I must have led a very sheltered life. I've lived in the town all my life and I've never come across most of the people mentioned in this thread.

The only one I think I recognise is the bloke mentioned by Pool Power. If he is the one one I'm thinking of I think he was known as 'Big Nick'. He used to go around West View and the Headland on a bike bumming fags. (For those of you who went to school at Eton the phrase 'bumming fags' doesn't mean what you might think, translated into the Queen's English it means 'scrounging tabs').
It was amazing how successful he was at it - people will do any thing to keep their head on their shoulders.

He used to tell us that he got letters from Al Capone asking him to run his business for him in Hartlepool. He used to say that Al would say in his letters that he was writing them slowly because he knew that Nick couldn't read very fast. He always git a huge laugh with that one - well we all wanted to go on living.
The last I heard of him was that he was in jail. God I hope so.