Article: DOWNFALL OF THE MAGPIES' MESSIAH; A classic saga of rags to riches . . . he's the miner's son who revitalised Tyneside, transformed Newcastle United and took over the mineowner's mansion. Now Sir John Hall has fallen on hard times.

Byline: GEOFFREY LEVY

HIS was the ultimate fulfilment of the disadvantaged: a miner's son born into a life of coal dust, who grew up to buy out the great pillared mansion from the very family that had once owned the mines.

Yesterday, when the great house was put back on the market for pound sterling8million, Sir John Hall, who came as close to being a Messiah on Tyneside as any mortal man can be, could not bear to be around to see it.

The man who revitalised the passions of Newcastle United Football Club, and whose entrepreneurial buccaneering breathed new life into a depressed North-East, had slipped back to his home in Southern Spain with ...

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