I loved comics when I was young. The Dandy, Beano, Beezer, Scorcher and Score, Roy of the Rovers. Loved them all. Peter Hansen loved them too and started collecting them from the age of six. His collection grew so big he moved to Northumberland and stored them in a barn.
Now retired, he is moving to Canada and his amazing collection is being broken up and auctioned off.
Also today there’s a threat from Nissan, the cost of charity work, a Labour ‘comeback’ in Durham, how real is ‘illustrative’ reality, the profit and loss of a city’s park cafes, my son’s front page debut, and the remarkable endurance athlete from Newcastle who created a Guinness world record in the desert.
Nissan warning
Nissan has warned Government ministers that it could be forced to close its Sunderland plant if the EU fails to include the UK in its ‘Made in Europe’ rules being ironed out in Brussels, according to the FT.
The measures proposed by the European Commission are designed to save Europe’s struggling industrial base from growing competition, specifically from China. However, the UK motor industry’s problem is with the rules around stricter requirements for corporate fleets and small electric vehicles.
Corporate fleets make up a sizable share of car sales across Europe. But under the EC’s recommendations, only vehicles for these markets assembled in the EC would be eligible for the ‘Made in Europe’ benefits - putting Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Charity begins…
I’ve worked in the media most of my working life - but I’ve also worked for a charity, so it was interesting to see the two sectors come together in a LinkedIn post this week.
Kate Lee, CEO of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations was unhappy with the above wording in a news report, and questioned how the journalist even calculated the ratio.
“Comments like this in the media are unbelievably unhelpful,” she said. “Salaries to pay staff to do the charitable work IS the charitable work. Even foundations must employ staff to do the fundraising to generate the income they distribute.
“Stop implying charities should somehow run for free and yet STILL achieve vital societal impact that we all benefit from.”
There was a lot of love for her views in the Comments.
Result reversal
Labour’s Julie Griffiths has regained her seat on Durham County Council. She was one of the many Labour candidates to lose out in last year’s elections as Reform swept to power with an overwhelming victory.
A by-election was held after Reform’s David Cumming stepped down because of work commitments - and this time the Reform candidate, Theo Bell, was defeated by 1,004 votes to 786. The result gives the once-dominant Labour Party five councillors compared to Reform’s 60.
Showcase opens
Culture-led regeneration, investment in knowledge-intensive industries and placemaking are the key themes for the Newcastle and Gateshead delegation at MIPIM 2026, which begins in Cannes tomorrow.
Pam Smith, chief executive of Newcastle City Council, said: “MIPIM is one of the key platforms for us to showcase Newcastle and Gateshead’s story. I am looking forward to having conversations with investors from around the world with a shared vision for how we can continue to shape the future of Newcastle, ensuring we are creating a globally competitive place that delivers for our residents.”
Eldon Square, NCG, Ryder Architecture, Avison Young, FaulknerBrowns, Legends Global, Rolton, Aptus, Atkins Realis, CAA ICON, Hanro, igloo, Naylors, NE1, North East Combined Authority, Todd Milburn and Ward Hadaway will be part of the Invest Newcastle delegation.
‘Illustrative’ reality
Durham council deputy leader Darren Grimes has admitted using an AI-generated photo in a post about local authorities relocating people to deprived areas of the North East.
The councillor posted a blog in which he said southern councils were moving “problem tenants, recent refugees and homeless families” to the region, and he linked the issue to Durham’s social housing waiting list.
The article used a photo of a group of South Asian men in tracksuits next to a coach in a housing estate. When asked by the BBC about the photo, the Reform UK councillor acknowledged it was AI-generated. “The image was obviously for illustrative purposes,” he said.
Budget approved
Sunderland councillors have signed off a budget which will see Council Tax increase by 4.5% and savings of £600,000 planned for the next 12 months.
Parking charges will be looked at and there are plans for about £55m of investments into schools, infrastructure and equipment as part of the council’s capital programme. An extra £100,000 is also expected to go towards city-wide events.
Confused?
Newcastle councillors were told this week that the decision to close two park cafes was taken because they were “haemorrhaging” money. The closures proved controversial and the council has since said they would look to bring in private operators for the cafes, despite having branded them as commercially unviable.
As a whole, the council’s parks service is projected to spend around £2.4m this year – significantly above the £1.5m annual budget allocated when the local authority took back control of the city’s 33 parks from the charity Urban Green Newcastle (UGN) in March 2025.
The Local Democracy Service reports that UGN’s most recent accounts, for the year ending March 31, 2024, showed an overall loss of more than £700,000. However, its cafe operations in that year ran at a £120,000 profit.
50 marathons in the desert
This seems to have slipped under the radar of the UK media, but Geordie Mark Telford has run 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days, on sand, in the desert!
His coach Ole J Brom said in a LinkedIn post: “This wasn’t about attention. It was about standards. There were injuries. There was doubt. There were plenty of valid reasons to stop. He didn’t. He showed up. Again. And again.”
