Tosker, Geordie, Nicky and Mary will remain familiar names to many in the region who were avid viewers of nineties TV hit Our Friends in the North.
The epic BBC series - about the interwoven lives of a group of four Newcastle friends over three decades - was huge in its day and made household names of its lead cast: Christopher Eccleston, Daniel Craig, Mark Strong and Gina McKee.
It's said to have provided James Bond star Craig, who played the troubled Geordie Peacock, his breakthrough role.
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And now those unforgettable characters will be making a comeback as Peter Flannery, the North East writer of the nine-part drama, is reviving Our Friends in the North for BBC Radio 4.
Fans will be able to reacquaint themselves with the group of pals and the adapted series, due to start in March, will end with a new, 10th episode - by another writer, Adam Usden - to bring their story up to modern times.
Flannery's acclaimed award-winning TV series was compulsive viewing - especially with Geordies - when it aired on BBC2 in 1996; depicting gritty and realistic ups and downs in life for Geordie; idealistic Nicky Hutchinson, played by Ecclestone; Nicky's girlfriend Mary Cox (McKee) and - entrepreneur in the making - Terry 'Tosker' Cox (Strong).
Covering their life and loves from 1964 to 1995, the drama plays out against a political and social backdrop that takes in the eighties Miners' Strike, elections and police and local government corruption, including the T. Dan Smith and John Poulson scandal of the 1960s-70s.
And as the four characters aged in the series, Newcastle enjoyed a prime - and - changing - role too, with one scene showing Thatcherite businessman Tosker, at the top of his game, in the long-gone but fondly-remembered floating nightclub Tuxedo Princess.
Another memorable late scene featured Craig's Geordie - now long-haired and heavy drinking - in a bleak Quayside shot.
While those stark visuals will be missing on radio, the re-written version is said to capture all the spirit of the original, safe in the hands of its cast of four young actors.
Among them is Philip Correia, who is also a writer and his new play, The Invisible Man, recently made its stage debut at Northern Stage.
He plays Tosker and fellow actors who will be bringing Nicky, Mary and Geordie alive for a new audience are James Baxter, who was in BBC sitcom Alma’s Not Normal; Norah Lopez Holden and Luke MacGregor.
Local actors Tracey Wilkinson and Trevor Fox, who also appeared in the original series, will be making a return, in new roles, here.
Flannery, who was born in Jarrow and also wrote the George Gently series, initially created Our Friends in the North as a play and once said of the TV series: "I've always said it's just a posh soap opera - but it's a posh soap opera with something to say."
Now the writer - who now lives in Oxfordshire but attended a North East event in 2016 to mark his creation's 20 year anniversary - adds: “You can tell any story you want to if the characters are interesting. The personal and the political are connected. It’s all one world.”
His story also inspired a stage play in 2007 at Northern Stage and now its return, with its update, will be bringing a touch of the modern-day city.
Its new final episode by Manchester-born writer Adam Usden is set in Newcastle in 2020 and is said to pick up several of the characters and echoes of themes from the original series, including housing conditions, young people’s engagement with politics and father-son relationships.
Usden called the original series "defiantly, wonderfully unsentimental" and said: "One of the things I loved was that even when people failed in the immediate moment, very often we saw how flashes of kindness, warmth and moral courage redeem them in surprising ways, sometimes decades later, even if the people never realised the impact their actions had on others.
"Legacy hangs over everything and setting a story 25 years after the show ended gives me a real chance to explore that.”
Alison Hindell, Radio 4 commissioning editor for drama and fiction, said it is exciting to welcome back an iconic drama and to offer a new instalment.
"With its themes illuminating the continuing ‘North-South divide’ today, this powerful and well-loved saga is told by a committed and talented team, many from the north of England themselves, whose passion for the story is self-evident," she said.
"It will be warmly welcomed by fans and a chance for discovery by a new audience too.”
Our Friends in the North will begin on March 17 at 2.15pm on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
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