A MAN who helped prevent the demise of the great British pud has died aged 81.

Keith Turner and his wife Jean founded The Pudding Club in 1985 when they ran The Three Ways Hotel in the Gloucestershire village of Mickleton.

The club caught the public's imagination and the couple, who later moved to Staindrop, near Barnard Castle, made numerous television appearances, attracting further publicity in newspapers and magazines.

The idea was to serve a light main course followed by a choice of seven hot puddings. Guests could enjoy as much or as little as they wanted.

Mrs Turner said: “In those days, restaurants only served cold desserts from a sweet trolley and we longed for a proper hot pudding like jam roly-poly or spotted dick.

“It was an idea whose time had come and it fulfilled its purpose in preventing the demise of the great British pud.”

Although the couple had to let the hotel go when the recession of the mid-1990s bit, the tradition continues The Three Ways to this day.

Mrs Turner said The Pudding Club was just one part of her husband's life.

After graduating from Oxford he became personnel officer for ICI in Billingham and it was here he met Jean, originally from Norton, who had recently qualified as a dentist and was working in her father's practice.

The couple wed in 1959, soon becoming trained marriage guidance counsellors, with Keith later tutoring the region's counsellors.

After two children, Mr Turner was transferred to Malaysia, where their third child was born, and a fourth arrived in 1968 when the family was back in Teesside.

Mr Turner resigned from ICI in 1976 and the family moved to a smallholding near Appleby, where his wife continued to practise dentistry while her husband tended cattle, sheep, a pony and numerous hens, ducks, geese and bees.

It was during this time they met a spiritual group called the Emissaries and it was when they were asked to be presidents of the 10th International Human Unity Conference, at Warwick University, in 1983, that they discovered Three Ways Hotel was up for sale.

They ran the hotel for 12 years, moving to Teesdale after leaving The Three Ways.

This allowed Mr Turner the chance to embrace his interest in theatre and he became a familiar face on stage with the Castle Players.

The couple also found time to support SCAD, a charity working for social change and development in many poor villages in southern India.

Mr Turner fell ill in March and passed away on June 17. He is survived by Jean, children Kay, Gill, Stephen and Nigel, six grandchildren and his collie, Danny.