It's All Your Fault

People of Jesmond: you’ve let me down. 

You’ve allowed your most valuable asset to slip through your fingers. You have failed to protect a tiny jewel in your community’s collection of treasures, and soon it will vanish. 

Residents sitting in trendy cafés with your flat whites; students munching takeaways in your bedsits; rich folk at smart dinner parties in the villas at the top end of Osborne Road: I blame the lot of you. All except a very few loyal supporters. Like Dominic Parker.

A Perfect Night Out

I’ve never been to Tup Tup Palace, that nightclub of dreams in the centre of Newcastle. 

Not just because the bouncers wouldn’t let me in – no amount of “don’t you know who I am?” could squeeze me through those doors – but I honestly can’t think of a more horrendous way to spend a Friday night. I’m sure the hundreds of young people who swagger in and stagger out again at 3am into urine-sodden streets have a wonderful time; I’d rather endure an evening with Nigel Farage at a UKIP rally.

Cheryl Cole and The X Factor: The Final (Geordie) Word

I went to the wrong school. That’s my excuse when friends down South ask me why, despite an entire childhood on Tyneside, there’s scarcely a twang of Geordie in my speech.

Quite how I avoided the accent is a mystery: it was my background music for more than 20 years. I can tune in and understand every word perfectly: I can even communicate with Kevin, our house painter, when he’s in full flow. His accent is so strong it renders Jo utterly speechless with admiration and incomprehension. I’d be a brilliant Cheryl Cole interpreter.

In fact, my wife swears that my hidden Geordie dialect emerges after I’ve had a couple of pints of Tyneside Blonde down our local pub, but I know that it’s not very authentic. Sure, I may find “upaheight” a more economical use of language than “it’s up there on the top shelf”, or fret that my wife “blethors” or about the “clarts” which perpetually adorn Izzy’s wellingtons. I may conjure up an entire vocabulary of Geordie abuse when United are a goal down, but I can’t reproduce the fluent, passionate language of the Angles and the Venerable Bede, the delicious (but sadly endangered) burr of the people of Redesdale and the North Tyne, where I spent every teenage weekend, or the sharp, expressively precise language of Tyneside, my home until adulthood and ambition drew me south. No matter how many pints I consume, I still call a "short" a "shirt", and I probably always will.

Mind you, Jo’s from California, so she’s scarcely one to judge. Nor is Mike Darnell, the President of the Fox network. He lives in a nice house in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, a permanently sunny, botoxed world as far removed from Newcastle as you could possibly imagine. According to some tabloids, he it was who decided to first axe and then reinstate our Cheryl Cole for the US version of The X Factor. Now they say the final decision has been made: Cheryl is out. And all because of her accent.

Personally, I don’t believe a word of it. Darnell’s a genius: he virtually invented reality television; he understands better than anyone how to create a popular hit; and he adores the English – he jumped when I brought him Amanda Byram for Paradise Hotel (OK, she’s Irish, but it all sounds the same in Calabasas). Did he really worry that Cheryl’s speech might be an impediment?

There’s something terribly fishy about this whole U.S. X-Factor Geordie-hating story. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Paula Abdul was involved. Many thought American Idol improved when she finally departed. Quite why she’s back in Cowell’s good books I can’t imagine, but I doubt Paula would want to be upstaged by someone prettier and wittier. If Cheryl had returned and Paula stayed, you can bet fur would fly and tears flow. And I doubt Fox would have insisted that Cheryl had emergency elocution lessons: self-defence more like.

Perhaps she should have developed her own mid-Atlantic drawl. I find it almost impossible not to impersonate people when I’m with them: from Americans to Italians, Brummies to Belgians, my accent flows with the crowd. According to Jo, I’m particularly embarrassing when I’m abroad. In Italy I only have to step off the plane before I lapse into Italianglish, flinging my arms around and shouting loudly at waiters.

Jo claims I don’t speak a single word of actual Italian. She’s wrong: I speak fluent musical notation: “Andante Sostenuto, Affretando, Subito Pianissimo”, I cry with confidence once the Chianti takes hold.

Admittedly, these words aren’t much help when you’re trying to order squid or sea bass, but I’m sure they’d be pretty useful if I was asked to be a judge on the Italian version of the X-Factor. And I know I’d be perfectly understood, because I’d be speaking them without the slightest hint of a Geordie accent.

