It's hard when you can't provide.
As far as I'm concerned of it, Earl is one of the boys.
Rather than some guy coming to you with a suit and tie
and three or four different letters after his name.
Somebody like Earl, you're able to speak to a lot better.
These are the guys here you want to be talking too.
The men, their futures at stake.
I have minus in my bank,
so that's affected on my mental health, because I've had no money.
It's nice to have people that actually care about the north-east.
When I was on the street,
best night sleeping was in the graveyard, no one's disturbing you.
Telling you.
I had loads of company, but none that woke us up.
I was never alone.
So when you walk on the Waggonways–
the Waggonways they just go from–
It's the old roads through the mines.
We often talk of our history and what went on around here,
our past and our ...
And I think it opens people up,
well it certainly opens men up,
in terms of talking to each other.
And then you can move on to all sorts of different topics.
It's not only the mining, it's the fishing industry,
it's the docks, the Wallsend, the shipyards, you know?
Because all our families, you know,
they would have been there at some point or other, you know?
But obviously there was a lot of poverty in the 80s.
Oh yeah, well I've always had like, the anxiety issues and that ...
And I deal with them through my art.
I mean I'm a mosaic artist,
I just decided to take a leap of faith last year,
when I got made redundant, you know?
For me personally was like the rise of Sam Fender
and the Newcastle United it just happened all at the same time.
And I just, the inspiration I got from that
was just unbelievable, you know, and ...
It gives you that sense of worth again, you know?
Because I mean, for so many years
if you say you're from North Shields, you know, they'd just be like,
"Oh leave him well alone then,
you know, he's a wrong'un."
But it's changing, you know what I mean?
Obviously the poverty, you know,
I've had a lot of my friends fall by the wayside, they've killed themselves,
half of them are still in jail.
It's not brought to the forefront, is it?
Like the male side of things, you know?
And that's obviously why these are important
and what Earl's trying to do.
You're gorgeous, yes you are.
Can I ask, you do any community project here, as well?
No.
So I do the men's walk and talk groups and stuff like that,
and I was thinking if there's anything you ever want us to do on a Tuesday
or something we can come along and spend an hour with youse.
A bit of grooming.
I mean because the best therapy in the world, animals.
My name's Earl by the way.
Hi, I'm Judith.
Lovely to meet you Judith.
Most of the time my mental health is all right,
but my dad like, he's had his struggles with mental health
from the past like year.
He had really bad depression when we were growing up,
so I know what it's like for people to bottle things up
and see the effects of it.
So, coming here and just having a chat
and about errors we see in Scotland, about anything.
Doesn't have to be deep, if it is deep it's fine,
but just meeting folk like Earl and
everyone around this kind of communities,
really ignited my sort of faith in folk again.
Thank you Hughen.
No worries mate.
Was that a good work out for you this morning lad, eh?
Now you can go pick your cuppa up now.
So now it's cheap breakfast full English, £2.50,
as many cuppas as you want for a pound.
Appreciate it.
I mean I don't know what this magic is you have Earl,
but before you know it these guys have permission almost,
seeing you, a big burly bloke, successful bloke,
to know well it's OK, every man feels what I feel,
every man gets a bit scared, every man's struggling.
The kids call him grandad.
He looks it.
Say uncle man, uncle.
He's a cool uncle, he's not a grandad.
We're doing a live sing along, attention all.
It won't be long, till I'm gonna need
somebody to lean on.
So just call on your brother when you need a hand,
we all need somebody to lean ...
I think Earl's just a testament of doesn't matter how bad things get,
you can always get yourself out of them.
You know, like the last sort of 12 years of austerity
and you know people really being sort of dragged down to their bones.
You've got to take heart in the fact that
people are doing something about it.
You cannot wait for a change of government
to bring about that change.
Hey, Jude.
Don't be afraid.
I think it has always been this sort of tough working class thing,
of you know, you don't talk about your feelings,
you know, you get on with it.
And I think for a long time, you know, when there was industry,
you know, a bloke could go to work, work hard,
go out in the evening, play hard and that was it, you know.
But now there's people that have got nothing coming out of
what their grafting for and then they've got this family struggling,
that plays on a person's, inside a man's head.
And when the lads think, "Oh I can't talk about the thing."
Because they're going to get judged for being less of a man.
You're actually braver than any other man,
because you're coming forward and you're sharing it.
When the industry was an industry back then.
Yeah, I remember when I was younger, it was a Sunday
that had the fish market on.
Right.
They had all the tables and everything I mean
and I used to come over from South Shields with us
and get my grandad's fish and that.
This area we're coming through now is the Meadow Well.
Which in the 90s, early 90s had massive riots.
Meadow Well riots.
Them riots actually got some things done,
because they actually ended up investing a lot more money in the area.
