This might be his slightest novel, weighing it at only 205 pages, but it’s his densest.
Another unreliable narrator – an old Japanese painter and teacher – Masuji Ono tells part of his life story, often repetitively (maybe he has dementia) and full of false modesty. He’s actually an arrogant old fuck.
It’s set in an unnamed Japanese city between 1948 and 1950 as the Empire is setting about post WWII rebuilding and the country is on its knees.
Ono-San was a celebrated pre-war artist, seemingly of a propagandist bent (and maybe in the pocket of the Emperor) but his star has faded and it’s causing some trouble in selling off his youngest daughter into arranged matrimony.
The book dwells fastidiously on the customs and mannerisms of a horrifically mannered and often obsequious Japanese cultural set of mores.
For a western reader (even though Ishiguro has long been a naturalised UK citizen), this makes for tough reading. There are many Japanese place names to contend with and his cast of characters is vast for such a small tome. What’s more, given the episodic, and sometimes rambling nature of the prose they pop up sporadically but with important things to say. It’s a laborious follow.
Like anything Ishiguro turns his hand too it’s quite brilliant in the quality of the writing and the slow release of information that just keeps one on track plot-wise, but it has none of the empathy of his other novels and certainly no playfulness at all. So it makes for a n endurance test, albeit a shortish one.
It was the least enjoyable of his books for me. But a weak(ish) Ishiguro beats 9/10 writers into a cocked hat and for that I recommend it. Just don’t make it your Kazuo debut.
David Greig has written some of my favourite plays. I will never forget his Macbeth addendum, Dunsinane. And The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart is a play like no other you have ever seen. Add to that The Suppliant Women (after Aeschylus) Solaris and Yellow Moon and you have a writer of significant importance. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).
I bumped into him on Monday lunchtime on Lothian Road, and after chittery chattery he asked me if I was still writing this largely undiscovered colossus of writing magnificence. “Yes”, I humbly replied.
“Well, you’ll regret meeting me today” he proclaimed as he fumbled in his rucksack to fish out a copy of Columba’s Bones and thrust it into my hands. With that he disappeared into the fog.
It wasn’t foggy.
Gulping with fear I strode to Sainsbury’s for my Red Pepper and Lentil Soup, a bargain at £1.50 in these days of crippling extortion. Fear, because the thought of ploughing through a religious tale set in Iona in 825 was my idea of hell – I’d read the publicity and had abandoned the idea of purchasing this novel.
Fast forward 5.5 hours, to whence I sit on the #43 Lothian County Bus to South Queensferry. People are looking at me like I’m a leper as I guffaw at page three of this magnificent jewel.
It’s only 180 pages, it’s A5 in size, pocketable, and has big type for the hard of reading, so if it was going to be a chore it was going to be a manageable chore.
It’s not a chore.
Yes, it’s set on Iona. Yes, it’s 825AD (or whatever they call it now). Yes, it stars a monk, a viking and a widow. No, it’s not a turgid bag of fleapiss.
What David Greig does, and this cues me up to blow voluminous smoke up his beardy arse, is conjure up (based on an existing story I think) a truly great thing. Firstly, it’s hysterically funny (think Monty Python meets Mary Beard, pissed). Secondly, it’s properly engaging. In so few words Greig creates three characters that are at once unique and at the same time familiar. Thirdly it’s unputdownable.
It’s a story about revenge, love (of God, man and woman) and values. But mostly it’s just a right rollicking read. I’ll say no more because it’s easy to spoil it.
By Wednesday teatime, as I rolled off the #43, it was done. I will be extolling its virtues to all and sundry for many moons.
This is the 19th Martin Scorsese movie I’ve seen. It settles firmly into the upper quartile of this remarkable director’s work.
His range is immense and this sits closer to some of his American History documentaries than it does to, say, Gangs of New York or Wolf of Wall Street.
But it actually has its roots in Casino/Goodfellas territory, because it’s a kind of mafia film, in that it explores a very one-sided gang attitude to clansmanship (and in a small part Klansmanship).
It’s actually a story of genocide/ethnic cleansing, as Robert Di Niro’s (rarely better, certainly not in the last 40 years) rich, ranch-owning, Oklahoman one-man dynasty sets out to wrestle away the oilfield rights of the Osage tribe of Native Americans by hook or by crook – mainly by crook.
The Osage are mightily rich because oil has been found slap bang in the middle of their land and Di Niro’s William Hale is jealous and determined to get his greedy mitts on the money.
He does this in a pincer movement. Firstly by marrying his returning WWI war hero, a dim-witted nephew Ernest Burkhart (phenomenally played by Leonardo DiCaprio) into the Osage. His willing wife Mollie (a star turn by Lily Gladstone) is unaware of Hale and Burkhart’s long term ambitions and simply falls in love with him. Truth is, it’s mutual.
