How dare he suggests, Little Dennis pass on derogatory remarks about his fellow 'Geordies' sitting in little sheds at the bottom of the Garden, rolled up copies of the Newcastle Evening Post or whatever all ready. Well I can, and your honour in my defence, I put forward as evidence a visit made to the wonderful and not to be missed open air museum at Beamish.

Here where once were fields just to the south of Newcastle, they have managed to rescue old buildings such as shops, homes and other public buildings to rebuild them brick by brick on this site, which now resembles a small town complete with it's own tram system, and joy of joys a steam railway.

Each building is furnished as it would have been originally, which means you can step into a co-op shop complete with goodies on the shelves. Look into the local dentist, Ugh, or dribble over the sight and smells of printers ink from a set of lovely Letterpress printing machines that still thunder out typeset paperwork. And all before nipping into a real ale pub next door for a pint of Newcastle Brown.. Oh yes and you can go down a drift mine as well as looking around some miners cottages. It was here my lord that in the back gardens they have rebuilt a set of outside loos, wherein on a pin are copies of a newspaper all ready for use. I rest my case.

I grant You Mr Forster that things have changed quite a bit since you took the A1 down to Civilisation to become an 'Essex Man' I mean when you left, Newcastle and the North East was a vibrant place offering work aplenty in the mining industry or alongside the Tyne, building the ships for our once proud Merchant shipping fleet. Not any longer. On the other hand, at least they have a whole group of new industries and Newcastle is, as I can tell you from personal experience a great city to visit, and yes I still have friends there, who assure me they no longer keep the coal in the bath, and their loos are inside now, and equipped with those loo rolls little dogs like to play with.

But I would like to make at this stage a public apology not to you Mr Foster, but to a recent Lord Mayor of Newcastle. You see it all happened during my last visit to a Hospital Radio Conference in that city. As part of the weekend, we were all bussed up to the Town Hall or Civic Centre -- not sure which as it was dark, and knowing the Mayor had his own pet charity for the year, I and a couple of others decided that our 300 hundred or so delegates, should as thanks dig deep in their pockets. To which end we borrowed a valuable antique silver ice bucket from the Civic Centre to do duty as a large collection can.

So sorry Mr Mayor, just hope the cash raised was put to good use, and sorry about the dent in the Ice Bucket.

ENDS