It takes time to become a veteran in this business (advertising). So, it takes a while (39 years in my case) to be asked to look back on the olden days of what I do.
I was honoured to be asked by Barry Hearn to join him for a 60 minute chat with The Lane’s Creative Director, Ian ‘Fletch’ Fletcher about advertising, then and now.
So here’s Barry’s Marketing Society / Lane podcast called leading Conversations #21.
Please do enjoy. And let me know what you think.
Day 6 was spent almost exclusively at Roundabout in Summerhall, my favourite venue.
We started with England and Son, a one man play devised for Mark Thomas, the superior political stand up. It’s a tour de force, comparable in quality only to Jodie Comer’s turn in Prima Facie. Indeed Summerhall’s owner, Robert McDowell, presented Mark with an award at curtains for “the best single hander I’ve seen in 42 years on The Fringe”.
It’s a play about the violence his dad doled out on his mum after returning from wartime duty in Malay and Thomas’ character’s own descent into thievery and class revenge.
It questions whether institutionalized violence is acceptable on the forces’ return.
It’s bleakly funny and then just bleak.
An outstanding script delivered perfectly by Mark Thomas. Another 5 star show that prompted Jeana to ask him for a hug after the show decaying that “I’m no luvvie but…” But, she was being a luvvie. I’ve broken her.
It was impossible to beat that day but had contenders the following day at the Traverse in the form of Bloody Elle and No Love Songs – more later.
Next up, Salty Irina, an interesting two (and laterally Three) hander about two gay girls who are inspired by each other to infiltrate a Nazi music festival to see what it is that makes them tick. It’;s a really lovely relationship drama with a beating political heart that covers racism and love equally well. Gay female love has nbeen a feature of our Fringe and it’s been joyous to behold. I liked the production very much and would recommend it.
Third of the day was Lady Dealer, another single hander and again a gay female central character . This time a loud and proud LADY drug dealer. Her USP because drug dealers are guys. The real theme here is loneliness. It’s described as a poem play and starts out very poetically by our heroin(e) Charly (get it?) played by Martha Watson Allpress. She’s magic in the role as she tries to cope with the real life challenge of a power cut that cuts out her lifeline to her business and personal contact with the world when her mobile phones run out of juice. It’s a mile a minute breakneck performance of considerable skill that won over the audience. Great stuff.
Number four was Strategic Love Play, Miriam Battye’s production by the glorious Pines Plough and the equally glorious Soho Theatre is about how to win the battle in a first date. She starts out a ball breaking cynic, he a bore but the tables turn (literally) in a clever set design that perfectly suits Roundabout, before swinging back and forth in a tennis match chess game of power. It’s brilliantly scripted and performed by the two protagonists and easily garners four stars.
Then we moved to Udderbelly for last year’s Roundabout breakout hit, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder, expanded to suit the larger performing space it has a Six vibe that should see it transfer to the West End (Soho Theatre, or The Bridge at least). It’s already played at Bristol Old Vic. It’s about two Hull based true crime podcasters who are told by their hero podcaster that they’ll be nobody’s until they solve one. So they do.
With a superior supporting cast of five, including some big licks Musical Theatre talent, they put on a great and hilarious show with some decent tunes and a great script. It’s comedy gold. Another five stars to bookend the day.
Gaslight is a decent retelling of the play by Patrick Hamilton, that was released as a week long radio play on BBC Radio Four, but has been upgraded with bonus scenes for BBC Sounds that give further insight into the story.
It’s actually the source of the term ‘Gaslighting’ that is so in vogue these days and makes what I’ve always found a difficult concept easy to understand.
It stems from this play in which an abused wife is gradually driven to distraction by her odious husband who turns the gaslight down in their living room (there’s a flimsy reason there’s still gaslight in a home in the 21st century but let’s not fret over it too much) when only the wife is present and ridicules her as she tries to explain it to him.
Essentially he is undermining her confidence whilst driving the process of her descent into near madness.
He’s gaslighting her.
It’s a clever tale of murder and greed that flies by in an instant even with the additional bonus scenes.
There’s also a decent sound track and title song by Imelda May.
Cast in order of appearance:
Tippi Griffiths ….. Lacey Turner
Jack Manningham ….. James Purefoy
Bella Harding ….. Rebecca Night
Ishani Rawe / Izzy ….. Macadie Amoroso
DCI Nina Rawe ….. Cathy Tyson
DI Reynolds / Michael McLennon / Chris De Jeanne ….. Richard Lintern
Written by Jonathan Holloway, based on the original play by Patrick Hamilton
I inhaled this splendid new podcast from ITV News, presented by Paul Brand.
It’s a forensic study into the goings on in number 10 Downing Street during the clown king, Boris Johnson’s reign, throughout Covid.
Although there is nothing particularly new about the story itself, what brings freshness and interest to the sorry saga is the revelations of whistle blowers and number 10 insiders who (anonymously) share their observations with us.
Anonymous, because they fear dismissal if they were to be identified as the moles.
It rattles along at a fair old pace and intersperses the story with the many, many ITV News clips that broke each of the seemingly endless stories, including the botch job by Cressida Dick and The Metropolitan Police (clearly some insider dealings going on there) and the ultimate downfall of Johnson for unrelated reasons.
It’s a really great summary of a story that gripped the nation and, in seven short episodes (with no ads), never outstays its welcome.
Well that was a year wasn’t it. A controversial but great World Cup, the Tories entering the Death Spiral and a meltdown summer.
But as regular readers will know this end of year post is all about culture and what I most enjoyed. It’s not “the Best” because that’s impossible to define but it’s what gave me most pleasure.
But before that: family.
Jeana became the most popular knitter in the universe and brought grins to many faces, especially this Christmas. We had a great trip to Italy in September although the first week in Sicily (Palermo especially) was marred by the tremendously stifling heat. Things got a lot more bearable in Puglia, although the town (Trani) was very quiet.
Tom returned from Canada and sat at our Christmas dinner table, not once but twice, The First in Perthshire with his delightful (and highly sarcastic) Canadian girlfriend, Natasha. She really is a great match. The second was at home with family (his first in about 11 years).
In between times he wrote our car off. Oh well. On the plus side I got a fab Christmas gift from him (as Keir called it, The guilt gift). It’s great to have him back.
Ria is doing great in year three of her dentistry degree but SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, she and Keir got engaged and will marry sometime in 2043. We are all so delighted about that. Keir is a son to us, and even more sarcastic than Natasha.
Amy is prospering in London doing amazing nutrition and fitness work and her relationship with Kieran is blossoming. They now live together and we’ve been delighted to spend much more time with him. He is perhaps not quite as vocal as Natasha and Keir but can hold his own, especially when playing Catan!
I had an enjoyable year at work where Whitespace became Dentsu Creative and I looked after a bunch of international clients (including Generali, Amex and Macquarie Bank’s UK spin off).
Turning to culture…
Music
It was a great year for music. Dominated by Inflo and Little Simz. His band, SAULT, released no fewer than 6 albums although only one is now available. You snooze, you lose.
I was beside myself when Little Simz landed the Mercury.
My favourite songs of the year are on Spotify (here’s the link:- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Kla7n9PSHkeqbmm41tVsb?si=c0539ebcf7614455).
Notable artists for me were led by the Glastonbury experience (my fourth) with Alan where Little Simz and Self Esteem (who was astounding). ruled the roost. Also Confidence Man and Amyl and The Sniffers put on great gigs.
But Warmduscher and PVA were also great at Hidden Door Festival.
Also in music I can’t overlook my Theatre experience of the year which was Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club with Jeana. Truly great theatre.
Another great theatrical music experience was Manic Street Creature at The Roundhouse during the Fringe starring the excellent Munah. Spine tingling drama.
Theatre
What a year for theatre. 51 shows at the Fringe.
Topped by The Silent treatment, Manic Street Creature, Mustard, Waterloo, Sap and Motherload. Every single one of them female (mostly solo) shows and ALL at Summerhall.
Another stunning female performance was Jodie Comer’s in NTL’s Prima Facie and the all women Pride and Prejudice (Sort of) at The Lyceum.
Yet another (and a Fringe First winner) was Breathless at The Pleasance who had, in my view, a particularly strong Fringe. We Should Definitely Have More Dancing had me in bits at Assembly (and guess what, an all female cast).
Laurel and Hardy was another Lyceum stonker in June and Dreamachine at Murrayfield Ice Rink (part of the Unboxed Festival) was so good I went to the out of body experience twice.
Books
Also a great year for books I devoured three Kasuo Ishiguro books.
Motherwell by Deborah Orr was great but maybe the highlight was by Anna Burns in her Booker-winning Milkman, an astonishing and stylised account of the troubles in Belfast, the likes of which you never re-encounter.
I enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s fun but rather slight Expo 58, and Alastair Mackay’s recounting of punk music in Edinburgh, Alternatives to Valium was genuinely original.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep left me desperate for more (she really is a terrific American writer) and an old one that I had missed in Portnoy’s Complaint had me laughing my head off (Phillip Roth).
I reviewed Duck Feet by Scots writer Ely Percy on December 31st last year but didn’t do this summary of the year in 2021 so it gets an honourable mention.
TV
What a year for TV. It just gets better and better doesn’t it.
We are loving Ted Lasso at the moment but other notable TV series were: The White Lotus, This Is Going to Hurt, The Traitor, Industry and, of course, The World Cup.
And again, because I didn’t do this review in 2021, I can’t let the greatest TV show of all time go unmentioned. Succession.
Movies
We didn’t make the movies so much this year. My highlight (unpopular though it is) was Blonde with the astonishing Ana Di Armas as “Marilyn” but really as Norma Jean. Ignore the haters, it’s amazing.
Of course Jodie Comer in Prima Facie gets in here for a second time as we saw it at the Bo’ness Hippodrome – our favourite cinema.
The Banshees of Inisherrin maintains Martin McDonagh’s reputation, indeed enhances it, as one of the greatest directors and, not far behind, in fact equal, was PT Anderson’s brilliant Liquorice Pizza.
I also loved Florence Pugh in The Wonder and David Bowie’s surreal Moonage Daydream documentary.
Also in music territory was Andrew Dominick’s beautiful study of Nick Cave in This Much I know to be True and Elvis is probably Bad Luhrmann’s greatest achievement.
The Year started with Speilberg’s wonderful remake of West Side Story. I loved it.
A big shout out to The Vue for their reasonable pricing policy.
Podcasts
Not such a big podcast year for men but The Rest is politics stole the show by a country mile Matt Forde continues to shine with his Political Party podcast and The News Agents (Maitliss and Sopel) after a tricky start really found its voice. But Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart left everyone else trailing in their wakes.
Sport
This was shite. My golf was laboured. My cycling jettisoned (but will be back). I got to 56 Munro’s, but partly due to the weather it was a lean second half.
So that’s it. A truly great year in which. I also turned 60 and had some fantastic times with family and friends.
Thanks everyone for being part of my life. Have a great 2023.
Today in Focus has long been one of my favourite podcasts for its in depth coverage of the news of the day. Usually it’s deadly serious and very informative without a strong political agenda.
The last two days however, in the face of the global negativity we are endlessly enduring, has been a lightweight, delightful revelation as it has explored the motivations behind the so called ‘Wagatha Christie’ case in which Coleen Rooney (Wagatha) has accused Rebecca Vardy (Grass) of selling her private Instagram stories to the Sun newspaper after creating an elaborate means by which to trap her.
Vardy claims Rooney’s accusation is libellous and has taken Rooney all the way to the top civil court in the UK at the cost, to each, of over £1m.
It’s actually a hilarious story about ego and greed with, in my view, Rooney the wronged one but Vardy the potential victor.
The Guardian use this as a deep dive in to WAG (Wives and Girlfriends of English footballers) culture, privacy and the UK’s antiquated libel laws.
So there’s something for everyone and, if on Friday you want more serious stuff, we’ll no doubt be back to a diet of Johnson and Putin.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Presented by Radio 4 and BBC World Service this eight-parter is written and presented by Gabriel Gatehouse. It starts when Gatehouse meets, but dismisses as newsworthy, the Q Shamen months before he shot to global fame as one of the figureheads of the January 6th storming of the Capitol Building in Washington last year.
You remember the guy. Crazy hat, crazy spear, crazy look.
Anyway that’s actually the end (or the current situation) of a story that has its roots in 16th Century witch-hunting, leading to the Clintons (and Q Anon’s accusation that they lead a global cabal of child eating paedophiles).
It’s essentially a mash up of pretty much every conspiracy theory you’ve ever known, bringing in another paedophile story linked to satanic worshipping in a pizza parlour basement that didn’t actually have a basement, Clinton’s email fiasco, Trump’s Russian connections, Putin’s interference with the Western elections, William Rees Mogg’s vision of a new society where the intellectually superior become the only survivors of a collapsed global economy and the gathering conviction among Republican voters that QAnon is onto something. Most roads do lead back to QAnon and the growing influence this ridiculous cult exerts on otherwise sane people.
Gatehouse’s research is excellent. His weaving together of the narrative is compelling and his delivery self-effacing (he admits more than once to disappearing down rabbit holes and actually falling for some of the conspiracy theories he’s trying to debunk). Most of all it’s just really interesting and superbly pulled together.
So, whilst the world didn’t end on 6th January 2021 he postulates that the potential endgame of the gathering may not in fact be the end but a seriously deluded, and dangerous, beginning.
It’s excellent, it really is.
(You can read more of my reviews on https://greatpods.co)
It’s time to reflect on my best of the year. One thing that’s been great about it has been contributing to GreatPods.co a fab new aggregator of quality podcast reviews. Reassures me that my opinion is of some interest out there.
The front half of the year saw better output in my view and, of course, discovery of existing, but new to me, pods.
Those worthy of note and strong recommendation would be…
The Rest is History: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent and often hilarious history pod that’s also extremely interesting, if sometimes a bit mad. The best was their World Cup of Prime Ministers double header.
Dear Joan and Jericha: Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine’s super posh, super filthy agony aunt series where nothing BUT NOTHING is too extreme to discuss.
Brian and Roger: Big Owl’s fantastic black comedy by Harry Peacock and Dan Skinner about two men who meet at a support meeting for divorced men. One an unemployed lovely old soul who will help anyone (Roger) is increasingly exploited by the heartless and selfish Brian. Comedy gold. All told through the medium of telephone answering machines.
Grounded with Louis Theroux: Theroux is well known for his sideways look at documentary making, often choosing the left of field as subject matter. Here he talked to 22 people whose lives interested him (the best was FKA Twigs – truly brilliant)
The Battersea Poltergeist: A superb radio 4 drama documentary tracing the true life story of a poltergeist in 50’s London with a cynic and a believer acting as pundits. Gripping and great storytelling.
Wild For Scotland: A tiny, low budget doc about great walks in Scotland. Charmingly told by our lovely presenter Kathi Kamleitner.
I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson, having read several of his books and his two previous podcasts: The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August, both of which were brilliant. He also did a fabulous Grounded with Louis Theroux, the first in fact.
So this new outing from BBC Radio 4 had all the credentials for greatness.
It’s essentially an exploration of what he calls Culture Wars, but it’s not massively clear who the ‘wars’ are between or what he means by this.
The first three episodes suggest he has a pathological hatred of American Christian Fundamentalists who take on Femisists, the Pro Choice Movement (episode one)and the Liberal Left who used West Virginian schools as a test bed for new school text books in the 70’s (episode two).
By episode three he’s on to the AIDS epidemic and how, again, Christian Fundamentalists added homophobia to their delightful list of hobbies.
But then the themes start to wander and crumble a little. Episode four is about satanists and five, by which point I was losing interest, is about freedom of speech at Stamford University around about the time of the birth of the internet, built around some huge fall out over a Jewish Scottish joke (that isn’t even funny).
The trouble with this series is threefold:
I’m feeling Ronson has maybe hit a bit of a dry stretch in his career and this podcast is amongst his weakest ever work. At times turgid and often uncertain as to the overall point he is trying to make.
It’s all just a bit dull, frankly.
Joyce is one of those people you need for a community to operate.
In South Queensferry she and her late husband, Jim, were at the heart of everything. Greenferry, Cleanferry, raising money for local charities by playing impromptu gigs at Scotmid, her on the keys, him on the fiddle. Fundraising. Putting on community gatherings at the church, sitting on the Ferry Arts Festival Committee with me in the Chair, you name it.
But Jim passed away not so long ago and young Joyce is forging a new life for herself in her beloved Italy. It didn’t stop her from cooking up this rather appetising bowl of cultural minestrone.
She was an English teacher, at college not School.
Apart from her obvious love for Jim her other love is her son Steven who is doing just great at the BBC where he’s a radio producer on many big shows. Joyce’s pride for Steven (who was incidentally also MY producer on the short-lived Nightfly show on Jubilee FM) is apparent for all to see.
Joyce is simply a wonderful human being with a zest for life and a spirit of complete ‘giving’ that is sadly missed in her home community here in North Edinburgh.But as “La babysitter for Northern Italian twins, a boy and a girl, aged 7, she is kept well-entertained. She tells me she has no idea how long she will be there, but is in no hurry to return.
Life, it seems, could be worse.
Anyway, do enjoy Joyce’s fascinating and illuminating selections.
My favourite author or book
Oh, come on. You’re talking to an English teacher here. Can I have half a dozen? Let’s start with the poetry of Norman MacCaig. Funny, witty, incisive, poignant, beautifully Scottish, something for everyone. My husband and I used to organise the Scottish Writers’ Autumn conference, and MacCaig was one of our guest speakers. I didn’t particularly take to him (he was a bit of a smart Alec) but there’s no doubting his immense talent as a writer. Try “Academic” or “Aunt Julia” or “Visiting Hour” or “Sparrow” for starters.
Catch 22. One of the few books I’ve read twice. I’d never before encountered a book with such a clever (and initially confusing) narrative structure. Joseph Heller had such a healthy cynicism. I loved the dark humour. Recently, I heard someone talking on radio, who had no idea about the origin of the expression, Catch-22. (That makes me feel old, as it did when I realised that some of my students had never heard of The Beatles.)
The Great Gatsby. One of my all-time favourites. A wonderful reflection of the 1920s, flappers, the emerging film industry, celebrity, bootlegging, excess, truth and lies, appearance and reality, jealousy, careless people. Still relevant today. But it has to be read for its exquisite style and imagery — there’s no film that can touch it. I’ve seen three film versions. Baz Luhrmann’s remake was pretty good, but nothing can equal the richness of the language that we get from the book, and the romantic mystery that is Gatsby. Must read it again.
Wuthering Heights. Another book I’ve read a few times, and it was a different read each time — a story of wild romantic love; a story of social injustice and revenge; or a story of good and evil (just look at the number of times Heathcliff is referred to as a devil, or a goblin, or he appears amid thunder and lightning). I vaguely remember reading that Emily Bronte’s sisters found the ending too cruel, and wanted her to change it. I’m glad she didn’t (unlike Ibsen who had to rewrite the ending of “A Doll’s House” for the German audience who couldn’t cope with the idea of a woman leaving her family to lead an independent life.)
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
I read it in my late teens, and it left an enormous impression on me. Before that, I hadn’t given any thought to what it meant to be condemned to hard labour, and had never heard of a Soviet “gulag”, but this book made me wake up to the brutalities of Stalin’s world, and the ghastly existence that some people had. It was a book that helped me understand politics, to value freedom, and to be grateful for every morsel of food. In fact, every time I scrape the bottom of a jar, I think of those emaciated bodies.
