Collins Taak of the Toon: How to Speak Geordie. Sid Waddell

       WOR HISTORY AND WOR HEROES

      I suppose the first Geordie was the Venerable Bede who sat in his monastery at Jarrow about 1200 years ago and described the pillaging Vikings in much the same way as Toon football supporters describe the Mackem hordes: daft lads who go berserk after a couple of lager shandies. There is, in his works and the writings of his isolated pals on Lindisfarne, a sense of tribe that has come down through the ages, a sense of ‘ganging up’ against the rest of a hostile world. I like to think of Bedey and a few of his muckers drying off their quills, sloughing off their hair shirts and swanning along to a pleasant Saturday night hop in Bamburgh. Drop of mead, quick Gay Gordons with the local talent, then back in time for a cold shower and a mumbled matins…

      Moving to the colourful hectic age that Shakespeare immortalized, we have the doughty figure of Harry Hotspur, a cross between Lord Lucan and Arthur Scargill, part wild-child, part local hero. He spent his time fighting for whatever king was in power in London or sitting in Warkworth Castle planning to join the Jocks and invade London. Harry also had a terrible problem with pronouncing his Rs. So his granny made up this verbal mantra – one that many of us still use as an exercise today. ‘Roond the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.’ It is best attempted by pushing out the cheeks like a hungry gorilla and trying to get imaginary claggum (chewing gum) off the base of the tongue.

      The identity of Geordies became crystallized as sea-borne trade, particularly in coal, developed on the Tyne. Nowadays the ‘bonny lads’ who strut their stuff along the Quayside are rich footballers, legal eagles or IT wizards – all fat knots and designer stubble – but around 1750 the cocks of the walk were keelmen. These were an elite band of experts who rowed boats full of coal to and from merchant sailing ships in the Tyne. They had their own guild and their badge of honour was a blue bonnet, set off with a red neckerchief and silver shoe buckles. They earned top dollar, were known to enjoy a swallow or three, and occasionally broke the hearts of the ladies. Nobody knows why the legendary ‘Bonny’ Bobby Shaftoe – trained on keels but later a seafarer – went off over the briny, but I reckon it was to do with sex or drink or debt – or all the above. Our bright-eyed verbalized romanticism has always been deeply shadowed by excess.

      In 2005 Northumberland County Council ran a ‘Most Famous Northumbrians’ website competition and polled 30,000 people. This was the result:

      George Stephenson. He was the man who put a Rocket up the pants of the transport system by inventing a viable track-based steam locomotive. His mother kept shouting, ‘Stop clocking that bliddy kettle, Georgie, ye knaa it’ll nivvor bile.’ TRANSLATION: ‘Get out of the house and do some useful work, you waster.’

      Grace Darling. Did the single sculls out of a harbour in a fierce storm and rescued people from a foundering ship.

      Lord Armstrong. Famous arms and munitions maker with a factory along the old Scotswood road. Turned ‘Cragside’ at Rothbury into a turreted mansion sporting the latest electric and hydraulic gadgets. Typical saying: ‘What do yee lot want with a union? Stand on yer own pasties!’ TRANSLATION: ‘I’m alright, Jacks.’

      Jane, Duchess of Northumberland. Smart lassie who persuaded the government to give her £14 million to create a massive natural jewel of a garden in the backyard of Alnwick Castle.

      Jackie Milburn. The greatest centre forward Newcastle ever had. Scored six goals in a trial match having come from Ashington on the bus with his boots in a carrier bag.

      Jack Charlton. Another Ashingtonian who was in England’s World Cup-winning team of 1966 and now hunts, shoots and fishes like a squire of old.