For me, Sting’s Winter Songbook concert in the magnificent setting of Durham Cathedral – complete with Kathryn Tickell on Northumbrian Pipes, of course – was just perfect TV-viewing for a wintry evening.
For Durham (which is bidding to be City of Culture 2013), Newcastle and the North East, it was surely a superb publicity coup. It was shown in the US at Thanksgiving, in the UK this week, and will air in more than a dozen other countries across the globe. No wonder Melanie Sensicle, CEO of Visit County Durham, describes it as giving “a tantalising glimpse of what we have to offer to a global audience of quite breathtaking proportions.”