THE North-East has a proud tradition of producing great musicians but when it comes to the band most closely associated with this region, it’s hard to look beyond Lindisfarne.

With roots going back to 1962, and first topping the bill at The City Hall in 1970, the Geordie band became as synonymous with the North-East as Newcastle Brown Ale.

Despite going through more line-ups than the Labour Party’s shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn,

Lindisfarne earned international fame with songs that have stood the test of time, such as Lady Eleanor, Meet Me On The Corner, Run For Home and Fog On The Tyne.

It was, therefore, a pleasure to hear “The Lindisfarne Story” being told amid the unlikely setting of the North Sea, on a DFDS boat trip between Newcastle and Amsterdam.

Founder member and drummer Ray Laidlaw was joined on board by singer and guitarist Billy Mitchell, who was in and out of the band at various points in its history. Together they played the music and told the tales that emanated from the Lindisfarne years – and what a voyage it was…

PERCY Main Social Club was the setting for the band’s first paid gig but it was an inauspicious start. A tenner got blown away in the wind outside so they were left with the princely sum of one pound ten shillings to share between them.

But there were soon enjoying the trappings of their early popularity. They had enough money to buy a van from a local butcher. “It still had bits of mince and that in it but we cleaned it out,” explained Ray.

They painted the butcher’s name out from the side of the van shortly before a gig in Ashington. The trouble was that courting couples, “doing what courting couples do”, used the van for support and went home with bright green stripes across their backs.

LINDISFARNE continued to earn the stripes as a live act and, having noticed the success of open-air concerts in San Francisco and Hyde Park, the up and coming Geordie boys decided they should stage something similar in Leazes Park, Newcastle, playing on the back of a flat-bed truck.

The fella in charge of parks at the Civic Centre was all for it and promised to sort out an electricity supply. When the band members turned up, the bulb had been removed from a nearby lamppost and a cable was hanging down to be plugged in to the sound system.

“Health and safety wasn’t quite what it is now,” observed Ray.

THE other band members first encountered Alan Hull, the gifted singer-songwriter behind many of the best-known Lindisfarne songs, during an open mic session at The Wheatsheaf in New York – the North Tyneside village, as opposed to the Big Apple.

It was still early days, in 1968, and payment for the performers was made via donations dropped into a chamber pot.

Billy Mitchell recalled Alan asking if he could sing a few songs and the crowd wouldn’t let him off get off the stage.

“By the end, there was £7 in the pot and we got a lock-in. We did our best to drink our way through the £7 but it was impossible because it was only tuppence a pint,” said Billy.

Sadly, Alan died of a heart attack in 19995 but his legacy remains very much alive.

• The Lindisfarne Story, with Ray Laidlaw and Billy Mitchell, is nearing the end of its tour but North-East fans still have the chance to see them at the Phoenix Theatre in Blyth on October 29 and at The Gala Theatre in Durham on October 30.

BACK on dry land, it was my pleasant duty last Thursday to speak to members of the Stockton Townswomen’s Guild.

As is traditional on these occasions, I was asked to judge the monthly competition - this time requiring members to bring an old magazine.

Beryl Robinson won by bringing along a copy of The Motor magazine from 1953, commemorating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Northern Echo: motor magazine

By coincidence, the first page I came to carried a half-page advert for none other than DFDS – “Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (The United Steamship Company) – announcing the exciting new opportunity to “Take Your Car to Scandinavia By Sea!”.

Further inside the magazine was a full page advertisement for “The Best Car In the World” – the Rolls Royce. A Phantom III saloon was selling for a measly £1,095.

FINALLY, congratulations to Paul Howell, of Coniscliffe Road, Darlington, for winning the race to find the Holy Grail – or The Golden Tin of Spam.

The search was launched a few weeks back to promote Darlington Operatic Society’s forthcoming production of Monty Python’s Spamalot, which opens at Yarm School tonight (Monday October 24).

Paul followed the clues and discovered The Golden Tin of Spam hanging above a large ornamental gorilla which sits on a stall in Darlington’s Victorian Covered Market.

He wins two tickets for the show, afternoon tea for two at the Mercure King’s Hotel in Darlington, and enough produce from the market to give a family of four a slap-up Sunday lunch.

Spamtastic.