John North: Making tracks to Mr Pirelli's motor museum

The place was a gem, said Ken, the owner a cross between Bobby Thompson and Fred Dibnah. He also sent a street map, which proved to be very considerate.

Newburn is on the north bank of the canny Tyne, five or six miles west of Newcastle - number 21 bus every 20 minutes from the Central Station then turn right at the Jehovah's Witnesses hall and ask a friendly local.

Though the building is handsome and the collection magnificent, there are no signs to Newburn Motor Museum. Signs would be £1,000 a time says Tony Pirelli, the cross between the Little Waster and the Big Blaster and a man whose surname could hardly be more appropriate.

"If it was a corporation museum there'd be signs all over the place," adds Tony. "I've a lot better things to do with £1,000 than put a sign up."

Besides, he says, at their time of life, what do they want with signs.

He's 70, bought the former 4th Northumberland Fusiliers headquarters in 1979, opened it as a museum 20 years ago and still charges just £2 admission.

He's also worked as a film stunt man, providing cars and other props for everything from When the Boat Comes In to Brideshead Revisited and from Supergran to Chariots of Fire. Margaret, his wife, became something of an explosives expert, too.

"A bit bigger than Brock's fireworks," he says.

He'd owned a motor business in City Road, Newcastle, conveniently opposite the Tyne Tees Television studios. "When other businesses were buying Austin Minis, we were buying cars from the 1925s and 1930s.

"It didn't take brains to succeed, I was just the Johnny on the spot."

Tyne Tees wanted to hire a vehicle for The Paper Lads, one of the company's first drama series. From that standing start Tony and his vintage collection were off to a flier.

"You did your own driving for stunts in those days. If they wanted someone to go around a tight left hand bend on a hump backed bridge with all the wheels off the ground you did it and thought no more about it.

"There've been some really weird stunts, one when I was driving at 80mph down a narrow lane and suddenly saw a bloody great oak tree staring me in the face.

"I got around it, but it was hellish close. My knees were knocking at the end, it's a good thing they got it on the first take."

His own first car was an Austin 7, cost him £3.10s. His mate, Tony Cowie, still drives one. "Lovely car, incredibly economical," says t'other Tony.

These days, though film companies occasionally seek his services, he lives above the museum and on concentrates on restoration.

Walk though the caf/bar and into the meticulous museum and immediately there's a 1939 Sunbeam Talbot, as reflectively immaculate as the day it came off the production line and with transverse leaf spring, hydraulic brakes and 1185cc side valves.

It is ridiculously optimistic, of course, to expect any more technical talk like that.

Nearby is a 1972 Spitfire, £995 when every young man's fancy, an Austin 10 that cost £168 in 1933 and an early Anglia, registration number RSY 938 and known, therefore, as Rosy.

Rosy's chequered life story is told on a placard on the bonnet, including 13 years with a woodcutter who failed to appreciate her charms - "swamped in sawdust, the vehicle was preserved in good condition."

The oldest is a 1924 Standard, capable of 60mph and strictly for the upwardly mobile, the newest a Corvette which cost £35,000 in 1998 and may not yet have expected to become a museum piece.

In the workshop at the side, Tony Cowie works on two of the eight Invictas still in existence, both once owned by the Strathmore family. The Co Durham registered shooting brake was used on the Teesdale estates, the tourer, lovingly restored, is worth £250,000.

"It's not a task, it's a duty to restore such lovely old cars," says Tony Pirelli, though if he's nipping into the city he usually drives a Clio.

The museum's open every day except Monday from 10am-6pm, evening meals and talks by arrangement. Train to Newcastle and the Throckley bus thereafter. Others, of course, might prefer to drive.

HAD today's column not been driven to Newburn, we'd not only considered dipping a toe in the water of the opening air swimming pool at Stanhope but asked a well known Weardale figures what else there was to do up there. He paused, lengthily. "There's a new Indian takeaway," he said, "but it only opens at night."

SPECTACULARLY denied its first service for donkeys years when organisers discovered the true cut of the "priest's" cloth, Upleatham church near Saltburn now faces a challenge to its long-held claim to be England's smallest.

Letters to The Times lay counter claim for Lullington in East Sussex - 258sq ft against Upleatham's 270 and seating 22 at a very sociable squeeze.

St Beuno's, 30ft by 12ft at Culbone in Somerset, is said not only to be the smallest church in regular use but also the most isolated, a claim that Forest and Frith, for one, might outdo.

All this iconoclasm may have proved too much for Redcar and Cleveland council leader David Walsh, who enthusiastically promoted the original service. Coun Walsh, usually highly quotable, has failed to return the column's calls.

Though happily admitting to agnosticism, he may be somewhere on his knees.

STILL bible bashing, the Church Times reports that Tony and Cherie Blair are among 200 famous people who have chosen a favourite passage from scripture for a new book.

Whilst eight opted for the opening verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes - set subsequently to music by Bob Dylan - Cherie alone chose the Magnificat.

The Prime Minister, like Princess Michael of Kent through a press officer, said he "enjoyed the verses in Mark 4". It's all about the kingdom of God.

A flower festival at Trinity Methodist Church in Spennymoor this weekend not only raises funds for the church but marks the retirement of the Rev John Mason after 38 years ministry.

Born in Wolverhampton, a misty-eyed Molyneux man, he had been stationed in Lancashire, Cornwall and Somerset before becoming minister of Bondgate Methodist Church in Darlington in 1985. Five years later he moved to Spennymoor, and is retiring to Hurworth.

"I find that North-East people are very open, you know where you stand with them," he says. "In some areas they wrap it up, up here they tell you what they're thinking."

The flower festival, on the theme of Creation, blooms from 7-9pm tomorrow, 10-5pm on Saturday - refreshments and recommended lunches - and from noon on Sunday after a farewell Songs of Praise.

Amid all the floribundance, however, the retiring minister is preparing to grasp the nettle. "I want to become computer literate," he says.

...and finally, our plans to join Shildon lad John Robinson on his 20 mile Barefoot Crusade - a walk on August 26 from Chester Moor to Heighington for the Breast Cancer Research Appeal - have been boosted in the past week by precisely £5. Thanks, Bob. Other sponsors very welcome. Usual address, immeasurable gratitude.