Coming to Geordierama? Aye, I’ll be ‘gannin oot the hoose with wor lass’ to see it!

So, this is an invoice dated 13^th May 1974 from my dad, Howard Thompson. It’s for the hire of lighting equipment for Geordierama, which was a popular revue show in the North East of England in the early 1970s.

Lighting gear don't come cheap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The invoice is addressed to the show’s producer, Roger Burgess who also worked as a producer at BBC Newcastle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geordierama was a collection of sketches and comic songs, gently poking fun at the dialogue and way of life of the Geordie people. It was written and performed by a collective of local writers, actors and musicians including Scott Dobson, Eric Boswell and TV’s George House and Mike Neville. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It leant heavily on Scott Dobson’s popular book of the time, Larn Yersel’ Geordie, which originated as a humorous look at the origins of the Geordie dialect (“Am gannin’ hyem to wor lass” I’m going home to see my wife; “Walk? I canna wack! You want me to work?” I can’t even walk; etc.)

Somehow, my Dad, who was also theatre lighting designer in his spare time, got involved in the show. 

 

The show was a moveable feast and had lots of one-off spells at theatres and venues all over the region.

It may even have had different iterations such as Whatever Happened to Newcastle? with Mike and George as shown in the poster.

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Whatever Happened? promo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It became a regular feature for a while at the annual Newcastle Festival where it was staged at the Newcastle City Hall.  

Newcastle Festival 1976 promo poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It also appeared on BBC Radio Newcastle. Publicity-wise, it almost certainly benefited from the inclusion of Mike Neville in the cast who was immensely popular as the nightly presenter of the BBC Look North news programme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting back to the invoice, it’s for stage lighting equipment needed for the production which was off to the Alnwick Playhouse Cinema for a performance in the late spring of 1974. Lighting control equipment, isolator switch fuses, lanterns, rigging, de-rigging and transportation: that’ll be £132. Seems reasonable to me…

It must have been a success as in the same collection of papers, a letter is sent a few days later from Roger thanking my dad for his work. How polite! (Of course, this is what people did in the 70s – much better than a one-line e-mail or a text message, I think!)

Fun fact: the musical director of Geordierama, Eric Boswell was also the composer of the Christmas song and schools carols favourite, “Little Donkey”.