NO one holds dinners any more, they hold gala dinners. Until last week, a gala dinner was a dinner with balloons (and, quite, likely, hot air).

The do to mark the golden jubilee of Northern Cross, the monthly newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, spectacularly prickedsuch inflated ideas.

It was brilliant, vibrant and exuberant and it was memorable most of all for the 9pm arrival of the Rt Rev Kevin Dunn, the bishop.

The Lancastrian suite at the Dunston brewery stood to applaud the episcopal entrance. The music machine played Wild Thing, by the Troggs. "It's different," said a beaming Bishop Kevin, thereafter posing with Bishop Ambrose Griffiths, his retired predecessor, in purple pointed party hat.

Bishop Ambrose, 78 next week, is now a curate in Leyland, where his ministry began, and thus may have nothing to do with a van belonging to "Ambrose Griffiths, chimney sweep" which once we saw on holiday.

"I wish you'd had a camera," he said.

Northern Cross began in January 1956, the age (we were reminded) of Muffin the Mule, the invention of video tape and of an Astronomer Royal who thought the prospect of space travel "utter bilge".

Terry Wynn, its first editor, was northern man for the long-dead Daily Sketch and in true journalistic tradition held the inaugural meeting in the pub round the corner from the office in Marlborough Crescent, Newcastle.

Newcastle United star Frank Brennan, who contributed a sports column - "I owe it all to Father Dooley" - did his ghosted interviews in a city centre pub, too.

The paper had been the idea of Bishop Joseph McCormack, who believed that the national Catholic press ill served the North-East, though there were still times when journalists and diocesan authority managed to be at what might best be called Cross purposes.

Back north for the knees up, Terry recalled how Bishop McCormack had once ordered publication to cease immediately, changing his mind 24 hours later when the Daily Mirror mysteriously got hold of the story.

On another occasion, a parish priest had burned his church's allocation on the presbytery lawn, after deciding that the letters column wasn't to his Catholic taste.

Terry had been editor for three years. "I'm a bit like John the Baptist, here to proclaim the greatness of those that follow me," he said - and chiefly meant John Bailey, editor for the past 25 years.

John, Hartlepool based, may be Britain's most self-effacing journalist and is without doubt among the most dedicated. He almost never allows his picture in the paper, by-lines himself only as "The Editor", not only declined to sit at the top table with the bishops and bods but would probably have hidden in the broom cupboard had he been able to get away with it.

It was a bit like the Parable of the Wedding Feast, except that the editor extraordinary had no aspiration to go higher.

None doubts the excellence of the paper produced under his leadership. Bishop Kevin thought it the best in the country, Bishop Ambrose said it had led the field since day one.

"It has no rival in any other diocese in England and Wales," wrote the Rt Rev Hugh Lindsay, 79, the bishop before that.

The music machine played A White Sports Coat and Seven Little Girls and Pickin' the Chicken, all a bit reminiscent of Two Way Family Favourites. A 60s band called Midnight Shift upped the beat still further.

The company caroused, Cross infectious; the paper, rejoicing, put rather late to bed.

PRICED threepence, Northern Cross made its debut in January 1956. Then, as now, it was the Russians who were furrowing brows, yet another Red alert.

Sign of the times, if not of the Cross, the front page story concerned the Eden government's invitation to Bulganin and Kruschev to visit Britain in April that year - "criminal folly," said Fr Paul Crane, secretary of the Catholic Social Guild.

"It mistakes a change of face on the enemy's part for a change of heart for which there is no evidence," added Fr Crane.

"An England cheering tyrants through the streets is not a country in which any longer some of us would wish to live - for the day she does that, the England we love will have died."

There had also been much excitement, not least in the national dailies, about the "weeping Madonna of Walker", a suburb of Newcastle. The 11-inch statue had apparently been crying of and on for 36 hours, but only through a partially opened left eye.

Northern Cross sent someone from Kings College, Newcastle. He may have wept buckets but the Madonna, he concluded, definitely didn't.

There was a report that ten non-Catholics were taking instruction after a course at St Augustine's in Darlington, news of a wedding in Willington celebrated by Fr F E Crilley - not Father Ted, surely? - "Fashion tips for Leap Year" and a first children's column from Auntie Rosaleen.

"I went for a ride on a lovely new train called a diesel train," she enthused. "It looks rather like an electric train, only much nicer."

Bishop McCormack wrote of "strengthening the sturdy faith of our north land" and of a long and useful life. Half a century later, the Cross road still leads ahead.

EVER ecumenical, we turned out the following evening officially to switch on the Christmas tree festival at Bishop Auckland Methodist church, another thoroughly enjoyable occasion.

There was only one hymn; inevitably it was Shine Jesus Shine.

Forty local organisations and businesses had sponsored and decorated a tree, everyone from the funeral director to the decorator, whose three crossed paint brushes formed a star attraction atop.

Mr Chittock, the grocer, hung little pots of jam, Tindale Crescent post office's tree was boughed down with National Savings leaflets, our old friend Peter Beedle - award winning fish and chip man - had had someone knit chips and sausages and even little tins of woolly mushy peas with which to salute the season.

Used by the wider community throughout the week, the church looked - and smelt - quite wonderful. It was also a chance to catch up with 87-year-old Lez Rawe, who after 54 years as an accredited local preacher - and 13 before that as a "helper" - had delivered his last sermon, at Etherley, the previous weekend.

Awarded the MBE two years ago - "A lot better than the NBG," he mused at the time - he was head of lower school at King James I school in the town, has beaten cancer of both liver and colon and played tennis until a couple of years ago.

He'll miss preaching, of course - "but they've probably heard enough of me by now."

AT the lonely Methodist chapel in Forest-in-Teesdale we get talking to 83-year-old Clarrie Beadle, still preaching after being on the Plan - as the Methodists have it - since 1947. "When folks used to ask me how I survived up here, I'd tell them that all you needed was a good wife and a good muffler," he said. "Fortunately I had both." Much more of him, and them, in the At Your Service column on Saturday.

... and finally in this ecclesiastical edition, a splendid story from St Cuthbert's church in Darlington - where the autumn fair raised £5,525.

They'd been given a 21-gear mountain bike, in bits, got someone to put it together again, invited sealed bids over £50.

Asked at the fair to make a bid, a couple explained that they lived in Stockport, were staying in Leyburn and were only in Darlington because the wife had forgotten her jeans - so they couldn't get a bike back, anyway.

Organiser Julie Johnson said she was going to a funeral in the Stockport area the following week; the subsequent £75 bid proved successful and the bike was duly delivered.

Next day the wife rang to say how pleased they were, and that the purchase had released two bikes from the house which would in turn be given to their own Christmas fair.

It's doubtless what's called recycling.