He can't play the instrument, but Geoff Holter is one of the few people in the country who can repair accordions, and he's still in demand. Alison Lewis reports.

ACCORDIONISTS are few and far between in the North-East, so opening a repair shop here might seem like a foolhardy venture. The fact that Geoff Holter has spent almost 50 years repairing accordions in the region, but can't even play the instrument adds to the mystery of how he ended up with his business in Darlington and how it has been successful enough to survive since 1987.

Geoff and his team all started out in accordion repairs at Bell Accordions in Newton Aycliffe. The 69-year-old says he never wanted to be an accordion repairer, but after he left the Army and married his wife Mary in 1957, he was told that if he took a job on the trading estate in Newton Aycliffe, the couple could get a house nearby.

Geoff always intended to leave and find something more lucrative, but caught the accordion bug. "I ended up at Bell's for 30 years and I progressed in that time from being an apprentice to manager of the premises," he says. "When the business closed in 1987, I decided to start up on my own, and everyone I worked with came with me, as well as a lot of the customers.

"I know accordions inside out, we do all the tuning of them, the lay-outs of the mechanisms - but I don't play them. When I started at Bell's they were offering to give us lessons, but I never took them up on it, because I had no intention of staying," he explains.

"To me this is a working hobby - I should be retired I suppose, but for us here, it's about getting the job right. It so satisfying, especially on the older accordions, which come in looking like a heap of junk and go out in a first class condition."

One of his favourite projects was restoring the Green Howards' accordion, an instrument which survived a 500-mile trip in a wheelbarrow across Europe during the Second World War. It is now on display at the regiment's museum in Richmond.

Geoff says he employs some of the best accordion repairers in the land and that the business is perfectly placed geographically.

"Our business isn't local, it's nationwide," he says. "We have customers from the Shetlands, Ireland and right down to the Channel Isles and across to the West Country. If you look on a map, we're bang smack in the middle of the country and if you take Scotland and Ireland into consideration, we are handy for everyone.

"There aren't many accordion teachers in the North-East so there aren't many players, but in pockets elsewhere in the country there are lots of kids learning, because there are good teachers there."

Geoff sells the instruments too. Just a few days before I visit Geoff's workshop in Whessoe Road, he has had people from Wrexham in Wales over to have a look at the new accordions he also sells from the premises.

People often drive for hours to bring their treasured accordions to him for repair, rather than entrusting the job to a courier. This is because good repair shops and stockists of new instruments are few and far between, and because accordions are not cheap; they start at around £300 and go up to £23,000 for a top-of-the-range instrument.

Fortunately Geoff and his team not only offer excellent workmanship, they are also the only firm in the country which can make new bellows for accordions.

While many would probably think learning to play the guitar, piano or the fiddle would win more points in a popularity contest, according to Geoff, the accordion remains a very sociable instrument. "If you have an accordion, you're welcome at a party anytime," he says.

And the kind of party an accordion is played at has a direct effect on how often it needs repairing - the dustier, smokier or nearer the coast, the better for Geoff's business. "If they're played by someone who lives by the seaside, they go rusty inside," he explains.

"They suck in the salty air and that corrodes them. People who play at a lot of ceilidhs get a lot of dust off the dance floor in theirs and people who play in pubs - that's terrible, they get all sticky inside and stop playing because the bellows get full of smoke - but it keeps us employed."

* Geoff Holter Accordion Repairs (01325) 381223.