The Tees

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The Tees Podcast

Championing the Community, Culture, and Causes of the Tees. Produced and edited by Sunita Ghosh Dastidar.

Episodes

  1. 12/03/2021

    Talking Tees - John Nicholson

    Teesside has a “mythical” quality that lends itself to crime fiction says Stockton-born author John Nicholson. John is an acclaimed football writer who was long-listed for the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year for his strident anti-Premier League polemic "Can We Have Our Football Back?" last year. But for thousands of Teessiders he is best known as the author of the gritty Nick Guymer novels that put the industrial landscape and the lush hidden hinterlands of the area centre-stage. John, an exile currently living on the West coast of Scotland, has written 16 Nick Guymer 'Tees Noir' thrillers since 2006 and says his home turf is a massive inspiration. “Since I’ve started to work on it I’ve realised Teesside is a kind of mythical place," he told TheTeesOnline. “It exists only to the people who live there. It lives sort of in our imagination and no one else actually knows where it is. “Anything can happen there. So I thought because of all that it was a great place to set a crime novel. It was a way to introduce Teesside to the rest of Britain.” John, who grew up in Fairfield in Stockton, finds the contradictions of Teesside fire the imagination. "It’s a really interesting combination of man-made industry set against the natural world," he said. "It’s that gritty realism versus airy romance that is so inspiring. Teesside is unfashionable, but it’s got a romantic element to it.” Listen to John outline how he made Teesside the hero in his books - and more Edited by Sunita Ghosh Dastidar.

    20 min

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Championing the Community, Culture, and Causes of the Tees. Produced and edited by Sunita Ghosh Dastidar.

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