John North: And the band played on... and on

Since a CD was a long nurtured ambition, the musicians spent a full weekend in a local school ensuring they hit exactly the right notes - only to discover that it was the recording company which had to face the music and dance.

Their equipment had been faulty, the whole thing had to be done again. The band, second wind, played on...

"It had been a very demanding and arduous regime and a very long two days, especially for the youngsters in the band," says bass player and former secretary Bill Scarlett. "We had to play pieces and bits of pieces until they were perfect and if someone so much as dropped a cup we had to start again. Apparently there was a fault in the tonal system. They couldn't just twiddle a few knobs and make it right."

Hugh Stephenson, the present secretary, was given the job of persuading band members to give up another weekend - and with a new recording company.

Brass neck? "Hughie did it in his own inimitable style," insists Bill. "It gave us the opportunity to make it even better. It wasn't just the musicians who had to come back again, but all the people behind the scenes that we felt sorry for."

Formed as the Whitworth Band in the early 19th century, it's one of the oldest in the country, becoming a volunteer band in the Boer War. It later became the Whitworth and Spennymoor Silver Band, fell silent in 1978 but struck up again in 1983.

£1 from each CD sold goes to the Mayor of Spennymoor's charities - meningitis research and a minor surgery unit at the local health centre. The CD is £9.99, cassette £5.99, from any band member or, plus postage, from Spennymoor Town Hall.

THE town band also has junior and youth sections. Terry Robson, Spennymoor's town clerk and solicitor, plays tuba with the juniors.

"It's marvellous value," he says, "They start at six years old and get an hour and a half's practice for £1 a week." Mr Robson is 54.

An accomplished pianist, he took to the tuba two and a half years ago. "I enjoy brass band music, attended a lot of concerts in my official capacity and thought that if they could do it, I could. You know what they say about lawyers, always full of wind."

Unfortunately, however, both his wife and his cat regard the tuba as an instrument of torture. "It's difficult to hoover around, she's threatened to divorce me, the cat would rather be in the cattery and I've been banished to the summerhouse," says Terry the Tuba, who also takes his music to the town hall. "I practise when I've a bit of lieu time," he adds.

The town clerk, who lives in nearby Kirk Merrington, insists that thoughts of the senior section are merely blowing in the wind, however. "I hope to be in the youth band by the time I'm 60."

BY COINCIDENCE, we have also been asked to mention the recently renamed Chester-le-Street Riverside Band, now beneath the wing - or the roof, at any rate - of Durham County Cricket Club. Riparian yarns.

Coincidence II: Riverside Band manager Tony Thompson was a guest cornet player in Spennymoor's aborted recording. "It was dreadfully unfortunate," he says. "I genuinely wasn't available for the second session."

Formed in 1877 as the Pelton Fell Methodist Band and later Pelton Fell Colliery Band - enduring evidence of the adage that where there's muck there's brass - it performed for 24 years from 1974 as the Newcastle Brown Ale Band, with sponsorship from the brewery.

Bottle finally lost, they're now seeking new sponsors and patrons, with cricket club treasurer Tom Moffatt happily in tune as development fund manager.

"I played with my dad in Silksworth Colliery Band, it was an offer I couldn't refuse," says Tom. "They need maybe £6,000-£8,000 a year and are a very fine band indeed. It would be a tragedy if such a vital part of the region's heritage were to be lost through lack of finance."

The most imminent fund raising event is a Last Night of the Proms at the Riverside on September 27, with Consett-born opera singers Graeme Danby and his wife Valerie Reid. The band played at their wedding.

From September next year, the County Cricket Club hopes to stage an annual outdoor proms - and to fill every seat at the Chester-le-Street ground. They also had a Riverside concert in April, everything from the Post Horn Gallop to the Great Longbenton Leek.

Packages for the September concert range from £42 (with a four course meal and wine) to £12. Details from Tom Moffatt MBE, 11 Windermere Avenue, Chester-le-Street DH2 3DU.

