Who was Albert Dryden? The bizarre life of the man who shot dead a district councillor on live TV

Ex-steelworker in long dispute with Derwent authorities over home built without planning permission before shock killing caught on camera by BBC in June 1991

Albert Dryden, who has died aged 77, was responsible for one of the most shocking incidents in British broadcasting history.

The former steelworker from Consett was being filmed by BBC cameramen for the magazine programme Look North on 20 June 1991 as his self-built bungalow in Butsfield, County Durham, faced demolition from council bulldozers, the inevitable result of his failure to submit a planning application for the property three years earlier.

Seen on film brandishing a gun, a vintage First World War Webley Mk VI, the assembled press, police and Derwent District Council officials gathered around seemed nonplussed, determined to execute the destruction order and clearly not believing Dryden posed any real threat.

Planning officer Harry Collinson, 46, is heard in the archive footage urging BBC crew Phil Dobson and Simon Forester to get a shot of Dryden’s pistol, whereupon the bearded man, peering out from under a baseball cap, calmly cocks the weapon, takes aim and fires, sparking a melee as the gathered parties disperse through the fields like startled birds as he climbs a fence and continues to shoot.

Presenter Tony Belmont, bleeding from a bullet wound to his right forearm, was visibly shocked but nevertheless managed to turn and give an account of what had happened direct to camera.

Subsequently arrested and brought to trial at Newcastle Crown Court in April 1992, Dryden was convicted of the murder of Mr Collinson, the attempted murder of solicitor Michael Dunstan and the wounding of Mr Belmont and PC Stephen Campbell, injured in the buttock. He was jailed for life.

His friend Alex Watson, himself a Durham County Councillor, said at the time: ”You cannot excuse him for what he did, but he was a proud man and all he wanted was to build his house and live in the countryside on his own and not harm anybody.

"It was not planned, but the way he saw it, he was defending his castle.

“It was said that he was not remorseful about killing Harry Collinson but he was. I know that having seen him and it was good to see him before he died.

“He was just a man who wanted to get on with his hobbies. He was obsessed with weapons from that era and that was the way he was. He did not mean anyone any harm.”

Dryden was born on 12 May 1940, one of eight children. He was granted his first firearms certificate at 17, buying a rifle and sparking a raid on the family home in Consett just three years later over his illegal possession of guns.

Detective constable Fred Wilson said at the time: “He has a mania for firearms and has shown a genius for them.”

He appeared in court twice in the early 1960s, once for firing rockets and mortars and once for threatening local farmers, pledging to move to Argentina so that he could resume his hobbies undisturbed.

In 1982, having been made redundant, he rented the plot of land at Eliza Lane, Butsfield, where he would build the fatal house in a hollow six years later, having bought the land outright in 1984.

By 1989, Derwentside Council had received its first complaints about the bungalow, with Dryden lying variously that it was a new summer house for his 82-year-old mother, a nuclear shelter and then a cattle shed.

After a public inquiry was launched, Dryden lost his appeal and his mother passed away, an occurrence he blamed on council persecution. After his making several threats against the council, a friend of Dryden’s tossed a live cockerel in the late Mr Collinson’s face at a planning department meeting.

On the morning the demolition team arrived, Dryden warned Mr Collinson: “You might not be around to see the outcome of this disaster. You have been warned. If you had any sense you would go away and wait five weeks. You are making a sad decision.”

Moments later, the man he was addressing lay dead.

During his 26 years behind bars, Dryden is understood to have written four letters to Roy Collinson, brother of the deceased.

“Not once did he show any remorse, culpability, or regret for what he had done,” Mr Collinson told The Northern Echo.

“He looked to blame everyone but himself. At one stage he even tried to blame the vehicles that were going to knock down his house, claiming they were not taxed or something ridiculous like that.”

Released in October 2017 for the sake of his health, Dryden lived out his final year in a care home before passing away on the morning of Saturday 15 September.