The book I’m reading
‘The Italians’ by John Hooper. I’m beginning to get a handle on the divide between north and south, the different identities of the various regions, the vast number of different languages spoken in the different parts, the (ever-shifting) political parties, Berlusconi (who makes Donald Trump look innocent), the Italian character, attitudes, relationship with the truth, art, culture, history, religion, and the enormous influence of the Pope(s) in shaping this country. And I really get now what it must have been like to live through WW2 with the battles raging right here, on home soil, the terrible carnage of Cassino, Mussolini’s changing sides, civil war— what a diverse and divided nation still. (I laughed recently when a friend told me that Sicilians still say they’re “going to Italy” when they’re visiting the mainland.) I was also struck by various pieces of information. For example:
— Before they are employed, women can be asked to sign an undated letter of resignation in case they should get pregnant. (It’s illegal, of course, but in Italy…).
— Street Artists in Venice inherit their licences, even if they have no talent!
— Unheard of towns such as Trani, Macerata, Vercelli, or Cosenza house more cultural treasures than are to be found in the whole of the USA.
— The first state to abolish the death penalty was Tuscany in 1786. The Vatican State abolished it in 1969.
– A huge percentage of Italian adults under 30 (over 80%) are still living with their parents. They’re called “Bamboccioni”. (And it’s pretty obvious to me too, that Italian men of whatever age are still very attached to their mothers.) In other western countries, the average is around 50%.
— Italian convents house around one third of all the nuns in Europe. Catholic hospitals still rely on nuns for healthcare.
— State education is considered perfectly adequate and children there perform better than those in private schools.
— There was a huge sporting scandal in 2005 when it was discovered that players and referees were fixing (and had been for a long time) football matches, and that top managers had a web of influence over results which favoured the top clubs, particularly Juventus.
— Ethnic cuisine is still regarded with deep mistrust. (I can attest to this: it’s REALLY difficult to find ethnic food in local supermarkets, but there are whole aisles of pasta!)
— Berlusconi presided over changes in the law which reduced the statutes of limitation on white-collar (usually financial) crimes so that cases were “timed out”. This allowed him to escape justice for serious financial irregularities. (How Berlusconi is still in politics is beyond me, but then so is the whole of Italian politics.)
What a country, to provide the greatest cultural transformation in the history of the West. This nation gave the world painters and sculptors (Donatello, Leonardo, Botticelli, Titian, Caravaggio); composers (Vivaldi, Verdi, Puccini); and writers (Dante, Pertrarch, Boccaccio.). Not to mention Galileo, Christopher Columbus, Maria Montessori — all of them Italians.
The book I wish I had written
“Happenstance” by Carol Shields. I’m always interested in books with shifting viewpoints, but this one was extra clever. First of all, it’s a real book, as in one which you can hold in your hand to turn the pages. Both the front and back cover look exactly the same, with the title cover, except that one is subtitled “The Wife’s Story” and the other side is subtitled “The Husband’s Story”. Events over a single weekend are then told from each point of view, until the half way point when you are forced to turn the book over and begin reading again from the other side. It leaves you wondering if you’d read the “other” story first, would that have shaped your sympathies differently. (You’ll never know.) It’s ingenious. (And I wonder how it’s presented on Kindle, which must remove that element of choice.)
The book I couldn’t finish
It must have been so bad, I have cast it from my mind!
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Well it *was* Tolstoy’s classic, ‘War and Peace’, but only because I couldn’t be bothered carrying around such a hefty tome. But I always felt I *should* have read it, so it was the first book I put into my Kindle, and it did not disappoint. After my initial scepticism, and many arguments with my son, I can now highly recommend Kindle for hefty tomes, holidays, and a prolonged sojourn in Italy. (Is that an oxymoron?)
My favourite film
Gone With The Wind. A four-hour epic drama, and the first film I ever saw that needed an interval. My mother took me to see it when I was a teenager. She raved about it, described the excitement in the queues around the cinema when it first came out, and explained the moral dilemmas. She also loved Clark Gable (never understood that), but it was the cinematography that got me — those silhouetted buildings on fire, the sweeping high shots of wounded soldiers on the ground, and all in (then-very-new-and-expensive) full technicolour. And the music. I’d never experienced anything quite like that before. It was here that I truly realised the value of the big screen experience, and I’ve preferred to see films at the cinema ever since. I was sorry to see the latest animated Pixar film “Luca” released straight onto Disney’s streaming service — that would have worked brilliantly on the big screen with the backdrop of the (not overtly stated) Cinque Terre.
My favourite play
Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”. 19th Century Norwegian play about a woman who is treated like a child by her wealthy, over-protective-and-rather-patronising husband. Then, after an unexpected turn of events, the reality of her situation begins to dawn on her. In the final scene, she sits her husband down and tells him that, in eight years, they haven’t had a serious conversation, before delivering a few home truths. Quite a speech as I remember it. A feminist play well before the word ‘feminist’ was understood as it is today.
My favourite podcast
Coffee Break Italian. I was surprised to learn just how many of my friends were (and still are) learning Italian. I have no idea how I found this podcast but it’s a series of “live” lessons by a Scottish guy (a teacher in the west coast) called Mark Pentleton in conjunction with a native Italian speaker, Francesca. (I love her). They discuss various points of the language in the presence of a learner, and then they test her out on what she has learned. The student makes all the mistakes I would have made but it gives them the opportunity to discuss the points further, and the whole tone of it is so pleasant and friendly. Access is free, but you can pay for the notes and extra exercises.
As for other podcasts, I enjoy Four Thought, on BBC Radio 4, which is an interesting series of talks on various art/cultural topics. Just scroll through the list and there’s something for everyone. (I liked the one on the dying art of letter-writing.)
And there’s Louis Theroux’s ‘Grounded’ series which he recorded during Lockdown. Some really interesting interviews there.
The box set I’m hooked on
(Or was hooked on.) Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The West Wing’. My son, Steven, got us into this, and we, in turn, passed the set on to family and friends. One of them rang us up and said she and her husband had hardly left the house in a week, they’d watched all seven seasons (156 episodes) almost back to back. Now that’s dedication. Anything written by Aaron Sorkin is worth watching. The writing is top drawer. (And you could tell when he stopped writing episodes for the The West Wing after Season 4.)
My favourite TV series
Pretend It’s a City. (On Netflix — does that count?). A series of interviews and clips from Fran Lebowitz who is absolutely hilarious about her life in New York, and the changes she’s seen in that time. There are seven in the series, and you can watch them in any order, but I’d highly recommend Episode 7 “Library Services” which is the one I happened to watch first. Reminds me of my husband rooting out “treasures” in dusty old bookshops.
Other than that, if the series has to have been shown on TV, I’d go for “Fawlty Towers”. How I laughed at every episode. I thought the hoo-ha over ‘The Germans’ — now issued with an “offensive content and language” warning — was too much, but it’s a changing world.
My favourite piece of music
Mmm. Losing touch with music, I have to say, in favour of podcasts and voice radio. Something jazz, I imagine. Or classical. One memorable piece is ‘Adagio in G Minor’ by Albinoni, played on strings and organ. I first heard it playing as I walked into the (long time closed) John Smith’s bookshop in Glasgow, and bought it on the spot.
My favourite dance performance
Stomp. I still can’t believe the multifarious percussion sounds and rhythms they came up with using brushes, dustbin lids, lighters, anything really. Not even sure if they’re still around, (and they’ll have suffered from theatre closures during Covid) but that was an eye- (or ear-) opening performance for me. (But was it dance?)
I’d also go to see Irish Dancing anytime.
The last film/music/book that made me cry
Judy. Renee Zellweger was outstanding in her recreation of Judy Garland’s final performances. It exactly hit my mother’s era (which I heard a lot about as a child) and I was in floods of tears in the first few bars of “Over the Rainbow”. It reminded me also of my husband, — we played violin and keyboard together round the sheltered housing complexes, and that was one of our most requested songs.
The lyric I wish I’d written
Dorothy Fields’ wrote the lyrics for “The Way You Look Tonight” after hearing Jerome Kern play the melody on the piano. Apparently it had her in tears the first time she heard it. Her lyrics fit the music perfectly. She always said she didn’t write lyrics to be popular but to write a song that would fit the moment, or a character, and she certainly succeeded with this one. (Incidentally, Dorothy Fields was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her father, an actor, was very against her going into show business. Happily, she ignored him.)
The song that saved me
I’m not sure I ever needed saving, but, if I was feeling down as a teenager, “Bridge over Troubled Water” seemed to hit the mark. Love the rising crescendo at the end.
The instrument I play
Keyboard. I learned a very basic piano when I was a child, then, as an adult, found a keyboard at a jumble sale, and realised that it practically played itself. My husband played violin, but we were together for about eleven years before I realised that! Thereafter, we gave concerts together for many years, entertaining the elderly, and organised musical events in the local community.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Clarinet. I loved hearing Glenn Miller playing the clarinet. I even remember telling a friend that I’d like our son to learn the clarinet. Straight away, she replied “Joyce, if YOU want to play the clarinet, then YOU should learn to play the clarinet.” She was right, of course, but I never did — and my son learned to play drums!
If I could own one painting it would be
First, you need to watch “Made You Look” on Netflix. I’m one of those who couldn’t tell you the difference between an original and a fake. Happy to go and look at them in art galleries, cathedrals and churches (plenty of those in Italy) but I always wish I had a guide with me.
The music that cheers me up
Mr Boom. Children’s entertainer (probably geriatric entertainer now). His lyrics and rhymes were terrible: “I’m-Mis-ter-Boom-and-I-live-on-the-moon” but his performance with the kids was always cheering. I even went to see him on my own, long after our son was grown up!
Failing that, ‘The Laughing Policeman’. Nobody, but nobody, could fail to laugh after hearing that.
The place I feel happiest
In a coffee shop. Reading a book or newspaper. Sadly, not something I can easily do anymore — I’m too conscious, in these Covid times, that they need their tables back quickly, so I don’t hang about so much now.
Or, being out and about on my bike. Love that feeling of being higher up with the wind in your hair. I bought a second-hand bike here in Varese before I realised that the town is surrounded by hills (truly — in every direction.) So, I’m planning to buy an electric bike. (I really wanted a Vespa but everyone tells me they’re far too dangerous given the number of potholes and the generally poor state of the Italian roads.)
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Coronation Street. I watched the very first episode with my mother, on our brand new black and white box telly back in the days when there were only two channels and they ended the broadcasting day at midnight with the national anthem and a picture of the queen diminishing to a white dot and a high-pitched continuous “oooo”. Ken Barlow was but a fresh-faced, student with a long scarf and a lot to say about the state of the working-class world. I think it was actually better then, with episodes only on a Monday and Wednesday and some thoughtful social analysis arising from the era of the kitchen-sink drama. It’s decidedly middle-class now. I have no idea how they manage to keep coming up with new ideas, though some storylines are dragged out, or downright silly. Pressure to keep churning them out, I expect. And you have to admire how they’ve adapted to filming during Covid. Thanks to VPNs, I’m still able to access British TV in Italy (though it doesn’t help much with learning Italian!)
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Can’t do anything with these kind of questions. I’d rather have lunch with you!
And I’ll put on this music
Lanie Gardner singing Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, released in October 2020 is an interesting discovery. She’s a young American singer songwriter with her own YouTube channel.
Or Amy Winehouse. Or Madeleine Peyroux. Or I’ll let you choose. (I really should get back into music.)
Like this? Try these.
Politicians.
Liars, cheats, self-centred blowhards with empty promises and corrupt motives.
Each and every last one of them.
Right?
Well, actually, no.
Not if you have political ambitions in Leith that is.
First off, you have Deidre Brock, the sitting SNP MP for Leith and North Edinburgh and then there’s her closest competitor, Labour’s Gordon Munro.
A long term Councillor for City of Edinburgh Council I had the great pleasure to build on my Dad’s friendship with Gordon when I first met him as a fellow Board Director at The Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, one of Gordon’s many Council responsibilities (funnily enough that’s where I first met Deidre too).
I was immediately impressed with Gordon’s enthusiasm and contribution – so many of these posts are really statutory and lead to disinterested contributions, if any at all. Not Gordon.
It helps that he is a passionate lover of so many art forms, not least theatre. (Oh, and the mighty Hibees.)
But as time went on I started to stumble upon him all over the shop. In art galleries, at gigs, in the theatre. And then I called on his help to find a new home for Forth Children’s Theatre.
Boom!
He was straight in there, scouring Leith for us, putting forward all sorts of suggestions (including a disused car park under the Banana Flats).
I read some of his work in The Leither. I chatted to him in corridors. I quickly formed a deep respect for a man who wears his heart firmly on his sleeve and makes no compromises with his political beliefs.
To say Gordon is left of centre would be to downplay his passion for the Labour movement. An all-consuming passion that manifests itself in all the values of Labour that I love (although I vote SNP).
This is what politics should be about. A man of the people who cares wholly in his rage against the machine.
I love that about him. I love that about great politicians of any hue (and actually there are a lot of them that aren’t what I painted in my opening paragraph).
But, if you want to see what integrity looks like in flesh and bone, look no further than Gordon Munro.
An actual hero in my book. (And the only other person on earth I know that likes the outstanding Yasmine Hamdan.)
Now read about his heroes.
And, come the revolution. Back Gordon.
My Favourite Author or Book
Victor Serge. I first encountered Serge in 1983 when I bought a battered second hand copy of his ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionary’ published by Oxford books in 1963. It’s a great read and a fantastic insight into the tumults of the first half of the 20th Century. When the New York Review of Books brought out an edition which included material omitted from the edition I knew I bought it right away. I was not disappointed its still a great read. NYRB have also brought out his notebooks which cover 1936-1947 and his humanity shines through despite recording the murder and deaths of several friends. A threat that he constantly lived under too as Stalin’s GPU kept him under observation. They also publish some of his fiction too. His writing is superb and his volume of poetry ‘ A blaze in the desert’ is worth seeking out . “ All the exiles in the world are at the Greek informer’s café tonight,” is a line from his poem ‘Marseilles’ written in 1941 and a film script in one line. But don’t take my word for it here is what Susan Sontag thinks of Serge : “ Serge is one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes”. She’s right.
The Book I’m reading
As always I have several on the go. ‘Paint Your Town Red – How Preston took back control and your town can too’ by Matthew Brown & Rhian E Jones’ is essential reading. ‘The Divide – A brief guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions’ by Jason Hickel infuriates and illuminates in equal measure.’To Mind your Life- poems for Nurses & Midwives’ is life affirming. ‘ The way to play – coaching hints and technique’ by Inverleith Petanque Club is to hand as I’ve taken up this sport during Covid. ‘ Fixture List season 2021/22 Hibernian FC is essential year round reading for me as a lifelong Hibs supporter.
The book I wished I had written
Is still locked in my head and unlikely to make it out .
The book I couldn’t finish
Funnily enough I had a conversation recently with Ian Rankin where we both said we started but could not finish ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ by Thomas de Quincey. Turgid.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ by James Hogg. I know, I know it inspired Stevenson , it’s a classic etc but life gets in the way. Maybe one day.
My favourite film
Too many but if its one only then it has to be ‘Casablanca’.
My favourite Play
It has to be Peter Brooks ‘ Mahabarata’ in Glasgow . 3 nights in a row of the most sublime theatre I’ve ever seen. The whole audience, which included a chunk of Scottish Actors, were on our feet shouting for more.
My favourite podcast
I don’t do podcasts but I do recommend the blog ‘Stand up and Spit’ by the poet Tim Wells. Great stuff and always interesting.
The box set I’m hooked on
‘American Gods’. A great cast and a good realisation of a favourite book.
My favourite TV series
Tiswas. It just broke all the rules and was great fun too. Chris Tarrant , Sally James , Spit the Dog and the Phantom Flan Flinger along with some cool music . What more do you want.
My favourite piece of Music
‘Teenage Kicks’ by the Undertones. Perfection. When Peel left us and Hibs adopted it for a while as our tune part tribute and part due to the boy band look team we had at the time I was chuffed.
My favourite dance performance
I’ve been lucky enough to see Nureyev, Wayne Sleep, Ballet Rambert, Michael Clarke but it has to be Carlos Acosta with ‘On before’. He has this amazing ability that some football players have of being able to hang in the air. His company will be worth catching when we get the chance to enjoy live performance again.
The last film/music/book that made you cry
Film – Motorcycle Diaries – Walter Salles. I know that’s Guevara’s companion in the last scene watching the plane take off. Alberto Granado at 84 was not allowed in to the USA for the premiere at Sundance despite Robert Redford’s best efforts.
Music- Kathryn Joseph at Pilrig Church Hall. Go see here at Edinburgh Park in August.
Book- Notebooks 1936-1947 Victor Serge. So many deaths.
The lyric I wished I had written
‘Happy Birthday’ – not the Altered Images one. Imagine the royalties (and yes I know there’s a story to this lyric).
The song that saved me
Not a song but a request to dance the Gay Gordon’s at a wedding in 1985. We’ve been together ever since.
The instrument I play
The voice. Badly.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The piano.
If I could own one painting it would be
‘Nighthawks at the Diner’ – Edward Hopper. I have had a print of this up on the wall since 1983.
The music that cheers me up
A whole bunch of 45’s from season 1977/78. Punk Rock shook things up and even Bowie upped his game with ‘Heroes’. We were lucky.
The place I feel happiest
Home with our family our two daughters , son in law and the best thing to happen during lockdown our granddaughter Ada.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Alcohol. It’s got me in and out of trouble. Seen me on my hands and knees outside a nightclub in Tangier. Arrested in Burnley. Stealing a Police hat from the back of a Police car outside a Police station. Chased by a knife wielding pimp in a Miami hotel. And I keep coming back for more.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party. I’ll invite these artists and authors
Dead – David Bowie, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart , Frida Kahlo, Jesus so the wine would flow , Oscar Wilde.
Alive – Brian Eno, Marianne Faithfull, Annie Lenno , Jan Gehl, the Singh Twins, John Byrne.
And I’ll put on this music
Bessie Smith, Yasmine Hamdan, Calypso Rose, Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter.
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If you know Scottish advertising, you know Gerry Farrell. My dear friend of many, many years. Nearly 35 in fact.
It was he who got me poached from Hall Advertising to The fledgling Leith Agency. An unexpected happening, but one that made me think maybe I could do my job after all.
Gerry and I lived through a golden age of advertising that included many shenanigans and totally unacceptable behaviour. For instance, there was a hole in the wall of The Leith Agency that Gerry kicked when I failed to sell a second rate piece of work for him. It was, as I recall, a Lion Rampant singing into a microphone for Tennent’s Live. OK. it wasn’t second rate but it wouldn’t be troubling the jury at D&AD, and that wall will testify to Gerry’s passion for doing it right every time.
Gerry is, under all that loudness, bravado and fiery red-haired temper, a quiet and very, very thoughtful soul. A fly fisherman. You cannae flyfish making a fucking racket, I’ll bet.
The work he has done in Leith’s under-priveleged communities shows his generosity. He is also generous to a fault with his advice, his willingness to encourage young talent and to just make our industry better than it already is.