Hale’s second strategy in this pincer is the straightforward murders of Mollie’s family and many more Osage besides. There are numerous cold blooded killings that pepper the movie and yet it never feels gratuitous (cold blooded and shocking, yes, but not especially repellent – like it might have been in Tarantino’s hands.)
It’s a study in racism and of greed but that doesn’t mean Di Niro, DiCaprio and Gladstone don’t win you over with their overwhelmingly great performances – expect all three to feature at next year’s Oscars (I expect Di Niro to pick up his 9th nomination, DiCaprio his 8th and Gladstone her first – maybe a first ever Oscar for a woman of Native American descent?)
Gladstone is a silent but steely presence. Much of the film documents her suffering at the hands of Hale and Burkhart, and it’s truly shocking how DiCaprio treats her, despite his undoubted love for her.
It’s widely documented that the film is extraordinarily long (3h26mins without a break is a bladder challenging sit through) but although it features murders galore, it’s no action picture. Do not go looking for any Marvel escapades in this one folks. But it’s manageable, riveting and entirely justified in its length.
One other thing to point out. The soundtrack is an almost imperceptible blues bass thrum by Robbie Robertson that builds tension at an almost inaudible level but is like a heartbeat throughout. Sinister and compelling it quietly drives the story along. Bravo Robbie.
The movie is a savage insight into a part of American history that was not familiar to me and it deserves to be seen by a wide audience. Judging from the low availability of seats in Edinburgh’s cinemas this weekend that ambition at least appears to be coming to fruition.
In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.
Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.
My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.
That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).
Whatever, they’re awe shite.
The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it
The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.
At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.
Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.
Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.
The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).
He’s smart, but he’s also mental.
I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.
It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.
Azzie can escape, unlike most.
This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.
“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.
The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.
Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.
So, don’t buy this for a laugh.
Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?
Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.
It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.
OK, I have an excuse for my profound exhaustion. I’m 61 and I’m holding a job down whilst taking in exactly 60 shows.
God knows what it must be like for performers doing multiple shows, there are plenty of them, me and my wife’s favourite being Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland (And then the Rodeo Burned Down and What if They Ate The Baby), who put on two shows and, when we talked to them, told us they were taking shows in too.
It turned out to be the fifth biggest Fringe ever in terms of ticket sales, but it was a stripped down official EIF and an uninspiring programme, apart from the dance which was excellent. What theatre I saw was sub-optimal. That said Nicola Benedetti is an inspiration.
So, as said, 60 shows with a big mix of comedy, theatre, dance and music.
What stood out?
Much, I have to say.
I get accused of gushing about what I see, but I spent months planning (advance planning) my itinerary and that paid off well with experience playing a role.
Certain venues are more likely to offer quality than others and that forms the basis of my summary.
Before I start I have to say that week one was banging with those in the know taking advantage of lower ticket prices, the second weekend saw Edinburgh simply overwhelmed, but it tailed off rapidly after that. The cost of the Fringe is scary , although I believe there is astonishing value to be had in ticket prices, even at full price. It really is a bargain if you can find good value accommodation and is surely the greatest place to be on planet Earth for culture lovers like me, in August..
The shows/Venues
Roundabout with Paines Plough at Summerhall provided England & Son (utterly stunning), Daniel Kitson and Strategic Love Play all of which were brilliant. Lady Dealer was good and so was Salty Irina, but Bangers disappointed.
Summerhall itself always inspires and Mass Effect, Ben Target: Lorenzo, An Interrogation, Klanghaus: Inhaus and Club Nights were all amazing. I didn’t see a bad show at Summerhall. I just wish I’d got Gunter and Woodhill tickets.
The Traverse had a mixed bag. Bloody Elle and No Love Songs (you need to see this in Dundee) were both gig theatre inspiration, but The Grand Old Opera House Hotel disappointed, despite the inevitable hype. After the Act was truly awful.
The surprise pick of venues (although it has been rising in my opinion) was Zoo Venues, it picked up three brilliant Fringe First and I saw them all, the Danish Insider, Funeral by Ontreroed Goed and Beasts(Why Girls Shouldn’t be afraid of the Dark) but also a great show from Belgium called the Van Paemel Family. They punched above their weight.
In dance I was blown away by EIF shows Rite of Spring, L-E-V and Alvin Ailey in that order but also the aforementioned Summerhall dance spectacle, Mass Effect.
The Pleasance delivered for me with great shows like Hello Kitty Must Die ( although still a WIP in my view) and the five star Lucy and Friends and the ever reliable Showstoppers (I also hear Icehouse was amazing).
Assembly definitely delivered. Mythos Ragnarock (Death metal Norse mythology wrestling), Baby Wants Candy, Party Ghosts and Tutu,
And even Underbelly had some quality with Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder and the quite good Choir Choir Choir.
Space nailed it with the aforementioned Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland (And then the Rodeo Burned Down and What if They Ate The Baby).
