John North: Curtain call of all the greats

"I suppose I'm a bit of a squirrel," he says, a man who in a throwaway society keeps absolutely everything.

It may therefore be imagined that when chatting to him the column not only occupies the best seat in the house but the only one readily available, the others agreeably overflowing with programmes and playbills and other evidence of his 50-year fascination.

John kneels on the floor, his whole world a stage since the day half a century ago this week when, at Newcastle Theatre Royal, he saw John Hanson in The Desert Song and fell helplessly, happily, beneath a theatrical red shadow.

"It was a shilling in the circle, a lot of money in those days," he remembers. "If there'd been something special this week I'd have gone to mark the anniversary, but it was Voodoo Nation or something. I think I can probably give it a miss."

These columns also run and run. Six weeks ago we recalled the uniquely querulous Fred Emney at Billingham Forum and, one way or another, have been treading the boards ever since.

With an indirect connection, a Weardale reader asked on July 22 what had happened to Margaret Burton. Meticulously by hand - he doesn't think he'd like a computer in the house - John Foster offered the answer.

She was one of Sadlers Wells' leading sopranos, Britain's best paid principal boy, shared hard times and top billing in good measure. What happened to her is rather tragic, but we shall return to that shortly.

John Foster is in Langley Park, west of Durham, retired early from Durham County Council, maintains a much thumbed but hugely effective cross-reference system held together by devotion and bulldog clips.

Summer shows? Peerless. Repertory? Full works. Pantomime? Oh yes...

"Margaret Burton was quite easy," he insists. "I just looked in her file."

His colliery village cornucopia embraces a signed playbill from the week that Sid James died on stage at Sunderland Empire, programmes from 1893, the Stage Year Book from 1908, Who's Who in the Theatre from the "very rare" first edition, theatre histories if not from A-Z then certainly from Adelphi to Wyndham's.

Though things keep "wandering off" - it's a matter of remembering where you put them, he says - his recall is remarkable. "It's more or less a full time hobby now," he says, "a lot more interesting than many of the things you get on television.

"I just enjoy doing it, both finding out about theatre buildings and theatre people."

When post-war contemporaries spent Saturday afternoons watching Sunderland or Newcastle, he'd be at the Theatre Royal, the collecting bug beginning because he couldn't get a programme for the first two shows and didn't want to miss out again.

"The Theatre Royal is a wonderful building, but part of the pleasure is just walking up Grey Street past all the other attractive buildings. Some of the London theatres are rather disappointing after that."

These days, however, his visits are less frequent. "I tend to live in the 50s and 60s when there were a lot more stars than there are now. Nowadays there are celebrities not stars, soap opera people, and the stuff they put out isn't usually my cup of tea.

"When I began you might see Kathleen Harrison, Edith Evans, Cicely Courtneidge and Sybil Thorndyke within a week in Newcastle, or spend two weeks in Blackpool and see a different show every night.

"Now they won't leave London or they're earning much better money in films and television. I'm afraid the theatre isn't what it was."

So what happens when he himself, without family, must face the final curtain? "A jolly good question, I've no idea.

"It would be lovely if I could find someone, maybe a bit younger, who was interested and could add to the collection. I'd really like someone who believed in the theatre, as I hope perhaps that I have."

MARGARET Burton lived in 1954 in Pannal, near Harrogate. The lady in Weardale, then just a child, lived a few doors away and remembered watching her neighbour rehearse pantomime at the London Palladium, December 1954.

"Her voice filled the entire theatre without a microphone," she says.

John has the programme for that one, too, Mother Goose in which as "Colin" she co-starred with Max Bygraves and Richard "Mr Pastry" Hearne. Peter Sellers and the Nitwits were further down the bill.

"Ah, the Nitwits," says John. "When you were little you used to love them."

Margaret was born in Keighley in 1924 - Alice Pickles, her mother, was known as the Keighley Nightingale - and married the magician David Nixon in 1947, when both were with the Fol-De-Rols at the Floral Theatre in Scarborough. (John has the programme.)

In the 1950s she shared top billing with the likes of Tommy Cooper, Jimmy Clitheroe and Charlie Chester; in the 60s soared to fame with the Sadlers Wells.

A 1960s musical called Annie, inexplicably produced by the Moral Rearmament Society, was reckoned another highlight - though the show itself was slated. "Margaret Burton works wonders," observed The Times critic, perhaps remembering the Double Diamond advert of the time.

In 1980 she also had a bit part in Coronation Street, playing "rather nosy" boarding house keeper Peggy Watts who'd been part of a knife throwing double act until her husband died and who took in Rita Fairclough after yet another set-to with the lump headed Len.

There was another Coronation Street connection. When Margaret made her radio debut as a schoolgirl soprano on a 1939 Children's Hour, Violet Carson played the piano.

By 1980, however, the vivacious leading lady was barely second fiddle. Reduced to the chorus line, she had gained several stones, was battling alcoholism and had been married three times.

In March 1983 she appeared in the British production of the American musical Marilyn, just a couple of lines and a chorus, left early after a contretemps with the chorus girls but was allowed to return for the last three nights. She never worked again.

Her antique dealer husband found her dead in bed at their home in Hove in November 1984, perhaps not the best remembered of all theatrical Burtons but a rare talent in her prime. Margaret was just 60.

A tale of two Shildons

ALMOST close to home, last week's column visited the "other" Shildon - just across the border in Northumberland and once the busy, bare boned lead mining village in which three generations of Brian Ayre's family were born, worked and died hideously young.

It was lead mining country and the living wasn't easy. Brian's digging around the family tree reveals that, though three male members married on the same day in Blanchland in 1862, for two it was a second marriage. Their first wives had died in childbirth.

Now in Spennymoor via Weardale, he has discovered that in the 1841-71 censuses the village was called Shildon Hills and had a population of up to 800.

With one exception, however, none of his lead mining ancestors lived beyond 45, most dying in their 30s from consumption. The exception was his great great great grandmother, a French native whose family had fled to escape religious persecution during the Revolution.

She died in Hexham workhouse in 1887, aged - remarkably for the time - 96. Cause of death was given as "decay of nature". There wasn't much of that about, either.

HAPPILY hale, Shildon lad John Robinson - the "real" Shildon this time - plans another of his extraordinary barefoot challenges for charity.

Having walked up Scafell last year, he now hopes to head bare foot forward up Ben Nevis on September 25.

Snowdon and the length of Hadrian's Wall will follow. "I guess all thi s rain is to get me acclimatised for Scotland," says John, a 57-year-old martial arts expert.

The 4,000ft ascent, made into a video, will be to raise funds for multiple sclerosis research. Phil Steele, another Shildon lad but long in Crook, suffers from the disease.

Suitably unshod, John's now a familiar sight hoofing the streets of Shildon - peak practice, as it were. "A lot of people thought I'd never make Scafell," he says. "I'm confident of becoming the first man to walk bare foot up Ben Nevis."

...and finally, last week's note on Stockton councillor Stephen Smailes's cack handed domino playing produced a similarly sackless claim from Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland - played 28, won 0 - and a copy of the rules from Darlington and District 5s and 3s League secretary Phil Robson.

Here are embraced markers and check markers, stitched games, back pegging and (so it says) dying in the hole.

For fear of future embarrassment, however, most of us who thus mis-spend our Monday nights are grateful for confirmation of rule 10: "Each team shall consist of eight male players..."