Geordieland

Geordieland (Gateshead Zone)

 

Let's get this out of the way in the very first line - there is no such thing as Geordieland. It doesn't exisit, not in the real world anyway; but, like unicorns, the 'truth' about 9/11 or the veracity of TV presenter Dermot O'Leary's heterosexuality - that doesn't stop people going on about it.

In the 1960s T. Dan Smith went for 'the Brasilia of the North', Sir John Hall took it further still when he automatically started babbling on about 'the Geordie Nation' whenever someone pointed a TV camera at him in the 1990s. Now we have 'Geordieland', it might only exist in the world of lazy newspaper articles, low quality television programmes and people who think everything above the M25 is "ap norf", but that's enough and enough is enough. Enough. It has to stop. Geordie Nation? Jesus H Spender...

Newcastle upon Tyne is Geordieland in the same way that London is Cockneyland, Sunderland is just Cockland (they always get it slightly wrong don't they?) and Gloucester is (Fred) Westworld. "Shall we go to Gloucester this weekend love? Dirty weekend? The kids'll love it".

If Geordie FInishing School For Girls (BBC Three) and MTV's Geordie Shore are to be believed then most Geordies live on the breadline, spend their nash on fake tan and booze, hump without blobs and go to the gym a lot. That's it, nothing else. If you didn't know any better you could be forgiven for thinking that's all that happens in this Geordieland. Obviously there's far more to it than that so allow me to flesh it out a bit:

Geordies? They're mad aren't they?  (Yeah, look at Raoul Moat - absolutely mental)

Newcastle - it has pubs.

They don't wear coats. None of them. Ever.

If you can't pull in Newcastle you can't pull anywhere (no comment).

There is a river. It is called the Tyne. There's also a weather condition know as fog. At certain times the two are not mutually exclusive.

Geordielanders communicate solely through the use of the phrase "why aye". There are no other words, not in Geordieland.

Are ye gannin doon the Grove Spuggy?

See? See the richly textured layers of diverse culture and society that get 'lost in the edit' as they say in television circles. It's the BBC's fault; they might not have started it but they took up the reigns and now look where we are. Branded as languageless simpletons, broke, bronzed - but happy. Licence fee boycott anyone?

Status: None-existent.

Lookalike: Brasilia (T. D. Smith), Barcelona (J. Hall)

In Three Two Words: Why Aye!

The Turnpike

Routine Visit

Reputations. Some are are glaringly ignored (King of Cherry-Poppin' Michael Jackson), some meticulously cultivated (heterosexual TV presenter Dermot O'Leary), some uneviable (Jimmy Savile), some are just baffling ('Princess of Hearts'? Really?). Some are merited (Mike Tyson was feared by men and women alike), some not (Greggs snobs have a lot to answer for) and many are nowt more than a feeble moonshine of piss and vinegar (the Towers of London spring to mind. From the streets of Chalfont St. Giles!).

If a pub has a reputation it's usually for only one two things - nice food or bother, and never the twain shall meet. The Turnpike definitely had a reputation and it wasn't for its delicious array of locally-sourced platters. In the face of stiff competition it could hold its napper high in the pantheon of radge pubs once found in radius of a few miles in west Newcastle which also included:

- The Whin Dyke: drugs. Now closed.

- The Runnymede: drugs, murder, bar staff charged with manslaughter after a fatal drinking competition between father and son. Now closed.

- The Royal Frenchman's Arms: Lock-ins, sizzling steaks and ghosts. Now closed.

- The John Gilpin: drugs, stolen goods, armed robbery. Had the cigarette machine stolen one night and regulars selling cheap tabs the next. Now closed.

- The Centurion: all of the above and more - cottaging, slavery, you name it. Now closed.

- The Rokeby: hostile ambience even if it was empty. Now closed and reborn as a Farm Foods - this is an improvement.

Notice a pattern emerging? The Turnpike was the last of the bother pubs. Notorious in my youth after a machete attack, it treaded water for a few years with the occasional pagga before upping its game; seeing in the new millenium with a fatal stabbing. It was another eight years before its notoriety was sealed with a shooting. Guns - the big time. The premier league. Top of the pops. Throckley boys night out. 

