The EFDSS used to pay me. Not very much though.

Between returning from Germany in 1982 where I'd been promoting concerts and going to Tyneside a decade later to run a disastrous production into the ground, I hardly ever entered a "f*lk club". They were utterly dire and crawling with Thackrays and Hardings. And, presumably, Ms Brown (who I have never met).

I came across the teenage Nancy Kerr and Eliza Carthy in the Caedman Hall in Gateshead in 1994 or thereabouts and realised that dawn was finally breaking. Bitter? Yeah, had a pint or two of Newcastle Brown to celebrate.