BILL HALL was but a young (and doubtless impoverished) Church of England curate when, 50 years ago, he pitched up at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London.

“Tell him it’s the chaplain from the Fiesta night club,” said Bill, possessed of what the papers at the time supposed a “mod” haircut.

“And I’m the Chief Rabbi,” said the doorman.

It was the right note, nonetheless. The two had been friends since meeting at that once-celebrated cabaret spot in Stockton – the comedian Les Dawson among others captivated by the clubbing curate’s charisma.

That he became known as the Swinging Vicar followed, Bill insisted, a meeting with a particularly well refreshed clubber who wouldn’t believe his chaplaincy role. “Eventually I told him I was a member of a pop group called the Swinging Vicars. It stuck.”

Dawson – “hailed by a lot of people at the top of show business as the funniest man in Britain” said the Echo in 1968 – even visited the priest’s house in Thornaby. “We fight like cat and dog,” said Dawson, though he’d still provided a singular set of one-liners for one of his mate’s best man speeches.

“They died, every one of them,” said Bill, though with the humility to add that it was probably the way he told them.

Dog collared at the Fiesta – “the only man who can get in without wearing a tie,” he used to say, for times and fashions change – he’d also met incoming Middlesbrough FC manager Jack Charlton and became club chaplain for 20 years.

His funeral was held yesterday in Durham Cathedral, where he’d been an honorary canon since 1984. He lived latterly in Thornley, east Durham, and was 77. He leaves a widow and three adult children.

JUST three weeks ago we reported the funeral in Teesdale of the Rev Peter Holland, one of five future priests from the same generation of Stockton Grammar School boys. Canon Hall was another.

“Though the school had church connections, the atmosphere was never particularly religious,” the Rev Harry Lee, another of the faithful five, once recalled.

Harry, a dear old friend of these columns, died in 2009 at Shotley Bridge. He liked to tell the story of the two occasions on which snow had stopped the church clock during his time at Holy Trinity in Darlington – both on Midsummer Day.

Bill Hall became the first North-East arts and recreation chaplain in 1968, a regional post he held until 2005, doubling as vicar of Grindon, Sunderland, from 1971-80 and was an honorary research fellow at Sunderland University.

He was also a long-serving chaplain to the Showmen’s Guild – particularly remembered for helping Northallerton May Fair’s fight for survival – and to the Actors’ Christian Union.

In 1998 he was shortlisted in a competition to find Britain’s most creative person, made the top six and won £20,000 to support his chaplaincy work.

“He has made an outstanding and unique contribution to the creative life of this country on the slimmest of budgets and with the most remarkable level of personal commitment,” said Edward Wilson, one of the judges.

One of his finest hours came in 1990 when, after eight years of planning and fund raising, he staged a Durham Cathedral concert of Duke Ellington’s sacred music alongside a holy communion service.

It featured the Stan Tracey orchestra, actors and American tap dancer Will Gaines. The Very Rev John Arnold, Durham’s dean at the time, supposed that in 900 years of cathedral worship there’d never been an occasion like that one. It was reprised in 1993 to mark the 25th anniversary of the arts and recreation chaplaincy.

Canon David Kennedy, who led yesterday’s service, spoke of a great pioneer. “Bill was very genial, had a warm and engaging personality. He encouraged other people very well, but he had to have a degree of toughness, too. He was a remarkable man.”

THE piece on Peter Holland prompted a note from the Rev David Cook, a former colleague in the Spennymoor area, but now retired to Guisborough. “Always a laid back guy, took everything in his stride,” says David, who also recalls happy evenings in the Green Tree at Tudhoe and visiting Peter’s vicarage to find him beneath his car, feet protruding in two odd shoes. “Well ahead of his time, a man not afraid to get his hands dirty,” says David. Quite.

(Headline) Floreat Seaton

IT seems slightly odd, perverse even, that Seaton Carew’s biggest hotel should now have a Darwin Room and a Canoe Bar.

Doesn’t the dear old watering hole have any greater claim to fame than a nefarious nautical who found himself up the creek without a paddle?

In any case, the greater offence may have been committed by the ubiquitous Hartlepool Borough Council signwriter intent on a shotgun marriage between singular nouns and plural verbs.

We’d last mentioned sunny Seaton a couple of months back, after retired journalist Paul Screeton – chairman of the Friends of Seaton Carew station – claimed in a letter to The Times that the station’s immediate environs were home to at least 59 different species of wild flower.

Ever on the scent, armed with a blooming beginner’s guide, we set off to see for ourselves.

There’s a very pleasant little path from the northbound platform off towards Greatham, over a battered bridge and then, slightly surprisingly, back over the line by way of one of those Stop, Look and Listen crossings which seems to have escaped Health and Safety.

There were at least four different species of butterfly – “cabbage white and three others” said the lady lepidopterist – a Brillo Pad box and two or three discarded beer cans (which, of course, grow exponentially.)

Mr Screeton may well have a point about the flowers, though his further suggestion that Seaton station is “Adelstrop-style” may be considered journalistic licence.

I counted daisies, dandelions, dead dandelions, old man’s baccy – perhaps not the botanical name, but what we used to call it in Shildon – two Northerns and a Grand Central.

One of the Northern trains was emblazoned with a large image of a Viking and the slogan “We are not fearless, we are Northern.” Whether this was a message for the RMT union we were sadly unable to say.

The lady lepidopterist did much better when counting wild flowers: celandine, clove, vetch, herb Robert – I’d only heard of Herb Albert – grounsell, honeysuckle, campion, grape hyacinth, periwinkle, docks…

Hartlepool docks, very likely.

She also recognised some weeds. “I know they’re weeds because we have lots like that in the garden,” she said.

None in The Times has bettered the claim that Seaton Carew has the country’s most floribundant station – and no matter what they say about the theory of evolution, the Periwinkle Room sounds better than the Darwin Room, anyway.