Football & Politics panel discussion

George Caulkin

Here at Live Theatre, we love knowledge. We also love straight-talking. So it is safe to say we also love George Caulkin, one of the most respected voices reporting on North-East football since 1994, when a one off report for The Times led to a job that would occupy the next 21 years of his life.

Those 21 years would span Keegan’s Entertainers and the drudgery of the Ashley era, with George one of the first to announce with nervous authority to his 100k Twitter followers in October 2021 that the dark Sports-Direct days were at an end.

Now a Senior Writer with the thoughtful and informed online publication ‘The Athletic’ and a regular podcaster, he is recognized as the go-to-person for football transfer news, often with the inside track on stories and a more dependable source than the mainstream media.

He declares his allegiance to Newcastle United if questioned, once describing the club as ‘perennially perplexing’. He is better described nowadays as a regional fan, an admirer of Middlesboro’s ownership and freely admitting his huge enjoyment of lower league football, though we are not sure if he was referring to Sunderland there…

George is a Patron of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, promoting the great work of the organisation, most recently celebrating what would have been Sir Bobby’s 90th birthday through his perceptive and informative writing.

Steve Harper

Sometimes the statistics of a footballers’ career can’t do justice to the contribution they have made to a club or the game in general.

Signed as an 18 year from Seaham Red Star in 1993, the transfer of Steve Harper from the County Durham outfit to Newcastle United could not have expected to lead to a 20-year playing career with the Magpies.

The respectable 199 appearances for the club in no way seems a fair reward to a universally liked player, who by his departure from the club as a player in 2013 had set the record for the longest playing career in the 131-year history of the club. His debut for the first team in 1998 saw him achieve the rare feat of playing in all top 5 English football division.

During the Entertainers period, Steve was a loaned-out, up-and-coming keeper, only to find his returning path to a regular first team spot blocked by the highest calibre of goalkeepers the club has perhaps ever seen - Shaka Hislop, the late great Pavel Srnicek and perhaps that most ever-present of players, Shay Given. Highly rated by managers from Sir Bobby to Ruud Gullit, King Kev to Glen Roeder, Steve was persuaded to stay and fight for the shirt by manager after manager.

By the time he became the number one choice in the Championship season of 2009/10, at the age of 35, he had appeared against Man Utd in the horribly familiar 2-0 FA Cup Final defeat of 1999, kept a clean sheet in the 1-0 shock Champions League defeat of Juventus in 2002 and saved the penalty that won Newcastle’s first ever competitive penalty shoot-out against Watford.

Bouncing back to the Premier League at the first attempt, Steve broke the club record for clean sheets in a season, with a remarkable 21 from 45 games played.

An occasional pundit and analyst on TV and Radio, in 2019 he gained a Masters degree in Sports Directorship and since hanging up the gloves has returned to St James’ Park in various coaching roles. Steve hails from Easington, Co Durham and is the son of a miner who worked at the Easington Colliery until it’s closure in 1993, his life has many parallels with the story of Love It If We Beat Them.

Paul Ferris

Born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Paul Ferris was a teenage footballing prodigy, and in 1982, at 16 years 294 days, became Newcastle United's youngest-ever player. Sadly his promising NUFC career would last just 14 games and return one goal before a serious knee injury would force him down the leagues, initially to Gateshead then onward to Barrow and an FA Trophy win at Wembley.

In 1993 Paul returned to the club as a physiotherapist under Kevin Keegan and was a part of the Entertainers team that thrilled the country. He was a huge part of Alan Shearer’s career saving return from injury. While working at Newcastle United Paul Paul earned a master's degree in History of Ideas in 2004 then went on to study law part-time 2004-2006. He left the club in 2006 after beginning a successful quest to qualify as a barrister he was called to the bar in 2007.

The lure of football was always strong, and he came back for a third spell at Newcastle, now as Head of the Medical Department, again working closely with a host of big-name players and managers.

His memoir, capturing football, politics and family ‘The Boy on The Shed’ became a critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning bestseller described by the Telegraph as having ‘enough depth and humanity to make your average football biography look like a Ladybird book’.

His follow up, The Magic in the Tin, chronicles his fight with prostate cancer in his early 50’s, shortly after recovering from a heart attack at just 48 from an inherited condition and has also become a bestseller. Both available on Amazon…

Paul also writes novels and is the CEO of a successful health and fitness business, Speedflex. He is certainly a survivor, so should be well equipped for the panel.

Ian Mearns MP

Ian Mearns MP has been Labour MP for Gateshead since 2010 prior to that he was a local councillor, for Saltwell Ward, on Gateshead Council for nearly 27 years and was Chair of the Education Committee then Deputy Leader of the Council before being selected to stand for Parliament.

Predating all of this is his lifelong love of Newcastle United, a die-hard fan for more than 50 years, through good times and bad. He first stood on the terraces in 1966. Carrying on his passion into his professional life as an MP, he helped found and Chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Football Supporters. In a recent debate in Parliament on a White Paper on football governance Ian welcomed the White Paper stating “fans are the lifeblood of clubs, not just an asset to be cynically sweated, as was said by Mike Ashley when he took over Newcastle United”. Leaning to the left of the Labour Party Ian’s career could have had parallels with Len’s from Love It If We Beat Them but from the back benches he has navigated his way to being a respected if however sometimes outspoken parliamentarian.