WHILE it fights to keep its Zurbarans, the Diocese of Durham still has its Olly Burtons. They may not, the artist modestly supposes, be quite as valuable.

Olly, retired former head of science at Ferryhill School, is now a volunteer guide at Durham Cathedral and for the past 15 years has been its unofficial artist and cartoonist.

His drawings include bishops directing Harry Potter films, preaching through a megaphone and stoking the boilers. Sales go towards the upkeep of what he reckons (with justification) the best cathedral on the planet.

The cartoons, he says, have been well received. “The acid test is when the subjects first see them, but I’ve not yet had any death threats.

“Some of the world’s other religions may be a bit humourless, but it doesn’t apply to the Church of England.

The cathedral is a very jolly place, we get a lot of laughs there.”

Now 74 – “in my head I’m still 21” – he has an exhibition of his work, cartoons and more serious stuff, at the McGuinness Gallery in Bishop Auckland Town Hall until December 24.

THE fight for the Zurbarans, for Auckland Castle and for other treasures of Durham’s ecclesiastical heritage has also been taken up by the Reverend David Youngson, a remarkable chap.

David’s been registered blind for getting on 25 years. It doesn’t prevent him from leading an active life or from seeing worrying developments.

“There is a great danger that what the Church in Durham stood for will be forgotten about and the castle sold off to an uncaring entrepreneur,” he writes to Ian Boothroyd, the diocesan secretary.

A former vicar of St John’s in Stockton and of Owton Manor, Hartlepool – the stress of Owton Manor accelerated his blindness, he believes – he now lives in Billingham.

He’s concerned not just about the Zurbarans but about the portraits of former bishops that hang in the Auckland Castle throne room and, among much else, the castle’s historic dining room table.

Particularly he recalls a meeting during the miners’ lock-out in the 1920s when the bishop invited coal owners and union leaders to a meeting around that table.

“The miners were gathered in the courtyard below and a union representative would go forward to the bow window to indicate each point of the discussion as it was agreed.

“What the miners didn’t know was that the final outcome was that they went back to work for 1/3d a week less.”

ANOTHER of the Church’s treasures, the Reverend Robert Williamson, vicar of St Cuthbert’s in Darlington, proves to be a dab hand at playing the saw.

“It’s just a wood cutting saw with a double bass bow. It sounds like a warbling lady, fairly high,” he says.

The vicar included a couple of numbers at a parish gathering the other night, not least that wellknown biblical hit Don’t Hide Your Light Under a Bushel.

It’s a skill, says Mr Williamson, that he learned at his father’s knee.

“He used to play the saw on the platform at the Royal Liverpool Philarmonic’s Christmas party every year.”

Mind, he adds, his dad still played Noel on the piano.

ALL of which offers the chance again to mention the organ concert this Saturday, at 7.30pm, by David Ratnanayagam, St Cuthbert’s director of music and organ scholar at Durham Cathedral.

The recital will include work by Bach, Walton and Mendelssohn.

Tickets are £10, £8 concessions, available on the door. Proceeds towards the organ restoration; details on 01325-460999. Mr Ratnanayagam claims no knowledge of saw playing.

The vicar, unfortunately, is unlikely to be offering accompaniment.

THAT other great musical highlight, the annual Coffee and Carols service at Newbiggin-in- Teesdale Methodist chapel, was postponed on Tuesday because of the snow – “you know how wick it gets up here,” says June Luckhirst, colloquially. It will now take pace next Tuesday, December 14, at 10.30am. The chapel’s the oldest in continuous use, the occasion wonderful, the last carol – special request – really is going to be Joy to the World. If the weather relents, there’ll be more of all that next week.