Craig is, by his own admission, having a miserable stag night. A beefy young man - a scaffolding erector by trade - he clatters across the Tyne Swing Bridge in a black mini skirt, auburn wig and stiletto heels, pursued by a cacophony of catcalls and shepherded by a group of drunken mates wielding plastic devil's tridents. "They know I hate doing this sort of stuff," he grumbles in his broad Geordie brogue, slapping away the trident someone is trying to wiggle beneath his skirt. "I feel like a right twat. And my feet are killing."
It is a measure of the extraordinary feel-good factor currently suffusing Newcastle that over the course of a weekend there Craig is the one person I meet who isn't unequivocally positive about the place (and even he seems to have come round by the time I bump into him again later in the evening).
Newcastle - or Newcastle-Gateshead as the promotional literature now prefers to style it - was until not so long ago defined by economic decline and the beer, kebab and vomit culture satirised in Viz magazine. It has, over the last few years, reinvented itself as one of the UK's must-visit destinations. The alcohol and lamb doners are still very much in evidence - they are, to be honest, part of the fun - but have been subsumed within a broader arts and leisure scene that have won the city a raft of tourism awards.
The zeitgeist envelops you almost from the moment you arrive. It's there in the trendy architecture that has transformed the previously derelict quayside into a swish residential and entertainment quarter; in the spray of colourful boutiques and designer clothes stores that have sprung up around the town centre; above all, in the way all the locals seem so wildly pumped-up about their native city.
In the 10 minutes it takes my wife and I to get from the station to the Vermont Hotel where we are staying, we are assured by three separate people - a W H Smiths checkout girl, a taxi driver and Colin the hotel concierge - that we're in for a fantastic weekend. Maybe they're all getting backhanders from the local tourist board, but even so you can't help but feel swept up in the general air of enthusiasm.
Appropriately for a city that has always loved its football - the stands of St James' Park rear above the skyline like the legs of some vast praying mantis - a visit to Newcastle is very much an experience of two halves.
On the one hand you've got the culture. This is a town that has a huge amount to do and see, and yet is at the same time compact enough to do and see most of it in the space of a weekend, aided by an excellent public transport system and the fact that most of the major attractions are situated within a mile radius of the city centre. Theatres, art galleries, museums, even a Turkish steam bath - they're all there, mixed in with some fantastic shopping facilities and more Grade 1 listed buildings than anywhere else in the UK outside London and Bath (Grey Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares, was recently voted Best Street in Britain by Radio 4 listeners).
Some of the biggest draws - the Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre, the sweeping, futuristic comma of the Tyne Millennium Bridge - enjoy a national reputation. For us, however, it is the less hyped venues that prove the most enjoyable. The Museum of Antiquities, for instance, with its fascinating collection of Roman artefacts, or the Biscuit Factory, a 35,000 square-foot indoor arts market selling everything from miniature ceramic hippos (£37.50) to a giant bronze apple segment, complete with baseball-sized pips (£8,000).
Paradoxically the attraction that most wows us is one you can't even get into yet. The Sage Gateshead, a £70m, Norman Foster-designed concert hall, isn't due to open until December, yet still takes the breath away, dominating the south bank of the Tyne like some gigantic silver armadillo.
That is one side of the Newcastle experience. The other, of course, is the city's legendary nightlife. With a 40,000-strong student population, the highest concentration of pubs and bars of any town in England and a free-wheeling, anything-goes attitude that makes 90s Manchester look positively puritanical, this is a place where over-indulgence is not simply an option, but a duty. Come 5pm on Saturday the streets are already starting to fill with stag and hen parties - the latter kitted out in regulation angels' wings and condom earrings - and by 8pm the Quayside looks like a cross-section through a particularly frenzied termite mound. And yes, however cold it gets the girls still wear micro-minis and the guys short-sleeved shirts.
It's not all Bacardi Breezers and Viz stereotypes, of course. A brief flick through The Crack, Newcastle's equivalent of Time Out, reveals listings for everything from gourmet restaurants to stand-up comedy, classical music to Indian dance, jazz clubs to transvestite cabaret. Even those with the most marginal tastes would be pushed not to find something to do of an evening.
Yet despite that, it remains the vibrant pub and club scene that provides Newcastle with its unique night-time ambience. Normally I don't really go in for thumping music and packed bars. Here there's something irresistible about them, a hedonistic vortex that sucks you in even when, like myself, your natural inclinations tend more towards a quiet meal and a trip to the cinema. The bottle of champagne we down before leaving the hotel no doubt plays a part, as does the fact that with everyone around you clearly so hellbent on having a good time, it's hard not to do the same yourself.
Either way, we spend our Saturday night doing something we haven't done since university days, namely embarking on a full-scale, no-holds-barred pub crawl. And you know what - it's the best Saturday night I've had in years (and the worst Sunday morning). No wonder the city is regularly included in lists of the world's most fun places to visit.
There is one final element that makes Newcastle such a great place to spend time, the thing that perhaps more than any other gives the city its unique resonance. It is, for want of a better word, its northern-ness. For all the jazzy new architecture and cosmopolitan diversity, trendy cafes and designer shops, it remains, at heart, a raw, rough-edged industrial town, with all the down-to-earth lack of pretension that goes with that. Its transformation has been dramatic, but has not been achieved at the expense of its roots. As Craig the Stag puts it when we catch up with him at the end of the night, still gamely sporting his wig and cocktail dress: "We might be getting all posh like, but we're still Geordies, man."
Way to go
Paul stayed at the Vermont Hotel, Castle Garth, Newcastle NE1 1RQ (0191 233 1010, vermont-hotel.co.uk, email: info@vermont-hotel.co.uk. The Moonlight in Vermont package includes one night's accommodation in a double room, dinner, breakfast and a complimentary bottle of champagne for £155.
GNER trains depart from London to Newcastle every 30 minutes (journey time three hours), gner.co.uk, 08457 225 225.
