Taking the Hump

ENGELBERT Humperdinck, a 76-yearold for whom the Last Waltz really does seem to last forever, will again hold the floor in this weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan.

For former Northern Echo photographer Ian Wright, it’s a step back to 1965, and the extraordinary story of how the singer changed his name to make his fortune.

Son of a British Army NCO, he was born in India in May 1936 and christened Arnold George Dorsey. Originally a sax player, he became Gerry Dorsey because friends liked his impression of Jerry Lewis.

For years he worked the clubs, a jobbing entertainer whose records seemed largely to go round in circles and whose career was interrupted by National Service and tuberculosis.

Then, he played Darlington and, if not quite overnight, everything changed midweek.

Now, he is said to have sold 150 million albums, to have bedded up to 3,000 women and to have a £65m fortune – “an erotic demigod to a gazillion little old ladies,” said a Sunday Times profile at the weekend.

Ian, who photographed and became friends with many of the stars on the thriving North-East 1960s club scene, had met Dorsey at the start of his week’s run. He was early turn at the La Bamba nightclub in Grange Road, Darlington – “wining, dining, dancing, cabaret” – midnight spot at Tito’s, in Stockton.

Ray Ellington, an instrumentalist, had the alternate slots. Dave Butler, described as a comedian, was compere.

Still there was no cover charge to members.

Dorsey was staying at Mrs Oakley’s guest house – “all the theatricals did” – in Orchard Road, Darlington. Ian’s parents lived nearby in Vine Street.

“I went home on the Wednesday and he was drinking tea in my mother’s kitchen, waiting to see me,” Ian recalls. “Gordon Mills, the manager who also managed Tom Jones, had phoned to say he wanted him to change his name to Engelbert Humperdinck because it was more memorable.

“Neither Eng nor I had heard of him and there was no Wikipedia in those days. Eng couldn’t even pronounce it. I took him down the library and the lady found us a book which said he was a 19th Century German composer.

“That was it, the first half of the week he was advertised in the Northern Despatch as Gerry Dorsey and the second as Engelbert Humperdink. It was all so strange to Eng, he even gave them the wrong spelling.”

Ian still has the photograph, taken in the little La Bamba dressing room on June 15, 1965, of the night that music history was made.

Eighteen months later, Humperdinck had a number one hit with Release Me, which also made the top ten in America. Soon he had millions of fans including, it’s said, the young Princess Anne.

Gerry Dorsey really had made a name for himself. This Saturday he sings for Great Britain.

Ian Wright and his wife, Lauren, now live in Las Vegas – “I don’t have to travel the world to take photographs; everyone comes here” – where he also still captains the Vegas cricket team.

In another age he played for Cockerton, and for The Northern Echo side in the Westminster Press Cup.

“We won it so often, Mrs Campbell- Preston finally gave us it,” he recalls.

He and the man he calls Eng – the g is soft, as in Gerry – remain friends.

Humperdinck has a mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles (Liz Taylor a former next-door neighbour) and another near Leicester.

“There are always two tickets when he’s in town, always sandwiches and a bottle of champagne backstage,” says Ian.

“We still talk about Darlington.

He’s never forgotten the day he sat in the kitchen in Vine Street and wondered if his manager had gone mad.”

THE tragic death of Stephen Aitken, managing director of Darlington Farmers’ Mart, recalled an altogether happier occasion at Auchenblae, which means Field of Flowers.

It was June 2006, the Auchenblae Highland Games coinciding with – though in no way competing with – England v Ecuador in the World Cup.

World Cup? They couldn’t have given a twopenny dram.

Stephen, then 38, was both a Scot and a Highland Games champion.

Built like a show ring ox, he was 18 stones, stood 6ft 3in, excelled at the heavy events – the “cabber”, he called that great telegraph pole – but considered himself “quite wee”.

It was an unforgettable afternoon, a classic Scottish snapshot like a panorama from a porridge packet.

