NORTHERN ECHO 2001

Does any one remember this, or know who may have written it?

THE Ghoul - in Darlington pronounced as in "fool" and in Hartlepool rhyming with "foul" - was reckoned the Masked Monster of the Mat.

"The most sensational wrestler of all time," proclaimed the post-war posters, not least (presumably) because of his fearsome guillotine garrotte - or rabbit punch, as in these parts it is known.

We'd written of old Ghouly in 1995, recalling the bout with Ernest Baldwin at the Farrer Street stadium in Middlesbrough when - having been left for dead by the guillotine garrotte - Baldwin was miraculously reinvigorated by the same blow. It was a classic example of what maks yer bad'll mak yer better.

That piece also stirred memories of how Hartlepool's tricoteuses would sit at ringside in the Engineers' Club whilst the guillotine was lowered and then - too late - throw balls of knitting wool at the egregious executioner.

Familiar legend had it that the Ghoul remained masked because he'd suffered horrific burns as a child, though the cognoscenti knew that he was really a good looking chap called John Bates from Manchester and that you couldn't hope to meet a nicer feller.

We again mention the Ghoul on the bill because of a remarkable doorstep delivery from Ian Luck in Gainford. Browsing at a fire station sale in Darlington - in aid of the New York disaster fund - he came upon a vast cornucopia of wrestling magazines, programmes and photographs from around 1950, and suggests we give them to a good home.

Maybe we will, but should any freestyle philanthropist care to make an offer - there must be 100 Mat magazines alone - the money will also go to the appeal.

The programmes are all from St James's Hall in Newcastle - Abdul the Turk, Legs Langevin, Kwango (who may have had it easy), lugubrious Les Kellett and even Tiger Woods, who played the saxophone when not putting the wind up elsewhere and might still have been a couple of bob behind his later namesake.

Mighty Ted Beresford, alas, had been obliged to spend several months hors d'combat after being bitten by a fish.

There was Hassan Ali Bey, reckoned the world's strongest man and photographed doing his Tommy Cooper impression, Ali Baba (sans thieves), the masked Bert Royal ("causes a certain amount of consternation") and Gypsy Benito, who may or may not have got lucky.

They were joined on the mat, if not the carpet, by North-East wrestlers like Norman Walsh, a former river policeman from Middlesbrough; Ron Johnson, an Easington council foreman who opened an off-licence in Hartlepool, and Alf Rawlings from Stockton, who appeared to have a particular thing about the Ghoul.

The masked man, a programme noted, had offered not to use the guillotine garrotte if Rawlings would kindly refrain from his death lock.

Dave Armstrong from Northumberland, the first man to wrestle in contact lenses, was known as the Choppington Chicken - not, probably, for reasons of cowardice - and should not have been confused with Larry "Whiskers" Laycock, an ex-Marine who kept a chicken farm in Darlington.

All right then, whatever happened to Larry "Whiskers" Laycock?

It's Mat magazine which offers the greatest ringside entertainment, however, both in its almost hysterical defence of the "sport" - "leading journalists use wrestling as a whipping boy on every possible occasion" - and in the unexpected nature of some of the features. They included "Famous frogmen of yesterday", "Do carrots wrestle?", "The curse of indigestion" and "Masturbation: can it be cured?"

"The answer," concluded Mat magazine prudently, "is yes and no."

It cost a shilling, rose to 1/6d, incorporated Rugby League Record "and other sports" and fought to the end - two falls, two submissions or a knock-out - to legitimise wrestling's iffy image.

"There isn't much you can say to those human parrots who go around exclaiming 'It's a fake', for we feel that they are under a psychological handicap that places them beyond means of reasonable argument."

It died, probably, when ITV pulled the Saturday afternoon plug. As the Guillotine Garrotter might ultimately have observed, it was the cruelest cut of all.