Snowvember

On Thursday afternoon I received a cheery phone call from the Mercedes dealership in town. The winter tyres I’d ordered weeks ago, in a quite untypical moment of advance planning, have finally arrived. Unfortunately I now can’t drive my car through the snow to have them fitted, as it doesn’t have winter tyres.




I’m resigned to leaving the wretched vehicle incarcerated in its white overcoat, like last year, until the first thaws of spring.

Enduring Northumbrian winters is like having children. The first is exciting, surprising and unbelievably beautiful. The second is just as attractive but, thanks to the experience you’ve gained from the first, rather more manageable. The third is, to be frank, just a bore and far too exhausting to enjoy: you just want it to do its thing and get to the next season as soon as possible.

This particular infant is about a month premature yet, far from being a meagre little weakling, is a big, bouncing avalanche. I can't remember the last time we had snow this early, certainly not to such an extreme degree. 8 inches landed on our drive on Wednesday night. It began falling shortly after I'd asked Jo to remind me to order some road salt from the builders' merchant. I guess they will have run out by now.

At first Izzy couldn't believe her wonderful new surroundings. She rushed round the garden kicking up white clouds and screaming "no!. no!" – she’s not very good at consonants yet. Now she's not so sure - after another ten inches dumped themselves on us last night, the snow is up to her waist.




The dogs are still excited, though I spend hours prising iceballs out of their ears. I've also been trying unsuccessfully to hack a path out for the oil lorry – we’re in danger of running out of fuel.







Meanwhile my Facebook wall is full of entries from excited friends in London swapping snowflake sightings. Their kids can’t wait to clean off their rusty toboggans and build snowmen: I just want to be able to drive to Waitrose without having to be dug out of a ditch by a tractor.

Within minutes of the first flakes’ arrival I demonstrated the typical demeanour of any Brit facing the first snows of winter: panic. Having to be in London for two important meetings, I watched the weather forecast with sinking heart and decided to fly down the night before. I knew I’d be OK, because I’d driven by the airport a couple of times and the snow wasn’t that deep.

Newcastle Airport responded by doing what airports do: closing down unexpectedly and telling its passengers nothing. So, having been summoned to the departure gate at the appointed hour, with a British Airways plane conveniently parked at the end of the jetty, we all sat down and waited to board. After an age somebody spotted that the plane in front of us was already full of passengers – it was the previous flight that had been waiting two hours for the runway to open. Our plane had apparently been circling patiently over our heads, but eventually gave up and landed in Teesside – neither plane flew anywhere that night.

Quite why the runway was shut on Wednesday afternoon remains a mystery – the weathermen had given us days of warning. I guess they must have been the wrong sort of snowflakes. It wasn’t a very good few days for Newcastle Airport as the following night a plane nearly skidded off the end of the runway. Maybe like me they’d forgotten to order their road salt. I took the train.

I felt sorry for the BBC Breakfast reporter the following morning. Sent out to report on the chaos up north, he parked his satellite truck by a busy roundabout and waited for cars to start spinning out of control. Every time they cut to him, instead of the carnage his journalistic instincts demanded, you could sense his disappointment when he could only film an orderly line of cars confidently steering through the slush. I guess they must all have had their winter tyres on.

Who Is Michael Smith?

Having been silently fuming all week about a BBC4 documentary about Newcastle at the weekend called Michael Smith's Deep North, I was delighted to read Keith Hann's withering comments, published in The Journal on Tuesday and reiterated with even more venom in his blog, where he wrote:

Then I switched channels to BBC4 and also felt compelled to cram in some abuse for “Michael Smith’s Deep North: the novelist returns to his native city of Newcastle upon Tyne.”

First thought: if this bloke is a novelist, how come an eager reader of the literary supplements like myself has never heard of him? Second thought: if he is Geordie, how come he sounds nothing like one? It could be argued that I don’t sound much like one myself, it is true, but this bloke did have some sort of accent, just distinctly not a Newcastle one. He first outed himself as coming from “a small town about 30 miles away” and later apparently confessed that it was Hartlepool. (I had lost interest by that point and was only half-watching the programme, as I indulged in a vigorous debate on Facebook about where this wanker came from and how on earth he had got the gig). I am profoundly sorry that space did not permit me to get the popular description “monkey hanger” into the paper.

