GEORGE Romaines, the Shildon Wagon Works electrician who became a legend in his own lunchtime, has died suddenly. He was 82.

Look North presenter Mike Neville supposed that in the early 1960s George was the most popular man in the North-East; Tyne Tees Television director of programmes Bill Lyon Shaw thought him a showbusiness natural.

He made his Tyne Tees debut on the station’s opening night, January 15, 1959 – singing Witchcraft – but it was on the live, five-days-a-week One O’Clock Show that George really made his name.

It ran to 1,098 shows, over five years. He missed just two.

“It was like painting the Forth Bridge,” he would recall. “The moment you finished one show you had to go off somewhere to start running through the next.”

They were television’s days of innocence, the young Romaines once accosted on the studio steps by a woman who demanded to know where they kept the horses.

“What horses?” said George.

“You know,” she said, “the ones they have on Wagon Train.”

Even in later life, he would be stopped by people who’d ask if he he’d once been George Romaines. Yes, he’d agree, he probably had.

He was born in Shildon, remained there throughout his life, failed a voice test for Durham Chorister School and was educated at Timothy Hackworth juniors. William Richardson Romaines, his father who died when he was 13, played cricket for Durham County against the Australians, a sporting passion inherited by George and by his sons, Paul, Mark and Simon.

He’d also been a footballer with Grimsby Town, played against the great Tommy Lawton for the reserves – “I can distinctly remember him going past me lots of times” – but returned to Shildon as a 12/9d a week apprentice. “My mam thought the wagon works was steadier employment,”

said George. “In those days she was right.”

As a cricketer with Shildon British Railways, he played alongside Durham and Northumberland man Jack Watson, who died last Saturday.

They remained friends.

George was already singing professionally – “£12 a night between races at Spennymoor dogs” – when spotted at a seaside talent show and invited to join the fledgling ITV station in Newcastle.

Bosses insisted he simply become George Romaine – he never understood why – and that he wear a toupee. George hated the hairpiece, in the habit of pulling it on a dog lead along the studio corridors.

The show also made household names of singers like Chris Langford, Ethna Campbell and David Macbeth – who had a top 20 hit while still selling Andrews Liver Salts – and entertainers like Austin Steele and Terry O’Neill.

Steele and O’Neill did a comedy caveman routine called Ug and Og, in which George once joined as an ancient Briton.

The viewer who spotted that he’d forgotten to remove his wrist watch won two guineas from the listings magazine.

Modestly, George insisted on giving much of the credit for his success to Tyne Tees Television’s musical director Billy Hutchinson – “the only genius I ever met.”

When time was called on the One O’Clock Show in 1964, George turned down the chance to front the Ted Heath Band, hosted Glamour Trail – which became more popular than Coronation Street – and became a public relations executive with Tyne Tees. Asked the difference between a public relations officer and a public relations executive, he supposed it about £12,000 a year.

After 20 more years in television, he became fund raising director for the Teesside Hospice and retired, contentedly, with his wife Freda. She died last year.

An enthusiastic custodian of a large garden, he was also president of Bishop Auckland Cricket Club – “a great honour, like a year at the Palladium,”

he once said. His sons commissioned a limited edition biography, written by former colleague David Dawson, to mark his 80th birthday.

Though his singing voice had been affected by a slight stroke – “I couldn’t sing my way out of a wet paper bag” – he remained a wonderful raconteur, a true gentleman and a loyal and unassuming friend.

On just one occasion, six years ago, he’d been persuaded to sing at a friend’s funeral.

It was Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye. Details of George’s funeral have not yet been finalised.