GIVEN the familiar verse from the 18th chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew – you know, the one about its being better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea – the Millstone may seem a surprising name for a pub.

It’s in South Gosforth, near enough the Freeman Hospital, and in the upper room on the first Tuesday of the month stages the greatest free show on earth.

We alluded to it last week, what unofficially they call the old folks’ folk club though by no means a folk museum. It’s in the afternoon because these days some of them are a bit wary of venturing out in the dark.

Last Tuesday’s line-up included great names from the North-East traditional music scene like Johnny Handle, Tommy Gilfellon, Ed Pickford and Marie Little. Maybe they no longer march on Aldermaston – some of these guys might struggle to make the corner shop – but the bus pass buskers remain in remarkably good voice.

Once idealistic, perhaps a bit more realistic, they hang on to their totems. “Eight or ninety per cent of them will still be lefties,” says Jim Sharp, another singer. “There aren’t many Conservatives in folk clubs.”

THE place is rammed, so many wanting to perform during a three-hour session that it’s basically one singer, one song. “There must be a bus load in, they’ve all been reading your column,” says Dave Normanton, a masterful MC.

Many, singers and listeners, have grey beards. No longer compulsory, as in the sixties it seemed, beards still appear very much in folkie fashion. However the term is interpreted, few may be supposed young shavers.

Dave begins proceedings by tinkling a little bell, as if to announce the solemn bit of the Mass. There’s even a bloke in from down south, and on this occasion even further south than Gateshead.

“We have international renown,” says Dave. “We get letters from Seattle, Warkworth, all over.”

Among those regrettably absent is 84-year-old Bert Draycott, retired Fishburn miner and world spoons playing champion, who hasn’t been feeling too clever. “I was that poorly,” he says over the phone, “I didn’t even give the doctor a tune.”

The music’s eclectic, though not as in Eclectic Light Orchestra. Really it’s more folk music hall, a surer pick-me-up than any amount of pill popping. “If you could bottle this and sell it,” says Jim Sharp, “you’d soon be a millionaire.”

FIRST up, singing Act Naturally and accompanying himself on ukulele, is Keith Perry, formerly the Sun’s photographer in the North-East and who still takes pictures for the paper. He’s known as Misspent Uke: the Sun subs’ desk would have been proud of that one.

Johnny Handle may no longer be the tousle-haired troubadour who toured the world but he’s a great turn, for all that. He’ll be 80 next month, still plays numerous instruments, still loves to entertain. His song is about the sex life of fishes, he says. It might not strictly be true, but it would make a good headline in the Sun.

Gilfellon, his former colleague in The High Level Ranters, has the sort of beard in which Edward Lear supposed that two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren might comfortably have found habitation.

None minds if the lads have to nip out during the songs. It’s an age thing. Not for nothing are two of the performers nicknamed the Prostate Duo.

Another senior moment, Jim forgets his lines. “The other day I was singing a song and forgot the bloody month that comes after May,” he says.

The Freeman’s proximity also means that an ambulance periodically wails beneath the window. Half the room wonders if it’s playing their tune.

Dave Normanton has written a poem, inevitably with a Geordie accent, called Fifty Shades of Grey From the Husband’s Point of View. As in the more familiar version, the lady attempts to liven things up, though perhaps a little less successfully.

“Fifty-some-odd years ago I might have had a peek,

“But Mabel hasn’t weathered well, she’s 84 next week.”

ED PICKFORD sings about the Bridge Hotel in Newcastle, a legendary folk music venue; Pete Collins – the bloke from south of Gateshead, Tunbridge Wells to be precise – essays a number about why winkles always turn to the right.

Apparently it was written by Sydney Carter, who also wrote Lord of the Dance. Lord of the Dance may be slightly better known.

Dennis Bostock has a song appropriately called Divvent Let Life Grind You Down, Jim McGeean essays the old North-East number about The Neighbours Doon Belaa.

Ed Pickford returns toThe Ballad of the Great Crested Newt, said to have been inspired when someone told him there were none of that species in Whitburn. “I was absolutely devastated,” he says.

Between verses he also tells the joke about ice hockey being a card game, with which readers of these columns are all too familiar.

Ken Gregson ran folk clubs in Sunderland and in Hartlepool but left in the late 1970s. “It was getting too serious,” he says. “This is how folk clubs used to be, where the most important thing is having a good time. It’s a great afternoon.”

Marie Little, who’s 64 and made an album called From Hot Pants to Hot Flushes, sings a Woody Guthrie song about a 1914 strike in Kentucky. “It’s really exciting what’s happening in Greece and in Madrid,” she says. “It’ll happen here yet.”

“She’s brilliant,” says Ed Pickford. “When Marie really gets going, she reminds you of Gracie Fields.”

AT the interval – the “blether break” Dave Normanton calls it – Jim Sharp and Di Henderson reflect on how the folk music scene has changed.

“There are still plenty of good young song writers around, if anything the quality’s better,” says Jim. “It’s just that the emphasis has moved away from folk clubs to festivals.”

“There’s a really friendly atmosphere here,” says Di. “The folk scene in the North-East has a lot of history – it wasn’t history then, it was current affairs – but it’s still vibrant today.”

They’re booked for three hours, overrun, wind up with a joyous jamming of Hey Baby – perhaps never before considered a folk song – before retiring downstairs to the bar. The bus pass also means there’s no need to worry about the beer.

It’s been an invigorating afternoon, a winter blues buster. The Millstone walks on water.

The Millstone folk club meets on the first Tuesday from 2-5pm but now gets very full. A similar event has started at the Bridge Hotel in Newcastle on the Third Thursday, same times.