Privy counsel

A CHAIN reaction, the pun almost inevitable, last week's note wondering why outside netties had a crescent-shaped hole in the door has attracted considerable response. Privy counsel, as it were.

We've been pointed towards the Outhouse Preservation Society, to its Wall of Fame and buy-a-brick schemes, to the Outhouse Museum - all in Liverpool, Nova Scotia - and to a book fundamentally entitled The Toilet Papers.

There are outhouse fridge magnets, outhouse postcards, even "exclusive"

outhouse ornaments ($11.95) using Chinese reverse painting (whatever that may be).

"Dare I suggest that the crescentshaped vents were indicative of mooning, but not quite the full version," writes Roger Dent from Dalton-on-Tees, near Darlington.

Much the most helpful contribution, however, comes from Dave Nicholson, a volunteer at the wonderful Lions' Bookshop in Darlington - great bargains, limited opening, yon end of Houndgate Mews. Dave sends a slim volume, written by Charles Sale in 1929.

Sale was a vaudeville artist, mostly playing hicks - bumpkins - until he penned The Specialist, about a carpenter from his home town in Illinois who built nothing but netties. That the illustrations are by William Kermode may be considered homophonic happenstance.

The book became a massive bestseller.

Dave Nicholson's 39th edition, published in 1959, is said to have taken it to 553,000.

Though Sale died in 1936, it's now sold a million and is still available - up to $15 - on the internet.

At one stage, Sale - known as Chic, perhaps not as in Chic-Lit - was receiving so much fan mail that he had to take six months off the stage in order to answer it.

Dave Nicholson is especially keen to underline page 20, about ventilation. "I can give you stars, diamonds or crescents - there aint much choice - all give good service.

"A lot of people like stars because they throw a ragged shadder. Others like crescents because they're graceful and simple this year people are runnin' more to crescents."

Sale died in 1936, a sadly unhappy man - euphemists across the United States had begun to refer to their outhouses as the Charles Sale, perhaps as is "Sale now on".

"It is a terrible thing to have happened,"

said the inadvertently eponymous author - and equally it's amazing, the things upon which Gadfly readers can wax lyrical.

ALL this mucking about also leads us to the Reverend Henry Moule, a 19th century Dorset vicar whom history describes as "the champion of the earth closet". Moule, who patented his device, thought the by-product "manure for the millions", swore that a neighbour's swedes grew by a third after thus being treated and was endorsed by The Lancet. Even Queen Victoria was said to have had one (though not, of course, to have used it). The Rt Rev Handley Moule was Bishop of Durham from 1901-20. Could he have been yet more distinguished, son of the earth closet champion, than anyone had supposed? ANOTHER literary treasure chest, retired art teacher John Todd makes contact following recent references to the Mekon and to The Eagle, the 1950s boys' comic in which the greeneyed monster threatened intergalactic mayhem.

Though John was born in 1946, and thus a bit too young to be reading the Eagle - or very much else - when it first appeared three-and-a-half years later, his dad collected the first year's set for him.

He was nine when introduced to it, at once so enthralled that he told the cub mistress back in Easington that he felt poorly and would have to go home.

"I just wanted to learn more. It was the first lie I remember telling," says John.

No less excited, the column headed for Barton, between Darlington and Scotch Corner, in order to buy him a pint and to catch up on some long-forgotten reading.

The Eagle became an instant highflyer, devised by the Reverend Marcus Morris as an intended antidote to the American horror comics popular after the war.

Morris also formed the Eagle Club - a shilling membership plus an extra tanner for the still-remembered gilt badge - with all sorts of rules of a self-improving nature.

An additional award acknowledged the good guys - dubbed MUGS and said to be the opposite of spivs. It was a curious connotation and never caught on.

The first two pages featured Dan Dare, subtitled "pilot of the future". John had forgotten, perhaps should have remembered, that he smoked a pipe.

Other strips included the story of St Paul, the ubiquitous PC49, Tommy Walls the Wonder Boy - sustained on a diet of eponymous ice cream and by the W-sign, not to be confused with the V-sign - and the maiden voyage of Captain Pugwash, "the story of a bad buccaneer and the many sticky ends which nearly befell him".

The Black Pig and the somnolent Mate made their debuts, too. Tom the Cabin Boy didn't. The pusillanimous pirate, added the script, also had a wife "who was far more terrifying than Pugwash (but good at mending socks)".

Other pages offered a mix of written stories and sports and hobbies sections, the sub-text morally rearming but not mortally wounding. Advert-based cartoons ranged from Ronnie the Rowntree's Gumster to the Three Mustardeers. They, of course, endorsed Colman's.

Golden Eagle, the comic became a soaring symbol of a brave new world - and all, as John Todd points out, for threepence.

SOME editions last Wednesday carried memories of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan - but not the story of the time that Supermac was introduced at a state banquet to the wife of French president Charles de Gaulle.

Former Times journalist Paul Wilkinson, now near Harrogate, insists it's true that, struggling for small talk, Macmillan asked Madame de Gaulle the one thing she'd want most when able to return to a normal life.

Madame de Gaulle replied wistfully: "A penis," she said.

The PM was only rescued from terminal embarrassment when one of de Gaulle's aides whispered in his ear. "I think she means appiness, Prime Minister."

INITIAL recent references to HORSA huts and to ROSLA - education, if not necessarily educational, acronyms - reminded Wendy Acres in Darlington of her speech on retirement from full-time teaching.

She was suffering, she said, from AIBS - Acronym Induced Burn-Out Syndrome.

"In the last few years there always seemed to be some new government initiative and always a wretched acronym to go with it," she says.

And now? "It just seems to have got worse."

...and finally, the column in earlier - and more mischievous - days owed much to Peter Jones, eminence rouge of Darlington's Conservatives and chairman of the Liquid Luncheon Club.

He became known as L/Cpl Jones, and bore his stripe uncomplainingly.

Word now arrives, via the panoply of banners and balloons outside the family mansion, that Jonesey was 65 last week. The old boy is to be wished many happy years ahead.

We attempt, meanwhile, to get our own outhouse in order. Gadfly returns next week.