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Some typical clichés but an entertaining programme.
I am from Bury (Lancashire) and have lived 'down South' in various cities for over twenty years.
I am constantly amazed at how ignorant most southerners are of the rest of the UK. Conversely, they will probably be well travelled within Europe and some parts of the globe. I called it "Capital Syndrome"!
In my job, we have to visit our sites all over the UK. Love to see the expressions on the faces of the graduates I sometimes have with me (fish out of water!) - even though the usually have been regaling me with their gap year travelling stories!

this program is good for teching richer pepole street wise in one way

I am absolutely disgusted with this kind of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ programming. Newcastle has one of the best cultures which has been completely omitted by this programme making us all look like morons who got knocked up at 16 and have permanently lived on the dole. What about the prestigious Newcastle University that all the southerners don't mind coming up to?? In order to get rid of these stupid class divides and ridiculous set up stereotypes of pie eating swearing drunks why not show these 'posh' girls that girls from the north can be infact the same or even better than them by going to an average family in a good area in order to demolish their preconceptions. I'm personally embarrassed at the programs portrayal of geordies and cannot bear to watch anymore

Id also like to point out that they deliberately made the posh girls go to grainger market despite the fact theres a Tescos outside and a huge Marks and Spencers up the street. Also their choice of charity work made our community look like drug taking prostitutes when in fact you can find these kind of people in any city in the UK, and the woman was from bloody Greece not Newcastle. The posh girls should have helped the elderly or disabled and done something useful in the community

Geordie Finishing School for Girls

The program was 100% artificial and contrived in many ways - an insult to the intelligence and to the North.
That wouldn't matter, but it dangerously enforces the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ obsession with the North-South Divide.

The 'posh' girls (if they've been fairly represented) are not normal representatives of the South.
Amazingly, most people from the South are the same as people from the North.


The representation of Newcastle is a disgrace and hardly represents the dynamic and diverse city that it is.

If the producers want to do something original, why not take 4 wealthy northerners(many exist) and send them
to a deprived part of London (of which there are many).

I liked this. Mainly because the "posh totty" (I'm a St. Trinians fan) appeared to be more or less coping.

Yes, Newcastle appears worse than it actually is. I believe this to be an artifact of distortion. You have to strip uneventful, dull bits out, in order to create an interesting program. However, running all the set-pieces back to back against each other, especially as many are bad, creates a poorer than actual picture because of the loss of the moderating effect of 99%+ nothing happening for good or ill.

I have to question the validity of a ten day exercise. For far too many actual unemployed, it is a life sentence with no realistic hope of any time off for good behavior. Perhaps a nondeterministic end time might help them get a bit closer eg. 5% chance on any day after 10 that the scenario will be brought to a halt.

Then again, I also suspect the 2010 census and the welfare state are about to prove an interesting mix. Interesting to see Cameron taking the country to the brink of strikes in an effort to sort out a pensions bomb twenty years downrange. My belief is that no significant fraction of employees makes it as far as 65/66. Only the managers. The rest become unemployed aroundabout 40 as, like ruthless husbands trading their wives in for younger models, businesses replace expensive, less efficient middle aged staff with youngsters. I hope there is a camera on hand to catch Cameron's expression when the census tells him the median age of an employee. Because I am of the opinion there is a 'dole bomb' going off right now.

Very contrived programme but also very enjoyable! I must however comment on the Newcastle 'chav' I think her name is Michaela who is a single mother with 2 young kids and is on benefits, when talking about one if the 'posh' girls she mentioned how she had never had to work for anything, everything being given to her on a plate etc. This enraged me pot kettle was the first thing that came to mind! I think these girls have more things in common than they think! The geordie's mother hasn't worked for as long as she can remember, and she has obviously had 2 kids whilst on benefits and she is complaining about having no money! Stop breeding when you are on the social with no father in sight to support and go out and find a job. Lazy and unprincipled....everything they own down to the clothes on their own back is paid for by the state. I know some of the geordies worked and good on them but it's young ladies like Michaela who are proverbially taking the Pi** out of our benefits system.

Well done to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ for just undoing all of the work which Newcastle City Council has spent millions of pounds on trying to promote the area. I am disgusted to say the least at the way in which your programme has portrayed the people of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Talk about giving the place a bad name. Why on earth have you chosen to compare well to do people from the South to pure chavs of the North. This does not give a good clear comparison of the two areas and I feel its been done for shock viewing only. You could have easily compared the girls from the South to girls of an equal background from Newcastle. As far as Im concerned you have ruined a very good publicity campaign ran by Newcastle Council and wasted a lot tax payers good hard earned money. Not all Geordies are on the dole. You may be surprised to note we do work! The Jarrow Marchers and the miners will be turning in their graves.

