Landlord lauded

At the North Briton in Aycliffe Village, now sadly shuttered, his bonhomie and his bean feasts were as legendary as his largesse. He also told the world’s best joke, the one about the crow that gets stuck in the tarmac.

He’d been a canny keeper, claiming eight catches for Boldon against North Durham in 1968 before moving to Bishop Auckland – where his expertise behind the stumps perhaps exceeded his running between them.

Allan was a big lad. “Milk turned faster,” the Beardless Wonder once observed.

He played for both the England police team and for Durham Constabulary, toured extensively and enthusiastically, missed a career highlight in 1994 when forced to cry off from the Backtrack All Stars with a ruptured varicose vein. “It’s like an abattoir in here,” he said.

He’d also been in the Bishop side in a 1980 cup final at Annfield Plain when a streaker stopped play. “Bollock naked,” Allan recalled. “I couldn’t believe it, not in Annfield Plain.”

His police career was mainly on south Tyneside, his licensed trading began as steward at Bishop Auckland Cricket Club before turning the North Brit into everyone’s dream local, and no matter how far off they might have lived.

New Zealand cricket captain Richard Hadlee was a frequent visitor; 25 years ago Colin Milburn lived and died there. A pub wasn’t the best bolt hole for Ollie. “Everyone begged him to get help and on the morning that he died, he finally agreed that he would,” said Allan. “You can’t help but think of Gazza.”

His sportsmen’s dinners were uniquely unstructured. Former Newcastle United full back Alan Kennedy, booked at one of them for his first-ever speaking engagement, was so nervous that he couldn’t eat a morsel. Allan gave him a few talking tips – and then ate the chief guest’s dinner.

That was also the night that he changed the menu after the Eating Owt column grumbled that “seasonal vegetables” always meant sprouts.

“I had to open a tin of peas because of you,” said Allan.

He’d be MC, too. Introducing former Liverpool centre half Ron Yeats, he observed that his previous clubs were Tranmere Rovers, Barrow and Doggart’s.

On another occasion we’d been at a do at Darlington Cricket Club, Allan’s post-midnight claim that recovery from his replacement hip surgery was being helped by a 6am paper round greeted (shall we say) with some scepticism.

A £20 bet was laid, the taxi homeward at 1.30am asked to return four hours later in order to get me to Aycliffe. On the stroke of six he emerged carrying a paper bag, having slept in the bar in order not to miss the moment.

He still didn’t have a paper round. “I did it to see your face,” he said.

With customary verve, he’d also hosted Eating Owt’s tripe tasting evening, buying for 15p a second-hand copy of the Andy Capp Cook Book, tripe and onions was between curried sweetbreads and brain fritters. The section was called “Rent day recipes.”

Mostly his joyous idiosyncrasies were confined hereabouts, though the North Brit went viral – or would have done had the internet really existed in 1992 – when the bar lads formed a syndicate to run a horse called Dominant Serenade, known thereabouts as Tuppence, at Cheltenham.

Allan left in 1996, taking the Clamart and then the Honest Lawyer in Scunthorpe, where he was a big favourite with Scunthorpe United fans.

We’d caught up with him there in 2010, the hip still not up to a 6am paper round, but Allan as hospitable and as genial as ever. From beneath the bar he pulled a photograph of the constabulary cricket team – familiar names like Ray Clish, Harry Mordue and Joe Cushlow – from the shelf a bottle of what he insisted was his special.

The man who made the great Brit died last week, aged 70. Pubs have changed and mostly not for the better: we’ll not see his like again.

n Allan’s funeral is at Scunthorpe crematorium at 2pm next Wednesday.

IAN Harper’s funeral overflowed St Alban’s church at Trimdon Grange, an inevitably tearful occasion lightened a little by a story of Ian’s young grandson, Noel.

Ian, of whom we wrote last week, had courageously fought cancer for six years. Towards the end, his grandad confined to bed, Noel asked if he might go up to see him and returned with hands on hips.

“Granddad must have been very naughty,” said Noel.

They asked what he meant. “Well, you have to be very naughty indeed to be sent to bed in the daytime.”

PERHAPS coincidental, perhaps because we were at Welling United’s ground last season or perhaps because Frankie Howerd went to school nearby….David Walsh reports, howsoever, that Welling have signed a new overseas player. He's called Nortei Norty.

….and finally, the two former Newcastle United players who’ve become successful racehorse trainers (Backtrack, November 13) are Mick Channon and Micky Quinn.

Steve Tindale, one of several who believed Michael Owen to be in the frame – he’s an owner, not a trainer – today invites the identity of the first world heavyweight boxing champion to regain his crown.

Decidedly heavyweight, the column returns next week.