TV spotlight on Teesside's Transporter Bridge
August 30, 2001
Teesside's Transporter Bridge is to be closed to prepare the historic landmark for its latest taste of stardom!
Middlesbrough will be the backdrop to part of the new series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet! and the bridge will close temporarily to enable a BBC film crew to capture the area on film.
Filming begins in September and will mark the programme's return to its true roots. Despite a strong Geordie presence on the small screen, Teesside inspired the storyline. It was created by Teesside-born Franc Roddam and based on local characters he knew.
Beach crowds share
dolphin magic
August 30, 2001
Astonished onlookers watched in amazement yesterday as around a dozen dolphins frolicked in the sea at Saltburn, just yards from the pier.
The dolphins, likely to be the same ones seen at Seaburn earlier in the week, were first spotted off Redcar as they made their journey south.
Gary Rogers of Saltburn Surf Shop said he had never seen anything like it in his 18 years on the beachfront. The dolphins were putting on displays, leaping 10ft out of the water.
He said it was a magical day which he was never likely to forget.
Around 25 lucky surfers paddled out to get a closer view of the dolphins.
Redcar and Cleveland beach supervisor Jim Beckett said: 'The last time I saw anything like this was in Australia.'
Gardener plots world record bid
August 29, 2001
A County Durham leek grower has come close to breaking the world record - with a pair of leeks 4ft high. John Hayton's bench leeks towered above the competition at the Middlestone Moor Leek and Flower Show, but at 309 cubic inches they were still 15 cubic inches off the world record. Mr Hayton, 62, will go for the record again this coming weekend. He thinks he may have some even bigger leeks to show at a festival in his home village of Kirk Merrington.
August 28, 2001
Durham Cathedral has been voted Britain's best-loved building. The magnificent Norman structure won more than half the 15,819 votes in a survey for BBC Radio 4. The second most popular building was the Eden Project in Cornwall. Buckingham Palace featured in the list of most disliked buildings. Durham Cathedral and Castle are now a designated World Heritage site. A campaign spearheaded by the Northumbrian Association wants the priceless Lindisfarne Gospels manuscript moved from its present home in the British Library to Durham Cathedral, which campaigners say is its rightful home.
August 28, 2001
Teacher shortages are at their worst level for three decades, according to the chief inspector of schools in England. The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) says 40per cent of teachers are leaving the profession before completing three years in the classroom because their salaries offered them little hope of getting on the property ladder.
Australian council
keeps Cook symbol
August 22, 2001
Civic leaders in an area of Sydney have voted to keep Whitby's Captain Cook as its official emblem following speculation that he was to be dumped in favour of a dancing dolphin.
Sutherland Shire Council was seeking to change its official Cook logo because he was deemed dated and offensive to Aborigines. The council covers Botany Bay where Cook arrived in 1770 and claimed the territory for Britain. Now it has abandoned its plans following a three hour debate infront of a public gallery packed with people carrying pro-Cook banners.
Officials at the Captain Cook Museum in Grape Lane, Whitby, have been following the Australian proceedings with great interest. A spokesman said it appeared to have been 'political correctness gone too far'.
Curator Mick Green said the visitor book contained messages of respect for Captain Cook from scores of Australian visitors, including Aborigines.
Thousands without power as storms bring down major cable
August 21, 2001
Thousands of homes in North Yorkshire are without power today after a high voltage electricity cable fell into a field near Boroughbridge.
Power to the cable has been switched off. Power company NEDL has speculated that the weekend storms may have been the cause.
A lightning strike left hundreds of Stockton homes without power over the weekend. Witnesses described a huge explosion followed by a fireball when the thunderbolt hit the Fairfield electricity sub-station. NEDL said the strike was highly unusual. The supply was knocked off immediately and work started to transfer customers to other supplies.
Meanwhile, a lifeboat had to make an early exit from an RNLI open day after reports were received of red flares being fired off Coatham Bay.
Redcar's lifeboat Leicester Challenge had been one of the attractions at Teesmouth Lifeboat Station's annual open day. It left the event after receiving the call at 3pm. A search was carried out but no people or vessels were found.
Twenty minutes later the lifeboat was in action again after four divers were caught in a thunderstorm off the shore of Redcar Esplanade. The torrential rain and strong winds had made the divers' boat jack-knife and it was filling with water.
August 21, 2001
A County Durham war hero who faced a pauper's funeral has instead been laid to rest with full military honours.
An appeal fund was set up to pay for the funeral of Robert Bell, who was awarded the Military Medal for storming a German stronghold in World War Two.
Mr Bell, 86, had no living relatives and very little savings when he died at the Beamish Residential Home in West Pelton. He had served as a private in the Royal Scots in North Africa and then Italy. At the age of 29, Pte Bell was honoured for his role in an attack on the formidably-defended Vincigliata Castle near Florence in Italy.
There were pipers at Mr Bell's funeral in Chester-le-Street cemetery on Monday. A serving major from the Royal Scots attended the service, and his coffin was draped in the Union Flag as a bugler played The Last Post.
August 16, 2001
North-East showbiz stars have been urged to throw their weight behind a campaign to save Newcastle's historic Odeon cinema.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has taken away listed status from the art deco American-style cinema which opened as the Paramount in 1931.
Experts rate the cinema as the best of its type in Britain, if not Europe. But property developers have shown an interest in the Odeon city centre block and now there are fears that the de-listing will lead to demolition of the cinema.
Northumberland and Newcastle Society has sent letters seeking support to the likes of Jimmy Nail, Robson Green, Ridley Scott, Rowan Atkinson, John Miles, Mark Knopfler, Bryan Ferry and Sting.
Campaigners say demolition would be a loss to the history of motion pictures in Britain and to the social history of Newcastle.
August 16, 2001
Production at Nissan's Washington plant has been slashed by more than ten per cent to just over 300,000 cars a year after a slump in sales.
New shift patterns will be introduced at the company's flagship site in a bid to avoid redundancies among its workforce of 4,500.
The reversal in fortune comes less than two months after Nissan chiefs revealed the Washington factory was the most productive in Europe for the fifth year running. The company has suffered poor sales in Europe as a result of the strong pound.
August 14, 2001
Accident investigators are still looking into the blast at a Teesside power station last week in which three men were killed.
The area at the plant at Wilton near Grangetown remains sealed off so that the Health and Safety Executive and operator Enron can continue their separate investigations. It is not yet known the plant will return to normal operation.
Andrew Sherwood, 36, from Hartlepool, Darren Higgins, 28, of Normanby, Middlesbrough, and Lawrence Surtees, 40, of Hawthorn, County Durham, were killed by the explosion last Wednesday. Blast survivor Graham White, 37, of Billingham, is steadily recovering in hospital. The cause of the blast remains unknown.
Lecturer guilty of village hate campaign
August 14, 2001
A retired Open University lecturer has been found guilty of running a 12-year poison pen letter campaign in the tiny village of Manfield near Darlington.
Dr James Forster, 68, sent a barrage of obscene letters to residents between 1987 and 1999. Teesside Crown Court heard how he threatened to put a bomb down the chimney at the home of a frail pensioner; sent pornography to a 13-year-old girl and accused his young next-door neighbour of being a prostitute.
After an eight-day trial, a jury took four-and-a-quarter hours to find him guilty of three counts of threatening to destroy property, three of sending indecent mail, and one of incitement to commit burglary. He was cleared of three charges of damaging neighbours' property.
Judge David Bryant adjourned sentencing and bailed Forster while psychiatric and pre-sentence reports are carried out. He also ordered health assessments to be carried out on Forster and his sick wife Elizabeth.
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