Why are the following issues never addressed in the programme:
- It _is_ hard to bring up two children on your own while unemployed and looking for a job. This is why you first 1.) get a job; 2) find a stable partner; 3) and THEN start thinking about having children.
- It _is_ hard to get a job in Newcastle these days. Especially if you have no qualifications. Maybe if you had done your GCSEs instead of drinking in the street at the age of 13, it'd be easier to find a job?

It creates a warped picture if the circumstances the Geordie women are in is treated like something they were born with, i.e. the fact that they have no qualifications and have children while still in their teens. No one forced them to do these things and Geordie girls can go to Oxbridge, too, if they set their mind to it.

This programme has really angered me, I am a Geordie living in Berkshire and I constantly get colleagues at work asking me if Newcastle is "really like that". A lot of Southern people (who havn't visited the North East) are of the opinion that it is still cloth caps and cobbles streets. This stupid programme as only reinforced what they assume is the case. I was hoping to convince my children to move back North in the near future - now they are very sceptical - thanks a bunch ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ!!!

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so you have made a budget to make this dross, but can't afford F1 COVERAGE ??

I'm from South Shields (just several miles from Newcastle) and a student at Newcastle University and the show highlights nothing but the negative aspects of the city. Just as Geordie Shore finishes, this programme comes along and tarinshes the region's reputation even further. They decided to film the series primarily in Byker/Walker, two of the most socially deprived areas in the region, but in my opinion, there are areas in the likes of London and Birmingham that are far worse. Why didn't the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ take the posh girls to Brixton or Peckham? It's doing nothing but reinforcing the so-called North-South divide.

The programme refrains from highlighting any of the favourable aspects of the city. As Mephistopheles posted, Newcastle University is dominated by well-off southerners, I know people that have attended Eton College and Stowe School and they've been surprised at how nice Newcastle is as a city, contrary to how the media portrays it. I can walk the streets of the city without the fear of being stabbed, mugged or shot by gangs. How many other people living in other major cities can say this? I, for one, haven't felt so intimidated in my life as to when I visited Glasgow recently and walked back to the hotel at 8:30pm with gangs on every street corner.

I am, however, unimpressed at how some of the members on the show can claim that Newcastle is difficult to find work in. This is nothing but laziness, all you have to do is pick up the local paper or look online and there's a ton of jobs in the area. As matter of fact, I'm currently looking at a vacancy in a bar serving drinks, which took me no more than a 10 second internet search. They can't use the excuse that there's no jobs when there's loads, they can't expect jobs to be handed to them on a plate, you have to get off your backside and look for them.

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In support of post #12. another product of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ3 Bilge Pump, and you let ratings leader F1 go to Sky TV?

Why not take some posh girls from Cheshire and send them to a deprived London borough?
Surely this would make no difference to the programme without creating a North-South divide.

i was realy surprise when they going on about how hard it is and the houses are gorgeouse theres a lot of pple on the breadline i am meself one of millions not as fortuanate as some of the lasses on the show thats not being on the breadline also going on about the posh girls taking of the mams and dads well the geordie lasses

I love the idea of the programme, it is fantastic! I'm not happy, however, with the way that it seems to portray deprivation and hardship as something that only exists in the North. I would say that I have good experience of life overall and I am well travelled. having lived in both the North and the South, I have observed just as much, if not more, hardship poverty in southern cities (for example: Portsmouth, Bristol, Southampton, London) as Newcastle. I would further add that Newcastle is probably the greatest city that I have ever lived in. The people are honest, hard working and friendly and the city has residents that are super rich as well as super poor - no different to any part of the UK on that score! The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ would have been best advised to make clear that this rich/poor divide is typical of most UK cities but instead gives the impression that "posh & rich" is a southern thing and "poor & deprived" is northern.

why is that mikala girl teary eyed telling everyone some weeks she cant even afford gas/elec, but she can obviously afford luxurys like nail extensions, false eyelashes etc? im not saying single moms shouldent make the most of themselves but dont go on tele pleading poverty when your obviously not that hard up!

I agree most of the comments, I think the thread that runs through them is that to avoid being in the financial and social predicament the Geordie girls are in they nned to get a job and stop relying on the state and from some of the comments here there seems to be jobs around if they really wanted to. However I think this is where the issue lies.

Have I missed something - 3 of the Geordie girls do have a job. Only Mikela doesn't and she appears to be quite well off!

