I'm lucky enough to have lived and followed Newcastle United around the world at a time when everybody loved us.
I was privileged enough to be able to speak to the one and only Peter Beardsley this week and I asked him to reminisce the Entertainers period when the nation took us to their hearts.
He acknowledged it was a great time to be a player but for fans it has to be the best era to have been supporting the team.
One big buzz was being the nation's second team at a time when even Manchester United fans' eyes were glazed with a begrudged respect as we threatened to run away with the title.
Suddenly kids all around the country dumped their Man United and Liverpool tops and pulled on black and white ones instead.
Now we're about as popular as a booze ban in the Bigg Market and there's plenty of evidence to support it.
Once upon time in bars all around the world suddenly everybody wanted a bit of Geordie action, the Asics shirts went up on the wall, those paintings of Kevin Keegan and the rest of the lads were going like hot cakes and singing the Philippe Albert song was a second nature for the Toon Army.
Ohh, what fond and treasured memories back in the halcyon days of the early to mid-1990s.
Fast forward to 2007 and there couldn't be a starker contrast.
Buy any paper outside of Tyneside and it will be packed with Newcastle United news all right!
But don't expect it to be of a positive nature.
Down south, where the lager isn't very strong and expensive, nobody smiles and they think that Michael Owen belongs to the FA, they've tried everything in the book to upset the apple cart in Toonland.
Because just as it was easy to put the happy go lucky Geordies on a pedestal back in the Keegan era, it's just as easy to reverse the action and throw us to the dogs nowadays.
Lowdown, Newcastle United are and always will be an easy target for Press men outside the North East.
Why?
Because we're unique.
We fail in spectacular fashion.
We turn up in droves to watch our team even when they are terrible.
We buy the shirts no matter how much they cost to make (even when we are told how much they cost to make).
Win or lose we're first at the bar and we don't go home and hide when our team gets beat and we out sing home sides even when we are getting thumped.
I know I sound like a moaner but we're even the butt of the jokes on the Ladbrokes advert for god's sake!
We've being attracting over 50,000 at home for the last six years and apart from two top four finishes under Sir Bobby Robson, we've been pretty dire.
But we're still here now and the Champions League seems a long way away.
And we are an even easier target than ever before with Michael Owen club v country argument going on which all stems from Owen not playing for one of the top four.
Plus we have signed Joey Barton, who had the cheek to confess he wanted to get fit for his club before his country before being crucified for it the next day.
Oh and before we go any further Big Sam probably plays a long ball game because the length of passes have increased from 12.4 metres (average length last season) to 17.9 metres this time around.
Or maybe I'm just being paranoid!
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