He’s a great teacher too, and a showman. Oh God, a showman. His pitches have been legendary – up there only in theatre and passion with those of the dearly departed Simon Scott.
And he’s a laugh. A fucking loud, hearty, guttural laugher that invites you to laugh with him. And who could resist? The teller of tales has many that are just wonderful.
As you might expect from Gerry his Unknown Pleasures were created with a great deal of thought and are nothing if not thorough. But also shot through with storytelling genius. Take his opening line for example …
“As a little kid and right the way through my plooky adolescence, I spent hours skulking in Morningside Library.” I mean that is just Gerry Farrell to a T. Witty, colloquial but a beautifully turned and welcoming entree for the many corses that follow.
Enjoy this. I sure did.
My favourite author or book
As a little kid and right the way through my plooky adolescence, I spent hours skulking in Morningside Library. Once I’d read the two hundred-odd books in the ‘Fishing’ section, I prowled the fiction shelves, skimming everything with an interesting title or back cover story, zooming in on the dirty bits and filling in the facts of life my mum and dad were too embarrassed to tell me.
As the plooks faded and my ginger hair reached afro proportions, the novelist who came to make the deepest impression on me was John Updike who wrote the ‘Rabbit’ quartet ‘Rabbit Run’, ‘Rabbit Redux’, ‘Rabbit Is Rich’ and ‘Rabbit At Rest’, depicting the life journey of Harry Angstrom, a blue-collar anti-hero on the run from the American Dream just as much as he’s inexorably pulled towards it. As Julian Barnes said in the Guardian:
In Rabbit Redux Harry feels he has “come in on the end” of the American dream, “as the world shrank like an apple going bad”; by the start of Rabbit is Rich he feels “the great American ride is ending”; by the end of Rabbit at Rest “the whole free world is wearing out”.
Years later, aged 21, I met him in Rome at a talk he gave and we had a wee blether. I told him how much I’d learned about sex from the way he wrote about it and he reminded me that he had twice won the Bad Sex Award, literature’s equivalent of the Razzies.
When I left home for Italy aged 17, the second novel ‘Rabbit Redux’ was my company on the long train journey from Edinburgh to Perugia. It set the tone for my own glorious liberation from my parents and my exciting and occasionally disastrous experiments with drugs, alcohol and naughty girls. I probably learned more about sex, infidelity, father-son relationships, marriage and death from the pages of that book than I learned from my own experiences in later life.
It started a love affair between me and American literature and got me reading Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Roth. All these writers taught me the best lesson I’ve learned: don’t take anything in life too seriously, especially yourself.
Will Atkinson picked out ‘Earthly Powers’ by Anthony Burgess in his Unknown Pleasures. That’s in my Top Ten. I read it in an eight-hour binge in a caravan, finally finishing at 4am in the morning, thrilled and wrung out, unable to get a wink of sleep.
My favourite Scottish author by some distance is Kate Atkinson and my two favourites of hers are ‘Life After Life’ and ‘When Will There Be Good News’. I feel like I know her because I used to sit opposite her daughter Helen at the Leith Agency. I’d bring in books for her to give to her mum and she’d bring in books her mum recommended to me.
Finally, if anyone wants a red-hot tip for a thriller, let me recommend ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household about a man on a mission to kill Hitler. You won’t put it down till the last page.
The book I’m reading
I’ve just finished ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’ Farrell who lives in Edinburgh. It zeroes in on a single catastrophic domestic event – the death of Shakespeare’s son. There may never be a better, more absorbing book about the death of a child. The prose is luminous, the depth of feeling is bottomless and the ending is miraculous.
The book I wish I had written
I’m still waiting for that story to appear in my head. Most writers will tell you not to even bother sitting down to write a book unless you have a story you’re bursting to tell. That’s not happened to me yet although I’m permanently gripped by the IRA’s blowing up of Lord Mountbatten. He was an awful man but nobody deserves to die that way. If I was to write anything it would be a fictionalised version of that. The only part of a book I ever wrote that got published was the title of my son-in-law Adam Kay’s first book ‘This Is Going To Hurt’, his diaries from his time as a junior doctor, currently being turned into a BBC drama. If I got a penny for every copy sold I’d have several million pennies. But I’m happy to make do with my honourable mention in the credits.
The book I couldn’t finish
If a stack of them fell on me, I’d be crushed to death. Most notable was ‘The Master and Margarita’ by Mikhail Bulgakov. Just a chore, so I gave up. Life’s too short. ‘Underworld’ by Don Delillo was another one. I bloody hated ‘American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. And I almost gave up on The Thursday Murder Club but I’m glad I persisted. People kept telling me to read ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I eventually slogged through it but I was never gripped.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
There are plenty of things I’m more ashamed of than not reading somebody’s book. I do love books and I have a secret fantasy about being locked in a library all night. But nobody should be guilt-tripping themselves for not obeying the Culture Police. There are plenty of great books I haven’t read. In my old age I look forward to sitting down for a month and reading all of Shakespeare’s plays because he really is the best writer (of English) that ever lived. Crying shame if you had him forced down your throat at school and never went back to enjoy him in later life.
My favourite film
‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. One way or another, I’ve been dogged by mental illness in my family all my life and was amazed when my own mental health went off a cliff one day. Jack Nicholson takes Ken Kesey’s novel by the scruff of the neck and gives it a violent shake. My favourite scene is the fishing trip. My favourite bit of dialogue is “What flavour?”…..”Juicy Fruit”. I’m krazy about Kubrick too. Clockwork Orange and The Shining are incredible movies. So powerful I’ve never been able to watch them again.
My favourite play
I rarely visit the theatre but I’m not going to be guilt-tripped about that either. I did love ‘The Bevellers’ by Roddy McMillan which I was taken to as a 13 year-old St Augustine’s RC schoolboy. I remember all the filthy, funny lines like “If he got a hard-on, he’d think it was a fart gone backwards” and “Tell that fireman ma knickers are on fire and he’s the man wi the hose.” I was shocked and delighted in equal measure at the way all my St Augie’s Catholic teachers in the audience fell about when those pearlers got dropped in the salubrious surroundings of the King’s Theatre.
My favourite podcast
Ach, there’s millions but ‘Thirteen Minutes To The Moon’ has been my favourite for a while, especially the second series about the doomed Apollo 13 flight. It still blows my mind to think that there’s more computing power in a bog-standard calculator then than there was in that spacecraft back then. The astronauts and the chain-smoking NASA crew who got them home with old toilet rolls and sticky back plastic are heroes to me.
The box set I’m hooked on
Nothing will ever touch The Sopranos. If you argue otherwise I’ll have you chopped into pork parcels and fed to the fishes.
My favourite TV series
‘Friends’. It hasn’t aged that well – these days at least one of the pals would have to be gay and they certainly couldn’t all be white. But the casting was inspired and I partly credit its warmth and likeability with helping my four kids become the funny, fearless, big-hearted people they are today. I’ll never forget taking them to a holiday house right on the water on the Cote d’Azur for a fortnight. Remind me never again to rent a holiday home with a telly. I couldn’t get them out in the sunshine for hours every day because they were glued to Aniston and Co. The scene where Joey has to improvise a foreskin out of Spam for a casting session is unforgettable. Oh, and Danny de Vito’s turn as a stripper in police uniform. The other night I watched ‘Friends: The Reunion,’ a silly, moving, funny, big-hearted retrospective bringing the friends back together in front of a live audience. Worth it just for Lady Gaga dropping in to do ‘Smelly Cat’ with Lisa Kudrow and a gospel choir.
My favourite piece of music
Nah. You cannot be serious. I could do a different Desert Island Discs every week. I cried half the day when David Bowie died. I love genres, like Motown and the way that inspired superstars like Beyonce and Amy Winehouse. I love ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ by Ella Fitzgerald. I love country music and I’d love to visit Nashville. (I spent six years singing and playing in an 11-piece bluegrass band called The Downrights, see photo.) Nina Simone still gives me the chills as does Robert Plant. When I was 13, if I couldn’t be a pilot I wanted to be Mick Jagger. The cowbell at the start of Honky Tonk Women might be the quickest cue to get on the dancefloor. Or is it the opening bars of Nutbush City Limits? I love pure, shallow pop music: Denis Denis by Blondie; anything by Chuck Berry; beautiful slow sad songs like Purple Rain, Perfect Day, Bridge Over Troubled Water and Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay. I think Eminem is an amazing writer. I love every song Jarvis Cocker ever wrote. I never fail to fill up listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and I still get a kick out of a brass band playing the William Tell Overture (I used to play the French horn). But the sad truth is that I’m a show-off. All the songs I love are songs I can learn and perform. My perfect gig would be me on stage, with me in the audience but I’ll settle for karaoke.
My favourite dance performance
I’m just not into it. I love watching African tribal dances and Mick Jagger prancing and poncing about on stage. Couples who can jive make me jealous. But ballet? Puts me to sleep. I’m a dance Philistine.
The last film/music/book that made me cry
Sophie’s Choice and the Killing Fields unlocked my tear ducts. But honestly, I laugh more than I cry.
The lyric I wish I’d written
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover
The song that saved me
I used to play hymns in my local church group and although I don’t have a strong Catholic faith any more, I’ve always found ‘Amazing Grace’ one of those songs that gets me reaching for my best and bravest voice. It’s a song about being saved despite your wretchedness and that’s a compassionate and helpful way to find comfort when you’re going through a tough time. The other one is a song called ‘Pilgrim’. Steve Earle wrote it in a hurry. He had been asked to say something at a friend’s funeral but his mind went blank so he came up with this beautiful song instead and sang it at the service. It’s a very beautiful song to sing at funerals and it has a chorus that suddenly starts everyone singing along, despite the lump in their throats.
The instrument I play
I have two guitars. A beat up old Yamaha semi-acoustic which I practise on at home and a gorgeous, sunburst Godin 5thAvenue Kingpin (see attached photo) which is my ‘show-pony’ geetar, the one I go on stage with. It has a gorgeous, vintage ‘50s tone so it sounds as good as it looks.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
My son Olly is a genius on the piano and his playing leaves me stone-cold jealous. He can play anything after one hearing and if need be he can take it up or down a semitone in an instant without breaking sweat. He plays regularly for a ska band called Bombskare (but we never talk about that in an airport). I’d also love to be able to play blues harmonica. You can wrench more raw emotion out of that tiny piece of tin than even the sweetest Stradivarius.
If I could own one painting it would be
Anything by Monet, if I had the monet.
The music that cheers me up
Phil Collins. Only joking. Ry Cooder, Bop Till You Drop. Never gets old.
The place I feel happiest
In a boat flyfishing for trout on a Scottish loch. If I had to pick, I’d go for a week’s stay in the Victorian Boathouse on Coldingham Loch.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Karaoke, singing ‘Mack The Knife’.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I’ve thought about this a lot but the honest truth is if I was having the ultimate dinner party I’d be treating my best mates and my family at Langan’s Brasserie in London. I’d have their spinach soufflé with hot anchovy sauce, to this day the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. If you forced me to invite famous people, they’d mostly be dead ones because that would give the occasion added piquancy. I’d have Claude Monet, Bill Nighy, Billy Connolly, Shakespeare, Meryl Streep, Winston Churchill (seated next to Gandhi who he was very rude about), Charles Dickens and Jennifer Aniston (seated next to Jack Nicholson who would try and fail to get off with her). Bowie, Prince, Jeff Lynne, Amy Winehouse and George Harrison would be in the same room, doing requests.
And I’ll put on this music
It would be live music, played by the house band above, doing requests all night, shouted out by me and my dinner guests.
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You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose family.
Well, I got lucky because Alan is my brother in law and I count him among my best friends.
He lives in England, he supports a shite football team and he’s clean living and thoughtful.
So, why do I like him so much?
I’d say many of my longest and most enjoyable deep into the night chats over the last 20 years have been with Alan, once we’ve dispensed with our wives.
Music leads the conversation, followed by sport.
We both golf badly and we both cycle. We both just love sport full stop.
But we also like contemporary literature, the movies and good TV.
So many great nights have been spent in Alan’s company, and great experiences too, on golf courses, bikes, boats, footpaths, pubs, restaurants but, most of all, gigs.
We went to Glastonbury together in 2015 or so and we had tickets for the big one in 2020. Covid Glasto. The 50th.
But we got to keep them for 2021, and now for 2022. It will be epic by then of course, no longer for his 60th, but it will be for mine.
I look forward to that very, very much but in the meantime you’ll just have to content yourself with his cultural highlights. Thanks Alan. Thanks Bro.
This is an impossible task. Ask me the same questions tomorrow and I’ll probably give you a whole different set of answers .. except for favourite dance performance.
My favourite author or book
I’ve always enjoyed exploring Scottish fiction so Ian Banks or Ian Rankin would be up there, and some quality American storytelling (which often comes on recommendation from Mark). I’ve never read enough John Updike – and should – but if there’s one author it would probably be Cormac McCarthy, and the Border trilogy.
The book I’m reading
I had my usual burst of reading after Christmas and worked my way through Shuggie Bain and two of the Kate Atkinson Inspector Brodie tales. I wanted something different after that and I’m slowly working my way through Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Mountains of the Mind’.
The book I wish I had written
Nothing specific, but I’d love to have put together a collection of short stories. Check out ‘Children of Albion Rovers’ sometime.
The book I couldn’t finish
Updike, the Rabbit trilogy. I stupidly bought the big version with all of the books compiled together and the smallest type known to man.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Haven’t read or can’t remember reading? That’s too long a list…
My favourite film
This is a bit like asking for your favourite song. It changes all the time, so it could be ‘Three Billboards..” or anything in that ilk, or it could be a Tarantino choice, maybe ‘Django Unchained’ but one film that always makes me laugh is Mel Brookes’ ‘Young Frankenstein’, a classic of its kind. “Hump, what hump?”
My favourite play
Not my specialist field, and when we’re in Edinburgh at Festival time we tend to go to see more comedy than anything else, but I really enjoyed ‘The Incident Room’, which is all about the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper.
My favourite podcast
Probably the ‘Desert Island Discs’ archive on BBC Sounds, but I don’t know if that counts as a podcast. I don’t listen to many but enjoyed the first two series of ‘That Peter Crouch Podcast’.
The box set I’m hooked on
‘The Bridge’! How did I miss this first time around? Easily the best crime thriller of its kind, the storyline is so well put together and the characters are amazing. Lockdown was also put to good use by watching every episode of ‘Schitt’s Creek’.
My favourite TV series
Nothing in particular at the moment, but looking forward to a new series of ‘Peaky Blinders’, although I hope they make this the last before it gets too far out there. Trying to follow the first series of ‘Killing Eve’ is a good example of why you should quit when you’re ahead.
My favourite piece of music
An impossible question. What day is it, what mood are you in? I’d find it easier to answer the best live performance I’ve ever seen. (Prince – twice – if you’re interested.)
My favourite dance performance
Mark trying to get into Tom’s white jeans.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Driving alone and listening to ‘The Dark Island’ when we were putting together the music for my Dad’s funeral.
The lyric I wish I’d written
A Beatles lyric, maybe “Though I know I’ll never lose affection / For people and things that went before / I know I’ll often stop and think about them / In my life I love you more” (In My Life). A close second would be a line or two from Buddy Miller’s ‘Don’t Tell Me’.
The song that saved me
I haven’t heard it yet, but I’m still listening.
The instrument I play
I took piano lessons when I was young but then they clashed with Wednesday nights at Tynecastle and I gave up. Right now the instrument I regularly hold, but can’t really play, is the guitar.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The guitar. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing musicians and watching them pick up a guitar and produce something of beauty with such ease is something I’ve always wished I could do.
If I could own one painting it would be
Anything by Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko. There’s 2 opposites for you!
The music that cheers me up
I have a Tuesday Morning playlist that was set up for my Tuesday morning class while they waited on Zoom for the session to start that always cheers me up, but if there’s one song that stands out it would be George Harrison ‘What Is Life’.
The place I feel happiest
Zermatt on that first day of skiing, just before you push off for the first run. A quick nip from the hip flask usually sets it up nicely.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Classic rock. There’s no thinking going on, just raw noise and aggression.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I’d want to laugh, so probably Billy Connolly, Sir Alex Ferguson and my first boss, Bruce Findlay. I think we’d all have enough in common to talk about.
And I’ll put on this music
I wouldn’t. I don’t want to miss anything.
If you like this here’s some more…
Felix comes from a long line of McLaughlin brothers. Four men so very different you’d be surprised they were even related. But each is a star in their own right. And their beloved Mum, Prue, well, she’s a one off.
Felix is the performer of the bunch. The natural showman. As you can see from the picture above, which I took about 12 years ago at the after show party for FCT’s Ya Beauty, he’s larger than life.
He’s enthusiastic, knowledgeable and great fun to be around. But his music quiz performance, in last year’s extended lockdown series, was only passable.
Felix and I know each other largely through the august body that is Forth Children’s Theatre where Felix made his name before going off to Wales to tread the boards there and meet his delightful wife, Louise.
But now he’s back to Scotland, living in Fife. I’m looking forward, very much, to meeting with Felix and his brothers at the annual Edinburgh Festival politics day, where they cram in as many left wing performances as is possible in one day.,
Thanks for your fantastic, not unsurprisingly eclectic selections Felix. Enjoy everyone.
My favourite author or book.
Never been a big reader to be honest, particularly of fiction. I have perhaps read more in the last 10 years or so, but I’ve always revelled in autobiographies – some favourites were Rikki Fulton, Danny Baker’s trilogy, Mo Mowlam and Peter Ustinov. Not read Obama’s yet, so that is on the list.
The book I’m reading.
A Kindle freebie called The Escape by CL Taylor – the kind of trash that sends me to sleep.
The book I wish I had written.
Argos catalogue – the book of dreams.
The book I couldn’t finish.
Lovely Bones. Dull.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read.
It’s a cliche, but all the classics – Dickens, Hardy etc. Never been one for fantasy, so won’t ever attempt Harry Potter or Tolkein, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far!
My favourite film.
Movies I could watch again and again include One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Sleuth (obviously the Olivier/Caine original), West Side Story and The Odd Couple.
My favourite play.
This has been mentioned before in this series, but I saw Ulster American with Mark G a couple of years back at the Traverse, which was amazing. We spoke to one of the actors (Darrell D’Silva) outside afterwards and his wise-cracking American accent from the stage then morphed into thick Rotherham! John Byrne’s The Slab Boys at The Lyceum circa 1988 made a huge impression on me. I used to go to all the previews back then at Lyceum, great atmosphere in there. Seen many great musicals – Green Day’s American Idiot once in Cardiff and once at the Playhouse in Edinburgh, Blood Brothers, special mention for B2’s production of Rent and FCT doing Jesus Christ Superstar in the Fringe a few years back (and being well oiled helped with my accompanying every word from the audience!).
My favourite podcast.
Adam Buxton is always good with a nice interviewing manner and interesting people. His recent chat with McCartney was miles better than Idris Elba’s bum lick on BBC. Richard Herring’s LHSTP is very silly, but still makes me smile. The BBC Sounds series Tunnel 29 is an extraordinary tale of escaping under the Berlin Wall, gripping and well worth seeking out.
The box set I’m hooked on.