The Turnpike continued to trade for a few more years before the inevitable happened; patronised, no doubt, by die hard regulars, turf-claiming dafties and impressionable young charvers looking for a voyeuristic chaser to go with their teenth of tack (nee dink) and pint of LCL. Where they, the luminous-nosed auld dongs and low-level tattie-peelers go for a night out now is anyone's guess. It comes to something when your local carks it and you've got to travel just to have a pint and see someone get their lips danced on, watching someone have Hunters Chicken for their tea is no substitute.

Status: Dead

Lookalike: The Chapel Park

In Three Words: Time Gentlemen Please

Gay Dogs (by request)

Right, deep breaths all round and let's get through this one as quickly as possible.

Pedigree & Chum

Now, the naysayers may scoff but it is a statistical, zoological and societal fact that some dogs are gay.

Some breeds are exclusively gay - the Japanese chin, pomeranians, Welsh terriers of course. Dingos are almost exclusively gay and only mate strictly as a biological necessity to ensure the future of the breed. Obversely, it's a popular misconception that poodles are gay. Poodles aren't the slightest bit gay, poodles are proper rock. Don't be taken in by stereotypes and think before you start patting, belly-scratching or fiddling with your flies in secluded car parks.

I RUV YOU!!!

Individual dogs are are also friends of Dorothy and it goes without saying that the world of entertainment has more than its fair share of mince terriers. Forget Lassie, he just needed the work, the first publicly gay dog on television was Huckleberry Hound. Not only did he make it acceptable for alternative-lifestyle canines to be represented in popular media but he aslo consolidated his breakthrough by giving Yogi Bear his big break. From that point gay figures, animal and human, became the norm on the television. Huckleberry Hound became the face of the LGBT movement until legal challenges from Hanna Barbera over image rights in the late 1970s, the rainbow flag was subsequently adopted as an alternative. Heterosexual television presenter Dermot O'Leary is rumoured to have a Huckleberry Hound tattoo in an intimate area. 

His bell-end.

Not all stars had the courage of their convictions however, Aramis from Dogtanian & the Muskehounds spent his entire career in fear of being outed, he married a dalmatian and had seven litters of pups to provide a smokescreen for his secret shame. If only he'd known that Milady was a popular face on the animated French gay scene at the time. His double life was only revealed when someone drew a picture of his funeral at the Paris pet cemetery in which his widow meets a string of his ex-lovers.

Are gay dogs dead though? That's what you're asking and you're right to do so. As we have seen above some undoubtedly gay dogs have sadly passed, so it wouldn't be fair to then single out and name, for example, Roxy Irwin - the Briar Lane Boner, just to prove the point conclusively would it? Yes, he definitely cocked more than his leg, but he mightn't want the world to know about it. The least we can do is respect his privacy (to dog-bot his way around the impoverished streets of Throckley). I have it on questionable authority that other dogs not known to me personally were fond of the flexi-lead but I'm not going to name names. I don't want Peter Tatchell on my back, again.

Humpers of the left leg, we salute you.

Status: Dead, Alive & Immortal

Telltale Sign: Hides the remote when Will & Grace is on.

In Three Words: A New Low?

Alexander von Humbolt

EFIL4STOWS

September 14, 1769 – May 6, 1859

Over-achievers. There was always one in your class at school. There's often one at work. Some of us have them as friends (not me, of course). They can be admirable, inspiring, annoying - depends on the personality type, of both the over-achiever and the achiever-perceiver.

Alexander von Humbolt (AvH, A-Hum or 'ver Uber Boffin' if he was getting a write-up in the red-tops) was the over-achiever's over-achiever. The thinking man's crumpet. Intellectually, he'd get it.

Let's take, for example, his summer holiday of 1789. Humbolt went on an excursion up the Rhine and by way of a memoir of this trip he wrote the treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein or Mineralogic observations on some basalts at the river Rhine. Treatise. Mineralgic observations. He was 20 years old. Hmm.

