IT was Mike Neville, news nose posthumously alert, who started this one. Did we know, asked Peter Sotheran after Mike’s death on September 6, that he’d appeared in rep in Redcar back in the 1950s?

Promised a Pacitto’s lemon top as an incentive for further information, Peter duly obliged. The debt has now been paid.

Pacitto’s is a Redcar institution, the lemon top an ice cream icon to rival the pernicious parmo. Though vet Alf Wight – aka James Herriot – supposed Pacitto’s the world’s best, the company’s website is more modest. “It has got to be the best ice cream parlour in Redcar,” it murmurs.

The knickerbockers are reckoned glorious, too; monkey’s blood’s optional.

Giacomo and Guiseppi Pacitto, brothers, are thought to have hitch-hiked to the North-East from Italy around 1897. Giacomo began business in Norton Road, Stockton, before opening in Redcar in 1924.

Guiseppi launched an ice cream parlour in Scarborough where still a lemon top with Horlicks is reckoned a dream ticket.

These days the two Redcar sites are run by grandson George, whose genial features are visible immediately on alighting the train. He’s included in the Faces for Redcar project, alongside Punch and Judy man Brian Llewellyn, councillor and heroic MND battler Mike Findley and a two-year-old girl who’s been ten times to the giddy Beacon on the prom.

A cornet’s £1.70, the lemon sorbet squirted from a magic machine. We treated Sue Sotheran, too, and in a near-deserted high street, we chilled.

LEMON-TOPPED largesse notwithstanding, Peter and Sue Sotheran have yet further cause for celebration: they’re marking 60 years as bell ringers.

Necessary skills? “Well, it’s like being able to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time,” says Peter.

Both are MBE recipients, she the tower captain and he the steeple keeper at St Mark’s church in Marske-by-the-Sea. “She’s better than I am,” insists Peter.

It began when he and a friend cleaned decades of muck and birds’ nests from St Cuthbert’s in Kirkleatham – “the fearless enthusiasm of youth” – and then began to teach themselves the ropes.

Peter moved to Saltburn, helped start a new team there before chiming down the road at Marske –more guano, more nests – making basic repairs and then helping launch an appeal completely to replace the bells and frame.

In 1975 they appeared in a slot called Heap of the Week on the BBC television programme That’s Life – a redundant clapper hurled into the North Sea by an English international hammer thrower, Peter pursuing it to ensure that the tide carried it away.

Still they remain in tune together and once had a handbell ringing team, too. “You can play anything from the scales to a sonata,” on the bells Sue insists.

Her husband, who ran a printing firm in Redcar, supposes the accomplishment part physical exertion and part mental agility. “It takes about three months to learn how to handle a bell rope, but when you get it all together it’s quite exciting.”

“It’s team spirit,” says Sue. “We hope still to have a few more years pulling together. We love it.”

THE day after Martin Luther King’s statue was unveiled in Newcastle, 500 years and two weeks after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, a marvellous musical marking the latter came for the night to the manorial Elm Ridge Methodist Church in Darlington. Next night they were in Glasgow.

It was called The Monk’s Tale, Luther himself sometimes labelled the Mad Monk and, if not quite mad with the Roman Catholic church then certainly pretty unhappy with its over-indulgence.

“A lot funnier than it sounds,” said the flyer, and so it proved – gloriously and sometimes hilariously ingenious, perhaps the only work in history to rhyme heretical with exegetical.

The cast of three even essayed local links, like the (untrue) recollection that they’d played Hartlepool. “I know it’s rough, but it’s the first time I’ve seen church bells fastened down with a padlock.”

Another campanological connection? It rings something or other, anyway.

THE Durham Age UK men’s breakfast was addressed by The Very Rev Andrew Tremlett, the Dean of Durham. Asked how he got the job, he revealed that the interview process had included an hour of psychometric testing over the phone. Whatever it is, it appears not to be in the scriptures. He didn’t mention the bells at all.

STILL amid the cloisters, this particular column is rather puzzled by the extensive advertising for the great cathedral’s “Comedians and carols” event, said to be on Sunday, December 18. On the Advent calendar, and elsewhere, the 18th is a Monday. So is the thing on Sunday or Monday, or are they just having a laugh?

RICHMOND Methodist church was full, the overflow overflowing, for last Friday’s thanksgiving service for Eddie Roberts. “A top man, a remarkable man,” said Adrian Grayson, his eulogist.

Last week’s column told how Eddie’s heart had three times been restarted – Boxing Day, 1993 – by an ambulance crew with a defibrillator, then a little-known piece of medical kit. He died aged 84.

We also said that his body had been donated to medical research. “Eddie was always a very generous man and he’s giving even in death,” said the Rev Les Nevin, the minister.

He was an Anglesey lad, Welsh and very proud of it. The family came in to Green Green Grass of Home and at the end stood for the Welsh national anthem, which Eddie loved to sing. That and I Thought I Saw a Pussycat, apparently.

Between the two, inevitably, we all sang Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer, and with great gusto.

He was a geography teacher and, long into retirement, a school sports enthusiast. He and Edna had met at teacher training college – 230 women, 23 men, not much choice, said the minister – and for nearly 60 years opposites attracted.

He was Methodist, Tory and a Leeds United fan. She was Church of England, Labour and flew with the Magpies. She was North Yorkshire, he North Wales.

Formally he was Edwin, a name Edna only used – it was recalled – when he was in trouble.

Chiefly he was a football man, he and Adrian forever seeking out matches – though Eddie’s illness meant that they didn’t this season get to Sunderland, where Adrian’s lad was manager. “I don’t think he missed much,” said dad.

Somewhat improbably, Eddie had also got himself a bit-part – keeping wicket – in an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. “His glove work wasn’t up to much,” said Adrian. “He stopped everything with his pads.”

The Conservative Club thereafter may never have been as full since the night of Maggie’s great triumph. As so many observed, Eddie would have loved it.