And then, right at the end I saw Singing Sands a new Scottish play by Our Theatre at Greenhill. Magically heartwarming.
On the Festival, official, Food delighted but the theatre programme was gash.
All, in all a brilliant Fringe with one life changer. Funeral.
The day started with something unimaginably beautiful. The latest offering from my favourite theatre company in the world. Ghent’s Ontroerend Goed. I have RAVED about them in the past but this is their high water mark and will not be beaten this Festival.
It can’t be because it is perfection.
This is how the company describe it:
Funeral is a theatrical ceremony, a new ritual that brings people together, whatever they believe, are or think. Because everything isfinite and we are going to have to live with that.
Simply the most moving theatrical experience of my life, bar none.
Many of the audience were moved to tears and when I met the director afterwards I couldn’t speak to him, at first, as I was so emotional.
It’s called Funeral (at Zoo Southside) and to reveal any more would be to ruin it for you. Just trust me and book before it sells out- it’s on the way. It is a religious experience although there is no religion in this particular Funeral.
Of course nothing could match this today. But next up was Tomorrow’s Child at Assembly Checkpoint by Ghost River Theatre. It’s a blindfold experience in which the audience enter the auditorium blindfold guided by a staff member and seated for a 40 minute sound-play telling the futuristic story of birth based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. It’s interesting and technically great, but it’s not a life changer.
I went back to Zoo Southside (incidentally it’s one of the best curated venues on The Fringe and consistently delivers good challenging work and has a lovely Cafe) to see another Belgian play in the Big in Belgium season. It’s based on a famous 18th century Belgian play by “Belgium’s Shakespeare” and tells the story of a large peasant farm working family who are ousted from their land by a money grabbing Baron who owns their property. It’s incredibly bleak but has considerable lack humour, however I felt I was one of the few in the audience that laughed at the darkness.
Called The Van Paemel Family by Valentijn Dhaenens/Skagen, what marks it out as outstanding is its presentation. It’s a pre-filmed piece accompanied by the creator who plays all 13 parts in the family (male and female).
It’s projected onto a gable end and as each character speaks (in Flemish) the subtitles appear above them. It’s a highly accomplished acting and technical achievement and blew me away. Transfixing.
Next up TuTu; a French all male comedy ballet ensemble. Man, they can dance, classically, including en point. It’s hilarious in places but suffers a little from inconsistency. Nevertheless it’s great crowd pleasing fun.
Finally, my second French play of the day at the official Festival. Dusk, performed in French with subtitles and based on Lars Von Trier’s Dogville movie, it was never going to be an easy ride, was it? And so it turned out.
It involves a lot of live filming spliced with pre-recorded footage. Again, it is technically brilliant but I didn’t have a fucking Scooby what was going on.
Interesting, but not one for the comedy crowd. The luvvies loved it. I’ve been found out.
You’ll have seen its gaudy cover everywhere because its ubiquitous.
So, I’m not sure I can add much to the clamour about this universally loved phenomenon.
It feels like it’s written by a woman for women (a copywriter as it happens).
But I’m a gadgey, so here’s my take.
Although it screams women’s lib in CAPITAL LETTERS, as a man, I really liked it.
I was reading it on the back of my favourite American female writer’s Privileged (Curtis Sittenfeld) – also a take on girl power but from the 18th century transposed to the 21st.
It turns out to be a clever political read that challenges male dominance (including acceptable rape) and puts sand in the oyster.
That sand being Elizabeth Zott.
She’s a character.
She’s amazing.
She’s the book.
Everything about this novel is about Elizabeth Zott. Crazy name. Crazy girl.
It becomes a thriller having started out as a character study but really, it’s just a about humanity, and love.
I could tell you about the grief, bullying, corruption and all that.
But all that matters is you love this beautiful, strident, complex woman and her battle with convention, with scientific prejudice (essentially women didn’t do science in the 1950’s) and with the television industry that, even then, objectified women – no-one though was going to objectify Elizabeth Zott, unmarried mother, scientist and hater of domesticity.
Gramus does a great job of constructing a spider’s web of a plot that all comes together beautifully in the end and creates a character that we all fall in love with as her difficult battle with integrity unfolds in 400 delicious pages.
This promised to be a winning combination. Jessie Buckley written and directed by Alex Garland with music by Geoff Barrow (Portishead).
It is.
It’s full on bonkers horror movie, folk horror I’d say where Wicker Man meets Friday the 13th, meets The Thing.
Bonkers really is the word.
Harper (Jessie Buckley) has retreated to a country manor to regroup after a nasty break up with her husband, very nasty it turns out, and meets the Fast Show-esque posho, red-trouser wearing owner of the manor, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), for a tour of the building before he departs. Played for laughs by Kinnear we start to relax until Harper’s exploration of the local area throw up the shades of Wicker Man local population (all played by Kinnear) that indeed would not be out of place in The Fast Show but maybe more at home in one of the more eccentric Inside Number 9’s.