JUST about the last time that Bill Scarlett appeared hereabouts was when the John North column accompanied him on the Beamish Vintage Car Rally, July 1976.

"You get to know how the Queen feels when you're on the Beamish reliability run," said Bill. "Thousands of people along the road and they all want to wave like mad at you."

Unlike Mr Scarlett, we suggested, it was unlikely that the Queen would be in the back of a 1946 Ford Anglia with a can of Tartan in her hand.

Coincidence III: Frank Atkinson, revered and long retired founding father of Beamish Museum, has stepped down as chairman of the museum's "Friends", his place taken by Tyne Tees Television folk-architect John Grundy.

The admirable Mr Grundy reveals in the Friends' magazine, however, that he'd better not be hands-on. "I lack practical skills. My mother dreaded those days when I would return from the shops with a balsa wood model aeroplane because she knew it would end in tears.

"In more recent times my wife has effectively banned me from DIY because of the uncertain outcomes which ensue."

He hopes, he says, to write more for the magazine instead.

LAST week's revelation that Shildon lad and fireworks big wheel Wilf Scott had been awarded Membership of the Victorian Order by the Queen prompted a note from Eric Smallwood in Middlesbrough. Eric had read somewhere else that Her Majesty's Page of the Back Stairs was miffed at not being similarly recognised - but wondered, more to the point, what on earth the flunkey in the broom cupboard does.

The royal household, it may be added, also has a Woman of the Bedchamber and a Page of the Presence among its 650 full time staff. That the Back Stairs boy is at the front of the queue is witnessed by royal author Andrew Morton's account of the afternoon that the monarch decided to feed the ducks on the Buckingham Palace lake.

The Queen rang the Page of the Back Stairs who passed the message to the number one footman who telephoned the chef who told the kitchen staff to cut bread into uniform strips. Another footman made the half mile round trip to pick up the wrapped package.

The Queen's senior dresser laid out her favourite green herringbone coat, galoshes, gloves and woollen scarf. The Page of the Back Stairs summoned the royal corgis and delivered the bread on a silver salver to Her Majesty.

Some time after that, the ducks finally got their dinner.

ANTICIPATING a little light relief from his lunchtime chicken tikka roll, Alan Woods in Middlesbrough was taken by the headline in last Tuesday's paper - "Funding offer for young naturists" - and was therefore somewhat disappointed to discover that we meant "naturalists" instead.

Alan Archbold in Sunderland draws attention to Saturday's report of the European athletics championships in which we claimed that Britain had won eight medals - one gold, two silver, four bronze.

"Your man must have gone to a better school than I did," he says.

Several readers have also pointed out a possible discrepancy in the first paragraph of Monday's Hartlepool United report - a reference to Pool's play-off defeat on April 31. To be fair to our man at Victoria Park, however, he was awfully upset at the time.

NO one raised a vocal eyebrow, however, at the inclusion in last week's column of the squaddies' poem about the camel and the sphinx.

Emboldened, Ernie Reynolds in Wheatley Hill sends the joke about the new officer at the desert camp who asks the sergeant what they do for sex.

"We use that camel, sir," said the sergeant.

A fortnight later the officer approached the camel which kicked, spat and generally played hard to get.

"Sarn't," bellowed the officer, "you told me that you used this camel for sex."

"So we do, sir," replied the NCO, "we put a saddle on it and ride to the nearest brothel."

...and finally, John Robinson's Barefoot Crusade is just 11 days away. Suitably shod, the column and others will be joining him on the 20 mile Bank Holiday Monday walk in aid of breast cancer research.

Several readers have sent cheques, made payable to the Breast Cancer Research Appeal; other donations, c/o Mike Amos at the Northern Echo, would be most welcome.

John's bare foot forward is from Chester Moor to the Cumby Arms at Heighington, where a big fund raising party will be held on the Monday afternoon. We hope to be there by 4.30pm.