Geordie war hero behind Waltzing Matilda

ANTHEM SINGER John Collinson THE tale of how a Geordie war hero became the first singer to record Australia’s unofficial anthem Waltzing Matilda is told on TV tonight.

The programme recounts how John Collinson, severely injured at the Somme in 1916, woke from an anaesthetic and began singing in a beautiful tenor voice. Born in 1892, he was raised in Wallsend, Tyneside, and worked in a shipyard before going to Australia.

He served in Gallipoli before the Somme and needed 27 operations but the treatment in England changed his life.

When his amazing voice was revealed he was introduced to Proms conductor Sir Henry Wood and became his protege. Gabrielle Gale, of the Royal Academy of Music in London, said: “To have someone of that calibre as your guarantor, it makes us think he must have been really special.

“It was 1919 and he won one of our most prestigious prizes.”

Collinson became a regular voice in the earliest days of radio and TV, touring Europe and America. He returned to Oz in 1940 and is thought to have died there in 1973.

His 1926 original disc of Waltzing Matilda is a treasure in Australia. Archivist Thorsten Kaeding said: “It becomes the quintessential Australian song.” ■ Watch Inside Out on BBC One North East and Cumbria tonight at 7.30pm.