Anyway, things escalate, Friday the 13th Kicks in for 15 minutes or so before the extraordinary finale in which men beget men.
Maybe Garland is saying that all men are the same (a strongly feminist outlook from a man) and he’s not referring to their better qualities by the way.
Either way, Buckley again shows her acting chops off well in what is ultimately a throwaway chapter in her wonderful, multifaceted career. She’s great and so is Kinnear.
As I said at the start it’s bonkers, but gloriously so.
Men eh? You can’t live with ’em, you can’t live with ’em.
I’ll start with a disclaimer. If you don’t like musicals walk away now ‘cos you ain’t gonna like this.
If you DO like musicals you are in for one helluva treat when you tune into this baby.
Jeana and I devoured this last night in one big juicy helping. Howling with laughter and wide mouthed in astonishment at the quality of this brand new musical by Cinco Paul (writer of The Lorax and Despicable me).
It’s a full on demolition of (but really adulation of) the musical theatre genre, specifically the 40’s and 50’s (Oklahoma, Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Music Man) and the sixties (Godspell and Sound of Music).
The quality of the music throughout is outstanding, as is the choreography, but what makes the difference is to drop in a musical theatre hating character in one of the two central roles.
Built around the construct of Brigadoon (get the name? nice Jewish take on it) a musical in which two American tourists stumble upon a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years.
In this take on it the tourists are Josh and Mellissa two doctors who are falling out of love and are on an outdoors course to reconnect.
They get lost in a forest and, sure enough, in the mist is a bridge to what turns out to be Schmigadoon. Once over the bridge they cannot return to the real world until they have found true love. Will it be with each other or each with an inhabitant of Schmigadoon.
The opening song is a pure rip on Oklahoma’s title song and a basket auction later in the series is a direct take on the key scene in the same. It’s hilarious.
Every principle in this is outrageously funny, the script is camp and there’s no shying away from the gayness of the genre and its leading men (not all male MT singers are gay, I should point out as a further disclaimer, but the odd one is known to be, including Alan Cumming who revels in his role as the coming out mayor).
Barry Sonnenfeld, director, looks like he’s died and gone to heaven with this lavish production.
Everything, but everything in this pastiche is crafted with love. Even though it’s an absolute pisstake at its core it’s still reverential to the genre and, boy, if this made it to the stage it would sell out.
X is a superior horror movie. Clearly borrowing from the territory of Texas Chainsaw Massacre it manages to, nevertheless, be refreshingly original.
The premise is this. A (relatively) young young bunch of hipsters head out into the Texas countryside in 1979 having booked a cabin on a ranch in which to stay.
Their mission? To create a porno (or adult film as it was called in those days).
Upon arrival (and becoming apparent from a stopover at a petrol station that they are in Bible Belt and that sort of thing is not approved of) they are confronted by the owner of their accommodation. He’s very, very old and has an itchy trigger finger on his shotgun and appears to have forgotten the transaction (it was pre airbnb days).
His (hidden) wife is even older, but it transpires she seems to have a taste for a bit of jiggy jiggy and soon enters the fray in a quite unexpected way.
Much carnage (and a fair bit of nudity) follow but it’s funny in a way and it’s nice to see 90 + year old serial killers getting their moment in cinema.
It’s shot really well and Mia Goth is terrific in the lead.
Set in rural Ireland in the 1860’s and written by Emma Donoghue who penned the magnificent Room, it stars Florence Pugh (frankly, as far as I’m concerned she can do no wrong) and a young Kíla Lord Cassidy (13 -14 maybe) who has not eaten for four months as part of some sort of religious experience, feeding instead of miraculous “Mannah from Heaven”.
It’s a tight knit, despicable, Catholic-besotted community that are peasants in their beliefs and their behaviour.
The local council (including a splendid Toby Jones) bring in a nurse (Pugh) and a Nun to take 8 hour rotating shifts for two weeks to work out if this truly is a miracle or some sort of hoax.
The film centres on the young girl’s fanciful fast and Pugh’s wonderful caring nature as she tries to work out what’s really going on.
The music’s a problem but, that aside, it makes for a gripping drama and a genuinely unpredictable storyline.
To say I love Curtis Sittenfeld’s writing would be a tremendous understatement. Her two fictitious accounts of Laura Bush and Hilary Clinton’s lives blew me away but I’ve gone back to the start, her first novel.
It reads as if autobiographical, in a way, about a young girl finding her way in life at a privileged Prep school in the USA.
As a midwesterner (a kind of redneck I guess) the main protagonist Lee Fiori (Italian extraction, not given) this LMC (lower middle class) girl (maybe (ULC) gets a scholarship to Ault, a super posh prep school that preps kids for the Ivy League colleges. She’s a rural superstar but an Ault also ran and she is so lacking in self confidence that you wonder how she can possibly make it through.
