A Silent Night is welcome...

“Merry Christmas: Dinnit dee nowt daft!”

The quirky Mackem message thought up by Sunderland College students was produced for a laugh ... but it needs to be heeded by the revellers who descend on the city over Christmas.

As we reveal today, the police and ambulance services are teaming up to tackle an expected rise in booze-related trouble over the coming weeks.

In particular, they fear another bumper night of bother on the notorious date dubbed Black Eye Friday. If it’s anything like last year’s festive fracas, they are in for a busy night.

Black Eye Friday, or Mad Friday as it is also known, is the last Friday before Christmas, when traditionally, city workers let their hair down. The day marks, for many, the beginning of their Christmas break.

For the hard-pressed police and emergency services is marks one of the busiest and resource-sapping nights of the year.

Last year, North East Ambulance Service attended 501 incidents of which 94 were alcohol-related. That was about 250 more calls than they would usually get on a Friday night.

It’s a similar story on New Year’s Eve.

No one wants to be a party pooper, but it’s timely to make the plea to everyone in the run up to Christmas to take things easy.

The police and ambulance services are teaming up and expecting the worst. How nice, and beneficial for the city, if the revellers were to prove them wrong.

We don’t expect a Silent Night, but as close as you can get would be appreciated by our hard-pressed emergency workers.

As the students who have given Christmas a Mackem makeover might put it: “Av yaself a proper Merry Christmas.”