Enjoyed Zerozerozero a lot – atmospheric, dark, crazy and great acting. I was late to the party with Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow but binged right through, very clever. I love Derry Girls on All4 and Detectorists has also been a lockdown binge.
My favourite TV series.
GBH with Michael Palin and Robert Lindsay at the top of their game, very much of its time but still relevant. I always return to Have I Got News For You and anything with Alan Partridge.
My favourite piece of music.
Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. My Dad had a cassette of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic and he played it ad nauseam in the car when us four boys were younger. For me it is hugely evocative, stirring, dramatic and beautifully performed. My younger brother bought me a vinyl copy for Christmas a couple of years ago, which is exquisite.
My favourite dance performance.
Not a medium I rush to go and watch, to my shame, as I know I should, however my cousin Lulu Johnston created and performed a one woman Fringe show in 1994, which was a double bill called “Beastie” and “Gemma & Mrs Kemper”. It was on at St Cuthbert’s By The Castle and I always remember in the 2nd half, she got herself into a dolls house and danced with it on for over 20 minutes…amazing.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry.
12 Years a Slave. Astonishing.
The lyric I wish I’d written.
Well it’s a toss up between Newport’s finest Goldie Lookin Chain’s “Your mothers got a penis” with some memorable lines:
She walks around proud, with a short dress on
Which sometimes exposes the tip of her dong.
Often it’s dripping, sometimes it’s dry
No matter when I see her there’s a tear in my eye
or from Iggy’s Lust for Life – “Well, that’s like hypnotizing chickens”. Love that line.
The song that saved me.
To be used seamlessly in three different scenarios – loud in car on a long journey, background chill at home, or thumping out from a PA as the sun comes up, it has to be Primal Scream with Come Together.
The instrument I play.
When much younger, I learned trumpet, tenor horn, drums and piano. Don’t play any of them now, sad to say.
The instrument I wish I’d learned.
Guitar, definitely.
If I could own one painting it would be.
Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. There was a small print copy on the wall in my granny’s house and I used to stare at it just to try and work it out, it fascinates me. Even better, the original is housed in Scotland, so my ownership wouldn’t involve any Brexit red tape cos it’s in Kelvingrove Gallery in Glasgow!
The music that cheers me up.
Elvis, no contest.
The place I feel happiest.
6-9pm on a Friday, taking ages to make a curry in my kitchen, random hoppy ales in fridge, music loud, chatting rubbish with wifey.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure.
YouTube.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors.
Adolf Hitler, Elvis, Shakespeare, Bowie, Clare Grogan, Bjork, Joe Strummer, Daniel Day Lewis and Chic Murray.
And I’ll put on this music.
Late 60s early 70s easy listening (Bacharach, Tony Christie, Dionne Warwick) interspersed with Chic greatest hits cos we’ll need to dance between courses, then lots of shouty Simple Minds, Big Country or Proclaimers when everyone is lashed up.
If you like this here’s some more…
I know Duncan through his fellow love of the greatest football team on earth. Hibernian Football Club.
With the greatest team song in the world.
We;’ve been to several, mostly heartbreaking events together where we have inevitably Hibsed it.
Aside from that I bump into him from time to time at gigs.
He also works in my industry on the PR side and our paths have crossed here too.
He’s probably best known, though, for his most excellent podcast The Terrace that has spawned a hit TV programme on BBC Scotland.
Duncan is nothing if not enthusiastic, an avid buff in music, football and literature if not more.
He’s an enthusiast, a statto and a thoroughly nice bloke who I wish I could have spent more time with over the years. His best mate, Mark Atkinson, also happens to be the son of one of my best mates, Will Atkinson.
So all things considered he’s the very man to share his cultural secrets.
My favourite author or book
A few authors who I will read anything by: Simon Kuper, Wright Thompson, Erika Fatland and David Keenan.
The book I’m reading
I annoy my fiancée Sarah because I never just have one book on the go. I’ll have one in the lounge, one upstairs, one on the Kindle. So currently I’m reading Michael Crick’s biography of Alex Ferguson, a book about the final season of football in East Germany and Kelman’s The Disaffection.
The book I wish I had written
To be able to write like Gay Talese would be a privilege. Imagine being able to do profiles like Frank Sinatra Has A Cold?
The book I couldn’t finish
Gorbachev’s memoirs. Maybe it was the translation, maybe it was my age, but gave up a fifth of the way through. I’m getting more ruthless as I get older, why waste time reading bad books when there’s so much good out there?
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Oh plenty. Only in more recent years have I started to read more and more fiction. So a lot of the classics are unknown to me.
My favourite film
Probably 24 Hour Party People. If I could bottle how I felt leaving the cinema after seeing that age 17 I’d be solving the world’s problems.
My favourite play
Not the world’s biggest theatre goer but very much enjoyed Mary Stuart when it ran at the Duke of York’s Theatre a few years ago.
My favourite podcast
Feels indulgent to include one I’m involved in, so I won’t. The podcast I’m most excited to see show up in my feed at the moment is Puck Soup, an ice hockey podcast. I find the three voices on that show both really soothing and entertaining.
The box set I’m hooked on
Spiral. French crime drama. Moody Parisians. Slowly watching the final series as I don’t really want it to end.
My favourite TV series
Arrested Development Seasons 1-3. I don’t think I’ve watched a show as much as got more enjoyment on every viewing, finding jokes I’d missed. And let’s know acknowledge what happened to the show when it went to Netflix ok?
My favourite piece of music
Probably the piece of music I’ve heard the most in my life and still love is The Weight by The Band. My dad was a massive fan and we used to hate it as kids listening in the back of the car on long trips to Elgin but suddenly as a teenager something clicked and I’ve loved it ever since.
My favourite dance performance
Sorry to be a philistine but I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a dance performance.
The last film/music/book that made me cry
Finding Jack Charlton. I think I cried about four times watching it. Having lost a grandparent in the last year to dementia it hit close to home too.
The lyric I wish I’d written
“When I finally find the words,
I’ll be coming back for you.
If I decide to rule the world,
I’m still coming back for you”
Somewhere Across Forever by stellastarr*
The song that saved me
Music means a lot to me, but I don’t think I’ve been saved by a single song. It’s helped me immensely and get through things, but nothing has “saved” me.
The instrument I play
The guitar, badly and not for several years.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Piano. Or an ability to sing well enough that other people would want to listen to me rather than put fingers in their ears.
If I could own one painting it would be
It’s not very sophisticated but The Runaway by Norman Rockwell. It’s one of my enduring memories of my grandparent’s house in Elgin. I was fortunate enough to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts and see the original in the flesh. It was a lovely moment.
The music that cheers me up
The day I can’t be cheered up by Hey Ya by Outkast will be the day I shuffle off this mortal coil.
The place I feel happiest
Waking up anywhere on holiday, anywhere in the world with Sarah.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I’m against the notion of guilty pleasures, but undoubtedly mine is professional wrestling. Yes I know it’s contrived, problematic nonsense but it fascinates me.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I’m always wary of meeting your heroes and idols but I think it could be fun to have Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash and the McIlvanney brothers for company. And it will be in a lighthouse.
And I’ll put on this music
A deliberately curated playlist from my iTunes catalogue that I’d spend many hours agonising over more than the food that was being served.
If you like this here’s some more…
And so to Claire.
Now, to start with, I have to declare an interest here. Claire is actually my client. She’s a strategist in the Scottish Government’s Marketing Team, although she never signs off her emails with her title so I don’t know what she is called formally.
So I’ll just caller her what I think is my biggest compliment for clients. A clear thinker. A brilliant mind and a thoroughly lovely person to work with that gives back huge amounts, that inspires all those around her and that makes her agencies eager to do their best work.
But I’ve known her a lot longer than that. Primarily as a Strategic Planner at The Leith Agency and secondly as a director of Edinburgh University’s alumni theatre group. However, because my shows and hers at The Fringe clashed every single year, neither of us has seen the others’ work. My assumption is that it will be brilliant.
Claire is just such a wonderful enthusiast and that ticks all my boxes. She really is a genuinely pithy thinker and original expert in positioning brands, services and now behavioural change of the masses. If you’re being asked to change your behaviour in Scotland there’s a good chance Claire has had a hand in it somewhere.
When I was a freelance consultant Claire always had an open door. We’d meet for coffee and a chat, often, no usually straying off topic and that’s what I love about her and the few that are like her.
No ego. No agenda. But plenty of time for me and other human beings. And for that I thank you Claire.
And now, on to her likes. Many of which I share. A great selection of stuff to get your teeth into and a lot of it pretty accessible so dive in and follow up folks.
(David Greig – an earlier contributor – will be pleased with her most excellent theatre choice, a show I’ve seen in Carlops Village Hall myself.)
My favourite author or book
I’m rubbish at favourites. I love Arundhati Roy, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, Hanya Yanigahara, Mary Beard, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Irving, Robert Harris, J. R. R. Tolkien and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I’ve just finished How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue which is beautifully heartbreaking.
The book I’m reading
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.
The book(s) I wish I had written
The Handmaid’s Tale and / or The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. This last is a children’s book but contains the character I’d sail off into the sunset with, if he wasn’t in love with Millie, Chrestomanci.
The book I couldn’t finish
The memoirs of a survivor. Doris Lessing. Recommended to me by a wonderful English teacher when I was 15. It sat on my bedside table for considerable years. Moving it to the bookshelf was the kiss of death. I must try again.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
I haven’t read any Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf to my shame. Nor any Germaine Greer though I’m a bit less troubled by this. I’ve barely dabbled with the classics though enjoyed a teenage love affair with nineteenth-century Russian writers. Sadly not in Russian.
My favourite film
Life Is Beautiful. A glorious tribute to the power of stories to make shit things, a bit better.
My favourite play
As a script, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. As a production (and script), David Grieg’s The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart. As a moment in theatrical history, National Theatre of Scotland / John Tiffany / Gregory Burke’s Black Watch. As a spectacle, The Drowned Man by Punchdrunk. For clutching at my heart, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I’m looking forward to The Lyceum’s audio play, Sophia, by Frances Poet.
My favourite podcast
Shit Town. Tremendous (if dark) story telling. And anything by History On Fire.
The box set I’m hooked on
The Bridge. I can always tell when I’m properly obsessed with a show as I start imagining (wishing) that I see the characters in the street. Saga is an awesome character for all sorts of reasons. Call My Agent was a gift in lockdown.
My favourite TV series
The Simpsons.
My favourite piece of music
Totus Tuus by Henryk Gorecki. Or Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys. Both whisk me back to teenage freedoms. The former was me wishing I was cultured and cultivated. The latter, fondly imagining I was rebellious.
My favourite dance performance
Crystal Pite’s Emergence, performed by Scottish Ballet in the EIF in 2016. Or way back to my teenage years, Rambert’s Little Red Rooster. Somehow, maybe the first time I’d heard the Stones. Electrifying.
The Last film / music / book that made me cry
Yerma with Billie Piper by the National Theatre, currently available online. It was filmed with a live audience. That usually makes me cry. She was also awesome.
The lyric I wish I’d written
Many of Stephen Sondheim’s. (See Liza Minelli’s version of Losing My Mind. Or Judi Dench and Send In The Clowns.) For suckerpunch-ness, the Pet Shop Boys: “I love you, you pay my rent.”
The song that saved me
Paint It Black by the Stones and Amy Winehouse feed my self-indulgence pretty well. And I’ll listen to Stand On The Wordby the Celestial Choir on repeat.
The instrument I play
Chopsticks on the piano. I aspire to play Bach.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Clarinet. One day, I’ll play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
If I could own one painting it would be
Actual paint? Anything by Alison Watt would do me nicely.
The music that cheers me up
All sorts. Jazz. (Kansas Smitty have been doing wonderful things online during the pandemic.) Handel. Mozart’s Requiem, perversely.
The place I feel happiest
Theatres. Right now, any theatre that was open and about to serve up a show would cut it. If I’ve got my pick of all of them, the Traverse, in no small part because of their bar.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Does Jilly Cooper count as culture?
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Zadie Smith, Mark Ravenhill, Clare Barron, Neil Tennant, Laura Bates, Tennessee Williams, Greta Thunberg, Alan Rickman. I’d need a big table.
And I’ll put on this music
US3. Air. Nouvelle Vague. Charlotte Gainsbourg. Kings of Convenience.
If you like this here’s some more…
Morvern is one of the most creative, most ambitious (in a good way) and most democratic people I know.
She sees creativity through a lens that brings people together in a way that improves their lives. Ordinary people largely. That’s why she’s been involved with Leith Creative, led the Leith Shutters project, where she put amazing street art onto the shutters of closed shops, The Mural Project, which had a similar ambition of bringing street art to Leithers, and, of course, she founded the fabulous Leith Late 10 years ago and, pandemic aside, has nurtured it through a wide variety of forms with often little or no money.
Also a lover of unorthodox cinema, her KinoKlub has delighted many with its surrealist movie screening, often, but not always from the horror genre.
She’s a thorn in many sides because she won’t ever, take no for an answer. Her co-curated Blueprint for Leith was citizen-powered and asked the questions the City Council daren’t and therein lies many of her face-offs. Deeply respected (probably feared too) by our ‘City Fathers’ she has succeeded in drawing support from them for many of her ambitious projects.
You’d assume from all this that Morvern was a proud Leither, and she is, but only as her adopted home because she’s 100% Glaswegian, and sounds it.
I’m so delighted to have Morvern share her cultural inspiration with us. I’m also proud to know her because I consider her by far the most proactive, imaginative and effective advocate of art and culture, outside of the pantheons of culture that dot my city, that I know. Her influence is massive, her ability to articulate her belief in the power of art and culture tremendous. But underneath it all she’s just a really lovely, caring person that does what she does for all the right reasons.
And its the reason she gets the respect and admiration that she does. Including from our City Fathers.
My favourite author or book
My three favourite authors are Ursula le Guin, Shirley Jackon and Octavia Butler, but it has been Octavia’s work in particular that has really helped me get through the various lockdowns of late. Butler was the first recognised Black woman author in the science fiction genre, a genre she dubbed ‘speculative fiction’. It was by harnessing this she was able to explore the following scenarios: ‘What if?’ ‘If only?’ and ‘If things go on like this’. The latter has been highlighted most recently in the public consciousness by her 1998 novel Parable of the Talents, which features an American President despot who presides over an increasingly chaotic and destructive country, using the mantra “Make America Great Again”.
There are so many great places to start with Butler, but my favourite of her characters is Lillith Iyapo from the Xenogenesis trilogy who we meet in Dawn, with the start of a new kind of human race after the demise of Earth. My great sadness is, since Octavia is no longer with us, the novels we have of hers are finite so therefore I eke out the experience of reading her work and savour every novel and short story available.
The book I’m reading
I’m currently reading Into the London Fog, subtitled Eerie Tales from the Weird City and published by the British Library under their ‘Tales of the Weird’ series. There’s lots of great stuff in it, including entries by Edith Nesbit who wrote a significant amount of ghost stories alongside her children’s fiction, and Arthur Machen, a great proponent of the weird literary genre. Editor Elizabeth Dearnley talks in her introduction to the collection about the feature of fog in the city making it both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, an eeriness I think we’ll all be familiar with now when wandering around our emptied city centres as a result of the pandemic. My only point of reference to the historic London fog is of course the Edinburgh haar, which is less inherently mysterious and more of an eerie character itself!
The book I wished I’d written
I don’t wish I’d written anything already out in the world, as each book is a product of their time and of the circumstance of the author. However, I would love to edit a future contribution to the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series, or something of a similar ilk. I recently attended an online talk by Elizabeth Dearnley (editor of Into the London Fog), who described putting the book together as a dream project, which I can well imagine. I believe there must be a vast array of uncovered weird and gothic gems in the collections of the National Library or the University of Edinburgh, that could be given a whole new lease of life in a shiny new edition. Edinburgh is the city that spawned Blackwood’s Magazine and other similar periodicals of the 19th century after all, so there must be plenty of fine homegrown bogie tales of yore out there to sift through!
My favourite film
I couldn’t possibly single out any one film in particular, but the film genre that I’m most fond of is horror. Unfairly diminished and looked down upon, the horror genre has existed since the genesis of film. It provides a safe space to explore societal fears and prejudice, to observe life’s inhumanities, to vicariously experience the limitations of the human body and our ideas of what might happen after death. There is some evidence to suggest that horror, while always popular, has increased in popularity as a result of COVID-19, with stay at home audiences keen to watch pandemic-themed dystopias as a means of helping to cope with everyday reality. Perhaps it’s like wild swimming – the more you subject your body and mind to cold sharp shocks, the easier it becomes to cope with real-life trauma. A few recent recommendations worth seeking out include: Midsommer, Tigers Are Not Afraid, His House and Host.
Favourite podcast
I have to confess I’m not much of a podcast person, so I’m just going to mention the handful of podcasts I’ve ever spent time listening to. First up is the Persistent and Nasty podcast, (@PersistentNasty on Twitter), a collective of Glasgow-based female creatives who regularly interview a variety of cool and interesting guest speakers. (Dunno why I’ve not been invited on yet tbh!) I’m also a massive fan of adrienne marie brown who has written, amongst other things, the inspirational Emergent Strategy. It’s a radical self/society-help book inspired by the work of Octavia Butler and her writings on the subject of change, and has been really influential to my thinking and writing about creating our collective futures. (See Edinburgh Reimagined: https://sceptical.scot/2021/04/time-to-rebuild-edinburgh-reimagined-part-2/) The Emergent Strategy Podcast has grown out of the teachings of the book of the same name and is well worth a listen. During 2020, adrienne also launched the podcast Octavia’s Parables with Toshi Reagon, which explores Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents chapter by chapter. I’m yet to properly dive in, but it’s sure to be amazing.
Favourite TV series
I don’t tend to binge on TV series, tending to stick to film instead, but this sprung to mind so I’ll run with it. One surprise TV hit of the pandemic was BBC series The Repair Shop, a programme centred around the careful and sensitive restoration of beloved family items to their owners. Filmed at Weald and Downland Living Museum, the show features a regular roster of expert restorers in their field, working in the areas of fabric, leather, wood, metal and mechanics. Antiques Roadshow this is not, with the heart of the programme not based in what something is worth financially. Instead, the focus lies in the emotional attachment we have to objects of personal significance, and the powerful feelings that are involved in bringing these items back to life, often evoking loved ones that have been lost in the process. Indeed, some of the items so lovingly brought to life are pretty worthless and potentially irreparable to an outsider’s eye, but priceless to their owners. Each project is a reminder to us to care for what we already have in a disposable society, plus it makes me greet regularly!
