THE shop is so traditional, so old fashioned in a state-of-the-art sort of way, that probably they call it Messrs Dressers. Certainly the retired managing director still calls the general manager Miss Robinson - and Elspeth Robinson, who 46 years ago this week joined the firm as a shorthand typist, would never in turn imagine him as anything other than Mr Warrand.

Though there are echoes of Are You Being Served, in Dressers - a family business in all sorts of ways - they take selling seriously.

"Proper form of address is one of the things we insist upon and, personally, I think it has paid dividends," says Mr Warrand. "Everyone has the right respect for one another. Some might think it old fashioned, but it's what has come to be expected. It is very rare that we lose a member of staff."

Last week, however, it was announced that Dressers in Darlington - and in Northallerton - is to close. Though he insists that the former stationery business remains viable, the two families who own it may nonetheless have seen the writing on the High Row wall.

Peter Warrand was born in West Hartlepool in 1928, his father an engineer, his mother in the family wine business. It was to his brother-in-law Charlie Summerbell, however, that young Mr Warrand's interest first turned.

Charlie, later a North-East legend on the Daily Mirror, covered Hartlepools United for the local evening paper, under the by-line Sentinel. Peter - who must from hence forgive the familiarity - was his runner, a journalistic first base broadened by reporting the boxing and wrestling at the Engineers' Club.

When Charlie joined the Northern Echo's Hartlepool office, he invited his brother-in-law to become his assistant - branch office reporters presumably enjoying rather more autonomy than they do today.

"Perhaps I hadn't enough confidence in myself," says Peter, though it was another inky trade outlet - a second cousin, no more - to which irresistibly he was attracted.

He joined Charles Sage and Co, stationers to the letter, where the boss wore a wing collar and the workers were expected to wear suits and to see their reflection in their shoes. "It was about standards," says Peter. "I've always been a great believer in standards." After a year's further education in Cambridge he joined Dressers as commercial manager - Warrand officer, as it were - in 1953, became general manager four years later and managing director in 1974.

In retirement, he still handles advertising and publicity, organises Dressers' lauded literary lunches, emotionally brought a statement of the shops' impending closure to the Echo office within minutes of the news being broken to the 68 staff.

"It was very, very sad, they really hadn't had an inkling," he says, though even the closure - said the statement - would be done the Dressers way.

"Service to the customer has always been absolutely important. We had to have the best quality in everything, something you don't always get in the big shops nowadays."

For years, Dressers wouldn't even sell lined notepaper, nor pads with the price on the front. For a long time, they wouldn't even sell Basildon Bond. People no longer feel the texture of notepaper, says Peter.

"In many shops if you want a pen you have to find one on a shelf and pay for it at a till.

"Here Mrs Wilkinson has almost 40 years experience in pens. She might seem a bit old fashioned, but she comes over very well."

He had introduced new departments, like travel and china - "fancy goods, we called it then" - broadened the book department, wore Dressers heart on the sleeve.

"Six out of ten customers don't know the author or the title or both. People like Miss Lofthouse had studied for diplomas in book selling. They were able to help.

"It was about quality of service. Our china, for example, was minutely inspected before it went on display. We got a name from some of the manufacturers, but Dressers customers expected perfection."

From 1971-90 there was a branch in Stockton, abandoned when the rent continually increased. The Northallerton shop, opened in 1970, will close on the same day.

Northallerton had originally been a printers, owned by an elderly lady called Mrs Cowper who every Wednesday - on his day off - Peter would visit in the hope of persuading her to sell.

"Eventually, it was decimalisation, or was it VAT, that did it. I persuaded her that at 80-odd she didn't want to be doing with that sort of thing. She sold it on condition that we kept on the workmen and looked after them which, of course, we did." The Darlington shop moved to the present town centre site in 1966 - closed 4pm Saturday, re-opened 11am Monday - helped by a troop of boy scouts ("we put some money into their funds") and a flotilla of post office trolleys.

Now, however, the descendants of the two families who bought the business in 1942 have been made an offer it seemed impossible to refuse. The future use has yet to be revealed.

"Retailing has changed so much, expansion seems to be in out-of-town centres or factory outlets," says Peter. "Maybe we couldn't have continued in the way we would have wished, especially with the impending retirement of Miss Robinson.

"There are very, very few independent retailers of our size left, especially family businesses."

Still in full vigour - several mornings each week he's in the gym by 7am - he plans more gardening, a bit of retail consultancy and (he says) to walk around the town looking lost.

In the meantime, closure plans are being gently and sympathetically advanced. "Many of the customers have become friends and I will miss them very much, but most of all I will miss the staff. They really are like a family to us all."

They shut up shop for the last time on March 31. At Messrs Dressers it will be a most melancholy day.

THAT tireless self-publicist Paul Gough - Century Radio's hundred miles an hour man - has rung about Phil Stamp's lost dog.

Phil plays football for Middlesbrough, his mum has a pub in North Ormesby, the dog's a shih-tzu, pronounced in a way likely to amuse radio listeners.

"You won't believe the trouble we had," says Goffy.

Anyway, Trish Stamp rang to ask if listeners could help find the poor little shih-tzu - "he'll go with anyone, no road sense, nothing". Half the North-East, says Goffy, turned out to search. The dog has now been found. At Saturday's match, apparently, the crowd were singing "Who let Stampy's dog out, Woof, woof." It's a take off of a song that's number five in the charts, says Paul. Ah.

STILL with matters canine, the ever-observant Tony Hillman reports another sighting of the veteran Darlington-born actor Charles Simon. He's up there at a dinner party thrown by Cruella da Ville in the film 102 Dalmatians. Mr Simon, still smoking 60-a-day, is 93.