Ever industrious, Friday's column wondered about the Olympic athlete who missed the final because he had to be back at work.

It was Stockholm, 1912. Diligent subsequent research - by others, of course - suggests that Durham's only athlete in those or any other Olympics was middle distance runner George Lee, a porter/handyman at the County Hospital.

There is no record, however, of when or how George's boat came in.

Pat Woodward, who began the search with memories of long gone chats with George Lee in the Shakespeare, fields his own bowling by checking the old Durham Advertiser files in the library.

They record the Durham City Harriers annual meeting of September 1912, in which "honour had been brought to the club" by the captain, unnamed, who competed without winning a medal in two middle distance events.

So had he caught the boat, thus missing it? "That's what he always told me," insists Pat.

George Lee is also recalled by Jack Haywood and by Dr Sydney Holgate, retired master of Grey College, Durham, and a Durham University cricketer of high renown.

Lee, says Jack, was an ardent Sunderland football fan. "I used to see him every other Saturday, taken to the match in a big Rolls Royce owned by Dr Hare.

"In those days there were only three or four porters. Now there are 30 or 40, more porters than doctors."

Dr Holgate, who played in the 1938 university side that famously beat a Durham County X1 by 113 runs - Freddie Turnbull 5-33 - remembers occasional chats with George Lee, including one in the County Hospital in 1945.

"I was having my appendix out, he was mending the radiators.

"He was a very nice man but didn't talk much about the Olympics. I think he may have been marginally disillusioned because he hadn't got a better job."

Whether the job's demands robbed him of the chance of Olympic glory remains frustratingly unknown. There is some Lee way to make up yet.

Friday's column also noted that the Stockholm 1500m had been won by AHS Johnson and that "the Britisher was loudly cheered". Well he might have been.

He was Arnold Strode-Jackson, actually, and he and his friend Philip Baker - one Oxford, one Cambridge - were private entries, not having been chosen in the Great Britain team.

"If there had been bookmakers at the games, no one would have put a brass farthing on either of the Englishmen" recorded a 1972 history of the modern Olympics, kindly despatched this way by Eddie Scarlett in Haxby, York.

The three Americans, hot favourites, ran abreast in an attempt to stop others overtaking. Jackson, running wide, edged them all by 0.1sec, in an Olympic record 3.56.8. Baker was sixth, and won silver eight years later.

Both went on to arguably greater things. Jackson became the only British officer in the first world war to win the DSO and three bars, Baker became the Rt Hon Philip Noel Baker, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1959.

The Olympic Games, for some reason, never again allowed individual entries.

Paul Dobson writes not just about supposed David Seaman lookalike John Lynas from Cockfield (Backtrack, Friday) - "nonsense, not even John looks that old" - but to ask why the region's bairns would love to see Manchester United goalkeeper Raimond van der Gouw in Toys R Us. He gives games away.

Reggie Kray's phantasmagorical funeral, strictly all ticket, will be attended by our old friends Paul Hodgson and Robert Ellis from Spennymoor Boxing Academy.

Though they'd never met the last of the Kray brothers, they did entertain Mad Frankie Fraser - as several outraged correspondents will remember - at this year's annual presentation evening.

Fraser, among other things, had urged his audience to write to the Home Secretary demanding Kray's compassionate release. "A lot did it. I'm sure it was our letters to Jack Straw that sprung him," says Hodgy.

"Spennymoor Boxing Academy has a lot of clout in high circles."

A report upon the proceedings at a later date.

The season of chicken and Yorkshire pudding, when talk is cheap and speakers ludicrously expensive, began as it always does with East Rainton Cricket Club's annual extravaganza.

They'd had a remarkable season, lifted three cups and won the North East Durham League by 78 points. Six league games were lost to the weather, none to the opposition.

The locally heroic Ian Kitching, captain and ageless inspiration, topped the bowling with 36 at ten and a bit - spinning these days, as the years advance.

David Greener, the inimitable MC, has been sending them down at much the same pace for Clara Vale in the Northumberland League, reckons not to be paid but to be given the use of the club caravan for two weeks in November.

He took 26 at 9.89. Success's secret, they modestly agreed, is that no one knows how to play spin any more.

David Johnson, formerly of Everton, Liverpool and Everton again, was joined on the speakers' circuit by former England rugby prop Jeff Probyn, one of several newcomers on the RFU Council.

"They used to say that the Council consisted of 57 old farts" he said. "Now there are 63."

T he following day to Seaham Red Star v Easington, FA Cup second qualifying, and another step for the Teamtalk.com boys on the Road to Cardiff.

Why had they chosen to kick off with Seaham? "We liked the name," they said.

Clearly they were impressed. "It wasn't for the faint hearted or the orudish but it certainly made for enthralling viewing," the website reported.

Easington saw off Seaham 3-0, the dot commercials now moving a few miles down the east Durham coast for the next round. We threw in the information that Billy Elliott had largely been filmed around Easington: they hit the Road ecstatic.

Richard Ovington seeks the column's help. Former Sunderland reserve and author of the impending work on the great and good of Brandon and Byshottles, he was brought up in Meadowfield next door to Muriel Giles - born on her birthday, though Muriel was six years older.

Every year they've exchanged birthday cards.

Last week, nothing, and he is becoming anxious. Muriel lived in Honister Place, Newton Aycliffe. We'll pass on any information.

the Olympic event in which women out-perform men (Backtrack, September 29) is the discuss, where the projectile is now much lighter.

Eric Smallwood from Middlesbrough today seeks the identity of the first footballer to be sent off at Wembley.

Back in the good books on Friday