No laughing matter

He was in the paper a few years ago, too, but that was the News of the World and the story concerned dancing girls and a show in Birkenhead so rude they were chased down the street. It was the best thing that happened, says Dave. The phone never stopped after that.

"It's all very well these politically correct people going on, but my act lasts 45 minutes and I can only be PC for seven."

Perhaps it was the line about following "God save the Queen" with the Zimbabwean national anthem - Old McDonald Used to Have a Farm.

His ideal audience, he says, is 400 junior ranks Black Watch all telling me to go away, and readers may perhaps accept a necessary degree of paraphrase.

His least favourite - deadly serious, this - are Rotary Clubs, Round Tables and Lions Clubs. "They hate me from the moment I walk on stage, I just can't understand it," he insists.

"I know they're posh people but I've nothing against posh people, they just won't listen. I know my accent isn't exactly Oxford but I'm proud of where I come from. I just won't accept their bookings now."

The fun factory, for which state assistance will meet £150 of the £249 fee, is organised by Scarborough based Vocational Services UK, who also run courses in dance, drama and hypnosis.

Lectures will cover everything from microphone technique to how to find an agent, from how to survive in Sunderland to what Dave, 53, quaintly calls "working class adjectives". He knows quite a few.

"The chap from Scarborough just heard my act one night and asked me afterwards if I'd be interested," says Dave, a big man in Union Jack trousers who's "died" more times than the star turn in the Casualties Union.

"One night I was the Ayrton Senna of Tow Law, I got out that fast. They were going to kill me. Another time, a football club dinner in South Shields, the bouncers had to get me out the back and then sneak back in for my clothes. They'd let 400 into a room licensed for 200.

"If an audience is very drunk or threatening, you run."

He was born in Ferryhill, where his grandma celebrates her 100th birthday next month. He says, shortly after being diagnosed diabetic: "The health authority sent her a leaflet telling her how to prolong her life; it was one of the funniest things I've seen in ages."

Originally a guitarist, he joined a group (as then they were called) at 15, switched to a comedy band called Contrast when he was 27 - another string - and joined the full-time funny business 15 years ago.

"It was the best thing I've ever done in my life. When I decided to put the guitar down I made twice as much money from half as much work and didn't need a pantechnicon to carry all the stuff around.

"I've a nice house, a nice car and in 18 months I'll have a nice pension."

Retiring then? "Not that nice a pension," says Dave.

The secret, of course, is in the timing - "absolute, split second timing" - which is why he never drinks before going on stage, nor in the Brit on Monday lunchtime.

"There are all kinds of comedy, mostly stories like Jasper Carrot or Billy Connelly, one liners, stand-up, alternative, after dinner, sporting, military, whatever.

"You have to have a lot of confidence, be slightly different, read the papers, listen to the news, be bang up to date. It's no good setting off with stale old humour and mother-in-law jokes, it just doesn't work any more.

"Some people are naturally funny and some do it parrot fashion. Some have memories, some have imaginations. There's work around for everyone just now."

Among his own worst experiences, coincidentally, was the night at the Corner Caf when inadvertently he was booked for a Country and Western gathering.

"It must have been the Grizzly Adams bit," says the man who's frightened of Lions. "I looked around the curtain and nearly fainted. I'm sure I'll be all right there next time."

* Details of the master's classes from Vocational Services UK, 01723 379200.

REJOICING with Jack and Cora Coe on their 70th wedding anniversary, last week's column noted Cora's recollection that their first marital home, in Leadgate, was crawling with blackclocks - "that is to say, cockroaches."

Paul Dillon wouldn't say that at all. "A blackclock is a large black beetle, not a cockroach," he writes.

"I know because in the 1970s I lived in a flat above a baker's shop in Darlington and, alarmed at the large black beetles that came out after dark, I sought expert advice.

"I was told that they were blackclocks, common in places where flour is stored or used - not pleasant to look at, but I was assured that they didn't present the health hazards associated with their less hygienic cousins.

"Thirty years later I'm still here, so I suppose the expert was right."

Paul's now workshop organiser with the Darlington Media Group. When he worked at The Echo he drew the original logo for the insect friendly Gadfly column.

His e-mail has, at any rate, afforded the chance of a classic reply: "entomology is as bad as my etymology," it says.

BOY George is a Charlton Athletic fan, spotted before the Sunderland match the other day - "despite his relative plumpness and thinning hair" - in conversation with a Stadium of Light waitress.

George, as he may or may not be known to his friends, was demanding, his favourite food, salmon with steamed broccoli. "What?" said the waitress. "Divvent forget you're in Sunderland noo."

BG sadly explained that he'd just come back from the States. "I couldn't get it there, either."

LAST week's column revealed that a locomotive called George Reynolds - a Class 87, truth to tell - was running in Virgin livery between London and Glasgow.

Since it couldn't be named after the Quakers' colourful chairman - could it? - we'd wondered if there might, after all, be more than one George Reynolds. There is a small world sequel.

The other George Reynolds was a British Rail press officer - a "spokesman" - in Scotland. We'd met him on a press trip in June 1976 when former Eastern Region public relations officer Bert Porter somehow persuaded the controllers to allow a carriage full of emotional journalists to hitch behind a freight train from Ipswich to Glasgow. "Pet food and grain," recalls the admirable Allan McLean, then the Press officer in York and now with Virgin's PR department.

After 32 years speaking up for the railways, George retired in 1997, his leaving do at Glasgow Central station interrupted by the invitation officially to name a train. George thought it was City of Glasgow.

"When the curtain swung back, the expression on his face was such a joy to behold that I shall take the memory to the grave," says Allan.

"There was the glistening nameplate George Reynolds. The City of Glasgow was later attached to another Virgin locomotive."

Months later George, who died in January, even got a free drink out of his retirement present. "You've just brought me back spot on time from Milton Keynes," said the landlord of the Press Bar in Glasgow. There is more to it than that, however. That carriage on the back of a cross country grain train was also where, 25 years ago next month, this columnist met his wife to be. A transport of delight, but another story entirely.

OUR own George Reynolds, word has it, was weekending at Whitburn when he and Mrs Reynolds decided on a bingo night at one of Sunderland's workmen's clubs. Whether it's true what they say about money going to money, Susan is said to have won the £600 jackpot. Our old multi-millionaire friend hasn't been around for verification. Luckier for some next time.

IT was also 25 years ago, March 20, 1976, that we were invited to open the new village hall at Redmire, in Wensleydale.

"A best bib and tucker do," the original John North column reported, lunch beforehand at Castle Bolton and a polliss optimistically assigned to crowd control.

Arsenal won 6-1 that afternoon, Queens Park Rangers topped the old first division, Princess Margaret's marriage to Lord ("call me Tony") Snowdon finally broke up, and an MP termed "a gratuitous insult to the taxpayer" BR's decision to spend £100 on a song for the incoming fleet of High Speed Trains.

A spokesman for British Rail was probably on the back of a freight train to Glasgow. We mention all this because of a call from Mr Philip Oliver, then as now the village hall committee chairman, asking us to perform another opening on June 23.

A few days later - open season, if ever - we're also inaugurating the £60,000 community park at Ramshaw, near Evenwood, though the first choice was Boro footballer (and Evenwood lad) Steve Vickers.

Philip Oliver insists that theirs was a unanimous decision. "We've completely refurbished the hall, you wouldn't recognise it," he says. Which of us has worn better remains, of course, to be seen.