For football-mad Geordies everywhere, Newcastle United’s triumph last month in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley in London was a moment of pride (the Magpies team beat Liverpool 2-1 to lift the trophy). To mark the momentous sporting occasion, the Angel of the North, Antony Gormley’s famous Gateshead monument, sported a Newcastle football jersey, drawing hordes of fans to the hilltop sculpture.
The cheeky news website NewsThump published a piece imagining the sorry state of the Angel post-match. “The Angel of the North has woken up with a banging headache and sick down its shirt this morning after celebrating Newcastle United’s league cup win,” said the comical report, which even took on the voice of Gormley’s creation. “I blacked out about 4am,” the Gateshead sculpture admitted. “My Newcastle shirt is absolutely ruined. I’ve never seen so much sick in my life, man.”
Mystery remains around who actually bedecked the winged piece in the black-and-white football jersey or where it came from. Perhaps it was borrowed from Newcastle’s goal scorer, the towering talisman Dan Burn, who is nearly two metres tall?