(Note for overseas readers: Hartlepool is a port in County Durham famous for capturing and interrogating a monkey that had escaped from the wreck of a French ship during the Napoleonic wars, and hanging it as a spy. Even more bizarrely, the mascot of the local football team, who paraded around in a monkey suit under the name of H’Angus, stood for election as mayor AS A JOKE in 2002, under the slogan “free bananas for schoolchildren” and was not only elected then, but has been re-elected on two subsequent occasions. I know London also has a joke mayor in the shape of Boris Johnson, but surely this must be uniquely absurd in all the annals of representative democracy? And, yes, I do know about the English Democrats in Doncaster.)

Third and final (for now) thought about Michael Smith: if the BBC wanted to make a programme about Newcastle, why couldn’t they have got a genuine Geordie to do it? One with some original ideas, who would not stumble over his lines? I am open to offers. And, failing that, there are undoubtedly several thousand other people on Tyneside who could also have done what Sir John Major would almost certainly describe as a not inconsiderably better job.

Well written, Mr Hann. I gather Michael Smith is some sort of pundit, the sort of chap periodically wheeled out by arts programmes and BBC4 when they need someone with northern roots and a regional accent. I'm sending the BBC a map of our region, so they can see that Hartlepool has no more connection to Newcastle, culturally or geographically, than Southend has to Chelsea. Apparently Michael Smith went to Tynemouth on his holidays: I spent every day of my childhood there.

At least the BBC will have added a few thousand extra shots of the Tyne Bridge to its library (perhaps they could use them again in their coverage of the Great North Run on Sunday), but there wasn't a single image of the real Newcastle. Perhaps that was because the film was made by a London production company?

The Embryology Debate

Tomorrow in the House of Commons, members of Parliament will be debating a genuinely life-changing topic. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has proved to be one of the most difficult pieces of legislation for years and, with a free vote on several of the more controversial aspects, there’s going to be a lot of heart-searching in Westminster.

For once Newcastle is right at the centre of this national debate, because it’s here that a team of scientists is working at the cutting edge of research into currently incurable conditions such as Alzheimer’s. In the last decade these researchers have succeeded in moving science forward so fast that the law, last debated in 1990, is now out of date. They are seeking a legal framework within which to continue their revolutionary work. And one of the key elements is the ability to utilize animal eggs (with 99% of genetic material removed, and a single human cell nucleus added) to replace a chronic shortage of human eggs.

Last week Joanna and I came face to face with one of the reasons for this shortage. For some time she and I have been trying to have a baby, and we have now turned for help to the fertility specialists at Newcastle’s Life Centre. As a result, not only are we waiting on tenterhooks for news of whether or not our current round of IVF treatment has been successful (sadly, there’s only a 25% chance it will be), but also we are now proud owners of six first class frozen embryos. During the IVF process, however, the treatment caused Jo to produce over thirty eggs. We happily signed the clause on our clearance forms to donate our unused eggs and embryos to enable the Newcastle researchers to continue their work. I doubt there are many readers of this blog who have not experienced close family members afflicted with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or some form of cancer. We believe we owe it to our children and grandchildren to do whatever we can to support genetic research to enable science to conquer these terrible afflictions.

However, the consequence of Joanna generating so many spare eggs (we jokingly dubbed her the “mother hen” for the first couple of days after we learned the news) was that she ended up in unbelievable pain, potentially life-threatening discomfort and a spell in the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Jo was suffering from Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), an affliction which affects a small proportion of all IVF patients, and which can even prove fatal. It’s not something I would wish to inflict on my worst enemy, and it was frightening to see Jo, her stomach distended as if she were seven months’ pregnant, doubled up in agony, her blood dehydrating by the hour. In order to prevent women enduring this dangerous side effect, the fertility experts are trying to reduce the number of eggs produced during the IVF process. However this in turn reduces the number of spare eggs that can be used in medical research. Hence the vital importance of this part of the legislation being debated today.

Reactionary religious leaders tend to set themselves and their congregations against anything that seems to challenge the biblical account of creation. Others fear giving power-crazed scientists a charter to meddle in things spiritual. But this bill has come about because the scientists in Newcastle and elsewhere want boundaries to be set. It’s a debate about regulation, not permission. I do respect the views of those who oppose it on religious grounds, but to describe it, as one reactionary clergyman has done, as “endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion” is to miss the point.

This law has been created with the sole aim of saving lives. The moral argument in favour is overwhelming. I hope our MPs are persuaded to vote for the proper regulation of a science that is dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering. For the sake of all our children.

