Colin Milburn, a gust of North-East fresh air

He was a wonderful cricketer, a delightful and wholly unassuming man and a roistering raconteur. There was more side on a middle stump.

If his death were tragically premature, the location was almost appropriate. The man that John Arlott termed a great gust of North-East fresh air died from the booze.

Comparisons with another international sports star born a few miles closer to Newcastle are hopelessly, helplessly inevitable.

Milburn, 18 stones of unreconstructed and unremitting affability, also answered to Ollie after the big one in Laurel and Hardy.

It sure as apples wasn’t the other one.

“He suffered from very high blood pressure but, of course, that was the drink,”

says his friend Allan Edgar, former landlord of the North Briton in Aycliffe Village, where Ollie had been staying. “Everyone begged him to get help and on the morning that he died, he’d finally agreed that he would.

“Everyone knew him as a lovely man, and he truly was, but he was also a very lonely man. When the cricket season ended he had nothing to do. He got a few speaking engagements but half of the time he didn’t turn up because he was drunk. It’s a pity that Durham couldn’t have used him more as an ambassador. You can’t help but think of Gazza.”

Milburn would spend up to two weeks at a time at the North Brit. “His mum was a staunch Methodist so he’d try to stay sober for two or three days before he went back to Burnopfield but it never really worked,” says Allan.

“The lads would try to give him a bit of a change by taking him round the village pubs. You look back and think it can’t really have helped.”

Said by Arlott to have been the best liked cricketer of modern times, he had played just nine tests – averaging 46.71 – when on May 23 1969 his car was in collision with an articulated lorry in Northamptonshire.

Windscreen impact cost Ollie lost his left eye and damaged the right; his characteristically positive response even making the minutes of the hospital management committee.

“Colin endeared himself to all who looked after him,” it was recorded. “His infectious good humour and indomitable spirit boosted morale throughout the hospital.”

Jack, his father – known also as the Burnopfield Basher – had been a Tyneside Senior League professional. Colin was 13 when he made his Durham Senior League debut for Chester-le-Street, once carrying his bat for 156 against Horden.

At 18 he made his only Durham County appearance, 101 against the touring Indians, before signing for Northampton because they offered ten shillings a week more than Warwickshire. He may best be remembered for hitting the great Wes Hall out of Lord’s.

Four years after his accident he attempted a comeback, scored just one half century in 35 attempts, retired with a first class batting average still at 33.07, with 99 wickets and 226 catches.

The Basher coached everywhere from Billy Butlin’s to Baliol College, did stints on Test Match Special, was welcomed wherever he went. He’d always liked his food and drink but now there was a real problem. The oneeyed man was no longer king.

“English cricket,” wrote the late Bill Frindall, “could ill afford to lose its most entertaining character.”

AYCLIFFE Village, where the Basher died, is just off the A1 near Darlington, 25 miles from his north Durham home. It was breakfast time on Wednesday, February 28, 1990 and they’d just arranged a car to take him home to his mum’s.

“He’d been unwell for a long time but on the morning he died he had to come downstairs on his backside,” Allan recalls.

He’d become a familiar figure in the pub, smashing bloke, life and soul, stories flowing like Samson bitter – or increasingly what Ollie called Georgie Best, a large vodka and Coke, after one of his drinking mates.

Frequently he’d give them a song, too. His favourite was the Green Green Grass of Home.

A favourite story was of the time, sunbathing in Barbados, that he was kicked in the back by a feller wearing ski boots and a duffle coat. It was Oliver Reed, the hell-raising actor.

“Come for a drink, I only have three days,” said Reed.

They filled the 72 hours.

Sometimes he’d wander down for a drink in his boxer shorts, sometimes late at night he might even remove his glass eye and slip it in someone else’s pint. “It got to the point where he didn’t really understand what he was doing, or appreciate that he’d become an embarrassment,” says Allan.

“Colin was never content with just a couple. Once he’d had a few he was his own man, that was it. No one could help him then.”

Many other sports stars, including former England cricket captains Ian Botham and Colin Cowdrey, were at his funeral back in Burnopfield. Mike Summerbee, the ex-England footballer, told Ollie’s mum Bertha that he’d probably look in for a cup of tea.

Bertha eyed him cautiously. “And that’s the strongest you’ll get in my house,” she said.

Allan Edgar also recalls a NatWest Cup match when Durham played at Darlington. “I turned Colin out as smart as a carrot, ironed his shirt, buffed up his best blazer, got him a taxi. I went down at tea time and it was like he’d been dragged through a hedge.

He must have spent almost all day in the beer tent.

“He always said that he’d try to take it easier, but he never really managed. Colin was a tremendous man, still terribly missed. You just wish he’d had help sooner.”

EVERY bit as amiable and as hospitable, Allan Edgar was a cricketer, too, kept wicket for Bishop Auckland and for the Durham Constabulary team when he was a polliss in the 1970s. After four years as steward of Bishop Auckland cricket club, he took over the North Brit – one of those landlords seemingly no longer licensed, the sort who knew everyone, had time for everyone and quietly would help anyone, too.

Now 65, geniality undiminished but not getting away over clever – as probably they say back north of the Tees – he runs The Honest Lawyer, a terrific real ale bar in Scunthorpe. For those who suppose the name an oxymoron, the restaurant upstairs is called The Gallows.

Still he pulls from beneath the bar his photographs of the police team – familiar names like Ray Clish, Harry Mordue and Joe Cushlow – still tells without mush persuasion his favourite North Brit joke about the crow that gets stuck in new tarmac.

Suffice that the punchline is “You don’t need a Porsche to pull the birds, just to be hung like a donkey.” It’s the way he tells them.

It’s sunny Scunny, too, though a cold-steel town last Friday – ironically the day on which Teesside steel making ceased. Mick Fell, a leading steel union official, is having a lunchtime pint after a week in London.

“It’s tragic,” he says. “After the Guardian, the first paper I read on-line every morning is The Northern Echo, just to keep up with all that’s happened there.”

Allan’s eager to catch up, too, to hear of old friends, to remember Ollie. “Twenty years and it still seems like yesterday,” he muses. “Colin was just a total one-off, a lovely man. How could you ever forget him?”

And finally...

THE North-East village from which three post-war Sunderland managers have hailed (Backtrack, February 20) is Corbridge. The gentlemen in question are Allan Brown, Mick Buxton and Steve Bruce.

Brian Shaw today invites readers to name the Football League ground which has staged both an FA Cup final and a cricket test match.

More quarter-final thoughts than anything else – it’s Shildon’s big day – the column returns on Saturday.