Recently, I sat down with Richard O'Neill MBE, storyteller, author, playwright, Professor in Practice at Durham University, and someone who grew up in a traditional Romani traveller family right here in the North East.

I'll be honest, I thought I knew what this conversation would be about. Storytelling. Oral tradition. The importance of keeping culture alive. Yet what Richard taught me was something I hadn't expected. His family weren't just travellers. They were story keepers.

For hundreds of years, Richard's family travelled to this region. Newcastle to Yorkshire to Carlisle and back again. Working fields, breeding horses, buying and selling. Every winter, they'd settle on Scotswood Road with their old wagons and cars, listening to stories from people in the villages and towns, then passing those stories on as they travelled. Sometimes even passing them back the following year to the very same people.

These were people who couldn't read or write in the conventional sense. But in terms of communication? Incredibly literate.

"They would pass on everything through storytelling," Richard told me. "Our history, our sense of belonging. Everything was passed on in stories."

"In Newcastle, you might say, 'gadji?'" Richard said.

I nodded. I've said that. I've heard that my entire life.

"The word gadji comes from gadje, which is Romani for a non-Romani person. And when we say chaff or chavi, that comes from the Romani word chav. Chavi means a boy, chavi means a girl."

I had no idea. None. Dozens of words in the way I speak, the way my family speaks, the way people across the North East speak come from Romani.

Richard told me about a musician friend from outside the region who came to Durham for work. They went to Morrisons together. Richard got in the queue first and started chatting to the person at the checkout. When they got in the car afterwards, his friend asked, "How long have you known her?" "I've never met her before," Richard said. His friend couldn't grasp it. The concept of just having a chat, even whilst you're getting a few bits and pieces in the supermarket.

"We are story people here," Richard said.

And he's right. We are. I do this. You probably do this. We chat at bus stops, in queues, on street corners. People from other places find it baffling. The North East has a warmth and rhythm to our speech, a musicality that makes conversation feel different. It's not an accident that we're the call centre capital of the UK.

The most powerful story Richard tells, to children and adults, is about one of his relatives, a First World War veteran.

During the Second World War, when he was too old to serve but had two sons in the army, he went into a shop he'd frequented for years. He was a woodcarver. The shop had a new owner. Who refused him service. He came back to where his family was camped and told his wife. She was furious. She wanted to confront the shop owner. But he'd had such an experience in the First World War that he was a totally peaceful man. He didn't want any upset. A woman came up and asked if he could make a wooden toy for her son. Her husband, the boy's father, was in the army and it was the child's birthday. He said yes. Afterwards, his wife asked, "Why did you offer to do that for that woman when they treated you like that in the shop?" He said, "Because it wasn't they. It was one person. And if I treat that woman the same way I've been treated in that shop, I'd be as bad."

When Richard told me this story, I felt it land.

"Children totally get it," he said. "Because every person has in some way been judged."

Richard works at Seven Stories in Newcastle, the National Centre for Children's Books, teaching storytelling to teachers and children. He told me about a storytelling event at a care home that integrates a nursery with elder care. The youngest child was three years old. The eldest resident was 103.

"They were laughing along at the same things," Richard said.

Richard believes teaching children how narrative works is how we combat misinformation. Because for a story to work, it needs certain elements.

"When you're telling that story to a group of people, they're not gonna let you get away with it," Richard said. "'No, you're wrong. It was a red lorry, not a black lorry.'" The audience holds you accountable. The community keeps the story true. AI can amalgamate what already exists. But it can't be held accountable by a three-year-old who knows when something's wrong.

"I think AI is the new steam," Richard said. Whether that's true or not, only time will tell. But what I know for certain is this: no AI is going to teach my grandson to see one person instead of they. That takes a story. That takes a human voice. Richard's family were story keepers. But what I realise now is the stories keep us just as much as we keep them. They turn strangers into neighbours at checkouts and bus stops across the North East. They teach a three-year-old and a 103-year-old to laugh at the same things. They show us how to choose compassion when we've been treated with cruelty.

Richard's full conversation explores his journey from traveller family to professional storyteller, why he refused a million pounds to appear on exploitative TV programmes, and how the North East became one of the great storytelling cultures.

2026 is the National Year of Reading, and Richard's work at Seven Stories reminds us why that matters. Reading doesn't just teach us words, it teaches us to listen for the truth in a story, to hold each other accountable, to see one person instead of they.

I'm still saying gadji without thinking about it. But now I know what I'm keeping alive when I do.

Until next time,

Alison Dunn