To Mandola Man Newcastle was never the county town of Newcastle. That has always been Alnwick, seat of the Earls (now Dukes) of Northumberland. Newcastle was, before the Local Government reoganisation in '74, a County Borough, a self contained county.

When I sing Byker Hill by the way, I do it more as a chant, the way I first heard it way back in the early '70s.