The last thing that made you cry
The last thing that made me ugly cry over and over again was Russell T Davies’ Channel 4 miniseries It’s a Sin, following the trials and tribulations of a group of queer teenagers descending on London for their first real foray into the world. Their arrival and beautiful emancipatory evolution of selfhood also coincide with the early days of the spread of the AIDS virus, and we watch broken hearted as AIDS rips through our group of friends, leaving none unscathed by its effects. A cultural masterpiece by Davies, who also directed Queer as Folk and who has admitted that he always avoided focusing on the AIDS crisis till now, perhaps intimidated by the overwhelming mark it has left on the queer community at large. What Davies and his queer cast have since created is a vital, vibrant and celebratory tribute of those lives we have lost, those continuing to live with HIV, and to all the young queers coming into themselves today. I’m tearing up now…
The instrument I play
I had violin lessons at primary school, which I wasn’t very fond of tbh. I then discovered Scottish traditional music around aged 10 when I joined the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop and suddenly a whole new world opened up. I started referring to my instrument as a fiddle and, long before being of drinking age, would pitch up to trad pubs like Babbity Bowsters and The Vicky Bar in Glasgow to join the sessions that took place there. It was great, the musicians would take up a whole section of the bar, with fiddle players, guitarists, whistle players, bodhrans, the lot, and we would play tunes all day as the crowd jammed in around us. It was my first taste of the traditional culture we have in Scotland, and the great community that can grow up around an artform. Celtic Connections was a key time in the trad music calendar, with all the local pubs full of musicians during the festival, and folk pitching up to the Glasgow Concert Hall to find a session. The Festival Club which took place afterhours was and still is an amazing place. I started going when it was at the Central Station Hotel, which is also where the performers and a lot of the out of town audience were housed at the same time, which made for a great atmosphere and lots of room parties! I’m a bit out of practice now – I must get back on it so I can join a session sometime.
Instrument I wish I’d learned
I always quite fancied playing the spoons as percussion, but never quite got the knack.
Music that cheers me up
Funk and soul is generally my go to most days, my personal soundtrack is generally upbeat. I also like a song with a message – some songs have turned into personal mantras at different points in my life. I moonlight as DJ BUTTZ (check me out on Insta) and recently put together a playlist for Emma Jayne Park’s Daily Dancing resource (you can find out more about DD here, it basically does what it says on the tin: https://www.culturedmongrel.org/blogs/2021/3/22/daily-dancing-turns-one).
All the songs on the playlist have been important to me at some point in time, and it was great fun to put together. I recommend everyone puts a similar playlist together, as it’s guaranteed to cheer you up if you ever feel things aren’t going your way. Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0yWFZaqW7Ml5BfRPk53dys
Place I feel happiest
I love being by the sea, and like many people over lockdown, recently took up wild swimming. It’s amazing seeing how the water changes from day to day, week to week, even minute to minute sometimes! There’s something about being close to water that brings out a calmness and retrospection in people. Wild swimming as a practice generates an inner happiness too. The experience of regularly immersing yourself in cold water can generate interesting results – you’d be surprised at the levels of cold your body can tolerate – and as a lifestyle it’s meant to be really good for your health. There’s nothing quite like watching wildlife from the perspective of being in the water as well!
if you like this here’s some more…
Mino and I go back a fair bit.
Our obvious crossover point is music. To say Mino’s knowledge of music is encyclopaedic would be to diminish his remarkable talent for the subject. He has smashed so many of the music quizzes I’ve presented over the years that I’ve asked him to collaborate with me this year rather than win. Again!
But he’s also a top bloke (another cyclist too).
I’ve been involved in hiring him (and recommending him) more than once in a business development agency role, another, this time professional, talent that has few peers.
And he’s funny and engaging and full of stories – including his own lifeline.
He’s proud of his Italian roots and I think that shows up in his enthusiastic temperament that gets folk going, creates a drive and energy behind what he does and gets things done.
We need more Minos. But for now you’ll just have to content yourself with his fascinating cultural fix.
My favourite author or book
Michael Dibdin for his Aurelio Zen mysteries, set in Italy. Returning to Scotland after a few years living in Milan, I discovered these books – he just seemed to nail Italian characters, one after the other, dialling up all the traits that I instantly recognised, with a little black humour thrown in. The series also used societal events taking place in Italy as a backdrop, from Tangentopli and Berlusconi – it’s all there.
The book I’m reading
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown. So many books written about them, but none like this. Coming at it in so many new ways and angles. Their chance meetings, the coincidences, conflicting accounts of the same incident, tangents, personal anecdotes, the sad tale of Jimmy Nicol who was a Beatle for 2 weeks in Australia while Ringo was ill. Insights on Yoko Ono as a child Shirley Temple impersonator. So much to enjoy.
The book I wish I had written
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. He sells his jazz bar in 1982 to focus not only on his writing but, began running and kept going. Marathons, triathlons and more. Very, very cool.
The book I couldn’t finish
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – have tried 3 or 4 times on different holidays. Will try again.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
I will one day, but as yet, I’ve not read anything by Alasdair Gray.
My favourite film
Broadway Danny Rose. Woody Allen plays a neurotic (of course) New York theatrical agent who gets caught up in a love triangle with his Italian American lounge singer, a lover and the mob. Worth it just to see Pee Wee the singing budgie.
My favourite play
Glengarry Glen Ross – not seen this on stage (yet), but the film adaptation counts. Ruthless, immoral, dishonest and desperate salesmen all vying for pole position as they try to fob off second-rate real estate to gullible buyers. Disgusting, horrible but very watchable.
My favourite podcast
Word in Your Ear with David Hepworth and Mark Ellen. These two have provided very useful cultural pointers through the decades from Smash Hits to Word Magazine to this excellent podcast that has got even better during lockdown.
The box set I’m hooked on
Shtisel – on Netflix. It’s about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family living in Jerusalem. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are not the everyday characters that we see in TV dramas but, depicted as ordinary people, you soon caught up with very familiar family themes, the ups and downs, aches and pains.
My favourite TV series
Curb Your Enthusiasm – even the first few notes of the opening credits fill me with joy. From the episode 1 of Season 1 to the last. Never a dip in quality.
My favourite piece of music
Beyond the Missouri Sky by Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny. Recommended by a great friend of mine as the best music often is.
My favourite dance performance
In 2009, Michael Clark brought a new show to the Edinburgh Festival for the first time in over twenty years. The performance was set to the music of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. The standout was Heroes. The 1977 video of the song was used in such a clever way. Wherever he looked, the dancers would move there to meet his gaze. When Bowie looked ahead – the dancers were in front. When he slowly alters his position to look left, the dancers moved to the left. They wore the same tight leather jacket that he was wearing in the video. It was surprisingly moving.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Sonho Meu by Maria Bethania always get me going. So sad and moving. A song about deep longing and homesickness.
The lyric I wish I’d written
‘You can’t hide from yourself, everywhere you go there you are’ by Teddy Pendergrass. So obvious and true.
The song that saved me
I wouldn’t say that Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie saved me, but I think this was the first ‘serious’ single that I bought with my own money after seeing the video on Top of the Pops. Strange to think that nearly a decade earlier, the magic moment for many people was Starman on the same show.
The instrument I play
I play a little guitar and sometimes bass with a group of equally untalented individuals.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The piano – if I’d had lessons, practiced 8 hours a day for 4 years I would have been absolutely brilliant.
If I could own one painting it would be
The Birth of Venus by Botticelli – might as well aim high.
The music that cheers me up
Whenever I need a little pick me up, Spread Love by Al Hudson & The Soul Partners. Turns rain to sunshine every time.
The place I feel happiest
Sitting under a tree in the shade.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Coronation Street. Sorry.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Boy George, Malcolm Gladwell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Larry David & Deborah Meaden.
And I’ll put on this music
Moon Safari by Air. Just joking. I think I’ll put on Synthesize the Soul: Astro-Atlantic Hypnotica from the Cape Verde Islands.
Here’s the 14 others in the series so far. Dip in, enjoy and share them
Rebecca Shannon
Phil and I go back a fair bit to our days at The Leith Agency where we overlapped as Account Directors, although we are both now Planners. (Him for many years, me for just one.)
I have to say I look up to Phil in professional terms as a planner of considerable heft and great thinking.
You can follow him on both LinkedIn and Medium where he often posts inspiring and beautifully crafted, simple explanations of a subject that we love. Sadly, it’s often shrouded in black art (usually to hide the indifference of the proponent’s abilities) but is, at its core, simply the distillation of evidence and research into insight in simple terms. Good planning should inspire creative teams to do great work, even if the commissioner is looking for something less than that, which sadly they often are.
What has, I believe, further connected us is our love of all things cultural and our tastes overlap considerably as his culture fix demonstrates. John Irving, and Cormac McCarthy. Tarantino and Wes Anderson. What I love (which I devoured in about three days after reading this when he sent me it last month). And Salvador Dali whose museum we have both visited.
Oh, and the wicked, but sublime, Ulster American.
Phil is also a quiet, gentle soul imbued with genuine kindness – I bet he gets great kudos from his girls (three I think).
He’s one of the ad industry’s good guys and, like me, is also an ex Chair of the IPA in Scotland, an honour that I know he enjoyed as much as I did.
Go Phil.
My favourite author or book
Bookshelves don’t lie. It’s clear that the authors I return to are modern, North American and male. I’ve read all of Chuck Palahniuk, all of Douglas Coupland, all of John Irving, most of Cormac McCarthy, most of Bret Easton Ellis, a lot of Elmore Leonard, and several James Ellroy. I read a lot of female authors too, but evidently with less dedication.
It’s crazy to pick one book, but I’m going with A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. It’s epic. It’s a tragedy. It’s satire. A couple of reviews described it as Dickensian in terms of ambition and social insight. There are brilliant characters that stay just on the right side of larger than life.
I read that Wolfe’s main insight from researching and writing The Right Stuff was that the primary motivation influencing male behaviour is a quest for status. And he used that observation as the basis of his subsequent fiction writing. You can see it in The Bonfire of The Vanities and it’s there in spades in A Man in Full.
The book I’m reading
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan, who is modern, Scottish and female.
I’ve read so much non-fiction of late that it’s a joy to be reading any novel again. But so far (I’m about a quarter of the way through), The Sunlight Pilgrims is not just any novel. There are interesting characters being tested by challenging circumstances, namely an impending second ice age in Scotland caused by climate breakdown.
The book I wish I had written
This is the one question I’m allowing myself not to answer. I haven’t ever felt like this about a book.
The book I couldn’t finish
I know it’s in vogue at the moment, but I haven’t learned how to not finish a book. That said, and despite him being modern, American and male, Don DeLillo’s Underworld was an arduous slog. Like climbing at high altitude – lots of effort to make little progress, with frequent rests required.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
There are hundreds, thousands of books I should have read. But I don’t feel any shame in that.
My favourite film
Probably Pulp Fiction if I base my answer on how often I’ve watched it. Most films, I find, do not reward repeat viewing. But Pulp Fiction keeps on giving in many ways – characterisation, dialogue, monologues, messing around with structure, brilliant set pieces, and the Christopher Walken/Captain Koons cameo.
Based on the frequency metric, other candidates would be Man On Fire, An Officer and a Gentleman, The Shawshank Redemption, Grand Budapest Hotel and (another guilty pleasure) A Knight’s Tale.
My favourite play
I like subversive theatre. And, in a non-pandemic August, Edinburgh is soaked to the skin by a monsoon of subversive and experimental theatre that plays with form and space and genre. I’ve often wondered whether it’s true that you can smell the oxygen in the Amazon rain forest. I do know that in Edinburgh in August you can smell the creativity. Its heady scent is everywhere.
It’s impossible to pick a favourite from these unrestrained, intimate shows crammed into those tiny, incongruous Edinburgh Fringe spaces.
Two plays that were performed in a more conventional space (The Traverse) have stayed with me. Namely, Grounded starring Lucy Ellinson in 2013, and Ulster American in 2018.
My favourite podcast
What I Love. It’s beautiful. Theatre director Ian Rickson has conversations with artists on stage in theatres that are empty because of Covid-19. They talk about three things that each guest loves – a song, a film, a piece of writing – and in so doing they reveal themselves. I wrote about the many ways in which it is near perfect for the Formats Unpacked newsletter.
Also, the Jonny Wilkinson episode of The High Performance Podcast. It’s not what you’d expect. It’s about self-awareness more than sport. He talks about the profound difference between a mindset of control and a mindset of exploration. And his definition of confidence – being excited by the unknown – has stayed with me.
The box set I’m hooked on
Most recently, the gloriously funny French show, Call My Agent. Set in a Paris performing artist agency, each episode includes a cameo appearance by a famous film star. The dialogue is great, there are occasional moments of slapstick genius, and the character development over the four seasons so far is gripping.
My desert island box set would be Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, or both if I were allowed.
My favourite TV series
I don’t watch telly. Not watching telly is how I free up time for doing extracurricular things. I don’t consider it a sacrifice.
I used to enjoy The X Factor when my daughters were the right age and all living at home. It is brilliant television, brilliant storytelling disguised as a reality TV show. It employs all the elements of the hero/heroine’s journey, multiplied by the number of contestants.
My favourite piece of music
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. The whole album please. Such apparently effortless eclecticism. They were so much more than a rock band.
My favourite dance performance
Dance was never really my thing. By which I mean that I decided it wasn’t my thing without ever giving it a chance to be my thing. It was the worst kind of pig-headed ignorance.
Luckily for me, joining the board of Puppet Animation Scotland in 2015 introduced me to the world of visual theatre. Since then, I’ve seen many shows involving dance and physical theatre, mainly at our annual manipulate festivals. The artistry and technical excellence of the performers, seen live and close-up, is a marvel. I’m not going to pick one.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
I think it might have been the scene in I, Daniel Blake when single mum Katie is so desperately hungry that she eats the tin of beans in the foodbank. The very idea that something like that can happen in a supposedly advanced society. Injustice meted out to a character you care about is a good formula for a tearjerker.
The lyric I wish I’d written
She no longer needs you.
Oof.
She wakes up, she makes up
She takes her time
And doesn’t feel she has to hurry
She no longer needs you
For No One is my favourite Beatles song, which is obviously saying something. The stark, cruel beauty; the brutal economy; the non-negotiable finality of those lyrics. Written when McCartney was 24. Genius.
The song that saved me
I haven’t been saved by a song. But I do have a song that I listened to a lot at the time that I needed saving. First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes. The video is based on a powerfully simple idea. We see people’s reactions as they listen to the song through headphones. The song may not have saved me, but if you read the YouTube comments it looks like it has saved plenty of others.
The instrument I play
Sadly, I don’t. File under regrets.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The piano.
If I could own one painting it would be
The Palace of the Air by Salvador Dali. This is a huge and hugely ambitious piece of surrealism that covers the entire ceiling of the Wind Palace section of the Dali museum in Figueres. It really does have to be seen to be believed. It’s immense and jam-packed with details that reward prolonged viewing until your neck starts to ache. It shows Dali and his muse ascending to a version of heaven, and the way he plays with perspective draws the viewer in so that you feel levitated, ascending with them. As well as the painting, I wouldn’t mind owning a space that would do it justice.
The music that cheers me up
The answer to this is a genre. Two Tone. A dancefloor filler by The Specials or Madness, maybe Night Boat to Cairo if I had to choose one. It’s not just about the infectious beat or the playful delivery, it’s a form of time travel back to my mid-teens when we were all gloriously irresponsible.
The place I feel happiest
Aside from being with certain people, it’s participation in creative acts that makes me happiest. It’s why I worked in advertising, it’s why I make documentary films, it’s why I write for pleasure, it’s why I’m on the boards of two arts organisations, it’s why I enjoy gardening.
The happiness of creating comes from the process more than the end product. The journey rather than the destination. So, I don’t really associate happiness with a particular place. A place for comfort? Yes. A place for stillness, spirituality and inner peace? Yes. Happiness, not so much.
That’s maybe ducking the question. So, in a cultural context, I’d say one of the smaller festivals. The Do Lectures on a farm outside Cardigan. Festival No 6 in Portmeirion. Or The Byline Festival in Sussex. Intense stimulation surrounded by my kind of people.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
AC/DC
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Keith Richards, Sarah Silverman, Michael Palin, Molly Crabapple.
And I’ll put on this music
One of my eldest daughter’s Spotify playlists. She has excellent taste, and we have a symbiotic musical relationship whereby she uses my premium account and I get a superb curation service, better than any algorithm.
If you liked this there are many more to read now.
Ah, Wendy. Wendy West.
What can I say about Wendy that won’t incur the Wrath of Khan.
You see, Wendy and I have an honest and frank relationship with one another.
Quite often she says Tomato, I say Potato.
But a healthy difference of opinion is a good thing. Right?
She often calls me “grippy” (adjective, grip·pi·er, grip·pi·est. Chiefly Scot. stingy; avaricious.) which I take as a term of endearment, but I fear my optimism is misplaced on that front.
She was referring to my handling of the financial management of Forth Children’s Theatre. Not to my speed of approach to the bar. Or perhaps she wasn’t?
But, the truth of the matter, regardless of our robust discussions that frequent our times together, is that she is an amazing human being, with an amazing family who I know just as well, and love just as much, as I do her.
We met at Forth Children’s Theatre.
She a parent, me the Chair.
I quickly spotted her potential for our board and managed to talk her into joining us and to exercise magnificent governance onto our historically fairly relaxed committee proceedings.
Her energy, enthusiasm, insight and good humour, laced with brilliant attention to detail, were to prove transformational for an organisation that always meant well but occasionally fell a little short on the difficult stuff.
But it’s beyond the boardroom table that Wendy and I grew our friendship. Rumbustious, hilarious and brilliantly honest.
She’s an amazing dancer, as I was to find out when Jeana and I joined her in a tap dancing class where she, the Margot Fonteyn of the room, contrasted amusingly with my Peter Boyle (The Monster in Young Frankenstein).
Anyone who knows Wendy knows she is a magnanimous supporter of the arts, and has recently worked with the excellent Lung Ha Theatre company. She is married to a Professor of Piping. THE Professor of Piping and her son and daughter have both inherited awesome musical and theatrical talents from her and Gary.
She’s just a really good egg, all round.
I’ve missed her during lockdown.
So, without further ado.
Wendy’s stuff.
My favourite author or book
The book that made a huge impact on me is The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson. The story of a contemporary Scottish minister who doubts the existence of God. Really thought provoking and truly beautiful writing. It actually stopped me reading for a while because I just couldn’t quite get into another book for quite some time afterwards.
The book I’m reading
Girl, Women, Other by Bernardine Evaristo I started it a while ago and put it down, this has reminded me to pick it up again!
The book I wish I had written
Winnie the Pooh – it has given pleasure to so many generations and it is timeless.
The book I couldn’t finish
I always thought I had to really finish a book – once you start and all that. Then one day, when I was really plodding through a book I had the sudden realisation that I could just close it and put it down. I did that and nothing terrible happened! Since then, I have become much more discerning. I couldn’t tell you what that book was – it was tosh, so I put it down!
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Well the fact that I have watched more of the classics as TV costume dramas rather than indulge myself in the words on the page doesn’t make me ashamed so much as determined to put right. I have a fine collection sitting in the bookcase waiting for just the right time.
My favourite film
Isn’t everyone’s The Sound of Music? Well, maybe not, but this is certainly a firm old favourite that never fails to endear! That aside though, I love so many films but to pick one, I would have to go for Cinema Paradiso as being a long standing favourite (director’s cut that is). The warmth, the angst and the beautiful scenery all set to Ennio Morricone’s simply sublime musical score. The beautiful friendship between Toto and Alfredo is heart warming right until the end. The Cinema Paradiso is the beating heart of the community – how nice!
My favourite play
This is hard, but I would have to go for Brian Cox and Bill Patterson in The Royal Lyceum Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It made such a lasting impression on me – I couldn’t quite believe how thoroughly compelling it could be watching two guys waiting around and nothing much happening. It was both funny and really quite serious in equal measure. Strange how things just strike a chord and claim a wee piece of your heart.
