Night to celebrate a Tyneside bard

FOLLOWING the success of The Great Joe Wilson (and preceding that Mr Corvan’s Music Hall and Hadaway Harry) I’d like to thank everyone who came to see the show about the “Bard of Tyneside”.

Joe Wilson’s 360 songs and poems, like the songs of the great North East singer/ songwriters Ned Corvan and Geordie Ridley before him, are a legacy of working-class life on Victorian Tyneside.

Due to the tremendous support we received for The Great Joe Wilson, Joe’s poems and songs are again accessible to another generation made familiar with songs like Keep Your Feet Still, Geordie Hinny, Row Upon The Stairs, Geordie Haad [hold] the Bairn, Sally Wheatley and many other classics.

Joe Wilson was born in Stowell Street (now Chinatown), Newcastle, on

November 29, 1841 and died on February 14, 1875, aged only 33 years.

Two years ago we held a Joe Wilson Night to celebrate the 175th anniversary of his birth. It comprised comedy and songs written by numerous great Geordie singer/ songwriters, and it sold out.

Last year we held a second Joe Wilson Night, which again sold out. This year, by popular demand, we are staging a third Joe Wilson Night. It will be held at Tyneside Irish Centre in Stowell Street, 10 yards from Joe’s birthplace where Newcastle City Council kindly placed a blue plaque in 2016.

Our aim is to make Joe Wilson Night a celebration for the Geordie nation, just as Burns’ Night is for the Scots. We might be succeeding!

Tickets are £16 and limited to 150. They can be bought via www.wisecrackproductions. co.uk or telephone box office on (0191) 4247788.

ED WAUGH, playwright, Wisecrack Productions