A TV historian has recalled the racism he faced growing up on Tyneside - and how Paul Gascoigne stood up for him.
David Olusoga, set to appear in A House Through Time starting next week, was raised in Gateshead and played at Brighton Avenue Juniors with a young Gazza.
At six years old, he was knocked down in the playground and looked up to see the future England football star offering to help, The Mirror exclusively reports .
He said: “I remember him putting his hand out to pick me up. I was five or six and he was nine or 10.
“I recall it vividly, because I had never known anyone with blue eyes.
“He was the only tough kid who did not have a problem with black people. We were isolated as a black family back then."
David was born in Lagos, Nigeria, but his parents met in Newcastle , and he grew up in Gateshead, spending his early years in St Cuthbert’s Village , the troubled 1970s estate.
“A combination of bad architecture and poverty, it was every bit as bad as it looked,” he said.
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“It had a cameo role in the background in the film Get Carter. If you looked behind Michael Caine in the scene on the famous Gateshead car park , you can see my bedroom.
“So I am always tempted to get that on a poster. My screen saver on my computer is St Cuthbert’s Village to remind myself that even on my dark days I have been through worse.”
David, 49, who wrote of the British Isles and our relationship with the people of Africa in the award-winning Black and British, gives talks on history in schools.
His own memories of his Tyneside childhood are marred by brutal racism.
“I do find the experiences growing up, even with my younger siblings, sound like they must be from the 1950s, not the 1980s,” he said.
“Coming out of school with my sisters, if there was no white person at the bus stop, you did not wait, as the buses would not stop for you if there was no white person with you.
“At times, you would walk all the way home. There was no point in standing there.
"It was so humiliating and hurtful when they did not stop. But there was more dignity in walking than not getting on the bus.”
David recalled: “You can’t say you had a happy childhood when people were trying to drive you out of your home. I was brought up amid a lot of violence.
“Black people were just hated.”
But despite the hatred he faced, David maintains a fondness for the North East.
In the second series of the show, he returns to Tyneside to tell the story of Nicholas Hardcastle, a medical officer at a workhouse in Newcastle who treated the poorest people in society.
He said: “This series, as far as I’m concerned, is a love letter to the North East.
“I hope viewers are reminded of all we have been through in the past, what the generations before us achieved and all they went through to build the region we have today.”
- A House Through Time airs on Monday, April 8, at 9pm on BBC2.
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