My favourite podcast
I like the Guardian Today in Focus – after Mark recommended it, but have also enjoyed listening to Brene Brown, Unlocking Us – she has really interesting guests including Barack himself, but lots of others too.
The box set I’m hooked on
The box set that is a winner for me is The Handmaid’s Tale, so compelling and terrifying. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, the series travels through the horrors of the dystopian society of Gilead and plays out struggles of power and oppression. A bizarre survival of the fittest that sees misogyny played out in its truest form but also in the shape of women against women. Hard to watch and recently compared by some to the America that Trump was striving for?
My favourite TV series
Ooooh, I love Killing Eve – Villanelle is brilliant! I really enjoyed Italy Unpacked – Italian chef Georgio Locatelli and English art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon, a programme exploring Italy’s art, culture and cuisine. Just beautiful to sit and watch on a Friday evening after rehearsals with glass of red in hand! It makes me want to go there, it makes me realise I know nothing!
I also enjoy the drama of Line of Duty, but I think the last series I watched that really hooked me was Greyzone, a Swedish/Danish thriller that was just so compelling. It is essentially about the events leading up to a terror attack and is tense stuff, in fact, it is ‘hold your breath’ tense stuff at times. Great strong female lead in Birgitte Hjort Sørensen as a gutsy and smart Danish engineer. Complex emotions though – clever how you end up liking the perpetrator… I do love watching tv in a foreign language with English subtitles – I rather fancy I’m getting the hang of a new language by the end of things…. alas, never quite happens!
My favourite piece of music
I am not sure I have one single piece of music. It’s very mood driven for me, although I never tire of Keengalee by The Chair – a cheery go to piece of music particularly on car journeys that I just never want to end – once more, once more!
My favourite dance performance
Ghost Dances choreographed by Christopher Bruce for Rambert. I saw it in the early 80s and was mesmerised. I saw the revival a few years ago and it mesmerised me again! Haunting and hopeful all at one time. The dance shows courage and determination in the face of oppression and although it represents the horrors of the Pinochet coup, it is sadly sorelevant today. I love how dance allows you to create your own meaning because you interpret the movement without the presence of any words to channel your reactions and emotions. Danced to traditional folk music, this piece never fails to move me.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Lion
The lyric I wish I’d written
Ok, so swithered over admitting this… I realise I don’t really properly listen to lyrics…(I hear Mark scoff very loudly. (No, not at all , neither do I. Ed.) In my defence, I tend to listen to the music and my mind wanders and I get a bit lost in my imagination…. So I don’t really have any that I could say I wish I’d written…confession over!
The song that saved me
Don’t think I have one…
The instrument I play
Well, being surrounded by awfully talented folk, I keep my minimal achievements with playing the clarsach quiet! Taken up as an adult, I enjoyed the beautiful sounds of the dancing strings – very hard to make a horrible noise unless it is terribly badly out of tune. These days, I enjoy doing a little accompaniment to traditional tunes in the parlour with a friendly nod on when to change chords! No public performances for sure!
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The piano. I also pictured myself dancing about playing the fiddle, but that didn’t quite transpire. Huge sighs of relief all round I am sure!
If I could own one painting it would be
Joan Eardley’s work. I love the Glasgow tenement children chalk drawings with their grubby wee faces, and her wild seascapes she painted whilst she lived in Catterline, Aberdeenshire. This self-portrait is just beautiful.
The music that cheers me up
Anything I can move to – The Penguin Café Orchestra, Abba. Duncan Chisholm on the fiddle for more reflective moods – he plays a mean slow air. Trad music and should also say, but actually mean it … I do love the stirring sound of a pipe band. Ok, so quite eclectic!
The place I feel happiest
I am happiest when the car is pointing north – I love getting to Ullapool and waiting on the ferry to the Isle of Lewis. Beautiful, remote, with big skies, huge oceans and great friends with whisky…
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Musical theatre! Not that I feel guilty about liking it, but some people sniff at it! Come from Away is my very favourite for the moment, it is mood lifting, energy boosting and just a very human story. Properly funny lyrics and great music too! I get emotional at the thought of the sheer unquestioning kindness demonstrated by the Newfoundlanders – this is a tale of gratitude, friendship and humanity.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Norman MacCaig – so I can hear him recite his poetry
Billy Connolly
Whoopi Goldberg
Emma Thompson
Barack and Michelle Obama
Margaret Atwood
And I’ll put on this music
Hugh Laurie in the background playing the piano and singing then the Penguin Cafe Orchestra for dessert
If you liked this there are many more to read now.
Molly Drake was Nick Drake’s mum.
I wasn’t aware of Molly Drake until this morning, when Samantha Morton chose this song as the final of her excellent Desert Island Discs.
As I walked along the beach at Dalmeny I played it five or six times, drawn deeper and deeper into its intoxicating lyrics and haunting story.
This song may seem, at first, to be a little naive with such a simple melody, no arrangement and a homespun nostalgic whimsy about it, but wait for the last verse.
The cutting, no scything, away of that whimsy, in an understated nuclear bomb of a conclusion, is devastating.
It’s magnificent.
And here is The Unthanks doing it, not as well as Molly though. Surprisingly.
Will, or Gramps as we now know him, has been a friend for quarter of a century.We first met at Hall Advertising where, instead of working, Will went our for long liquid lunches, and I got jealous.
You see, Will was a star copywriter and I was a jumped up greasy-haired fanboy with a lot to learn, but a willingness to do so.
Subbuteo nearly cost both of us our jobs as we did constant battle on the creative floor for what was affectionately known as The Linpak Cup (a polystyrene trophy of zero value or consequence).
Will was better in the morning.
I usually took revenge after lunch.
Will worked with Nige Sutton. Fuck me, they were an intoxicating (intoxicated more like. Ed) and an unlikely duo, but they were awesomely talented and taught me an awful lot as I lugged fridge freezers into Rob Wilson’s basement and they looked on.
Our love of football extended to Hibernian FC and our office bromance gradually filtered out into weekend boozing, bookending the weekly disappointments of another Easter Road humiliation, although we did witness Frank Sauzee, Stevie Archibald and Russell Latapy in green and white; not to mention Gazza, Laudrup and Larsson. Heady days.
Over the years though our relationship has grown and now stretches to a shared love of politics, music, theatre, contemporary fiction and, yes, a beer or two.
Will also shares with me the luck of the Irish. We both have wives that love us no matter our faults.
And I’ve been lucky enough to get to know his three wonderful kids, one of whom, his son Mark, is now the bestodian of the Gramps moniker for Will.
Congratulations Mark.
So here we are. The inimitable Will Atkinson.
My favourite author or book
It’s weird isn’t it, your favourite book isn’t always by your favourite author. Well mine isn’t. So to the book – Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. The first line alone is acclaimed as one of the best ever written – “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.” This leads you straight into a wonderful voyage of fictional biography that crosses oceans and decades, with every sentence and paragraph as powerful as the first.
So to the authors. No, Burgess isn’t among them. But there is Kate Atkinson, John Irving, John Gierach, William Boyd, James Lee Burke, John Le Carre and Patti Smith. Recent discoveries include Colson Whitehead, Sebastian Barry and Attica Locke. To name any one as my favourite would be a complete impossibility.
The book I’m reading
Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe. His books are on the face of it quite comedic, but beneath the humour often lies some very dark observations – about human nature and the society we pretend to aspire to be part of, Middle England with its examination of Brexit for example.
But whatever I’m reading I always have a John Gierach volume close to hand. He writes essays on fly fishing that are about so much more than (as he puts it) standing in the middle of a river waving a stick.
The book I wish I had written
Either A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving or Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. If you put a howitzer to my head Life After Life would just nick it. It’s a piece of high wire writing with a construction that few other writers would be able to maintain.
The book I couldn’t finish
Like many readers I feel incredibly guilty about not finishing books, but then I mostly can’t remember the ones I put down early, so there’s probably a moral in there somewhere.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Moby Dick – true of a lot of people I suspect.
My favourite film
I think one way to make a long list shorter is to include only those films you re-watch time and again. No Country for Old Men is brilliant, and also one of the few films that actually stand comparison with the book they came from. I love the magic realism of Beasts of the Southern Wilds. The Godfather Trilogy and Apocalypse Now always accompany me on long plane journeys. American Honey is one of those great films where nothing much happens but loads does really. Ditto the Straight Story about an old man crossing America on a lawnmower. But probably my favourite film of all time (this week anyway) is Bugsy Malone – joyous.
My favourite play
When I was at school I was a member of the Young Lyceum or whatever it was called then. Back then I was seriously into anything by Harold Pinter. These days I rarely go to the theatre, which is a shame because I love it as I love all live performance. Favourite play? The Importance of Being Earnest. (Note to self – when the theatres open again, go more often.)
My favourite podcast
I don’t listen to many to be honest. A couple of advertising based ones – Stuff from the Loft and Ben Kay’s one. However, recently I’ve been following Jeremy Paxman’s The Lock-In – chats with people you’d never normally hear. Paxman is his usual contrary self. It would be an experience meeting him, but I’d probably run a mile in fear.
The box set I’m hooked on
I’m not really. But for the sake of punning into the question, Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing.
My favourite TV series
Ever? Wow. For my sins I’m quite involved in the world of politics -so Yes Minster and The Thick of It are good, sharp takes on how silly it can all become. Fleabag and Killing Eve obviously. University Challenge – another Paxman outing. Sorry, I don’t know.
My favourite piece of music
One of the good things about getting older is you collect more and more stuff from more and more places – well I do anyway. It’s like curating your own cultural archive, infinite in its vastness. Musically it’s taken me from an early obsession with blues and folk into reggae and country and African Funk/beats and Malian divas and sweaty rhythm & blues and…and…and…and…the rabbit holes are deep and endless.
You get to add new stuff (eagerly awaiting new St Vincent album) and stumble across dusty but still perfect artefacts (over lockdown rediscovered the amazing Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and the Band.)
Taking the question literally as a ‘piece’ of music as supposed to a ‘song’ I could plump for something like So What by Miles Davis, King of Snake by Underworld. Or Peace Piece by John McLaughlin. But the one piece I go back to is the mind-boggling reach for the heavens that is Dark Star by the Grateful Dead from the Live Dead album – all 23 minutes and 18 glorious seconds of it.
My favourite dance performance
When I was a student at Stirling Uni in 1974 I was transfixed by the Ballet Rambert doing open rehearsals in the coffee area of the Macrobert Centre. A male and a female dancer improvised together to Tommy by the Who, I was totally lost in the moment. Then the moment eluded me until years later I started to go regularly to the ballet. Highlights have been the Rambert again, Nederlands Dance Theatre, anything devised by Michael Bourne and our own Scottish Ballet. Favourite? I’m terrible at remembering titles so I’ll cop out with Bourne’s Swan Lake.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
I’m not a great one for weeping over films, books, music but one song did help me through a period when my best mate was dying of cancer. Sailing Round the Room by Emmylou Harris is an uplifting affirmation of death that kind of reflects what I think happens after you die – not a smidgen of Christianity to be found. While we’re on the subject the same artist’s Boulder to Birmingham is one of the best songs about loss ever.
The lyric I wish I’d written
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in some midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
By Leonard Cohen of course. I want the whole song to be read as a poem at my funeral.
The song that saved me
Again, not sure a song has ever actually saved me but in another dark time I listened a lot to Speed of the Sound of Loneliness written by John Prine. It’s been covered by loads of people but my favourite is the Alabama 3 version where they changed the lyrics to the first person. Gives the song another whole new emphasis.
Come home late, come home early
Come home big when I’m feelin’ small
Come home straight, come home fucked-up
Sometimes I don’t come home at all
What in the world has come over me?
What in heaven’s name have I done?
I’ve broken the speed of the sound of loneliness
I’m out there running just to be on the run
The Rolling Stone’s Moonlight Mile would come a close second.
The instrument I play
Believe it or not I tried to learn the French Horn at school. Got as far as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
I can strum a guitar but really wish I could play properly.
If I could own one painting it would be
It would either be a Caravaggio – maybe this one:
Or a Joan Miro, maybe this one:
If I couldn’t have both I’d settle for the Miro.
The music that cheers me up
Music always cheers me up. At the moment it’s At Home (Live in Marciac) – Roberto Fonseca & Fatoumata Diawara.
The place I feel happiest
I’m lucky to have travelled a bit – rainforests really raise my spirits. But then so does being in a special spot in rural Languedoc-Roussillon. Or on a river with a fly rod, or a boat on a loch teeming with broonies. But actually where I am truly at my happiest (apart from with my family) is with friends. I am blessed to have met many people I have truly grown to like and count as good friends. Yep, that’s when I’m smiling, with them.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Hot Chocolate playing at the Usher Hall.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I’d need a big table: Hunter S Thomson, Keith Richards, Lee Miller, Kate Atkinson, Cerys Mathews, Kevin Bridges, Yoko Ono, Bjork, John Gierach, Jeremy Paxman, Michael Palin, Caravaggio, Boy George.
And I’ll put on this music
The Best of John Renbourn. Hunter would hate it.
If you liked this there are many more to read now.
Jon Stevenson
Jon was my first boss back in 1985 at Hall Advertising. He hired a hot new secretary soon after, that I quickly winched and later married.
He, and his wife Chris, had a daughter, Ria, who we thought had such a cool name that we unashamedly nicked it for our daughter Amanda.
(Only joking, she’s also called Ria.)
But that master/servant relationship that began in the pre-internet days soon became a peer-to-peer and extremely good mates relationship, and it thrives to this day.
We even live quite close (only a few miles as the crow swims) he in Aberdour, I in South Queensferry.
We have both run Festivals.
His, The Aberdour Festival, has put him on first name terms with King Creosote (which I think is cool). Mine, the spectacularly unspectacular and now defunct Queensferry Arts Festival.
By the way King Creosote’s first name isn’t King, it’s Kenny.
One of the things that has cemented our relationship is our love of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whom we both saw, with Chris and my, not his, Ria at Glastonbury in 2011 (amongst other occasions).
The other is beer and food and wine and that.
And good advertising.
And good books.
Jon is cool but he doesn’t think so and you couldn’t tell it from the preposterously ham-fisted portrait he ‘knocked up’ in 30 seconds when I asked him to. Not for him a trip to Patrick Lichfield’s, oh no, he, like me, is a bit of a basher and what will do, will do.
I made it monochrome which spares some of the abject amateurism of it.
Anyway, Jon, you have great taste and I’m delighted to share your Unknown Pleasures with my readers.
My favourite author or book
Where do you start? When I was young, I read to impress – Iris Murdoch, Anthony Powell, CP Snow, JP Donleavy (although I really did like him). I then went through a phase of reading books in rotation – one to improve me, one to learn something technical, usually something to do with the Apollo space missions, and one to read without thinking.
I’m much less rigorous now and over the years I’ve read everything by Len Deighton, John Le Carre, Christopher Brookmyre, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe, Iain Banks (but not Iain M. Banks) – even Jilly Cooper. At the moment I do like Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Coe, Ian McEwen and William Boyd. And Ian Rankin.
I’ve just finished Barack Obama’s book which was uplifting and dispiriting in equal measure. How do we get from such a patently intelligent and humane man to Donald Trump in such a short space of time? Jon Sopel’s latest book Unpresidented is an entertaining romp through the last US election campaign.
I can say, as anyone that has ever worked with me will testify, I have yet to read any of the airport books like “How to be a winning manager by the time you get off the plane”
The book I’m reading
One Long and Beautiful Summer by Duncan Hamilton – a paean to county cricket as it used to be before the gel-haired marketing know-it-alls took over and turned cricket into a game for people with the attention span of a particularly dim goldfish.
The book I wish I had written
No real desire to write a book, not even the one that’s apparently inside me.
The book I couldn’t finish
Quite a lot but Lincoln in the Bardo was definitely one I couldn’t get into.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Can’t think of any particular one, although I would like to have appreciated Dickens more instead of rejecting him because he was a set text at O-Level.
My favourite film
Toss-up between Apollo 13 and Local Hero.
My favourite play
I’ve seen a lot of stuff at the Traverse and it’s difficult to pick any one as a favourite but I did enjoy Under Milk Wood by the Aberdour Players in our local village hall. The writing is brilliant, and it prompted me to get the BBC Richard Burton narration as an audiobook. Which is probably better than The Aberdour Players’ version.
My favourite podcast
Like Stephen Dunn I thought 13 Minutes to the Moon was outstanding.
The box set I’m hooked on
When does a TV series become a box set? I can’t cope with TV binges so still watch one at a time.
My favourite TV series
At the moment it’s Unforgotten
My favourite piece of music
Pretty much anything from my Jolly-Jon singalongaplaylist
My favourite dance performance
Every time I’ve seen NDT it’s been stunning, but I go to dance performances with Mrs S on the basis that if I have to sit through a dance show, she has to go for a curry afterwards…so the last dance performance she went to was with Mark Gorman as she doesn’t really like curry….
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma at my mother’s funeral. Although it was absolutely pissing down, so there was some laughter through the tears.
The lyric I wish I’d written
The Christmas one Hugh Grant’s father wrote in About A Boy that allowed Hugh to live quite happily without having to work.
The song that saved me
Not sure I’ve ever needed saving but California Girls by the Beach Boys reminds me of being a hormonal 13 year old, getting interested in girls and thinking the Californian ones sounded exciting – if only I had known what to do if I met one.
The instrument I play
I’ve tried and failed several – but one day I’m going to master the guitar and be transformed into the acoustic Bob Dylan
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Piano or clarinet
If I could own one painting it would be
Probably something by David Hockney
The music that cheers me up
Bean Fields by the Penguin Café Orchestra. With thanks to Mr Gorman who introduced me to the delights of the PCO.
He’s also tried to introduce me to Nick Cave but I’d rather poke my eyes out with a burning stick, thank you very much.
The place I feel happiest
Achiltibuie – thanks to Jim Downie.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Death in Paradise
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author), Billy Connolly, Meryl Streep, David Attenborough and Danny Boyle
And I’ll put on this music
My Jolly-Jon mix tape obvs.
If you liked this you might like to read the others in this series.
I heard this wonderful piece of music courtesy of Jessie Buckley on the podcast “What I love” presented by theatre director Ian Rickson on a recommendation by a future Unknown Pleasures by Phil Adams. It’s a truly great podcast and this song is the sort of treasure you can find on it.
This is the state ensemble and the Choir of Sameba Trinity Church in Tbilisi, Georgia. “Basiani” – is the name of this beautiful group and this is Christmas Carol (Nativity of Christ) – “Alilo of The dawn” (“Tsiskris Alilo”) by Vakhtang Kakhidze. The word- Alilo ( probably derived from- alleluia ) is connected to Nativity of Christ, traditionally Georgians used this word to greet and rejoice in the Christmas of one another. The song starts with words- “On December 25th, Alilo, Christ has born in Bethlehem, Alilo. The Choir of Angels are chanting, Alilo – Jesus was born, Alilo. The martyred Lord’s Hand will ring the bells of the dawn, rejoice, rejoice, Angels are chanting – Alilo of the dawn!” And then at the end it repeats- Jesus was born!
It was never going to be brief.
It was never going to be orthodox.
I’ve known Ricky since I was little. Little in advertising years that is.
