Getting wind of a strange event

It includes Artizani - "an act featuring a lifeboat adrift on the streets" - Trash ("a junk music performance") and, get this, Dr Southall and his Victorian Flatulator.

Whatever can it mean? To what are the sensitive folk of Darlington being exposed? Is the wind really to blow Southally?

The original Victorian flatulator, of course, was the celebrated Frenchman Joseph Pugol, known professionally as Le Petomane and - more vulgarly - as a fartiste.

A baker by trade, Pugol was said to make the best bran muffins in Marseilles but still to find life strangely unfulfilling. From 1887-1914 he took to the stage, an instant sensation who bent over backwards - forwards, anyway - to amuse his audience.

The guy was prodigious, ending his act by smoking a cigarette down (shall we say) to the butt end and by rendering popular tunes, like O Sole Mio.

Though purists complained that some of his melodies weren't true, perhaps giving rise to the phrase about bum notes, the king of Belgium was said to have snuck into France simply to get a whiff of it all.

Le Petomane not only drew bigger audiences to the Moulin Rouge than the celebrated Sarah Bernhardt but, on 20,000 francs a week, earned more than twice what the actress did.

Was Dr Southall about to offer such bottom-line entertainment - al fresco, an' all - in Darlington Market Place?

We asked Keith Edwards, the council's arts development officer. "The simple answer is that I don't know," said Keith, because the matter was being handled by his colleague Marion Bynoe, on the next desk.

Clearly Kevin knew his stuff, however, recalling that the final third of Salvador Dali's autobiography was a self-contained book called The Art of Farting ("It's not very good") and that Leonardo da Vinci once said that people were just machines designed for making crap. "I think that's a bit cynical," said Kevin.

Since Ms Bynoe hadn't returned the call as promised, we resorted to the Internet - which offered details of other one-man shows like Thom Sellectomy ("Swallows swords, runs a drill up his nose, and more"), Rudolf Nakabalakov and the Half Naked Chef.

Finally there was Dr Southall's Victorian flatulator - "inspired by the drawing of William Heath Robinson, the engineering of Robert Louis Stevenson and a bump on his head in childhood".

The flatulator, added the website, "has an unprecedented ability to produce vast amounts of flammable gas", which sounded a bit like old Pugol without the Parisian accent but looked more like a pre-war ice cream cart.

Clearly Dr Southall had impressed Leicester City Council, anyway. "What an all-rounder," wrote the events officer. "He even unlocked a car with his sword for a gymnastics team who'd left their keys in it."

Ms Bynoe, alas, still hasn't returned the call. Like the Victorian flatulator, she may simply have the wind up.

EVEN before Dr Southall blows into town, Darlington Market Place had made the letters page of the Daily Mail.

A lady from Aycliffe Village - "I'm no snob, but..." - had eaten outside in the sunshine and been aghast at the plastic glasses, the paper plates, the dustbin chained to the wall and "the two very intoxicated men who'd obviously started their day with a breakfast of alcohol."

Café cultured, we checked it out on Tuesday - burger, chips and a pint of Magnet outside the Hole in the Wall. The café next door has long been boarded up, the bistro next door to that has closed, too.

Few were about, even fewer outside.

Nothing much happened, save that a fat woman brayed her bairn's backside - braying the bairn's backside is almost Darlington's national sport - and that a hungry wasp hovered the moment that lunch appeared.

Then Mr Frederick Stehr, long-time owner of Crombie's Café around the corner, strode up, eyed the plate and declared that the place was so quiet because the council talked of Darlington being a market town but watched impassively as the markets died inexorably. "I don't want to go on about the council," said Frederick, and for the next ten minutes he went on anyway.

Lunch was cold by the time he moved on, the wasp probably having eaten more than I had. The inside story next time.

Return of the rural godfather

THE Rev Malcolm Stonestreet, said in a long gone column to resemble a cross between Tom Jones and Len Fairclough, returns on Sunday to the pulpit where he spent 15 unforgettable years.

