THE night after he’d finished his autobiography – “On the chin, the memoires of a political bruiser” – Lord Pendry of Stalybridge was principal guest at the Ebac Northern League’s annual dinner on Friday evening.

Coming up 81, the former shadow sports minister and Labour MP was wearing the tie awarded to Oxford University boxing blues, the noble art taught him by a Benedictine monk.

“I’ve needed it a few times,” he said, enigmatically.

He’d been evacuated to the North-East during the war – Swalwell and Burnopfield, up near the Tyne – became a Newcastle United supporter and so avid a fan of Albert Stubbins, he of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP sleeve, that he was asked to give the eulogy at Albert’s funeral.

Other achievements on an impressive cv include leadership of the campaign to save the glorious buffet bar and clock on Stalybridge railway station and – a little less importantly – the campaign to save Radio 5 Live.

These days Lord Tom is president of the Football Foundation, a proud and passionate football man appalled at the mire surrounding Fifa. The Football Foundation, he said, had distributed £18m to help grass roots football projects in Co Durham alone. Fifa, in one year, had spent £17.6m on service at a single Zurich hotel.

Still fighting, he spoke eloquently and forcefully. It was a great pleasure to host the old battler.

FED up with overpaid ex-professionals by way of after-dinner entertainment, the Northern League booked the excellent Chris Cross, a table magician and entertainer from Newcastle.

“I’m really Christopher Alfred Goode but Chris Cross sounds a bit catchier,” he said, inarguably.

Earlier that day he’d fulfilled one of his regular bookings at the young people’s secure unit at Aycliffe, an educational visit much appreciated on all sides.

It’s unlikely, however, that the new tricks sessions would extend to his cabaret act. He’s an escapologist, too.

EXULTANT photographs of Durham cricket all-rounder Ben Stokes during the first test against his native New Zealand have revealed great armfuls of tattoos.

Much of it is Maori, though there’s somehow room for an Irish blessing, too: “May people respect you, trouble neglect you, angels protect you and Heaven accept you.”

Stokes’s origins – his father came to England to be coach of Workington Rugby League club – have also been subject of a letter in The Times. “Can we borrow half a dozen Australians for this summer’s tests,” it says.

SUBSUMED amid the small print, last Thursday’s paper carried a paragraph about a World War I concert – “George Hetherington and others” – at North Road Methodist church in Durham this Saturday.

“Others” include one of the column’s oldest favourites, Eddie Gratton the mistakenly nicknamed Singing Spinner. “So it has come to this; any others’ business,” says the former Opera Nova principal, now 76 and as cheerful as always.

Thornley lad, long in Blackhall Rocks, Eddie enjoyed a 45-year cricket career – seam, not spin – finishing at Mainsforth where (he liked to say) he kept on being mistaken for the sight screen.

It was also with Mainsforth that we found him on the boundary during a National Village Cup match at Harome, still singing despite a hammering. “It’s the funeral match,” he said.

The others also include acclaimed soprano Eileen Glenton. The concert, admission free, begins at 2 30pm.

GOOD reason if the admirable Alf Hutchinson, veteran of Cockerton cricket club and of the Britannia A 5s and 3s brigade, were looking a little less chipper than usual the other night. Alfred Hutchinson, the horse which shares his name, had just romped home at 20-1 at York and Alf was nowhere near the bookie’s. “The last time I backed a horse it was between two shafts,” he laments, though he may want to reconsider. First in eight of its 40 outings, Alfred the Greatish now returns a £15 38 profit to a £1 level stake.

COMPARING the fortunes of Marske United and Manchester United, last week’s column noted that at least one MUFC had won something – the Ebac Northern League championship – in 2014-15. Make that two things. The club’s quite extraordinary programme, edited by Moss Holtby, has been named the country’s top non-league programme for the fifth time in eight years. On the other occasions it was second.

….and finally, what Manchester United had been the last team to do in the FA Cup (Backtrack, May 28) was score four in the final – 4-0 against Chelsea in 1994 and the same score in the 1983 replay with Brighton. That was until Saturday, of course.

With Alexis Sanchez’s sumptuous strike in mind, readers are today invited to recall the only other Chilean to score in an FA Cup final – and for whom.

Chile front, the column returns next week.