ONCE he was among the North-East’s best known faces, robust and red headed, a presenter and documentary maker on Tyne Tees Television.

Now Andy Kluz is 69, took early retirement almost a decade ago – “changes at ITV,” he says – and a year later was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, an affliction he stoically shoulders.

“It’s not a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination, the biggest problem’s co-ordination, but there’s a lot worse,” he says.

“It can be frustrating, but it’s quite minor, quite slow and it’s not going to kill me. There are many people younger and a lot worse off.”

Much of his retirement – “on an off,” he insists – has been spent researching and writing a compelling historical novel around the Battle of Hastings, based on the belief that Harold was carried severely wounded from the fighting and a body double (as it were) left behind.

It’s now published. We meet in the Conservative Club in Richmond, hung with pictures of Maggie, of William and of Dave. It is not, shall we say, the boy’s natural habitat.

ANDY – Kluz rhymes with snooze, and also with booze – trained to be a teacher, did teaching practice at Redcar, packed up after a disagreement with the head of the art department. Suffice that one seemed more creative than the other.

Seeking to enter journalism, he found a job on the Newmarket Journal, the going made more difficult because he didn’t know the back legs of a cuddy from the front and in 1969 pitched up at The Northern Echo, sent to the York office where I was chief reporter.

The film Kes had just been released, poster promoted by a sort of reverse V-sign. Andy, ever-vigilant, noticed that the sensitive city council had blacked that bit out and broke the story.

“You were very impressed,” he recalls, and doubtless it was so.

He became an Echo sub-editor in Darlington, moved to local radio in Suffolk, joined Radio Tees – “it was the call of the North,” he insists – and finally switched to television.

He and his wife Liz live in a historic, half-hidden corner of Richmond, the old town strongly featuring in the book. “We absolutely love the place – the history, the geography, the people,” he says.

He’d still never been in the Conservative Club, though.

THE book’s called Fire of God, the name of a fictional sword. Harold’s wounds, it claims, soothed by a mixture of honey and spiders’ webs. “It was the natural thing for the Normans to claim that he was dead,” says Andy. “A lot of that belief is based on the Bayeux Tapestry, but there’s evidence to suggest that he wasn’t. A lot suggests Harold survived.”

He has also written three children’s stories and is working on a fourth. “It’s not to see them published, just for the fun of it. If the grandchildren like them, that’s great.”

Fire of God, written with a dedication to Liz – “for putting up with my endless lectures on the Norman Conquest” – will also have a sequel.

This one’s vivid in its history, imaginative in accounting and rich in language. Right from the time that he gave a reverse V-sign to York City Council, I always said that Andy Kluz could write.

n Fire of God is available from the Castle Hill Bookshop in Richmond, on Amazon and on Kindle.

KLOOZIE, good bloke, was also among those gathered last wintry Thursday for a reunion of former Tyne Tees Television staff at one of the Wetherspoons pubs in Darlington.

Furthest travelled was affectionately remembered weather man Bob Johnson, proud Scot, but now exiled near Alnwick. “No one told me it was going to snow like this,” said Bob, now 74, though clearly he’d known all along.

The weather worsened, the technologically savvy anxious to claim bragging rights. A live webcam showing three inches at West Hartlepool Rugby Club appeared to make the deepest impression.

It was St Andrew’s Day and Bob had to catch the northbound train. “It’s been lovely,” he said, “but I’m away for a bowl of Cullen skink.”

FIFTY years (and a few months) after the Summer of Love, hippy days were here again – reprised on a cold November night in a gig at Billingham Forum.

The lady of this house was at university back in 1967, talked of pot and patchouli – only the latter, of course, from experience – and of going barefoot with flowers in her hair.

All that stuff about peace and love seemed rather to bypass Shildon lads. In Shildon the only drugs were Beecham’s Powders; hippies were something connected to the leggies and gardens grew taties and turnips, not flowers.

Things might have been different in Darlington, but Darlington was a foreign land where we were but infrequent innocents abroad.

The band carried it off very well, occasionally chucking into the crowd one of those paper garlands which in other circumstances might decorate Christmas – though not in Billingham town centre where the council appears immune to such festive frippery.

A woman in the front row was up and swaying from the start. The column has a theory that the Forum employs a duty jiver, probably on minimum wage and alternating shifts with the lass who sells drinks on a stick.

The only problem, save for a distinct absence of patchouli, was that – even from the swinging sixties – I didn’t know half the songs.

Even when they sang Mellow Yellow – one of dear old Donovan’s – the impression was that I hadn’t really grasped back then the mind altering message he was trying to get across (and, truth to tell, still don’t.)

An enjoyable evening, for all that, but with the residual feeling that, even in the summer of love, I was already past it.

ATTEMPTING to maintain the theme, we sought a sausage sandwich at the World Peace Café, beneath the Buddhist Centre and across the road from the tattoo parlour – one of the tattoo parlours – in Darlington. “All welcome,” it says. Unfortunately it proved impossible to give World Peace a chance because the cafe only opens four hours a day, Monday to Wednesday. Peace in our time? Well, some other time, anyway.

AMONG the great fixtures of this house is Sunday morning scrambled eggs. She makes very good scrambled eggs, which is to say that she does when she’s here. Since she’s in Washington DC, however, I’m obliged to hoof for breakfast up to Costa at Scotch Corner. Resisting the special offer of salted caramel cappuccino and clementine loaf cake (eh?) I order a large coffee and a tuna melt panini. That’s £8.18. Eight pund eighteen. I was expecting change from a ten shilling note. Truth to tell, I’m not what you’d call single minded.

Much more on Washington next week.