Andy Potts
Bio
Community focused sports fan from Northeast England. Tends to root for the little guy. Look out for Talking Northeast, my new project coming soon.
Stories (178)
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Getting the bird
Oh Jeff ... I love you too ... but ... The birds have got to go. I mean, seriously? The partridge in the pear tree, that was sweet. You remembered how I talked about Christmas when I was a kid, and that song, and all those memories. And really, I’ve no idea how you even managed to find a live partridge – you don’t get them in pet shops, right? – and persuaded it to stay perched in a rinky-dink little pear tree while you brought it round.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Fiction
Nativity, Neapolitan style
If your childhood Christmases were anything like mine, sometime round about now you’d be trying to make a nativity scene. And, if your craft skills were anything like mine, you’d have ended up with an oddly sticky holy family attended by a wonky donkey.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Art
Cloe Sparrow
Ceramic tablets, embossed with sea creatures. Strung together by assorted pieces of flotsam and jetsam from our beaches. Snatches of verse, reflections on the strange hinterland of sand and foam. Cloe Sparrow’s first solo exhibition ‘Pages of my Mind’ delivers memorable images from our shorelines.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Art
Playlist: new releases
Binaries – If God Exists, I don’t First up, great song title. Intriguing, and likely to annoy all the right kinds of people. But that doesn’t mean much without the music to back it up. Happily, from the first stabs of menacing synth strings, this one is a belter. There’s a whiff of Paranoid Android-era Radiohead about the vocals – never a bad thing – charting a descent into tech dystopia with memorable flair.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Beat
The search for 'proper footie'
When it comes to history, whose side are you on? A trip to Oakwell might help provide some answers. You could watch Barnsley FC from the imposing East Stand. When it was opened in 1993, it made Oakwell the first football ground in Yorkshire to have purpose-built executive boxes in the stadium. The jury’s still out on whether this is a smart commercial move, or a sell-out to the prawn sandwich brigade.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Cleats
Boundaries Festival, Sunderland, 2024. Top Story - November 2024.
Sometimes, it’s the provincial towns where the fascinating stuff happens. Take Sunderland’s Boundaries Festival. In theory, assembling an international array of experimental music gurus in a northeastern city better known for footballing struggles and industrial heritage should be a non-starter. Easy to assume there’s no local audience, and nobody willing to travel to an unfashionable outpost regardless of who is on the bill.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Beat
Playlist: Waves festival
Saturday is Waves Festival, a monster music day across eight venues in Sunderland. Tickets, a bargain at £35, are running low, but you can still grab the last few here. And here are three rising northeast bands that you should be sure to catch on a bill led by Red Rum Club, Miles Kane, Tom A. Smith and more.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Beat
Fulwell Acoustic Mirror. Top Story - November 2024.
Remembrance Day feels like an appropriate time to look back at an unlikely piece of military history on Wearside. The Fulwell Acoustic Mirror might not look like much, but the stark concrete slab played a key role in air defence 15 years before Radar was implemented.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in History
Playlist: if the Pixies came from Peterlee
Marginal Gains – Now If the Pixies came from Peterlee, they might sound a bit like this. Part of the East Durham cultural revival (and yes, that really is a thing) Marginal Gains started life drinking cans of beer in a recording studio because it was cheaper than going to the pub. That musical atmosphere apparently rubbed off, persuading them to form a band. Fast forward a few years, and the bizarre juxtaposition between a poised rocking trio and a shirtless shouty frontman is grabbing attention across the northeast – and is surely destined to turn heads further afield.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Beat
Getting Stoned in Grimsby
If you wanted an ideal setting for an old-fashioned cup upset, Blundell Park would always be a good choice. This is a traditional football ground. Surrounded by residential Cleethorpes streets, with four floodlight pylons serving as signposts for visiting fans, it has the kind of setting all too often abandoned for out-of-town convenience. It’s been home to Grimsby Town since 1899 – the irony, of course, is that it was built for out-of-town convenience in the seaside resort that sprang up downriver from Grimsby docks – and the main stand dates from 1901. That makes it the oldest in the Football League.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Cleats
