Jeny Wren has been singing all her life... all 100 years of it, a talent once recognised with a medal at Billy Butlin's holiday camp.

THE marvellous Jenny Wren, oldest singer in town, celebrates her 100th birthday today. By way of overture we threw a little party 48 hours early, a bar tab never so swamped with sherry.

We are old friends, if not exactly partners in crime. Once there was even a showdown, high note if not high noon, to see who could render the best version of The Laughing Policeman. Jenny won.

It was maybe 30 years ago, dear old Charlie Raine on the joanna. The suitably diminutive Mrs Wren - proof perfect of what they say about good stuff and little bundles - even wore a polliss's uniform and nearly got locked up for it.

"My son David was just a young PC," she recalls. "He'd given me an old uniform and the inspector had him in his office. I had to take all the buttons and epaulettes and things off."

It was for her rendition of Jake the Peg, however, that she appeared on Tyne Tees Television, interviewed by the leggy Charlotte Allan. (Whatever happened to...)

"I went to Doggarts in Bishop Auckland and cadged a leg off one of their clothes dummies," says Jenny. "When I got on the bus to Newcastle, the driver made a terrible fuss about why I had a leg under my arm."

Now in a wheelchair, she remains mentally magnificent. The words return like it was yesterday:

I was a dreadful scholar,

I found the lessons hard,

The only thing I knew for sure

Was three feet make a yard.

Born Jane Anne but forever Jenny, she moved with her parents from Cumberland to West Rainton - "you know, beside the Store" - settled in Sherburn Hill, near Durham, when her father went down the pit there.

"He played in the band and was a singer, too. That's where I got it from, I suppose."

She was in service in Leeds, ran away to Doncaster to be married, worked hard all her life and attributes her longevity to it. (Her appearance she puts down to daily application of Avon's finest.)

"I've always sung, sung owt, sang when I was working in the tatie fields and up to here in water. Singing helps keep you young, too."

For many years she lived in Eldon Lane, then up the bank in Shildon, singing round the pubs and clubs, frequently for charity. Somewhere there's even a medal from a talent competition at Billy Butlin's. "Eeeh," says Jenny, "fancy me..."

Now she's resident at Hackworth House in Shildon, from where friends and staff joined her on Tuesday for a knees-up at the dear old King Willie, just along the road.

That it was a swell party, as Bing and Frank used to suppose, was chiefly down to Ken and Alison Houlahan who run the pub and gave the centenarian 100 per cent.

Browned off and bronchitic after two weeks in Ibiza, Ken added a Lemsip to the tab. "It rained for a week and a half," he said.

Today at Hackworth House there's a bigger party yet, guests headed by her daughter Mona who lives nearby - and was named after her grandfather's favourite song - and by her son Ted, from Stockton.

David, who became a chief superintendent in Durham Constabulary, died a few years ago. "If everyone comes, they'll need a football field," said Jenny.

Tuesday's little knees-up lasted two hours, inevitably ending with a sing-song. Clutching her fairground helmet, Jenny headed happily towards three figures, a policeman laughing all over her face.

A pussycat in tiger's clothing

COLONEL Philip van Straubenzee, once named by Tatler magazine as one of Britain's most eligible single men over 70, has died, aged 93.

Colonel Philip, as many in Wensleydale knew him, had played tennis until his late 80s, usually in a Panama hat. His wife died in 1981.

He'd also once told the column that his hobby was parson baiting. The baiter bit, his funeral on Tuesday passed peacefully.

The Rev Don Tordoff, a former rector of Spennithorne, near Leyburn, believes that the colonel had also listed "baiting the parson" among his hobbies in Who's Who.

"We got on famously. We never agreed about politics - he thought Margaret Thatcher to be just a little lower than the angels and I saw her in a rather different light - but we became really good pals.

"He often told me that he had never got on with any of the rectors of Spennithorne, and reminded me how many he'd known, but I'm not sure I really believed him.

"We'd sometimes sit together in his big and draughty old house with a small fire and a large whisky to chew over the world, the church and local gossip. He was a pussy cat in tiger's clothing, really."

Born in South Africa but long settled in Spennithorne, Col Philip won the DSO for wartime service in India, he and his brother receiving the medal on the same day. The brothers had also twice apiece taken all ten wickets, playing cricket for Aysgarth School, near Bedale.

Fifty years ago, Col Philip had realised an ambition by giving Spennithorne a cricket field, the pavilion - once a Scarborough beach hut - donated by his aunty.

Spennithorne cricket ground became yet grander when scenes from All Creatures Great and Small were filmed there, Freddie Trueman playing a dramatically demon bowler. The television company built a new pavilion, and left it.

We'd met at the cricket club's golden jubilee dinner in 1997, an occasion on which (it is recalled) the waitress proved something of a counter attraction.

"All we had at first was a 12 inch Atco," he'd recalled. "It took a week to cut the grass and then you had to start again."

He'd also been a county councillor, magistrate, school governor, chairman of Richmond Conservative Association and commanding officer of the 4th Battalion Green Howards Territorial Regiment - in which capacity he once organised a night river crossing exercise near Middleham with assault boats, Verey lights and rockets.

It caused pandemonium in Middleham's racing stables, prompting a very angry trainer into a 3am confrontation. The trainer's identity isn't known: a betting man, however, would have had a few quid on Captain Neville Crump.

Col van Straubenzee's autobiography - Desert, Jungle and Dale - was launched amid tight security at the Army and Navy Club in London. The old parson baiter had quite a tale to tell.

CHAPMAN Pincher, another remarkable nonagenarian, featured hereabouts three weeks ago. Raised in Darlington and taught fishing when his father had the Comet at Croft, the celebrated former defence correspondent and spy chaser had caught what's thought to be the biggest trout taken on a British river.

The one that didn't get away, we let out about 20 column inches to accommodate a nice story and a delightful man.

Two weeks later, the Daily Mail spread wide its arms and gave Pincher a full page in which to spin his success story. "We fishermen are modest about our achievements, so I have remained silent until today," he wrote.

It's what's called journalistic licence. At 91, you're probably allowed it.

A PS also to recent notes on Nelson, and the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. A letter to The Times reveals that on November 5, 1805 - 15 days after the great battle, 200 years ago on Saturday - a writer called Charles Fothergill was touring the Yorkshire dales trying to drum up interest in a book on the area.

On the road to Leyburn, he met the Richmond postboy who told him news both of the battle and of Nelson's death. It was a day of national mixed feeling, as Fothergill's diary noted.

"In Leyburn I found a large company of the neighbouring gentry, having attended the market and there heard for the first time about the great victory and loss.

"They had all or most of them got drunk on the joyful occasion of the victory and ever and anon shouted and cheered, but between every shout a dead pause occurred and the whole company sobbed aloud for the loss of the great Nelson."

...and finally, the social circuit turned to Peterlee Lions' Club's 20th charter dinner, distance and decrepitude compelling an 11pm departure. "You missed the best part of the evening," says fellow guest Clive Booth.

The best bit was that club president Tommy Miller - former Shotton polliss, now Hartlepool United chief scout and father of the Sunderland midfielder - entertained the assembly with several unprogrammed songs. "He was terrific, clearly missed his vocation," says Clive.

He's even texted congratulations to the head Lion. "Amazing what you can do," Tommy replied, "on six pints and a bottle of red wine."