Two Geordies Just Got Arrested for Toplessly Protesting 'Paedos' on a Bridge

Two of my favourite ever sentences in the English language, coming up. Read them together or soak them in one at a time, but mostly enjoy them, revel in them, see them for the glory they convey:

I'm in Byker where two men have climbed on the viaduct and draped a banner saying 'hang all the paedos' — Dan O'Donoghue (@DanChronicle)May 11, 2016

The shirtless protesters appear to be drinking cans of lager — Dan O'Donoghue (@DanChronicle)May 11, 2016

Steaming, absolutely steaming. These sentences were written at 8AM, by first-on-the-scene Newcastle Chronicle reporter Dan O'Donoghue, and they describe two men who are steaming. There is no way these two men have not been up all night, getting fucking on it. You do not wake from restful sleep and then take your top off* and bring the Newcastle Metro system to a grinding halt because you've flung a "HANG ALL PAEDOS"** banner off the edge of a bridge. These are not the actions of men who have significantly closed their eyes in the last 12 hours. These are the actions of two men who have gone £8 in each on a crate of Scrumpy Jack and have been up all night On It, powering through the initial drunk-until-midnight phase, staggering through the midnight-3AM watch-shit-documentaries-about-lorry-drivers-and-smoke-roll-ups dark hours, and then between 3AM and 4, out of nowhere, they had a deeply intense, angry chat about paedophiles – the words "FUCKING NONCE BASTARDS" were almost certainly said somewhere between 100 and 15,000 times – and they decided to Do Something About It, decided to get an old bed sheet out of the attic and a tin of red paint from when they did the bairns' room, and write "HANG ALL PAEDOS" – short discussion about the wording of the message, the quantity of the paedos that need hanging – and then went out on a bridge in Byker and enacted the plan, drinking from cans, throwing rocks at the police, making wank-off signs at passersby, urging all paedos to be hanged, alternating between putting their tops on and taking them off again, three-hour stand off, arrested by the police.

*This, of course, implies that the men were wearing tops in the first place, which in the dual context of "Geordies" and "drunk Geordies" is always a 50:50 shot. I mean, I don't want to intimate anything untoward about either of these iconic nonce-hating legends, but I just get the feeling that they don't wear tops a lot – that they are incredibly uncomfortable wearing tops.
** On closer inspection the banner actually said "HANG ALL PEODOS", but I don't want to dilute this heroic message with a whole bunch of (sic) nonsense. We know what they meant. They meant hang all paedos.

Obviously I am pushing hard for both of these men to be included in the New Year's Honours list, not least because of the disruption their protest caused: as the Chronicle reports, a Metro on Byker Bridge had to perform an emergency stop, and services between Manors and Chillingham Road were closed down, while traffic nearby was whipped into a fit of horn-honking, initially angry due to the delays and then supportive due to the fact that the men wanted to hang all the paedos. If you were in a car or Metro around Byker this morning and your trip was delayed, think: should you blame the two topless men who protested on your way to work this morning? Or should you blame paedos, for being alive?

The men were arrested at 11.40AM, after family and friends came to appeal at the bridge for them to come down and after they had made a trade-off with the police to swap cans of Scrumpy Jack for fresh water. Again, from the Chronicle's live blog: "Two police negotiators were used and any demands from the men are not known." The demands are pretty clear, to be fair. They've painted their demands on an old sheet. Their demands are: hang all the paedos.

It's important, in the aftermath, that we don't let their voices go unheard. This was, on reflection, a banner day for British banter. Consider: the only way this could've been more Geordie is if the two men were accompanied by a hard, un-neutered dog. The only way this could have been more iconic is if they tried to hang a straw paedo and hung him off the edge of the bridge to his death, a pile of pillows in an old Newcastle away shirt flopping onto the brush from the underpass below.

There are lessons to be learned from our two topless, paedo-disliking heroes: next time you have something to say, get out an old bed sheet and say it. Next time you get steaming, make some big decisions. You have a voice, you have an opinion. Let yourself be heard. And, most importantly of all, don't let their carefully crafted message be lost to the wind: hang all paedos. Say it loud, now, say it with me, paint it large in smudgy paint upon on a sheet: hang all the paedos. Hang. All. The. Paedos.

@joelgolby

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