Thursday 18 July 2024

A piece of my childhood: Jackie Charlton visits Ashington, Northumberland, 1971


"Big Jack" Charlton and "wor kid" (i.e. my little brother) Bobby - 1966 Soccer World Cup winners feted in their home town of Ashington


This is a marvellous half-hour 1971 "fly on the wall" TV documentary about the 1966 England football world cup winner Jackie Charlton, visiting his childhood home in Ashington Northumberland. 

I have previously written about the astonishing way that this mining village has - over several generations - produced international sportsmen - first in football, and now in cricket. 

All through my childhood I spent Easter and Summer holidays staying with grandparents in the next-door-to-Ashington villages of Newbiggin, and later Newsham; before, after and during the time this documentary was made. 

So, what is depicted is both familiar and nostalgic. Nostalgic, despite the decidedly un-glamorous nature of these smoky and coaly Northumbrian villages - a stark contrast to the bosky Devonshire and Somerset villages where I grew-up. 

We certainly enjoyed our holidays - much helped by the fact that Newbiggin - unlike Ashington - had a good beach, with rock pools, only a stones-throw from my grandparents house; and did not feel in any way deprived by comparison with our neighbours who were going abroad or to more genteel resorts.  

If you do decide to watch this programme, then you may find it difficult to understand what is being said. The dialect is mid-Northumbrian - sometimes called Pitmatic - and is still (even when the speaker is trying to speak posh) strange, or largely incomprehensible, to those who were not exposed to it as children; but in 1971 it was even more extreme.