It’s a mental health primer many years before we were obsessed with it and that makes it so compelling.
Coming of age novels usually follow the male trajectory but this brings a new aspect to it in a way that’s gripping, truly gripping. It starts all “Secret History” but very quickly moves into something else (Donna Tartt must love it though).
I’m not female so I haven’t lived through the whole “crush” thing that Fiori goes though, but I do get the outsider aspect of her life that is so superb conveyed. One reviewer suggests Sittenfeld was wire tapped at Prep herself to capture the authenticity of her conversational pieces in this wonderful book.
The few relationships that this poor, uncool, nervous wreck of a girl manages to chisel out of her miserable (not miserable) existence are truly life affirming. I loved Martha so much.
We have suicide attempts, well one. So beautifully rendered.
We have sexual awakening. Eventually. And so , again, beautifully described.
We have racism and classism, indeed the book really is about class.
We have astounding characters. Lee’s mum and dad, when they appear from time to time, are gold dust. (For the record I am Lee’s dad.)
I read this in Italy on holiday and it gripped me from cover to cover, luaghing out loud many times.
Why Curtis Sittenfeld has yet to win the Pulitzer is beyond me.
But you know, fuck it, it’s only a prize.
Stand alongside Tartt, Ian McEwan and John Irving as master storytellers Curtis. This is magnificent and it was only the start. (Rodham is mind-blowing)
In 1967 this book caused an uproar (and a lot of titillation), even in the swinging 60’s, for its forthright use of four letter language. most of it entered around genitalia and female in particular and graphic sex.
It has two central themes, unbridled sexual demand (stemming from Oedipal desire) from the central protagonist Alexander Portnoy, and BEING JEWISH. I write this in caps because Roth has a great love of them.
It’s a guilty read because it’s a misogynistic fantasy and includes a scene near the end that’s essentially a rape.
But, and I can’t emphasise this enough, it is astonishingly funny.
Apparently in the 60’s it was passed from pillar to post, thumbed by many as they, perhaps, considered what later to do with their own thumbs.
The world of Portnoy is split into Goys (Gentiles) and JEWS. He has a deep desire for Goy girls , or shiska. The worst nightmare for his incredibly over the top mother and suffering father. Marrying a shiska would bring shame to the family, the fact that Portnoy spend 250 pages fucking them senseless was not part of Portnoy’s Momma-sharing info (some of them resembling her – except for their blonde hair).
It’s FILTHY. Really, really filthy. And it’s FUNNY. Really really funny. Laugh out loud funny.
And it’s SEXIST. Really, really sexist. And it’s RACIST. A bit.
Before I shared my thoughts on this I thought I better look up some other recent reviews to see if I was out of kilter with acceptable views on this hilarious read. Seems not, seems it’s STILL considered a classic, even by people on Good Reads.
I feel I should be soiled by reading it, but I couldn’t stop laughing, most notably for his self-deprecative assassination of Jewish stereotypes (obv He’s Jewish and therefore has permission to observe his kinship judgementally) but I’ve read other Jewish books and just not ‘got’ it. I get it now.
It may be more than 50 years old now, and has dated a lot, but it’s vital, hilarious and (almost) educational.
In Gabriel Byrne’s autobiographical one man official Festival show, Walking With Ghosts, we get a stunning glimpse inside the head of one of Ireland’s most famous actors. It feels like an exercise in cleansing his soul, releasing his demons.
In two long acts he first of all describes his childhood in glorious humour, but also familial love. One of six Catholic children, this involves considerable church-based humour that may not have been for everyone, but I remember, vividly, the harshness of the nuns at my primary school. It’s at times hilarious and acted out in a relaxed way that benefits from excellent direction, sound and lighting.
Act two is a much more serious affair where he reminisces about the darker side of his life at seminary school where the dreaded Catholic child abuse raises its ugly head. But he tells the tale without hatred, indeed, his meeting the aging perpetrator of his teenage sex crimes is presented with pathos, not anger.
His typically Irish love of the bevvy eventually crosses over into alcoholism and this is the darkest section of the show.
All in all it’s a powerful and moving night of theatre with a modest man (no talk of his film career, other than nervously getting drunk at its outset with Richard Burton). This story is far from the Usual Suspects.
It merited a standing ovation and very, very deservedly so. 5 stars from me.
We should definitely have more dancing moved me to tears.
A big Fringe day and mighty me, what quality.
Let’s quickly gloss over Jo Griffin at Assembly Roxy. A Four star end to her show, but I’m afraid the first 50 minutes struggled to garner two in a totally indecisive stand up comedy set where she wanted to get real dirty but kept getting off at Haymarket. Avoidable.
