With an identity as a national laughing stock, aye. Every third-rate comedian has the thick, sentimental "jawdee" character getting worked up over nothing as a fall-back for a cheap laugh. Your "identity" is on a par with the boring Brummie and the thieving Scouser- fat, pastie-munching mags hanging around that big grey eyesore like flies around shit, spouting incomprehensible twaddle about "wor beloved toon". That's your identity to most people. You must be so proud.
What actually hurts us is that our accents are the same as yours to people outside the area and we get lumped in with you. It hurts to be associated in any way with the kind of people who hold mock funerals for the name of a football ground, who proclaim themselves a "nation" like the Catalan people and can't see how ridiculous that is, people who think they're living in some cultural oasis because woah, there's a big shopping centre over the water and a gallery with nowt of any worth in it... and fuck me if there's not a regional airport close by, there's a thing.
More than anything else, Newcastle United and its supporters have held back the North East as a region by sullying its image for outsiders. A region of hard-working, down to earth people who can laugh at themselves has been hijacked over the last 20 years by sanctimonious, humourless, pretentious bores droning on and on about their f***ing heritage and their "geordie pride". In your determination to prove that you're the bestest, loyalest, cushtiest fans in all the world, you just give the world the impression that you have got absolutely nothing in your lives, that the only thing that can light up the darkness of your Cruddas Park grief-holes is the chance to weeble about the place dressed like giant mint humbugs grunting, "toon toon black and white army" even though you're on the bus and it's Thursday morning. We hate you because you embarrass us and you embarrass the whole region. Now fuck off.
(@DCmackem, 2