Competitors dodged showers, judges sat in a little hut like a nightwatchman in an Oor Wullie cartoon.

“There are men, most men, who wear the kilt with panache and with pride,” the column observed. “There are others who wear it as a rag man’s horse might wear an ex-Army blanket.”

Stephen, amiable like most big men, had been joined at the Games by his mate David Dowson, 25, a Boro boy and former Hartlepool United reserve.

They’d met at Clairville Stadium, in Middlesbrough.

There, too, was Stephen’s wee brother, Bruce, another Highland fling king who’d been looking forward to the post-Games ceilidh.

“Stephen disnae always behave himself at the ceilidhs,” said Bruce, built like the Broughty Ferry.

“Aa dae noo, old age,” said Stephen.

We talked of the auction mart, of his hope that by 2008 the town centre might finally be rid of it. It remains one of only two in England, the other at Northallerton, still in the town. “The neighbours aren’t very happy with us,” said Stephen, almost historically.

He lived in Ingleby Barwick, had previously managed Stokesley mart, happily took the high road wherever possible, lured by pipes and Drumtochty.

A proud Scot? “Och aye,” said Stephen, “there’s no’ a Scot alive who isnae proud.”

SAD, also, to learn of the death of the Reverend John Mason, a good and gracious man who was minister of Bondgate Methodist Church in Darlington from 1985-90, and superintendent of the Spennymoor circuit from then until his retirement ten years ago.

Son of a Primitive Methodist local preacher, he was born in Wolverhampton – “a misty eyed Molineux man” one or other of these columns once observed – and hardly knew the North-East before coming to Darlington.

He at once loved the area, retired to Hurworth. “I think North-East people are very open. You know where you stand with them,” he said.

John’s funeral will be back at Bondgate at 2 45pm today.

NAOMI Tomlinson, that truly extraordinary young lady who featured a few weeks back, has narrowly failed to win the Clarins Most Dynamiste Woman of the Year award.

They thought Li’l Naomi “truly impressive”, her work “wonderful”, the decision “extraordinarily hard”.

Naomi’s Triple E charity benefited by £1,000 as a result.

She’s the 5ft tall 21-year-old from Newton Aycliffe who works with street children in the Philippines, sleeps next to the dumps, amid rats and cockroaches, showers with a bucket and doesn’t earn a penny, Her dad’s the Reverend David Tomlinson, associate priest of St John’s church in Shildon and naturally disappointed that his daughter failed to take the top prize. “She should have done,” says David.

MORE church news, and first a note from the admirable Bill Bartle in Barnard Castle following last week’s paragraph on Peter Mullen’s newly- published Politically Incorrect Lexicon.

Bill formerly helped run Peterlee Christian Mission. “I now know that not only was I a ‘power mad control freak’, but that I was in control of ‘a middle-class knocking shop/marriage bureau with inferior songs’. We live and learn.”

Peter Shipp, whose wife, Linda, is vicar of rural parishes near Stokesley, forwards an ad from last week’s Church Times for voluntary positions at Bishop’s House, Iona. – “will run for two to three mouths”.

Derek Harrison, meanwhile, encloses a whole page from his parish magazine. “For the past 20 years, Amos has worked in partnership with a wide range of Jewish, Muslim and Christian peace groups...”

“Aha,” says Derek, “I’ve always wondered what you did with your extra-curricular activities.”

FINALLY, a couple of beer festival pints at the ever-admirable Darlington Snooker Club elicits the information – hot from the press, as the apple industry might suppose – that the Rat Race Ale House on Hartlepool railway station has been named Camra’s North-East cider pub of the year. A homeward perusal of the Cleveland Camra magazine also reveals that Peter Morgan’s platform is included in a new Camra publication on Britain’s 200 greatest pubs. Since the greatest is also Britain’s smallest, it’s what you might call an oxymoron, especially after a few beers at the Snooker Club.