From the air, the neat rows of 1930s houses
that make up the Meadow Well estate,
are now pitted with the burnt out remains of a night's arson and looting.
One of the poorest and most deprived inner city estates in Britain,
where unemployment touches 40%.
So this is Jerry.
Jerry's a big part of the North Shields fishing community.
Fisherman?
Trawler man?
Yeah?
Passed.
I passed, I passed.
Take a look around the harbour here now at the moment.
From a once bustling harbour, full of boats, full of fishing,
a lot of people working, so you can see what's happening here now.
The north-east has got the biggest percentage of male suicide,
through lack of work and basically male pride and that.
Do you find that a lot in the fishing industry?
When people are used to working, their minds occupied.
All of a sudden your job's gone, that's a hard thing to handle.
And there's no support there?
Where's the support, who do you talk to?
Unless you're strong enough to raise above that yourself.
Yeah.
And sadly people are finding it easier to die
than they are to live.
It's hard to live now.
It's sad that, but it's true.
It's a sad fact of life.
These are the guys here you want to be talking to,
the men, their futures at stake.
It's nice to have people that actually care about
the north-east and fishing.
Quite agree with what you said there.
Yeah?
Idle hands makes works of the devil, kind of thing,
so there's a lot of mental health in the
fishing industry and in north-east in general,
because there's no work.
Well especially for young people coming out of school,
there's no industry.
It's almost poverty stricken innit?
Look at it.
Like, there's not a lot going,
unless you want to work in a restaurant on minimum wage.
There's not a lot going, it's the same in Whitley, where I'm from,
apart from the tourist industry there's nothing.
So unless you want to survive on minimum wage,
which you can't.
I'm one of the people that can say I'm glad that I am the age
that I am, I've seen the good times.
You know, but the pressures that people are under now, at the moment.
And I haven't been able to provide for my daughter for the last two months
and that has really, really got me down that.
There was one point I turned heavily to drink and drugs for a while.
That was just to try and cope with it all but,
I managed to sort myself out now and
get back on the straight and narrow,
but that's thanks to my girlfriend that I'm with now, really.
Look, there's a lot of lads that'll turn to drink and drugs
unfortunately some of them don't manage to get to the other end
and ends up getting hold of them and
some of them are no longer here.
I've lost quite a few friends
to drinking drugs through not being able to find work and that
and it's not nice.
But the government doesn't seem to care,
because they don't offer you the help or anything like that.
Like, I rang up trying to get help with my mental health
and I just kept on getting passed from pillar to post.
Just the Madalia there, the red one here,
but no one will be away now, there's nothing to catch here at all.
End of the year now.
That's the bench here.
That's where I first slept.
Yeah, but this is it man.
That place here see, is the marketplace.
When I went in there and I turned around and said, "I need to apply for housing."
I'm South Shields, born and bred
and I started to tell her about my history and I told her I was a former addict
and I'm trying to get clean and she went, "We don't give places to people like you,"
Exact words.
That just nearly made me drop my knees and I walked out
and I never engaged with the council again.
Bet she wouldn't say that now if I walked in.
You know what I mean?
So I was one of those, I fell through the cracks of the system,
but yeah, that's my high street, King Street
and you can see ...
Has shut, has shut, has shut has shut, has all shops are closing.
I think it's only like the charity place, things aren't really staying open.
I don't think any party can come in and change anything.
We're the ones that are giving food parcels away
and have mums coming to us crying
because they can't put food on their kids tables.
I bet their kids didn't go out with a meal a day,
but there's 170,000 kids that woke up this morning in the north-east that day.
The fact that they can't come out here and survive like we can.
Hey, how exciting is this?
I think we can get three chairs to a table.
I need to get more chairs out.
Are youse all right?
And running order is.
I want to say thank you,
for helping me, you know?
Anytime brother.
You all right kid?
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we all settled in?
My Name is Earl John Charlton,
I was born in South Shields,
I was made on the streets.
in November, December I was in a very dark place
and Louise, Janine, picked us up,
basically surrounded me and made sure I was going to be OK, which I am.
Oh, here we go.
Right, hey.
This one's called The New and the reason it's called The New,
because I was in the streets of London and in the City of London
and yes I had an addiction, my friends and my brothers
and sister around me had an addiction and we had our fix.
And we went and sat back down and next thing you know,
I look at my friend and and his lips start going blue.
And basically yeah, he was dying in my arms
and the public were walking by and they choose to ignore us.
And I'll tell you what, I might have been invisible then, but I'm not now.
I lived a life of pain and fear,
now I'm in therapy to make things clear.
Not to understand my past but to face the fears,
of those faces I've seen that have died in my tears.
That someone's daughter, that's someones's son,
how dare you walk on by when that could be one of your own.
I hope one day that is not one of your own ...