Jools Holland and the Real X-Factor: the day I discovered Joss Stone

I think the seats in Newcastle’s City Hall have got smaller since I was last there. I don’t remember my knees scrunching up against the row in front when I sat watching people with infinitely more talent than me taking their applause on the stage.

But then, apart from Thursday, when I went there to see Jools Holland, the last time I was in the City Hall was at my school speech day, and I was about half my current size.

I remember the feeling of envy when I saw the prizes handed out to my betters. I was given the wooden spoon called the Fifth Form Reading Prize. I can still remember all the words of the poem which clinched it for me: "Do You Remember an Inn, Miranda?”. At Christmas parties, when the festive spirits take over, I am inclined to launch into it -- until Joanna rushes over and throttles me.

Oh I know what it’s like to be second rate. Watching television on Saturday night, hearing the appalling cliché: “only one couple will be crowned champions (sic), the other will go home empty-handed”, my heart went out to Matt Di Angelo, bravely showing his rehearsed “well done, Alesha” expression. And the previous weekend I felt quite sorry for that strange Welsh singer Rhydian who now has to go back to Powys empty-handed. The painful sound of applause for someone else still ringing in his ears.

It’s extraordinary how worked up we get over television programmes like The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, they’re not about winners at all. Who else but a group of D-List losers would have the time to go on Strictly Come Dancing? Alesha Dixon was in a group called Mis-Teeq which had a few minor hits several years ago. She recorded a solo album last year that hasn’t even been released. Rhydian is a second-grade baritone with unusual hair and a gift for reducing middle-aged women to tears with songs from Phantom of the Opera.

Really talented performers don’t need The X Factor to get their break. They get themselves into bands, perform in clubs and are discovered by an A&R talent scout from a record company. So I’m a little underwhelmed by these kinds of shows, even though in the past I have produced them myself.

Finding a gold nugget in the drift mine of wannabes is well nigh impossible. In four series of Star for a Night, presented by Jane MacDonald (her own celebrity a product of television rather than talent), we found only one true gem. In an audition room in Bristol I spotted a shy 13-year-old girl with a beautiful face and long blonde hair called Joss Stoker. I remember she had a tendency to sing sharp (I used a harmonizer to correct her final performance) but the voice made your jaw drop. It was the voice of an old blues singer. She’s now called Joss Stone.

But unlike the winners of The X Factor, pre-sold to the Cowell money-making machine, Joss’s stardom isn’t derived from one television vote. She made it through hard work and dedication.

Watching real talent on stage makes your heart surge and brings grown men to tears. Or overgrown men, like me. Which leads me back to last Thursday.

I wasn’t in that cramped City Hall seat for long. The years peeled back as the entire audience got on its feet for two magical hours. Afterwards Jools told me this was his favourite gig. Not just because of his happy times here with The Tube, but because of the wonderful atmosphere in that old, faded hall.

How Jools managed to perform at all on Thursday is beyond me. His father died last week. His Christmas plans have been cancelled because of the funeral. Yet he brought two thousand people the best possible present. Thank you, Jools, and to all of you, a very Merry Christmas.

Russell Harty and Grace Jones: My Fault

So Fabio Capello appears to have survived his first weekend with the British press.

Apart from photos of him holding a wooden spoon (!) in his “favourite” Rome restaurant and dancing in a tutu, England’s new manager is still “Fab” in the tabloids. I’ll give it a fortnight.

The first time I came across the tabloid press was when, at the age of 19 at York University, I made a little student film called Corridor. It cost just £200, funded partly by the Arts Council, but mostly by a whip-round in the Students Union bar.

It was a typically self-indulgent piece of undergraduate nonsense: a lonely student walks down a corridor in a hall of residence and the camera reveals various cameos behind the doors. As he passes the bathroom, we see a buxom blonde trying to persuade a nervous nerd to join her in the bath. It was supposed to be funny: no naughty bits were shown, and the entire scene lasted about ten seconds.

The few days before the premiere (it was being shown in a double bill with Barbarella), I received a call from a freelance journalist who seemed to be interested in my creative achievement. I spouted on about alienation in student life.

I heard nothing more until the following Sunday, when I had a call from my mother in Tynemouth. Anxious relatives were telephoning her from all over the country. For emblazoned across an entire page of the Sunday Mirror was the headline “Students In Sex Film Shocker”.

All next week I received hate mail from Christian fundamentalists. At least the premiere was packed – albeit with a strange collection of men with raincoats. They were very disappointed.