Now retired, Malcolm was vicar of Askrigg, in Wensleydale, from 1967-82 - instrumental in reviving the village and in forming the Askrigg Foundation, which offered jobs to locals (some making Wombles on sub-contract) and bunkhouse beds to visitors.

The Northern Echo tended to describe him as "dynamic", the Daily Mail as "a rural godfather in the nicest sense".

"It's no use going on about all sorts of holy stuff if people can't afford to live here," he said.

Awarded the MBE two years ago and now living in Cumbria, Malcolm hopes for a reunion of the Foundation trustees and to see any old friends.

"A lot of the things I've done in my life have been a complete and utter cock-up, but Askrigg seemed to work," he says.

"I even enjoyed the photograph of the trustees, with a cow, signing the deed - but for the bucket of cow muck right behind me."

He's back at St Oswald's, Askrigg at 10am on Sunday. The At Your Service column will be up there, too.

CHRONICLING a day trip to Paignton, our last column also carried photographs purporting to show the Virgin train arriving both in Chester-le-Street and in Paignton.

How, ask both Keith Nicholson in West Boldon and Ian Hawley in Crook, could we get a snap of the train arriving in Devon whilst still a passenger on it?

That's the thing about this column, ahead of itself as usual.

Phil Saywood in the west country read the account on the Internet and is tempted to make the return journey. For Denis Towlard in Thornaby, it recalled pre-war holidays in Paignton when several American ships - "those high masted battleships they used to have" - would be anchored in the harbour.

"The local boatmen would offer trips to the US for half a crown," recalls Denis. "It seemed to work every time."

PAIGNTON by Numbers - as, shamelessly, the account was headed - also light heartedly recalled the occasion, mid 1970s, when we'd been asked to open Mickleton carnival, in Teesdale.

They'd really wanted Mike Neville. Mike Neville was £50, said the chairman; Mike Amos was nowt.

Twelve days ago, the morning we went on holiday, a "desperate" e-mail arrived on behalf of the villagers who'd developed a new community area at High Grange, a dot of a place between Bishop Auckland and Crook.

The official opening was the following week, last Saturday, but everyone really well known had demanded fees way beyond their tight-stringed purse.

Sadly, we weren't able to make it, either - but truly there's nothing new under the sun.

WE holidayed near Carew, in Pembrokeshire, a splendid little place with a magnificent, originally 12th century castle and little obviously in common with Seaton Carew, the rather more prosaic seaside village near Hartlepool.

"Carew" is apparently Welsh for "fort on a little hill". Gerald de Windsor, the castle's first occupant, took both the name Carew and the lovely Princess Nest, but not before she'd been Henry I's mistress and had a son by him. (These royals...)

Nest was so beautiful, it's said, that she was in turn hijacked by Owain ap Cadwgan, only for Gerald to pinch her back again and Owain to meet a bloody comeuppance. While Carew may be a bit bonnier than its east coast namesake, both give a home to Sites of Special Scientific Interest - Seaton Carew's dunes to rare flora, Carew castle to bats in the battlements.

We've not been able to trace Seaton Carew's etymology. Could they be related?

...and finally, Dick Fawcett in Redcar reports the sudden passing of Jim Wright - "musician extraordinaire".

Jim, says his mate, had an unquenchable love of jazz and blues, played the guitar with passion and unique style, should years ago have turned professional but somehow never got round to it.

Though he sought out songs that were beyond his range - "To hear his rendition of Tarzan and Jane, not to mention the monkey, was an absolute joy" - it never deterred him.

Saltburn-based singer and songwriter Martin Nesbitt had three years ago composed a tribute to him:

He's a legend in his lifetime, king of the jazz chord riff

What many say about Jim Wright is "If only, and what if...."

Dick, hoping to stage a memorial night at Redcar RAFA club on July 29, was talking at the wake to Martin, who recalled that in his early days he'd become embarrassed when songs didn't go down well.

Jim, whose high notes were often strictly metaphorical, offered sound advice: "There's no point in just being half an idiot."

After that, says Dick, Martin Nesbitt never looked back.