Sting is one of the world's bestselling musicians but he has never forgotten his North-East roots.

He recalls his early years in his autobiography published this week. Christen Pears reports.

FROM the age of seven, Gordon Sumner helped out on the family milk round, delivering pints to the doorsteps of Newcastle. Shivering in the early morning cold, he worked alongside his taciturn father and in the silence, he allowed his imagination to run riot.

"I created all kinds of fantastical futures for myself as I ran from door to door, my arms full of milk bottles: I will travel the world, I will be the head of a large family, I will own a big house in the country, I will be wealthy and I will be famous."

At such a tender age, he could not have known how prophetic these childish ambitions would turn out to be, but as Sting, one of the world's most successful recording artists, these "fantastical futures" are now a reality. With 20 years at the top of his career and an estimated fortune of £200m, it easy to forget that the creator of such legendary hits as Message In A Bottle and Every Breath You Take began life in the terraced streets of Wallsend.

Unlike others of his generation, Sting's musical popularity does not seem to have waned. He may have moved on from the punk-inspired sounds of The Police, but his tenth studio album, Sacred Love, was recently released to critical acclaim. His non-musical exploits - as an eco warrior, practitioner of tantric sex and recipient of the OBE - also keep in firmly in the public eye.

His autobiography, Broken Music: A Memoir, is published this week, and in beautiful, evocative prose, he recalls his early life: his parents' troubled marriage, his record number of canings at school and his first forays into music. It provides a fascinating insight into the humble origins of a man who has become a cornerstone of rock's ruling elite.

Sting - or Gordon as he was more prosaically called then - was born in 1951 and spent his early years in a terraced house in the shadow of Swan Hunter's shipyard.

He recalls: "There was something prehistoric about the shipyard, the giant skeletons of ships and the workmen, tiny by comparison, suspended in an enormous cage silhouetted against the sky.

"The cranes, too, seemed like enormous prehistoric beasts, metallic monsters grazing thoughtlessly and moving with unnatural slowness over the yards and the acetylene flashes."

He remembers watching the workers filing down the street to the yard, summoned by the early morning hooter.

"As I watched them, I wondered about my own future and what kind of job I would be able to do. Would I, too, join this vast army of men and live out my days in the bellies of these giant ships?"

But Sting was already looking for a way out of his stifling world. He had observed the frustrations of his father - a former lance corporal in the Royal Engineers whose life had never lived up to the promise of the wartime years. He felt trapped in his job as a milkman while his glamorous wife carried on an affair under his nose. Sting was determined to carve out a better existence for himself.

As his parents' marriage began to crumble, the young Sting became increasingly introverted and uncommunicative, and to escape what he describes as "the trench warfare of our childhood" he turned to the piano.

"Without the piano as an outlet, I might have become a delinquent," he recalls.

But despite the sometimes bleak nature of childhood, he recalls the unexpected beauty in it. Even walking to school on a foggy morning, past the rows of houses bombed by the Luftwaffe 15 years earlier, could be a remarkable experience.

"I love the romance and mystery of the ruined streets, but there is always an uncomfortable, spooky undercurrent, a dread that such impermanence and desolation can easily tumble over the perimeter of the bomb site and engulf around it like a poisoned cloud."

These powers of observation and description, his contemplative nature and his ability to think beyond the obvious have set him apart as a singer-songwriter but his talents weren't always so obvious.

His schooldays, where his height earned him the nickname Lurch, were often painful. Frequent canings inflicted physical pain, while mixing with wealthy fellow students caused emotional anguish.

"Some of my new classmates lived in Darras Hall, a well-heeled enclave to the north-west of the city, where at weekends I will be invited to large detached homes surrounded by landscaped gardens, with two-car garages, walk-in refrigerators, paintings and books, stereo systems and all the accoutrements of the burgeoning middle classes.

"But while being taken out of the back lanes of my childhood and deposited on suburban lawns was, I suppose, an encouraging metaphor for the opportunities that my education would provide for me, it also made me feel inadequate and alienated, not quite good enough, marginalised and resentful both of where I came from and what I was being led to aspire to."

He did just enough schoolwork to get by, concentrating more and more on his music. He had mastered a few Jimi Hendrix riffs on the guitar and became known as the kid who could play Purple Haze. It was the beginning of his career as a musician.

After leaving school, he began a series of "soul-destroying" jobs, before training as a teacher. He also embarked on his first serious relationships, had his heart broken, but music was a constant in his life.

In the spring of 1973, he joined the Phoenix Jazzmen as a bass player, playing in pubs and clubs across the North-East to a largely indifferent audience of miners, shipyard employees and chemical workers.

It was with this group he earned his now famous nickname because of a black and yellow hooped jumper he wore and which reminded his fellow musicians of a wasp.

Following his stint with the Jazzmen, he began performing with a band called Last Exit. Perhaps he would have remained with them, playing at college gigs and in pubs, had he not been introduced American-born drummer Stewart Copeland. The pair hit it off both personally and musically, and Sting eventually moved to London where the pair formed The Police.

His autobiography ends with the formation of the band that propelled him to international stardom because, he says, his story up until then is an unlikely one and one people don't really know. He doesn't want to tell readers about his celebrity friends and how much he's worth. He wants to show them that he struggled and that that his North-East upbringing is a fundamental part of the person - both man and artist - that he has become.

Broken Music: A Memoir by Sting (Simon and Schuster £16.99)