5:15 a.m.
Snow laying all around
A collier cycles home
From his night shift underground
♪
Past the silent pub
Primary school, workingmens club
On the road from the pithead
The churchyard packed
With mining dead
♪
Then beneath the bridge
He comes to a giant car
A shroud of snow upon the roof
A mark ten jaguar
♪
He thought the man was fast asleep
Silent, still and deep
Both dead and cold
Shot through
With bullet holes
♪
The one armed bandit man
Came north to fill his boots
Came up from Cockneyland
E-type jags and flashy suits
Put your money in
Pull the levers
Watch them spin
Cash cows in all the pubs
But he preferred the new nightclubs
Nineteen sixty-seven
Bandit men in birdcage heaven
La dolce vita, sixty-nine
All new to people of the tyne
♪
Who knows who did what
Somebody made a call
They said his hands
Were in the pot
That he'd been skimming hauls
♪
He picks up the swag
They gaily gave away
Drives his giant jag
Off to his big pay day
♪
Ho, the bandit man
Came north to fill his boots
Came up from Cockneyland
E-type jags and flashy suits
And the bandit man
Came up the Great North Road
Up to Geordieland
To mine the mother lode
♪
Seams blew up or cracked
Black diamonds came hard won
Generations toiled and hacked
For a pittance and black lung
♪
Crushed by tub or stone
Together and alone
How the young and old
Paid the price of coal
♪
Eighteen sixty-seven
My angel's gone to heaven
He'll be happy there
Sunlight and sweet clean air
♪
They gather round the glass
♪
Tough hewers and crutters

Child trappers and putters
The little foals and half-marrows
Who pushed and pulled the barrows

The hod boys and the rolleywaymen
5:15 a.m.