Ricky is a colleague of mine at Whitespace. The agency where I now work but which I helped establish in 1997 (I think.)
He joined the company soon after as an artworker ( a great one at that) and remains there to this day.
Ricky is a philosopher, of that there can be no doubt.
A man that is comfortable in his own skin. Happy to zag against the world, rage against the machine, bring his own world view to anyone willing to listen.
He’s a polymath. A musician, a massive enthusiast (one of the reasons I love him so much) a historian, a film maker, a writer, a runner, an all round top bloke.
And his cultural interests are nothing like any others you will read in my series. You’ll see that his aesthetic is caught in a cross between B movie Americana, and its musical cousins and deep philosophical discourse. It’s brilliant.
I mean, his dinner party guest list says it all: John Gray, Diogenes, Jim Goad, Marquis de Sade, Robert Burns, Scheherazade, Betty Page, Salma Hayek, Mairi Kidd and Aphrodite. (When Diogenes hits on Aphrodite sparks will fly. The Marquis looking on inquisitively.)
I do hope you will enjoy Ricky’s take on culture, life and the world as we don’t know it. I sure did.
Unknown Pleasures
Hey! I was so chuffed to be asked by Mark if’n I’d be interested in contributing to his blog in the form of an Unknown pleasures piece – and so here it is. Let’s just dive right in . . .
My favourite author or book
She by H Rider Haggard an incredible work, a rip roaring adventure so good I read it over two days (it would have been one had I not started it late in the evening) – OK it has courted controversy with it’s themes of Imperialism, race and evolution, female authority and sexuality – feminists both praising and criticising it – but putting all that aside – I just love this book and have nothing more to add than that.
If I could add one other book as an also ran You Can’t Win by Jack Black . . . no, not the Thomas Jacob Black the Californian Actor but rather the autobiographer who spent life as a hobo in depression era USA – discover a world of yeggs, gay cats, bindle stiff conventions and rod riding outlaws – so good, this is the book that most influenced William Burroughs and as the linear notes read from a ‘forgotten era of American history lodged somewhere between the Wild west and the birth of the Metropolis.
The book I’m reading
Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War a compendium of second world war experiences of woman of war torn Russia gathered and relayed by the author. I’ve been reading this book for some time, in-fact just over a year – I drop in and out of it whilst reading other books in between. Nothing prepares you for these stories and this is a work that shouldn’t be approached lightly – it should be read by everyone that thinks war is an option – It’s a deserved winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature but sadly serves to remind me that the human race has an unwavering propensity to record history and fail to absorb consequence. Progress you say? Read, absorb learn and act.
The book I wish I had written
I just wish I could get ‘any of the many’ unwritten books that are filling the Inside of my head completed and onto the printed page. It’s always the plan for another day.
The book I couldn’t finish
A pet hate of mine is to NOT finish reading a book therefore it makes me all the more selective of those that I invest in. However, there is one fiction publisher I tend to take a chance on and blind buy because even if the content ‘just ain’t no good’ like many of the characters within the books – the book cover art is ‘pulp’ superb and I do love them. So I forked out my usual four bucks on the budget find Hard Case Crime’s 140th book – ‘The Triumph of the Spider Monkey’ by Joyce Carol Oates –representing the ‘Mind of a Maniac’ or not . . . it’s SHIT! . . . and sits half read on the shelf and I probably won’t return to it no matter how great ‘Time’ magazine tells me she is as a writer.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
I feel no shame, more so regrets that I haven’t read some books – but the book I’d reply in answer to this has to be ‘One thousand and one nights’ the framing device featuring Scheherazade for the compilation of tales alone makes me regret not having read this . . . so much so, I’m off to order a Folio edition English translation of the book right now.
My favourite film
I have a real challenge between two movies that I absolutely love and consider both to be exceptional – Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre the first based on the Stugatsky Brothers Roadside Picnic book and the latter on German Anarchist B. Travens Treasure of the Sierra Madre (both books of which having read them, also deserve a place in my favrit books and authors list).
Although these movies appear miles apart in theme and content (one a 1940’s Mexican adventure the other a 1970’s Soviet Sci-fi movie) they are so similar in so many ways. In both movies two men set out on a quest to feed their hearts desire with the help of an experienced guide and we discover as viewers that perhaps the journey offers the true riches to our life.
If I was forced to choose between them, today I’d choose the 1948 Treasure of the Sierra Madre . . . watch out for the in-joke by director John Huston playing the rich American when Humphrey Bogart’s down on his luck character ‘Dobbs’ street begs from him three times – and on the third occasion Huston says: ‘that’s the third time you’ve begged from me today, when are you gonna stand on your own two feet?’ the reference being – Bogie bought the rights to the book and screenplay and saved it until after WWII when he could request John Huston direct the movie after returning from military service. Humphrey Bogart hoping this would follow the success that had made him a star with their two post war collaborations The Maltese Falcon and Across the Pacific.
My favourite play
Sophocles Oedipus – what a play! And from around 500BC – the plot involves a plague ravaging the land and the king doesn’t know what to do about it (hey wait a minute that sounds familiar), anyways – opening with a prophecy delivered by a consulted Oracle on what to do, Oedipus is informed he will shed the blood of his father and mate with his mother . . . and the biggest hook in theatre is delivered . . . you just gotta find out what’s to come.
My favourite podcast
There are too many to mention but on this occassion I’m only gonna mention one: Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine and Rhinestones – you think Rock and Roll or Hollywood has all the stories? Just take a trip down Country music histories colourful country road – from the poverty stricken get go in 1500’s Britain and the birth of murder ballads to the rags to riches world born in the Appalachian mountains to torture, extortion, rape, murder, gay shaming, suicide, prison life, girl power, love all over country USA – nobody can beat country for tales of sex and drugs and guitar twang! An oldie but a goodie – listen here.
The box set I’m hooked on
I ain’t no Box set ‘doer’ especially of the recent TV types, but I do have loads o’ box sets piled high in my collection of ‘old school’ – DVD’s an’ Blu-ray discs, including Universals Film Noir (regularly revisited), a couple of Arrow’s Gailocompilations (Oh my! those Italian’s made murder look so stylish in the 60’s ands 70’s) and lot’s of Euro and Japanese cinema box sets. But the box set that is most compelling is the astounding and award winning unforgettable WWII documentary series World at War This is a serious historical and emotional journey and even today, should be on the school carriculum. Super high rating of 9.2 on IMDB says it all and if and when you are lucky it’s sometimes available on Amazon Prime here https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-World-at-War/dp/B0197L5MSM
My favourite TV series
Champion the Wonder Horse – From the opening title song to the overall goodness in every story – ‘Champion’ can’t be beat. A boy, a dog and a wild horse doing more for his community than any official – the mantra by which I live.
My favourite piece of music
Pink Floyds Dark side of the moon. It’s still as incredible today as it ever was – a timeless piece.
As a kid in high school myself and some friends would camp out in our back gardens, go strawberry raiding around the neighbourhood in the middle of the night, return to the tent and gorge ourselves whilst listening to Darkside and Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album on C60 cassette and we’d dream of being ‘Rock stars’.
Dave Gilmour’s guitar solo’s on Time and Mick Ronson’s on Moonage Dream were the songs that turned me into a guitar performer. My sister found a cheap Strat copy in a Dunfermline shop window, recognising the shape from my Floyd poster and persuaded my mum to buy it for me. One of the gang purchased a drum kit – thought he was Keith Moon and another a bass guitar and much to the displeasure of the neighbourhood ‘Thundermaster’ were born. Back to DSoM tho – I’ve loved every track on this piece more than the others at one time or another but top choice now would be – Us and Them it’s so on the ball.
The toughest thing about this question was discarding Amazing Grace, Vaughn Williams’ Lark Ascending and Artie Shaw’s rendition of Cole Porter’s Beguin the Beguine all of which could easily have made the favourite spot.
My favourite dance performance
Anything by Rita Hayworth does the trick, so here’s a wee compilation of Rita in mash-up with the Bee Gees.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Just listened to it again today – see The song that saved me two questions below.
The lyric I wish I’d written
And I’ve been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet
Had my head stoved in but I’m still on my feet
And I’m still . . . willin’
Hats off to Lowell George and Little Feet.
The song that saved me
Dick Gaughan Sail On . . . makes me greet every time.
The instrument I play
I’ve never considered myself an instrument player per se – especially when I listen to all of my guitar influences who CAN play, but I do like to strap on the guitar and do the occasional live trash performance in a junkyard entertainment style or operhaps now – just give me a cowboy guitar, a horse and I’ll save the gal.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
The Guitar
If I could own one painting it would be
If it had been a work of art I think I would have selected Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina marble sculpture – it would look great sitting in the centre of my lawn. When I first saw this in the Borghese Gallery I was in awe – the detail of Hadeshand impressing Persephones thigh alone is enough to cement any sculptures reputation for eternity – and that’s before viewing the rest of the piece as a group. Wonderful.
If it has to be a painting tho the choice is beyond reduction but for this I’ll choose one of the many that I can happily view on a daily basis without tiring of and something that reminds me of just how joyful art can be . . . I love the art of Glenn Barr and his When Betty Rubble Went Bad is great even tho it perpetuates the ‘male gaze’ theory in art . . . but hey we’re getting into Feminist Theory, Sigmund Freud and Jean Paul Sartre territory here and and that’s not what this shiz is about (or is it?).
On an aside, if anyone fancies putting a wee heist team together and doing one on Tate Britain I would hang the Victorian romantic work Deer and Deerhounds in a Mountain Torrent the 1833 work by Sir Edwin Landseer above the fireplace in my villain’s lair.
The music that cheers me up
Western swing, Bob Wills, Moon Mullican, Spade Cooley et al and especially songs featuring the fantastic vocal of Tommy Duncan. His 1952 hit ‘Relax and Take it easy’ a particular favrit . . . Honourable mention to every album that the Dwarves have ever recorded tho.
The place I feel happiest
I’m with John Muir on this one and ‘None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.’ Just set me loose in a forest, on a mountain or wild environment and I’m happy.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Collecting Jungle Girl comics from the 40’s and 50’s and boy, oh boy there are hundreds of them – featuring such illustrated beauties as Jann of the Jungle, Lorna the Jungle Queen, Rulah – Jungle Goddess, Sheena, Princess Vishnu, Gwenna, Tiger Girl to name but a few and illustrated by such legendary artists as Will Eisner and Frank Frazetta.
Mind you I also can’t pass a ‘Good Girl art’ illustrated book and have built a fair collection of these featuring artist like Margaret Brundage, Allen Anderson, Matt Baker, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood and plenty more.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
John Gray, Diogenes, Jim Goad, Marquis de Sade, Robert Burns, Scheherazade, Betty Page, Salma Hayek, Mairi Kidd and Aphrodite.
And I’ll put on this music
The Muses would control the entertainment and have it performed live and maybe later the nusic app would randomly select and it’d look something like this . . .
If you enjoyed that there are a bunch more to read. Try these:
When I first met my wife it would be fair to say that our cultural influences were not exactly close.
The day we saw “Strictly Ballroom” at The Odeon (sighs at the loss of that great auditorium) she asked me what I thought of it. I was ambivalent.
“What, does it not have fucking subtitles?” she cried in dismay.
And her love of poor quality movies has yet to desert her. Indeed her 5.6 sweetspot on IMDB still fills me with gloom.
But our cultural planets have gradually aligned and we enjoy nothing more than visits to The Traverse, The Lyceum, The Cameo and The Filmhouse, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Modern Art Gallery.
We’ve done the Venice Biennale together. Going specifically for that reason, and especially to see the almost life changing Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable that overshadowed the biennale itself.
And then there is Italy full stop. Our favourite place.
During Edinburgh Festival month I still steal a march, but for my 30-40 shows she puts up a spirited 20 -30 and we take in theatre, dance drama, music and even some food. Not much, but some.
Imagine my surprise, as a lifelong Stranglers fan, when she announced, maybe ten years ago, that Golden Brown was her favourite song, the one she wants played at her funeral.
Jeana is my cultural partner of choice and we spend many, many hours in establishments of cultural wonder.
She’s also, much more than me, a creator: – her Alzheimers blanket, that she knitted for my Mum, had to be seen to be believed.
So here she is, cultural nirvana, Jeana Gorman style.
My favourite author or book
I’m not the biggest reader and tend to read when I’m on holiday. My initial thought was Margaret Attwood. However, I don’t think you can beat John Irvine. I read A Prayer for Owen Meanie, an absolutely wonderful book. First book I’ve ever read where I was dreading the ending as I didn’t want the book to end.
The book I’m reading
I have a stack of books to read at the moment. However, I spend more time looking at knitting websites getting pattern ideas and tips for baby items.
The book I wish I had written
I’ve never really wanted to write a book, at one point I did think there was a gap for a useful gardening book explaining the basics to novices and children. That has been filled now as there are so many websites and apps, and no one seems to want to pick a book up.
The book I couldn’t finish
Somehow, I managed to trudge my way through Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It was instantly forgettable and have since made the decision to stop reading a book if I’m not enjoying it.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
My knowledge of history is non-existent. I’ve often thought I should read more about it. I’ve bought a few books but I still haven’t taken the time to pick them up.
My favourite film
That’s a hard one. I love films and I love going to the pictures. Seeing a film on the big screen and immersing yourself in it. No distractions. I’m not big on seeing films repeatedly, once I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. A film I have seen on numerous occasions however is The Shining. It took about 5 goes to see it straight through and have seen it many times since. It never gets old.
My favourite play
There are so many to choose from, I really enjoyed the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart by David Greig, The Incident Room by New Diorama Theatre at The 2019 Fringe and Richard Gadd’s Monkey See, Monkey Do where I was actually the first person to get up on my feet to give him a standing ovation.
For sheer enjoyment though I’m going to choose Sweeney Todd for this, I’ve seen so many different productions of this musical and it never disappoints. I particularly enjoyed Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball’s production at The Adelphi Theatre in London.
My favourite podcast
It’s not just a Podcast but I do like Desert Island Discs.
The box set I’m hooked on
Mark and I are currently loving Gormorrah. It’s a brilliant series about the Italian drug gangs in Naples. Very brutal but somehow you come to love the characters. I normally binge watch box sets but this one is being eked out. (You wrote eeked out before I sub edited it. Eeked, though seemed appropriate. Ed.).
My favourite TV series
Grey’s Anatomy. What’s not to love? It started when I borrowed the box set from my sister-in-law and watched every episode with my daughter, Amy, over a 3 week period. I see the new series is about to be screened – can’t wait.
My favourite piece of music
Golden Brown by The Stranglers. I just love everything about it. It’s a beautiful piece of music. I recently heard an instrumental version by Zephyr Quartet and I loved that too.
My favourite dance performance
In 1989, at the Edinburgh International Festival, Mark and I went to the Kings Theatre to see Johann Kresnik’s and Gottfried Helnwein’s ‘Macbeth,’ performed by the Bremer Theater from Bremen. We were in the Gods, I was terrified of heights. When we first sat down I thought I can’t be here, the performance started and I was transfixed. Nothing has beaten that.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Gus Harrower recorded a version of Secret Love by Doris Day, my mother-in-law’s favourite song, for her funeral. The first time I heard it the tears flowed. Marley and Me it gets me every time – it was on TV the other week.
The lyric I wish I’d written
Our Children from Ragtime a beautiful song about children.
How they play,
Finding treasure in the sand.
They’re forever hand in hand,
Our children.How they laugh,
She has never laughed like this.Every waking moment, bliss.Our children.See them running down the beach.
Children run so fast…Toward the future…From the past.How they dance,
Unembarrassed and alone.Hearing music of their own, Our children.One so fair,And the other, lithe and dark.Solemn joy and sudden spark,
Our children.
See them running down the beach.
Children run so fast
Toward the future
From the past.
There they stand,
Making footprints in the sand,
And forever, hand in hand,
Our children.
Two small lives,
Silhouetted by the blue,
One like me
And one like you.
Our children.
Our children.
The song that saved me
The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops, in 1991, and Sinead O’Connor’s Earth Mother in 1994 certainly kept me company when I would be up through the night feeding Amy, Tom and Ria.
The instrument I play
Knitting needles. I learnt to knit when I was 10. Stopped when I had children as I just didn’t have the time. Started again when I was 50 when my great nephew was due. I always have something on the go. It’s a good way to watch TV and achieve something at the same time.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Definitely singing. I am in no way musical, if anyone would like a big challenge and would like to teach me, please contact me.
If I could own one painting it would be
I would have a statue. Either Michelangelo’s David or the Little Dancer – Aged 14 by Degas. I would have to work out how to preserve them, but they’d make for very interesting pieces in the back garden.
The music that cheers me up
Scott Walker always cheers me up, he’s so over the top. Marc Almond, in particular, Tainted Love and OMD’s Enola Gay.
The place I feel happiest
In my garden. There’s no better way to get some fresh air and exercise. Sitting having a coffee and watching the plants change and grow throughout the seasons is such a pleasure.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I love watching a completely rubbish TV series. My daughters and I have discovered a rating of 5.6 on IMDB is perfect. Sometimes you just need to let a programme wash over you. You know it’s rubbish but you can’t stop watching. Some I’ve particularly enjoyed are Riverdale, Once Upon a Time, Married At First Sight Australia, New Amsterdam and How to Get Away With Murder.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
Audrey Hepburn , Jordan Samuels (Skincare), Daniel Levy, Bob Mortimer and Tim Minchim.
And I’ll put on this music
I would ask my guests for some contributions in advance and make a playlist up for the evening.
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You might have been beginning to think that my Unknown Pleasures series was simply an old boys club of dusty memories. But you’d be wrong. It’s just that the female contributors I’ve invited to this have been, shall we just say, tardy, in their responses.
But I’m delighted to bring you the first of these, that of Lisl MacDonald.
Lisl’s quite a new pal actually. We came together through the Marketing Society and she was my choice to replace me as Chair of The Nods when I had to step down due to a conflict of interest when I joined Whitespace.
Our friendship has grown through marketing and music, but I’ve also been very aware of her vast appetite for everything cultural and I feel we are in for the long haul as we both near our later years. That’s if she stays in Scotland, because she has many interests in Asia and is more often than not found there.
Lisl has impeccable musical taste but her many performances in my lockdown music quiz ranged from inept to innocuous. But her humour and acerbic wit made her a welcome competitor. (I use the word competitor in the loosest possible term, I mean Brora Rangers are “competitors” in the Scottish Cup but they’ll never actually win any matches.)
Anyway, here’s the views of the lass fae Rothesay. I have to say, it is exquisitely composed (although she couldn’t spell cornet).
My favourite author or book
If I can redefine this as “books I have read more than twice”, then Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and Lanark by Alasdair Gray. These three books impart really important lessons about life, love, sex, war, racism, inequality, creativity, courage, and many more things besides. As they are so well written, you enjoy them first as a great read then realise afterwards that they were instructive.
The book I’m reading
I’ve just started Kitchenly 434, the new Alan Warner. Only on page 10 but looking very good so far!
The book I wish I had written
Candide, by Voltaire. Smart, tragic, hilarious, genius.
The book I couldn’t finish
Never managed to get far with Ulysses, James Joyce. I’ve tried three or four times then stopped, put the book down and gone and done something interesting instead.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith. Read bits of it.
My favourite film
Pi.
