other."

And the bouncers? "We'd gone over the road for a pint in The Sportsman."

Terry Farley, the old Silver Fox, had played for West Cornforth Juniors, decided at 18 that he'd never be a footballer, and after passing a Durham FA exam involving 22 Subutteo men and a pencil, happily took out his tickets. His hair turned grey shortly afterwards.

Peter had been banned from the Crook League at 12 - "they said I was too young, Durham FA were rubbish" - kept goal for Willington Juniors, Tow Law and occasionally Newcastle United Reserves, became village bobby at Cassop cum Quarrington and them places east of Durham.

When the ref didn't turn up for a village match, they sent for PC Willis - the polliss still had whistles in those days - and a remarkable career was born.

Terry became a leading Football League referee, lined matches at Wembley and in Europe, still coaxes and coaches youngsters and has been secretary of Bishop Auckland Refs' Society since 1961, elderly when only a young 'un.

Peter, memorably, refereed the 1985 FA Cup final, retired this summer as the Referees' Association's hugely energetic and wholly unpaid national president after 18 years in which he never lost a disciplinary case in which he acted for a referee.

Were all barrack room lawyers like P N Willis, as the column may previously have observed, they'd be growing tomatoes in the glasshouse at Catterick Garrison.

The RA's 18,000 members have now discovered that he was so hard an act to follow they haven't a president at all.

Terry, magistrate and Newton Aycliffe driving school owner, received four different awards for his 50- year devotion. Peter received life membership of the RA.

Each also gave a gift to his wife, in recognition of their long suffering. Perhaps it was also in acknowledgment of a mixed audience that the polliss refrained from his best story, the one about a quiet Sunday morning's motor patrol when he was overtaken near Brancepeth by a four-wheeled bat out of hell.

PC Willis chased, stopped and loomed awfully large; the driver wound down his window. "Can you help me officer, I'm looking for a s**thouse."

"It's your lucky day," said Peter, "you've found a one."

Saturday's gathering knew, of course, it was inappropriate. Peter Willis and Terry Farley, true gentlemen and fine servants to football, are men who gave referees a good name.

Officially it was the annual dinner of the Durham County Referees' Society. Among other guests was Ken Ridden, proud son of West Hartlepool, goalkeeper for the Gays and retired referees' director at the FA.

The Gays, it should at once be explained, were the Guild of Abstaining Youths, hair shirted members after the war of the Hartlepool Cadets of Temperance League.

Born on Silver Jubilee Day 1935, Ken qualified as a class three referee on the same day as Terry Farley, went automatically up from 3/6d to 5/6d a game, gained a degree in maths and physics but still didn't understand the difference between the Stanleys.

Thus it was that, when appointed to line an Amateur Cup tie at Stanley United, he caught the ten o'clock bus from Hartlepool, changed at Durham and fetched up in West Stanley, 20 miles north, instead.

"When I realised the mistake I asked desperately round for a taxi but there was only a funeral director in Craghead," Ken recalled. "I ended up arriving on Stanley Hill Top in a black limousine. I was just glad it wasn't a hearse."

Perhaps similarly disorientated, the referee failed to appear at all. Ken took control, Ernest Armstrong - vociferous Stanley United supporter, future House of Commons deputy Speaker and vice-president of the Methodist Conference - ran the line in top coat and welly boots.

"Despite Ernest's reputation he did pretty well," he said.

Ken, lovely man, is now much involved as a EUFA match delegate, barely a week passing without his passport, still stamped West Hartlepool, being flashed on some foreign field.

We reminisced over a bottle of red wine, neither Gays nor Cadets of Temperance any longer.

That afternoon we'd watched Easington Colliery, whose new chairman Allan Barkas represents proof of The Northern Echo's continuing influence for the better.

Allan runs a convenience store in West Auckland, 30 miles away, had spent all his life supporting the Bishops until reading in the summer in Local Heroes that Easington needed a new chairman.

"I rang them and we just sort of clicked," he says, and they clicked again on Saturday, 6-1 winners at Shotton Comrades.

Local hero? "Allan's been like a breath of fresh air," says club secretary Alan Purvis. "He's absolutely fantastic."

More local heroes, more pollisses: ten years after the club came within days of folding, John Coe from Willington Cricket Club rings - excited as might be imagined - with news that the Lottery application for a £330,000 ground development has been approved.

The credit, he says, belongs to Craig Brown and Neil Moore, two of the many Crook area policemen now extending the law's long arm to the club.

The work, chiefly involving coaching and community facilities, is expected to start in a fortnight. More of that later.

....and back to the refereeing fraternity: Chester-le-Street based Alan Wilkie, retired from the Premiership list and now a regional FA official, signs copies of his autobiography One Night at the Palace in Ottakers, Darlington, from 10.30-11 30am this Saturday.

More of that in a couple of weeks - once we've had chance to read it.

And finally...

Last Friday's column sought the identity of the international goalkeeper who played in League Cup finals for three different clubs in three different decades - 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It was Chris Woods.

Still with the number ones, Ken Lyons in Stockton invites readers to name as many as possible of the 12 Sunderland goalkeepers who made first team appearances in the 1980s.

In safe hands again in another three days.

Published: 29/10/2002