I used this experience later in life when I was the producer of the Russell Harty chatshows. The series had been put in a slot on BBC2 normally reserved for arts programmes. Three weeks into the run, with the audience figures languishing at about a million, I booked Grace Jones.

It was my fault she hit him. I’d never produced a chatshow before, so I decided to ring the changes by arranging the guests on either side of Russell, rather than using the traditional formation of host on one side and guests lined up down the other. As a result, when he finished talking to Grace, who I think had arrived from another planet, Russell turned to the next guest and in doing so, faced away from her. “Don’t you turn your back on me!” she screamed, and bonked him on the head.

It was only a gentle tap, but two minutes later, the BBC press office rang. At the end of the show, the street outside the theatre was full of flashbulbs. The next day we were on every front page. The following week we had three million viewers.

So I decided then and there to forge an alliance with the devil.

Hercules the Bear had gone missing off a Scottish island. When he was found, I brought him to London to wrestle with Russell. Then we had the newsreader Jan Leeming singing (if you could call it that). Each time we tipped off the papers and staged the “event” a few hours ahead of the live show so we could hit the deadlines, and the front pages.

The tabloids and I were, literally, joined at the hype. After a few weeks the ratings hit six million.

A few weeks ago in my Journal column I casually mentioned that I had had a meeting with Peaches Geldof. The following weekend one national paper had blown up the story into two full pages about how we were bringing The Tube back to Newcastle. How they made that connection, I’ve no idea. It would be nice, but it’s not true: we just had a meeting. But it’s good to know they read The Journal.

So “ello” Fab. Welcome to our crazy world. Just be wary of ageing blonde TV presenters and fake sheikhs.

The End of the Railway Line

Today I'm taking my final dose of GNER. There are just six days until National Express takes over the East Coast franchise.

I've grown accustomed to the faces of GNER, that is, to the cheery smiles of Eunice, Lianne, Daniel and all the other crew who have looked after me this past year. I'm sincerely grateful for their tolerance, good humour and impeccable service.

I guess you have to keep a sense of humour if you spend all day in a swaying metal tube trying not to spill coffee over bored businessmen, families with screaming children, drunks and assorted misfits like me.

I've loved hearing the crew stories: about bowls of steaming hot soup accidentally tipped into pompous laps; the dangers of silver-serving miniature sweetcorn to ladies with cleavages; the occasional shriek from the disabled toilet after someone forgets to press the "Lock" button. I like the story about the train driver who, bored by the endless straight track, is trying to perfect the theme from Laurel and Hardy on the train horns. I particularly love travelling back on the 8pm because there's a real party atmosphere in the restaurant car by the time it reaches York where all the dull people get off.

If anyone deserves a grant from One North East, it is these Newcastle-based train crews. They really are the true ambassadors of the North, for they are the first experience which most visitors have of the region. In fact, thinking about it, One North East could do a lot worse with its millions than to plough a few bob into the on-board train experience. Because the image we present to the people who come to visit us is key to the commercial success of the region as a whole.

Now despite what you might hear, people in the South no lnger think we're all about cloth caps and pigeons. When I announced to my friends in London that I was relocating back up here they all said the same thing: "Great place to party".

If I were a businessman with young children I'd be wary of moving my family to a city whose principal claim to fame is being Party Capital of Europe. A city that from teatime on Friday transforms itself into Club 18-30. Where you have to run a gauntlet of drunken yobbery just walking from the station to the car park. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a party pooper. I'd rather live in a vibrant city than in boring Orpington or Watford.

If we really want to attract investment to the region, we need to present another face. The North East needs a PR makeover. Evidently, thanks to the Passionate People, Passionate Places campaign, bed and breakfasts have enjoyed a bumper year. The North East is the place to come for the weekend. Now there's a bigger task: to persuade people to stay for life.

To get the level of investment that our local economy needs, we need to demonstrate to opinion formers that the North East can be lived in. and for that to happen, image is everything. Starting with the train service.

Not that the region has to change: far from it. We have wonderful scenery, great local food, an enterprise culture, comparatively cheap housing, some very fine schools, development grants, the Sage - there's a lot to boast about. No, we just need to work out how to tell people about it.

Meanwhile, a warning to National Express. When you take over our railway next week and start repainting all the carriages, please don't mess up the spirit of our special ambassadors, the train crews. Daniel tells me they are getting new ties and shiny name badges, but for the time being they have to cut to cut the GNER labels off their shirts and trousers. Let's not cut out the fun as well.