Hartlepool man Stan Laundon was recently reunited with his old friend, musician Joe Brown, at the Forum Theatre, in Billingham, where Joe was performing.

The pair's friendship was struck up in the 1960s when Stan ran the star's official fan club from Stan's mother's house in Dyke Street, West Hartlepool.

At the time, around 1962, Joe was topping the charts with his hit song A Picture of You.

Joe, who was recently awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honour's, asked Stan to move to London to run the fanclub full time. But it was not for long because Stan soon became Joe's road manager, ghost writer and publicist, which were roles he held for four years.

Although Stan met Joe briefly at the forum last year, prior to that encounter, the pair hadn't seen each other for 19 years.

Stan, 65, said: "I started off as a fan of Joe's in the late 1950s when I met him in Sunderland. I asked if I could run his fan club after the girl running it gave it up.

"That was about 1959 and there were a few hundred members of the fan club. It just snowballed from there."

Stan himself was no stranger to the limelight as he was a member of Hartlepool band The Trakkers and he was also working in a factory when Joe asked him to move to London to officially run the club.

Stan, who lives at Hartlepool Marina, said: "By this point there were thousands of fans. I soon went on the road with Joe."

Father-of-two Stan was Joe's right-hand man up until 1966, when Stan got married and returned to the north.

"Joe went into the West End in Charlie Girl, with Anna Neagle and Stuart Damon," said Stan, a former BBC Radio Cleveland presenter.

"We still kept in touch, especially on his birthday when I would remind him he was two years older than me."

Stan said he had "so many stories" from his time on the road with the singer, including crossing paths with fellow Hartlepool musician
John "Mod" Rogan, formerly of The Hartbeats, who played bass with Adam Faith during a New Musical Express (NME) pollwinners concert.

During Stan and Joe's reunion, Stan also met Joe's son, Pete, who he had not seen since he was one-year-old.

Stan and his first wife used to babysit Joe's daughter, Samantha, who has established herself as a solo performer and at one time was a backing singer for Pink Floyd.