I agree with many of the above comments which correctly identify the crass,innacurate and outdated representation of North v South.
As much as I admire the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, it really still is a north/south, class riddled institution.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ should have made clear at the beginning of EPISODE 1 that all cities have wealth and poverty,
of which Newcastle is simply one example, instead of its continued representation of the North South divide.

I know many areas of the country and most have Wealth AND Poverty, Beauty AND Ugliness.
The 2nd episode was slightly better balanced than the 1st and actually showed (very briefly) that Newcastle/The North is not all about depressed areas.
It was however, astonsishingly patronising in it's portrayal of the Geordies having a posh night out, and the posh girls actually going to a pub! - big deal!

The program also continues to give the impression that the posh girls must watch their step, if they're not to get into trouble with the locals,
but as Shep4 says, it is a very safe city - I've worked/socialised here for over 30yrs, and I've never seen or experienced any problems or violence.

Sorry, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, but the program is rubbish.

Sorry, but have half of the people posting been asleep for the last 18 months? The ones going on about why the 'posh' girls haven't been taken to a deprived area in the south, specifically. Err - previous series, 'Peckham Finishing School for Girls' ... that'd be Peckham in London... London in the south...

Having watched both versions, I'd say that the one filmed in Newcastle is a lot better than the one filmed in Peckham. I don't know whether it's down to the program of 'events' being arranged by different people, but it's actually putting across a lot more of what the place is actually like than the Peckham one did.

No, Walker and Byker are not representative of Newcastle, or the north east as a whole. Equally, Walker and Byker are not the roughest areas of Newcastle. There is a lot more to the area (north east), as there would be to any area, but this is not the point of the program - the point of the program is to show what it's like to live in a deprived area. Yes, the set up is contrived - it could hardly be otherwise, as it would likely be too dangerous for it to be otherwise. No, the 'posh' girls can't really get an idea of what it's like to be poor - they have their mummies and daddies to go back to and be protected and pampered by, and they know it, so they don't know how it feels to live without that safety net.

To take the wealthy girls to live with girls of similar background would defeat the purpose of the program - it's not about the north east, it's about poverty and social deprivation - it's not about the north / south divide, it's about the rich / poor divide.

Oh, and Tyneside is my favourite place in the world - it's home.

But to see only those aspects perceived to be 'good' would be as bad an injustice to see only those perceived as 'bad'. I love the whole of the north east - the pubs where your feet stick to the floor are as much home to me as the museums and galleries.

I do think it's a shame that the producers felt the need to take them to Lumley Castle for the 'posh do' in the second episode though. As it's about Newcastle, there are soooo many places in the town that they could have gone, so why take them to Co Durham???

How I would like to ask Steph how poor she wants people on benefit to be! Kimberley's family must be making lots of economies by sharing such a small space, and several of them are working, including Kimberley's husband, a soldier, and yet she is surprised their kitchen has the usual appliances. It is true it took my family a few years to earn enough for all these things, but they are relatively cheaper nowadays. She also said work in a fish and chip shop wouldn't suit her because she would want something more intellectually challenging, as if everyone ended up doing the jobs they wanted. Doesn't she realise that IS the challenge- to keep on doing these humdrum jobs year after year just to get by. This is what people do because they make sacrifices for their family, just like her parents sacrificed some of their spending money to send her to boarding school .If you haven't got spending money, you can't sacrifice it. Presumably they did it because it would give her an advantage, yet she seems to think anyone from a poor area could get off benefit and "make something of themselves" without those advantages.

A useful program at an interesting time, given the current(riots everywhere) state of the country. I thought it was about to come off the rails during the middle of the second part - like Huffty, I could see it ending in fighting. Instead, it recovered brilliantly for the third part. Interesting to see the geordie lasses picking up on the fact that whilst having all the toys was obviously very useful, it wasn't everything.
If those two groups managed to come to terms with one another, perhaps there is a possiblity of a nonviolent way out of the current mess after all...

As a fully paid up, card-carrying cynical pessimist, however, I am expecting things to get worse, rather than better. If this country were actually a one person, one vote, representative democracy, then the unemployed, as the largest single interest group, should be running it. Instead, we have Thatchers poll tax making voting an expensive privilege and Blair selling out the socialist, old labour 'workers party' in order to become electable. Whilst I don't agree with rioting, I am not suprised that, denied an effective platform within current politics, we are seeing it.

What we could do with is somebody clever to take the accomodation between rich and poor that we have just seen on this programme and figure out a way to spread it to the rest of the country.