That was nothing though, Humbolt as a mere callow youth. He would look back at his inexperienced fumbling with the Rhine basalts with a mixture of wistful nostalgia and a nagging frustration that he hadn't both discovered and thoroughly researched the K-hole while he was still in his teens. Everyone makes mistakes and has regrets, but most of us don't then spend the rest of our lives standing astride the globe in polymathic splendour; going everywhere, measuring and recording everything, making significant findings in the natural sciences, geography, meteorology and the rest to boot. Most of us don't have squids, willows, towns, mountains, universities and hog-nosed skunks named after us. He does. Are you an honorary Mexican citizen? Guess what.

It was easier in those days, of course, but even still it's clear the boy was different gravy. Where I consider it an achievement to make it out of the house at the weekend, Humbolt wrote Kosmos - an attempt to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge, in five volumes. Five volumes! It sometimes takes me more than a week to come up with this dreck and most of that is copy-pasting from Wikipedia with a few silly words thrown in for good measure. I blame my generation, if I was born into a prominent mid-19th Century Pomeranian family it would be a different story altogether. I still probably wouldn't have been worshipped by Darwin though but that's all right - the whole Creation thing left me a bit cold apart from Swervedriver.

Status: Dead

Lookalike: Inspector George Gently

In Three Words: Work-Life Balance

Crunchie

1929 -

Remember Crunchies? Of course you do, amnesia hasn't been fashionable since 2007, everyone remembers all types of stuff these days. Remember postage stamps? Walking? Urinal cakes? Eeeh, remember 'cars'? Yes man, start whinging about the bloody sweets for pity's sake.

Crunchie, then. It used to just come in a bar format but now you can get it in everything - ice cream, yoghurt, Crunchie Rocks, snuff. 'Milk Chocolate with Golden Honeycombed Centre", or posh cinder toffee for the busy modern professional when the Hoppings isn't on. 

Thank Crunchie It's Friday! That was the marketing slogan for a while. What a stinker. Unfortunately I can remember actual people saying it in real life, they were probably the same people who think Chris Evans is "fun". I didn't know then what I know now - that was the first nail in Crunchie's coffin (Crunchie's Coffin was one marketing opportunity they failed to capitalise on - skellington-shaped crunchie in a special box? It would knock the munchers bandy around Hallowe'en time. There's not enough gallows humour in the confectionary world. I blame those Quakers down in Bourneville. That's also why chocolate and beer don't go together, no matter what they think at the Trent House).

Crunchies aren't dead, but they're dead to me. I bought a pack of four at the Tesco Metro on the way home the other night because a) they were the first thing you saw as you walked in and b) they were on special offer at 82p. I would never have considered buying them otherwise, in fact I can't even remember the last time I even thought of a Crunchie until then. I am nothing if not a bit of a tramp, impulsive, but a tramp nonetheless.

The trouble with Crunchie bars is they're a nightmare to eat. The honeycomb bit either jars to bite through or gets hopelessly clagged onto your teeth, or both. This means you regret eating one before you've even got the whole thing down your gullet. And you can't just toothbrush the wreckage off your choppers afterwards either so you're committed to a good half hour off picking it away with your (crossed) fingers hoping you don't take a filling out at the same time. I don't want that from a chocolate bar, teasing a bit of debris off with your tongue is fine, but not a full scale archeological dig - I associate that kind of thing with that hairy wally from Time Time, the male equivalent of Charlie Dimmock one? You don't want those kind of mental images at hand when you're putting things into your mouth.

Status: Zombie

Lookalike: Wispa Gold

In Three Words: Choose Something Different

Rev. John Stott

Stott (r) with the Holy Ghost.

27 April 1921 – 27 July 2011

The Reverend John Stott, who died on July 27 aged 90, was one of the most influential Anglican clergymen of the 20th century. He was declared one of the world's 100 most influential people in Time magazine in 2005. He also wore muckle shoes and favoured a kilt.

Stott wrote over 50 books, including the 1958 classic "Basic Christianity," which sold more than 2.5 million copies. Using the profits from his writing, Stott funded the training of ministers from poor countries before sending them back out like a botnet attack on their homelands, pestering hitherto contented goatherds with tales of God's young 'un.

