[Mumbles]

Originally Posted by MTVN

Ah right, I just wikipedia'd the town his Mum's from and it said it's "approximately 5 miles to the south-west of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne" so I presumed that was his nearest City

No worries, the curse of Wiki strikes again. I don't think there's a huge amount of difference between Sunderland-Durham and Newcastle-Durham anyway, though ironically, despite the historic connections it's actually easier to get to Newcatle from Durham than it is to get to Sunderland from Durham.

To add to the discussion, you do find that outside of Sunderland and Newcastle, there is a lot of variation in the outlying areas of the 2 cities, so people from some of the places in Durham or South Shields are just as likely to call themselves Mackems as they are Geordies. Those people calling themselves Geordies in these places are usually referred to by people from Sunderland as "Plastic Geordies".