Then we enjoyed a wonderful dance show at Summerhall called False Start in which four dancers (two of each gender) limbered up in athletics gear to the music of a very good faux Kraftwerk soundtrack (in itself outstanding and something I’d listen to at home regularly). All slo-mo, repetition and systems dancing it was a gripping encounter for 20 minutes but at 45 was just too long. Had it been edited to 25-30 I’d have given it a solid four stars but the length undid it. They were performing a sprint but as a marathon it dropped to three stars.
Megalith started our day at 12:15 at the very Excellent Zoo Southside (I’m expecting great things there tomorrow). It’s a show about copper mining 10,000 years ago and explores the notion that rock (stone) is the source of every piece of technology that we own. It’s described as a theatrical poem. Now, I’m guessing this all sounds a bit wank, but it’s not. It’s a fascinating piece of performance art and I absolutely loved it. Seriously good quality entertainment with Techno, humour, stone circles and danger. 4 stars.
Circus Abyssinia (Ethiopia to you and me) in Underbrelly’s Meadows circus tent is an absolute cracker of a show that nobody could fail to enjoy (we’ll pass over the jugglers). Unbelievable dexterity on roller skates, hula hoops, swings, ropes and has extreme contortionisim and I mean EXTREME. All set to a pounding Ethiopian music bed. It’s brilliant, but it’s a warm venue. Another 4 stars.
The Gods, The Gods, The Gods, in Assembly’s Speigeltent on George Street is great gig theatre in which three performers on separate stages direct the audience to dance as they play an 11 track album that’s based around philosophy, a love story and godlike mythology with a mix of jazz, spoken word, techno and The Streets type rap. It’s engaging, beautiful, incredibly enthusiastic and I fell in love with them. Another 4 star job.
My first standing ovation of the week and the first time I cried was at “We Should Definitely Have More Dancing.” A criminally undersubscribed three-woman header by Oldham Coliseum Theatre in which all three women play the same character, Clara, who has been through a VERY difficult time medically. I’ll not say why because I didn’t know when I went and it’s maybe a spoiler. Anyway, expect tears (many of the audience were visibly moved as the lead actor, Clara Darcy, recounts her real life story, with the help of her ‘sisters’ who take on many roles besides Clara’s). The writing and direction is extraordinary and the story is told in such a confident and beguiling way that any sense of maudlin is excised from the story. I was moved to tears, leaped to my feet at the end and I bow deeply with respect at the feet of Clara Darcy and her co writer Ian Kershaw and directors Tatty Hennnesy and Rab Shaw. A monumental piece of theatre. Thank you and 5 stars no question.
Made by Uncommon Studios, and directed masterfully by Andrew Dominick, this takes the genes of Stop Making Sense and mates it with American Utopia to come up with something that is nothing like either, other than in terms of quality.
The documentary is a potpourri of off camera chat (not that much) and live music. It’s kicked off with a slightly dull and certainly unpromisingly slow ramble through Cave’s new ceramicist career, where he shares his depiction of the life of a devil, before we enter a seemingly derelict church where the magic happens. The church setting is incredibly apse. (That was a church pun).
Cave is the most spiritual (in a religious sense) atheist I’ve ever come across. Many of the songs he performs are studded with religious references, and of course death, as they are drawn principally from Ghosteen and Carnage (the former being the deathly album that was written before the tragic passing of his youngest son).
Cave announced only yesterday the death of his eldest son making the mood and lyrics of the first few songs desperately sad. And, to top it all, his only remaining son (Earl) makes a cameo appearance on Cave’s cellphone in a scene of fatherly love that defines Cave’s meaning of life (a husband, father and friend first, a writer and musician second).
The filming shows its workings throughout. Dollies chase each other round a circular track whilst a Steadycam swoops in and out of Cave’s group. Four strings three backing singers and a drummer (plus, of course, Warren Ellis) but most of all Cave, at his piano.
There’s an air of melancholia about all of this, which is hardly surprising, but the mood gradually lifts before closing out with another lament in Balcony Man.
Dominick is also credited with the lighting which is in many ways the star of the show. Atmospheric, piercing, rhythmically cued to the music. At one point a solo piano piece is matched note for note with the pulsing of a single orange spot. It’s mesmerising.
There’s a little humour, but not much, because what this really is, is a religious experience. A movie of great beauty and unlike any other gig film you will ever see.
Tremendous. And may someone’s God bless you Nick – the tragedy you and your beloved wife have had to endure is just not fair. At least you know millions love you.
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.
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:
The stories aren’t much cop
The premise is, for me, a little unclear and few of these episodes really do feel like proper wars, just spats
The idea (at least in terms of cultural exploration) was done much better, and far more engagingly and humorously by Willa Paskin in Decoder Ring. Her exploration of Unicorn Poo, The Mullet and other equally absurd cultural phenomena were just as well researched but were also genuinely fun and interesting.
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.
I hope I can make this compelling. Because Anna Burns deserves that.
With her winning of The Booker Prize in 2018 my faith in this oft-tarnished medallion has been fully restored because this is a recognition that is truly deserved. Only four novels this century (that come to mind) struck me as viscerally as this has.