It was Aronofsky’s debut in 1998 when he had no budget and loads of ideas. Firstly, it has one of the best soundtracks you’ve never heard and includes Aphex Twin, Autechre, Roni Size, and Clint Mansell. So it sounds great. Secondly, it is filmed on high-contrast black and white reversal film. So it looks great. Finally, it’s about a mad number theorist trying to find connection and order in the world through mathematics. So it’s a crazy but satisfying journey. It feels even more relevant today and I would love to see it on the stage.
My favourite play
Is it a cliché to say King Lear? We studied it at school and I’ve seen it staged in so many places, so many ways. It’s a credit to the creativity of all the artists involved in theatre around the world that you can take one old text and keep bring it to life in new ways which keep it relevant and feel fresh.
My favourite podcast
I have two. Trashy Divorces, which combines social history with trashy gossip of the highest order. And Backlisted, which has brilliant hosts, fabulous guests, and always costs me a fortune as I buy the books they discuss and refer to. It’s a real book lovers thrill.
The box set I’m hooked on
Currently the French spy series The Bureau. It’s making me suspicious of everyone’s motives…why are you asking me these questions Mark?
My favourite TV series
I’ve been all about RuPauls Drag Race for quite a long time now. The camp, bitchy, positive, supportive, colourful JOY of it.
My favourite piece of music
John Tavener’s, The Lamb. Unaccompanied voices. Written as a lullaby for his nephew and inspired by William Blake. Exquisite.
My favourite dance performance
The Rite of Spring, a Pina Bausch work. Can’t remember where we saw it but my husband and I still talk about it. Closely followed by whatever Benjamin Millepied is doing, we’ve seen his work a couple of times in Paris and its always engrossing.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
It was a few nights ago. I have chronic insomnia and often listen to music while I should be sleeping. A relaxing mix was on random play, and Max Richter’s Maria The Poet (1913) came on. The tears flowed.
Music truly is a drug. Beware of the set and setting in which it is consumed! This composition usually makes me feel hopeful. At 3am, with the rain pattering the window, and after a day of hearing news of corrupt Westminster politicians, attacks on women being normalised , genocide, climate disaster…well, I crumbled.
It was cathartic though.
The lyric I wish I’d written
They were written by T Rapp but made famous by This Mortal Coil. They contain all the wisdom of the ages:
The jeweller has a shop on the corner of the boulevard.
In the night, in small spectacles, he polishes old coins.
He uses spit and cloths and ashes.
He makes them shine with ashes.
The coins are often very old by the time they reach the jeweller.
With his hand and ashes he will do the best he can.
He knows that he can only shine them, cannot repair the scratches.
He knows that even new coins have scars so he just smiles.
In the darkest of the night. Both his hands will blister badly.
They will often open painfully and the blood flows from his hands.
He works to take from black coin faces, the thumb prints from so many ages.
He wishes he could cure the scars.
When he forgets he sometimes cries.
He knows the use of ashes.
He worships God with ashes.
The song that saved me
Slippery People, Talking Heads. It whispered to a young lassie on the Isle of Bute that it was OK to be a bit crazy. Preferable, even. Its my hymn, my anthem, my rallying cry.
The instrument I play
I’ve always read music as my family are all musical. So it went: recorder, violin, oboe, cornet. I violated the violin with scratching bows, obliterated the oboe with shrill reeds, but really enjoyed playing cornet in a swing band. Haven’t picked one up for decades though.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Piano. It’s on the list to learn.
If I could own one painting it would be
Woman With a Book, Picasso. It’s a reasonable likeness! I love that it is both vivid and still. It shows me that reading is an act of quiet solitude which can also be subversive, erotic and exciting. Mostly, I just like looking at it and it never bores me. And isn’t that the real criteria for putting something constantly in your line of sight?
The music that cheers me up
Honestly,? Music that takes me back to a happy time works. So Gil Scott Heron, Prince, The Pixies,and some old scool house, techno and hip hop gets me up off my chair, and feeling that same vibe from back in the day. If only my body felt the same…
The place I feel happiest
Anywhere I am by or on the sea. I grew up on the Isle of Bute, scuba dive and am a qualified yacht skipper. Sailing connects us as humans with all those communities of old who found ways to build boats, navigate, and handle the sea in all its moods. And its environmentally friendly.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
The podcast Dear Joan and Jericha. Outrageous.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
David Byrne (my muse), Voltaire, Robert Burns, Maya Angelou, Kim Gordon, Ian Dury, Alan Cumming, Michele Obama.
And I’ll put on this music
Ron Carter, Stockholm Volume 1.
![Ron Carter Foursight Stockholm Vol. 1 [CD] - IN+OUT Records GmbH](https://inandout-records.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/798747713924_front.jpg)
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Milbury, a fictitious town in England, is the home of a bunch of ancient stones that encircle the community and have strange intoxicating powers that render the townsfolk strangely happy and a bit out of it.
Moving there in the wake of the death of the family matriarch, father and daughter Adam and Mia are both involved in their study. Dad as a professional Archeometrist, daughter as a grumpy teenage podcaster.
Mia, in the central role is played by Worzel Gummidge actress India Brown and she rules the roost with a fine performance.
It’s a tight, short two and a half hour yarn that brings a mix of sci-fi and semi-religious mumbo jumbo into play.
It feels a bit young adult in nature but is well put together and an entertaining romp.
Reece Shearsmith plays a crazed scientist who wants to take over the world and adds his usual stamp of maniacal over the topness.
It was a 1977 TV series apparently, although I missed it at the time, and is brought deftly up to date by the accomplished dialogue of scriptwriting team of AK Benedict and Guy Adams.
Presented by BBC Radio 4 and BaffleGab it’s well worthy of your time.
Good drama well presented.
I’ve known Gus since he was ten.
He stood atop a rostrum and uttered these words.
In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Brodview
Avenue hill in New Rochelle, New York, and it seemed for
Some years thereafter that all the family’s days would be
Warm and fair.The skies were blue and hazy,
Rarely a storm. Barely a chill…
Our love affair had begun.
I know of no-one I have seen perform more often. In theatre and in bands and as a solo singer songwriter.
(Probably photographed him more often than my children too, TBH.)
He performed these two immense songs for my mum’s funeral.
Listen and weep. I did. (Just click on the pic. It’ll take you to Soundcloud.)
It’s his songwriting and vocal performance that hits the heights for me.
And clearly his academic advisors agree, as he is in the latter stages of a Master’s Degree in music (or something).
Lazily compared, by lesser critics than I, to Elton John (the specs and the height I guess) I prefer Billy Joel as a comparison.
But could Billy Joel do Jesus Christ in JCS? (I cried again)
Could Billy Joel hit the heights needed to carry off Bring Him Home as Jean Valjean? I think not. (And again I wept.)
Ladies and gentlemen (and those that go by any other description) please enjoy Gus’s cultural influences.
My favourite author or book
The book that my mind goes to if I’m ever asked this question is ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini. At this point I must’ve read it 3 or 4 times and it still gets me every time. It has a lovely father-son relationship story, but also emphasises themes of guilt and friendship.
The book I’m reading
I’m currently reading ‘How to Write One Song’ by Jeff Tweedy which was kindly gifted to me by Mark Gorman. A brilliant insight into the motives of songwriting and the philosophy of the creative process.
The book I wish I had written
The Bible.
The book I couldn’t finish
I never was able to finish the last Harry Potter books and as someone who lived as a young person in the 2000/10’s I think that’s poor show.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Like Mark, I’ve never gone for the classics, but I’ve always wanted to read the philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle. My Master’s degree often touches on philosophy so would probably stand me in better stead if I gave them a read. On a simpler note though, The Hobbit.
My favourite film
Interstellar. Absolutely love anything Nolan does, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Tenet.
My favourite play
Will have to swap out play for musical and I think for me it has to be Les Mis every time. Having seen it on stage countless times and been lucky enough to perform in it, I hope I never tire of it.
My favourite podcast
Has to be Sodajerker on Songwriting. They have talked to everyone under the sun and they manage to veer away from the shitty chat show questions to focus on the mechanics and process of songwriting.
The box set I’m hooked on
Still needing to finish off The Sopranos but I have been binging that of late. I’m excited and intrigued by the prequel movie that’s coming out this year starring James Gandolfini’s son.
My favourite TV series
This is possibly the hardest question on here. Chernobyl, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, Ozark, The Thick of It, True Detective to name but a few.
My favourite piece of music
I think at the moment it’s Racing in The Street’ by Bruce Springsteen. I could listen to the outro on an endless loop for the rest of my life.
My favourite dance performance
Mark Gorman at Forth Children’s Theatre after show party for Jesus Christ Superstar. A truly spellbinding and magical performance, those white jeans made him look like an elegant swan.
The last film/music/book that made me cry
The last few episodes of Schitts Creek were tear jerkers. Another excellent TV show.
The lyric I wish I’d written
I would like to think and hope that any lyrics I want to write have already been written by myself. And if any lyrics in well-known songs had been written by me well no one would hear them. However, “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.” That’s a pretty iconic line.
The song that saved me
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever needed saved, but Bon Iver’s music always can pull me out of a rut; creative or otherwise.
The instrument I play
Piano and a spot of guitar.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Drums. Or how to actually play the guitar well.
If I could own one painting it would be
These questions are clearly meant for someone more cultured than me. Eh, The Mona Lisa because it’s worth an absolute mint?!
The music that cheers me up
Anything pop from the 80’s.
The place I feel happiest
Anywhere on stage with my band.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I will get sucked into a YouTube hole watching Made in Chelsea and TOWIE videos. I have no idea why, but the people are weirdly intriguing, and the videos are more digestible in short form. I’ve never watched the shows on TV.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I don’t read enough to invite authors so I’m going to invite musicians and general famous people. And this is a question I do ponder often.
I wouldn’t want to be the person doing the seating plan for that one.
And I’ll put on this music
Probably some easy dinner jazz. With a few of my own numbers mixed in there.
It’s a real honour to have David contribute to my blog.
David is Scotland’s greatest living playwright (and dramaturg).
You’ll know him perhaps as Artistic Director of The Lyceum where he has written business-changing productions such as The Suppliant Women (an adaptation of Aeschylus’ classic and a personal favourite of mine. It truly was an epic and very moving, very feminist experience, so much so that I saw it three times), Touching the Void, Solaris and Local Hero.
He also wrote two more of my all time favourite plays; The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart and Dunsinane.
As if that isn’t enough, how about Lanark, Midsummer, Yellow Moon (I saw a lovely student production of this in a freezing cold Bedlam Theatre) and Europe, the show that initially made his name.
Perhaps his biggest commercial success has been his much lauded West End production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
He’s a great voice in the Independence debate. And he’s a runner.
I mean £ for £ he’s one of Scotland’s greatest creative talents with no discernible style. Look at his full list of productions on Wikipedia and you won’t say “Oh that’s a Davy Greig” because his output is so creatively diverse.
And when you read this you won’t be disappointed because he doesn’t just tell us what he likes he tells us why and shines really interesting insight onto all of his taste.
There’s a pretty shocking revelation in it too about his recent health that knocked me off my feet but I’ll let you read about it for yourself.
Thanks David. I am not worthy to be sharing this but I am very grateful.
My favourite author or book
PG Wodehouse is the writer to whom I return and return.
The book I’m reading
The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy by Matthew Wright, a two volume account of all that we know of the lost plays and authors of ancient Greek Tragedy. For example Euripides wrote over 100 plays and we only have 17 of them. And there were dozens of known, celebrated authors apart from the big three of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. This magisterial book collects everything we know about the lost work.
The book I wish I had written
This is an odd concept for me. I feel like if I wish I’d written a book then I would have written it. When I like a book, it’s in great part because I could never have written it. I suppose I will answer this by saying the form in which I feel least skilled is poetry, and I wish I could write it as well as the poets I admire whether that be Sappho or Alice Oswald, Don Paterson or Kathleen Jamie, Betjeman or Brecht. A book of really good poetry is the book I wish I had written.
The book I couldn’t finish
There are many but Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is probably the one which comes to mind. I found it fascinating, funny, engaging… but it’s also huge. It’s just too much. Too much. One day I’ll go back to it.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
I’m not a great reader of contemporary novels. It’s not deliberate. I find my time is filled up with plays, films, poetry, twitter, and I read a lot of non-fiction. When I get a chance at a novel I tend to pick a classic. I rarely get round to a new novel. I’m rather ashamed of this, in general, and specifically I would say Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. They seem like a deep and powerful exploration of women’s lives and friendships that could absorb me for a good while… so why haven’t I dived in yet!
My favourite film
Hunt for the Wilderpeople by Taiko Waititi
My favourite play
This is a very difficult one for me. Theatre and plays are my life. You’ve asked me four questions about books but only one on plays! And I have to choose only one. And it’s unclear whether it’s a performance of a play, or a script? So many flaws in this question! Nevertheless, them’s the rules, I suppose. In that case I will choose The Present by Andrew Upton adapted from Chekhov’s play Platonov. I saw it on Broadway directed by John Crowley with Cate Blanchett playing the lead, Anna Petrovna, who is turning 40 and bored of life, and staging a party. The play revolves around the eponymous Platonov with whom she is in love, as are most of the women in the play, and who has never been able to commit to her or admit his true feelings. Out of this simple country house palaver Chekhov weaves a desperate aching gouging out of the male heart, of love, of despair, and of the comedy of our own foolishness in the face of our desire. The original play is long. The magnificent Australian dramatist Andrew Upton did a version which adapts the play to 1980’s Russia and puts it in a simple contemporary English idiom which lets the play breathe beautifully.
John Crowley’s production was absolutely beautiful, delicate and detailed naturalism.
Cate Blanchett was incandescent.
When the lights came down I was in tears and couldn’t move for a full ten minutes.
My favourite podcast
There are so many, I like Talking Politics with David Runciman, I like The Archers podcast Dum Ti Dum, I like Blocked and Reported but recently I’ve been obsessed with QAnonAnonymous, a long running investigative series which follows the QAnon conspiracy theory. I picked up on it about a year ago, just after lockdown, and it became a bible for understanding the craziness which then beset America. It’s still the best primer I know for the American right.
The box set I’m hooked on
Do we do box sets anymore? I have a full collection of Muppet Show videos, I adore them, and when I saw that Disney Plus had them I began revisiting them on streaming. I can never get enough of them. Check out the episode from the first series with Kris Kristofferson singing Help Me Make It Through The Night with Miss Piggy.
My favourite TV series
Upright by Tim Minchin.
My favourite piece of music
Ay ay ay! Four questions about books but one about music!! It’s like the theatre question all over again. At least you get eight in desert island discs.
Since I was fifteen my Desert Island Disc, that I would save from the waves, has been the cover version of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ by Paul Quinn and Edwyn Collins from 1984.
My favourite dance performance
I was lucky enough to see ‘I Am Curious Orange’ by Michael Clarke with live music by The Fall at The Royal Opera House. It was glorious. The re-staging of the Battle of the Boyne by bum baring boy dancers in Rangers and Celtic shirts as Mark E Smith scowled and stomped across the stage…
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Peanut Butter Falcon, a rather beautiful movie from 2019 by Tyler Nillson and Michael Shwartz in which Zack Gottsagen plays a Down Syndrome man who escapes from a home to pursue his dream of becoming a wrestler, and hooks up with a down and out fisherman on the run played by Shia La Beouf.
The film, like Hunt for The Wilderpeople & Upright, explores my favourite movie trope where a gruff emotionally closed person carrying grief is paired with a vulnerable emotionally open person and they are cast loose in the wilderness.
These stories always make me cry.
I should write one one day.
The lyric I wish I’d written
So so so many from so so so many songs but I think, in the end, I have to defer to Bob Dylan who has come up with so many, so consistently extraordinary lyrics.
Probably my favourite is…
‘Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footsteps everywhere
You can almost think you’re seeing double
On a cold dark night on the Spanish Stair.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece.
She promised she’d be there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
Oh the hours we’d spend, inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wasting time
Oh those mighty kings of the jungle
I can hardly stand to see ‘em
It sure has been a long hard climb.
Train wheels running through the back of my memory
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese
Someday, everything’s gonna sound like a raphsody
When I paint my masterpiece.’
From ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ by Bob Dylan
It catches so beautifully the sense of playfulness and connection I felt, as a young artist, that the best is yet to come, that the great work is just around the corner.
The song that saved me
Dream Operator by The Talking Heads from True Stories.
I had a stroke last summer. I think running a theatre in a pandemic just got to me and my brain popped. Anyway, I’m fortunate it was a minor stroke and I was able to recover from the major physical effects quite quickly. But the mental effects were hard. I have found being an artist deprived of my medium, a theatre maker deprived of an audience, very hard on the soul. The wounds to The Lyceum of redundancy and closure have sometimes felt unbearable.
I am a runner, I like the trails and hills, and I was worried that the stroke would take that away from me. Fortunately I’ve been able to get myself together and, although a bit slower, I’m back running in the hills now.
Spring is here and the other day I was running in some back country. I was cresting a hill, the sun was out, and I saw a glorious Scottish landscape of loch and mountain laid out before me and this song came on.
It spoke directly to me, as songs sometimes do.
It was clearly a song in which an old artist remembers themselves being young and hoping one day to make art. The old artist says to the young one… ‘don’t worry, I’m here from the future to tell you, you become an artist in the end.’
In one line David Byrne sings…
‘Every dream tells it all, and this is your story, you dreamed me a heart, you’re the dream operator.’
That reminded me that the heart of an artist is a child.
And that an artist is just that, ‘a dream operator’ and that’s also as good a definition of an artistic director as I’ve ever heard.
I found myself crying as I ran.
The song released the responsibility and grief of the pandemic and returned me to the child artist who just wants to celebrate, understand and dream the world.
The instrument I play
I play the guitar well enough to strum along to things, and I have an extensive collection of guitars, ukuleles and banjos which I enjoy playing. The stroke rather fucked up my left hand fingering so I’m even worse than I used to be. I’m no musician.
Recently I have started taking singing lessons. I am greatly enjoying discovering my voice as an instrument.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
As a kid I learned Cello. I loved the sound of it, the feel of it. I still love Cello music. Jaqueline Du Pre doing Bach is some of my favourite music ever. I wish I’d kept it up.
If I could own one painting it would be
One of Rothko’s Red and Black paintings.
The music that cheers me up
Ah, there IS another music question. Phew!
I am always cheered up by ‘Got Soul’ by Valerie June and I challenge you not to be as well.
The place I feel happiest
My family’s cottage on Rannoch Moor.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I genuinely don’t believe in guilt over pleasure.
I like reading massive volumes of history – Anthony Beevor, Robert Caro, etc… Sometimes that feels like an old white man thing to be doing. It’s not that I don’t seek out diversity in history, I do. But I’m a bit Alan Partridge about military history. So maybe that?
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I don’t like dinner parties. I really enjoy one on one encounters best. I would invite Lee Miller to dinner. If she was unavailable, I would invite Aeschylus.
And I’ll put on this music
Lee Miller I would play Beyonce’s Lemonade. I think she’d like that. Aeschylus would be fascinated by Hip Hop – he was a composer as well as a poet and he wrote in rhythmic speech – so I’d play him some of the best Hip Hop I know from Public Enemy, to Dr Dre to Drake to Kanye.
gibberish 