So what else did he do? Let's say he invented Stottie cakes because he liked the feeding of the five thousand so much shall we? I can't be bothered researching his actual life any more. He also developed a mixture of small sugar coated sweets called Jelly Stotts but was badly let down by an unscrupulous confectionary agent who dropped the 'S' and sold the concept as his own to Rowntree-Mackintosh. Stott was probably devasted by the betrayal and this is what led him to devote his life to the church or something. He unsuccesfully ran for mayor of Nottingham on the promise of altering its name slightly so it sounded a bit more like his. I don't know. He mentored prominent religious hectorer and mate o' the presidents Billy Graham, they used to get together and watch Blott on the Landscape; John would claim it was all about him and Billy would tease him by saying it was really about Alan Knott. Billy was on the right tracks but slightly off target, it was actually about Jonathan Trott. John didn't like cricket, he liked teapots, robots and AC/DC (Bon Scott).

Status: Dead

Lookalike: An academic Bobby Robson

In Three Words: Ham, Pease Pudding

Amy Winehouse

Before.

14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011

Was it by design or misadventure? Did she fulfil her own destiny? Is she now an all-time great or was she actually a bit of a flash-in-the-pan?  Did she really "die happy"? Questions. Here's another question: didn't she look a bit like a badly neglected horse?

Amy Winehouse died as she lived - in London's massively overrated Camden Town - where menacing street nuisances are 'characters', where hepped-up nightmares are 'revellers' and where there's as many as two decent pubs. Camden, where alternative types flock so they can all look different together. Winehouse made Camden her own and they loved her for it. Amy's just larruped one of her own fans in the face yeah? Genius yeah? Camden innit, standard.

She broke through with her debut album 'Frank' - a 13 piece song cycle which doubled as a love letter to England and Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard. It was a bold move for a new artist and one which was received favourably by the critics, regarded as a promising arrival on the British music scene. Her love for Lampard junior went unrequited, however, the Chelsea Chubber finding love at the time with Elen Rives and latterly with star of ITV's Daybreak (and half of Adrian Chiles) - Christine Bleakley. Never having a strong grasp of football, Amy turned her attentions to Blake Fielder-Civil after he bragged about "having trials with QPR once" but "preferred having lie-ins and getting bonced". It was a ruinous relationship, Fielder-Civil wound up in jail and Winehouse began a downward spiral from which she would never fully recover. QPR denied any responsibility.

Frank was a strong start but it was her 2006 single 'Kebab' which thrust her fully under the spolight. Winehouse said the track was inspired by the Smiths song Meat Is Murder, when asked about this in an NME interview (in 2003) Morrisey said “In England, pop music seems now to be exclusively for children. If an artist is no good, why is it necessary to have that artist repeatedly rammed in our face? That Sarah Beeney would get it, by the way. Norks on it”.

Winehouse died aged 27 and in doing so joined a group of artists including; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Billie Holiday, the Big Punisher, Buddy Holly, Falco, Odetta and Per "Dead" Ohlin from Mayhem who all died at different times, at different ages and of different causes. Spooky? Well they were unavailable for comment, possibly celebrating the 19th anniversary of their debut 12" 'Land Of Oz' on Guerilla records (GRRR36). Coincidence? I don't remember a band called Coincidence - probably for the best, that.

At least in dying so young she never got a chance to go a bit shit. Most musicians that've been around for a while have to negotiate a spell in the artistic doldrums, remember Todd Rundgren's blue hair n' viking helmet period? Aphex Twin spent some time claiming that he wrote his tunes whilst lucid dreaming. Really Aphex? Who've you got on remix duties, Jimmy Hill? Paul McCartney wrote the Frog Chorus - he also wrote Pipes Of Peace, take your pick. No doubt there'll be some posthumous releases from Winehouses's record label, the smart money must be on a collaborative mash-up with the N-Dubz. Camden innit?

Status: Dead

Lookalike: The yellow one from Angry Birds

In Three Words: Bankrolled The Zutons