Don’t get me wrong, the striking was a bit doingy at first but later became more focussed and resonant as the strikers took better aim and improved their accuracy.
That’s not to say that this remarkable novel is better as it ends than as it starts because you only have to reread the first five pages or so, having finished the 348th, to realise that what may have seemed unclear at first was anything but. You just have to feel your way in, because this is no ordinary novel, with no ordinary language.
Reference points. Dario Fo (and his farcical political Italian landscapes. In many ways this novel is a farce.) Under Milkwood (crazy people, crazily told). I had another in mind when I was plotting this review as I lay in bed unable to sleep but it has slipped away from me now that I have pen in hand – it may come back to me. It may not.
Ah yes, it has. Magnus Mills’ The Scheme for Full Employment (a satirical take on Napoleonic economics).
For a start, to say it has a vague storytelling arc would be an understatement. If you’re looking for The Hardy Boys read The Hardy Boys.
It’s a collection of ‘studies’. Long, often seemingly rambling, portraits of life in a place few of us know. A place emerging from civil war in the late 1970’s but still in the grip of terrorism. Belfast (or at least Northern Ireland, so maybe-Belfast). It’s never stated.
Neither are the names of any of the characters, bar one.
We have Somebody McSomebody, Maybe Boyfreind, milkman (later Milkman, sometimes the milkman) and also, another, the real milkman.
There’s Tablets Girl – a poisoner, a witch maybe, a maddie for sure, a girl who was really a woman. And Tablet-Girl’s sister.
Nuclear Boy too.
There’s Longest Friend, there’s Third Brother in Law, Little Sisters (three of them always referred to collectively, none has a solo voice).
There’s Sister, Ma and Da (but there are four sisters and four brothers, except that one of the brothers isn’t a real brother) and anyway one’s dead and one’s in hiding (over there or down there) – ‘cos he’s a Renouncer of the State.
Our main protagonist (an 18 year old reader and walker – she reads while walking) lives in maybe-Belfast and this reading/walking behaviour is both absurd and unacceptable there. We do not know her name. Anna possibly.
Whilst walking and reading Ivanhoe she is picked up by milkman/the milkman/Milkman, a paramilitary leader aged 41 and married. He has the hots for her. It is not reciprocated, but the maybe-Belfast community don’t see it that way. You see, maybe-Belfast is a rumour mill and being the mistress of a Paramilitary leader (a renouncer of the state) is a badge of honour but also a sign of whoredom. Cannae win, eh?
So whether our protagonist is relationshipping with the milkman (the milkman/Milkman) or not, doesn’t matter. Somebody saw her accept a lift. That’s enough.
And that’s kind of what this book is really about, the state within a state that is so incarcerated by itself, its rules, its rituals, its religion (although religion is never mentioned by name in the book but is at the centre of everything – pious women abound) that no-one can breathe, no-one can move without being watched, photographed, talked about, lied about, exaggerated about. The caste system is so fucked, so confusing, so dangerous that life just stultifies. Large families are fecundated not through love (you would never marry a man or a woman that you ACTUALLY loved – that might actually make you happy and being happy is frowned upon).
It’s stifling and that’s why Burns’ long descriptive narratives, studies, go off at length into descriptions of a society that would scare you shitless, dear reader. They seek to capture this oppressive regime in a way that strikes fear into your heart. Actually it strikes relief that you weren’t there at the time. I was, but a decade later when it was all changing.
And yet, and yet, in the midst of all of this fuge and subterfuge and counterfuge and interfuge lies miraculous, hilarious, laugh out loud humour. I mean FUCKING HA HA HA. You know like Paddy Clarke? No, not like Paddy Clarke. He’s Southern. He’s from down there. (Our side, sure, but ‘down there our side’ which is not ‘our side, here’.)
As you worm your way into this initially terribly challenging read its gifts start to shed for you. The beauty, the majesty, the hilarity, the absurdity of what Burns is creating begin to reveal this novel as the masterpiece that it is.
I really, truly loved this and I know it’s not gonna be for everyone. But you know what? It’s a reward. A big fat kiss on the face. A love story to maybe-Belfast presented as a horror.
In that respect. It’s Bride of Frankenstein. Or maybe Let the Right One In.
One last thing. The lack of a definite article in the title. The Milkman, A Milkman, Our Milkman, was really tripping me up. It needn’t have . It was deliberate. Oh, so deliberate. And that’s another tiny detail that makes this novel so brilliant. (Along with this for tea: Fray Bentos, Opal Fruits, Licquorice Allsorts, ice cream, those communion wafer flying-saucer confection sweetmeats in edible paper pouched with strong fizz which explode on the tongue and boiled beetroot – just no chips.)
Daisy Haggard and Laura Solon have conjured up such a delightful comedy world that it simply takes your breath away at the exquisiteness of it all.
