Song for Jong

Kim Jong is known as the "Dear Leader". The comment piece was headed "The Dear Leader's diva."

There'd probably be a Siberian dance troupe, a Chinese orchestra and Mongolese folk musicians. The Times called it "a surreal Cold War alternative to the Eurovision song contest" and was clearly so proud of the phrase that they repeated it in the leader.

For Ms Clarke, whose mother is a councillor in Redcar and who herself tried to win the Labour party nomination in Bishop Auckland, it will be a sixth annual unpaid visit to the politically isolated country where - as The Times points out - there have been two million deaths because of food shortage and where there are an estimated 200,000 political prisoners.

She addressed the improbable Korea move in the Echo last October. "You don't want to push them any further into a corner, because there's no more corner left. We have to find another way."

SHE travels with her mother, about whom North Korean television made a documentary - "My mother is bigger in North Korea than Kylie Minogue," Ms Clarke once said - and sometimes with the choir she formed among the lads at British Steel Redcar, where she had also worked after graduating from Teesside University.

Splendidly, ingeniously, they're known as the Heavy Metal Opera.

Last year they took guitars and accordions - "a gift of friendship". This year her performance before an audience of 2,000 will be broadcast to the rest of the 23 million population via the country's only television channel.

They love the lass. "She has been adopted," said The Times, "with the same enthusiasm as the Albanians, in the depths of their Communist isolation, took to Sir Norman Wisdom."

There'll be Verdi, Puccini and Bellini but the encore, she already knows, will be Danny Boy. "For some reason they absolutely adore it. I get a huge round of applause and a standing ovation every time.

"It's something of a national anthem over there. I just cannot work out why."

IT has been recorded by everyone from Cher to Charlotte Church and from Sinead O'Connor to Maureen O'Hara. It was sung at Elvis Presley's funeral, is Northern Ireland's anthem at the Commonwealth Games and was recited by Barney Gumble in The Simpsons when Moe's Tavern was closed down because of what euphemistically were termed "excessive health code violations".

Suzannah Clarke is said to have launched into a magnificent version while judging a Ready Steady Cook contest in Darlington covered market on St Patrick's Day 2006.

Yet Danny Boy, that great anthem of Ireland, was written by an English lawyer who never once set foot on the Emerald Isle.

Frederic Edward Weatherly (1849-1928) was a prolific writer, virtually a one-man song factory, whose other successes included The Holy City and Roses of Picardy. Written in 1910, Danny Boy was wholly unsung - as it were - until a relative in America sent him the tune of a traditional Irish melody called Londonderry Air. It was a marriage made in Hibernia.

In his autobiography, published in 1926, Weatherly expressed the hope that the song might be enjoyed by "Sinn Feinists and Ulstermen alike", and so it has proved.

Everyone knows the first verse, but try reading the second without a box of tissues to hand. The pipes call yet.

IT would be neither possible nor proper to acknowledge Frederick Weatherly without reference to Denis Weatherley, another great man of music and the column's headmaster back at Bishop Auckland Grammar School.

We'd bumped into him in Darlington in 1997, remarked how well he looked. "There are three ages of man," said Denis, ever wise, "youth, middle age and 'By God, you do look well'."

A few weeks later he died, aged 85, while singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot - "Singing his heart out," said the Echo's death notice - in a concert in Nottingham. They'd reached the line about coming for to carry me home.

Born in Ryhope, Sunderland, Denis was best known for his baritone but also wrote music reviews for The Northern Echo, presented a classical music programme on Radio Tees and was a familiar voice on Wotcheor Geordie, a once hugely popular programme on the Home Service.

His funeral, at St Cuthbert's in Darlington, was so immense, so magnificent and so moving that, without having intended it, we wrote an At Your Service column - "Not pageant of death but rich celebration of life."

He'd also been a judge, long ago, at the Over 65s singing contest organised by one of these columns at Evenwood Workmen's Club at which all present were reduced to tears by a frail, white-sticked old man from the King Willie in Shildon who tremulously sang The Holy City.

AMONG the events recalled at Denis's funeral was a 1950s Saturday evening at Kings Cross railway station. Dressed for a posh night out, putting on his toff hat, he was off to a concert with Malcolm Sargeant.

The essential Englishman, coat so theatrical it's a wonder it didn't win as Oscar, was approached by a group of exuberant - shall we say - Newcastle United supporters, perhaps looking for a little additional merriment.

"We've won the Cup," they chorused.

Denis eyed them from beneath his homburg. "Aye," he said, "ah knaa."

WHICH takes us back to Suzannah Clarke, and to the reason for her annual excursion to North Korea.

Back in 1966, when football clubs were still run by a man called the secretary and Ms Clarke wasn't even born, the diminutive North Korean side qualified for the World Cup finals, stayed at the Teesside Airport hotel and played their early matches at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough.

Perhaps because they appeared in the red and white of the Boro, perhaps simply, because they were the underdog, Teesside took them to its heart.

When they defeated the mighty Italy, it made global headlines - and a bit in the Echo, too. "The fall of the Roman Empire had nothing on this," we recorded. "Soccer never saw such a frenzy of kissing and hugging as marked the victory celebrations."

Five years ago, the seven surviving team members returned to the scene of their Little Big Time, Ayresome Park by then a housing estate.

Big Jack Charlton spoke at a sportsmen's dinner, heaven knows how much lost in the translation, Suzannah Clarke sang a "friendship" song. The Dear Leader's diva was on her way.

PETER Lax, indispensable then as now at Billingham Synthonia FC, tells how the club was asked to provide training facilities for the 1966 North Koreans at the then-ICI owned stadium - "It was made clear we should make a bit of a fuss of them."

The visitors, however, were unimpressed by the Northern League ground - they wanted to play across two humbler pitches, separated by a cricket square, out the back.

The square was sacrosanct, a diplomatic incident loomed. "No way," insisted George Morgan, a top ICI manager and chairman of the cricket section.

"There might be another bloody war if we don't," said Peter.

Peace prevailed. Goal posts were moved through 90 degrees, the sun's alignment carefully checked. The North Koreans held fung shui.

There's a Suzannah Clarke connection there, too. Her great grandfather was the last official rat catcher at ICI Billingham. Not many people know that, either.

AFTER all that Danny Boy's Own, the Sunday Times last weekend carried a profile of Danny Boyle, a successful film director and things. Save for the fact that he supports Bury FC, who doubtless play Darlington and Hartlepool, we have been wholly unable to find a regional connection.

Nor, alas, is there room to return to cowping the creels and other North-East phrases explored in recent weeks. A over T as always, more of that next week.

www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/ columnists/feature/gadfly