The post includes a video where Mark, who moved to Dubai last year and completed the challenge to raise money for the Stray Dogs Center UAE, looks like he could carry on running.
The offshore construction worker was featured in ChronicleLive in September 2024 when he was attempting to run a half marathon on a treadmill every day for 120 consecutive days.
Core values
The Core, an association of hospitality businesses in Newcastle, will be officially launched at a lunchtime event on Thursday March 19.
Set up to strengthen the sector’s voice at a time of mounting economic and operational pressures, The Core has evolved from the NE1 Hospitality Group.
The launch event will feature a discussion with Sacha Lord, chair of the Night Time Industries Association. Former city council leader Nick Kemp, The Core’s head of operations, will outline the organisation’s vision and priorities.
Now you see it…
I’ve designed hundreds of front pages in my time - but this one is a first for my son Josh Aitken. Not that he followed me into the world of journalism. He’s a graphic artist who was commissioned to design this page for the premiere of the Peaky Blinders film in Birmingham last Monday.
Many of my front pages were tomorrow’s fish and chips wrappings - this great piece of work by Josh didn’t even last that long. It was on Instagram at the opening of the star-studded night then burned away to reveal the red carpet. Up in smoke in seconds!
Business bites
Total assets and pre-tax profits improved at Newcastle Building Society in a year when it opened a flagship site in the centre of Newcastle and opened its first branch under the Manchester Building Society brand in the heart of Manchester city centre. A new McDonald's distribution centre has opened in Darlington, creating more than 200 jobs. Track7 Technology Group, the parent group of digital development agency Enigma Interactive, has acquired Flex4 OPS which will continue to operate as an independent business in Kendal.
Final chapter for a Beezer of a collection
By Tony Henderson
It was a Boys’ Own passion which turned into a collection of national importance.
As a small boy living in Byker, Peter Hansen spent his sixpence-a-week pocket money on comics and from the age of six he began collecting them. Over the years it has grown into what is rated as the biggest British comics-related collection in the world.
It adds up to an estimated 40,000 comics, 20,000 artworks for the publications by top comic artists, nearly 900 bound publisher volumes, rare first issues, publisher records and pay books revealing who created what, toys, and even the letters, badges and membership cards which young readers acquired when they joined clubs devoted to their favourite comics.
Peter moved to Northumberland where he could store his collection, mostly in a barn.
He had continued collecting as he built up his own environmental engineering company after moving to Canada and sold it to an American firm before coming back to the UK.
Now in retirement, he is leaving Northumberland to return to Canada and his vast collection will be sold, starting with a two-day event staged by Newcastle auctioneers Anderson & Garland on March 11–12.
The sale features more than 500 lots, many of them made up of multiple items, and will be the first in a series of auctions which, because of the scale of the collection, will see the Newcastle firm split the undertaking with Excalibur Auctions.
Comics editor and writer John Freeman, who has run the downthetubes comics website since 1998, travelled to Northumberland to talk to Peter. He said: “This is one of the most important collections ever to come to auction and it is sad that, despite all efforts, it could not be saved for the country. It would have been amazing in a museum.
“The collection offers a vital resource, especially given growing academic interest in comics research, which is focused on the socio-economic issues of the day, from the war years and their impacts, war series outside of the two world wars, the swinging Sixties, anarchy of the late 1950s, love and romance, humour, adventures, exploration, space, history, anarchism and sport.”
You can read the full story in Cultured. North East by clicking here.
Recommended read
Frontline war photographer Paul Conroy, who was seriously injured in Syria in 2012 in an explosion that killed award-winning journalist Marie Colvin, has died aged 61. He is featured in the film A Private War where he was played by Jamie Dornan. Byline Times has published this wonderful obituary. Here is a small extract:
“Behind his mask of Liverpudlian wit lay a stern moral compass. A fabulous hell-raiser, with a love of drink, women and an evil vape the size of the Isle of Wight, he was a devil forever on the side of the angels.
“In Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, he risked life and limb time and again to tell truth to evil. What was so f*****g wonderful about Paul is that he did it with a grin as broad as the Mersey. Telling the world about human misery can be miserable; Paul’s lens was lit with laughter.
His group of friends was extraordinary, from Islamist doctors in Homs to Joss Stone to a rag-taggle of war reporters to Camilla, Queen of England, from whom he used to cadge “ciggies” whenever they met. Together, Queen and Scouser would give the footmen the slip and nick out the back for a quick fag while no-one was looking.
A musician of serious talent, he ended up joining the Royal Artillery and became a spotter, a kind of elite position but right at the front line. After a time he became bored with army life but, because he was a good soldier, he was refused permission to leave early. So he hid some cannabis in his quarters and then wrote an anonymous letter, grassing himself up and was sentenced to nine months in the military prison or Glasshouse in Colchester. Bored out of his mind in the nick, he plotted digging an escape tunnel but that fell through.”