The character acting here is beside itself…
Ade Edmondson – stunning weirdo revenge seeking father of murdered child.
Haggard herself, of course, every bit as good as she was in Breeders, probably better in fact as the open eyed innocent (Miri) returning home after 18 years in prison for child murder (wrongly convicted).
Geraldine James, Miri’s Mum. Daft as a brush and chastised by her middle class community for having an affair with a much younger man.
Richard Durden gives us an astonishing laugh out loud performance as Miri’s Dad, the green crusader who hates his wife for her affair but is trying to forgive her. Comedy gold.
Adeel Akhtar is simply delightful as Miri’s maybe-boyfriend and Ice cream Van Owner.
Meera Syall as quiet Adeel’s Matriarchal and dominant Indian mother.
There you go, that’s six award winning performances to start with, and there are many more.
It’s a touchy and dangerous subject but it’s not really all that black in its humour. It’s observational and has great constructs to play with: Forgiveness leading the way but technology too. Mira hasn’t a clue what all this “stuff” is after two decades behind bars and its subtly teased out to the pleasure of us viewers.
Really Daisy Haggard is a national treasure. But both this and Breeders have not been big hits, I can’t understand why because both are brilliant.
If either, or both, are new to you then you are in for a very big treat.
I’d love to have seen this in the hands of Lynne Ramsay, who adapted another of Alan Warner’s brilliant books for cinema. I am referring to Morvern Callar. A great, sympathetic rendering of a great book.
Michael Caton-Jones, by contrast, has made a ham fist of this.
The Sopranos, the source material, by Alan Warner is a spiffing book.
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, the stage play/musical, based on it, is one of the National Theatre of Scotland’s finest hours.
Our Ladies, also based on it, is supremely average. It’s just so….whatever.
The script, in part, destroys the source material, but there are some laugh out loud moments. I’ll give you that. But that’s because of Alan Warner.
The casting is more patchy than my lawn.
The acting more variable than a digital radio in the Highlands.
But my real ire is reserved for time continuity. Our Ladies start at their School in Fort William at, let’s say 8.45, but by 11 am they have driven to Edinburgh, rehearsed a choir competition, changed and hit the pubs before they are even open. Come on Michael (Caton-Jones).
And is the book not set in Oban?
The book is supremely feminist and lambasts its male characters but the movie simply caricaturises them. Every single man in this movie is poor (apart from the wee specky love interest of Orla).
It’s directed with a lack of sympathy and it’s poorly cast all round. I mean one of the girls was 27 when she played the part. Come on man.
I found it tolerable, but only just. I really could not be more ambivalent about this.
As we reach the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (or September the 11th if you can’t get your head round this confusing American dating approach) there’s been a slew of great documentaries hitting our screens. I’d argue this is the best. It’s hard to imagine better frankly.
For years my all time favourite documentary (if favourite is the right word) has been 102 Minutes That Changed America (it captured the attack on, and collapse of, the Twin Towers through a massive stitched together segue of found footage, in real time. I reviewed it here in 2009, back in the early days of my blog.
But this new series has raised the bar to a new level by tracking down a whole bunch of people who were there (essentially survivors), caught on mostly newsreel footage at the time that made people, the producers for sure, ask themselves. “I wonder what happened to that guy?” (It’s mainly men. Mainly from the uniformed services, and particularly the New York Fire Department.)
So they went out and found them and interviewed them around their footage – every bit as horrifying today as it was then.
You know, if you were to plan a terrorist atrocity you could not do it more effectively than Al Qaeda, under Osama Bin Laden’s leadership, planned this.
The interviews are essentially personal stories about how and why they got there, who they interacted with (saved, saw die at their sides, lost).
There are some truly extraordinary tales of heroism in all this. And that footage. Hours and hours of it.
Again and again we see the planes strike, the buildings crumble, the jumpers jump.
Is it appropriate to be so enthralled by this real life disaster, that destroyed the lives on nearly 3,000 as well as their multiple diasporae?
I mean, it’s been played out so many times that you wouldn’t think it could still grab you by the pit of the stomach, the pit of the colon actually, quite so viscerally.
But it’s engrossing. It’s so utterly spectacular.
It sort of shames me to be such a voyeur, and yet, it’s also like a modern day pilgrimage. An homage to the bravery and good or bad luck of these ordinary people.
One floor higher: death.
One room eastward: survival.
The sheer lottery of it all is what these stories bring to life. So movingly, so sympathetically teased out of these deeply respectful people.
In many ways it’s actually a tribute to Americans and the American dream because time and again this tells of the selflessness of people. It opens a window on New York’s cosmopolitanship because every ethnicity, every immigrant nation is represented.
Time and again I was in tears as these gripping stories unfolded with little or no blame. No why me’s? No hatred.
It’s a masterpiece on almost every level. Editing, direction, music, pace, drama.
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.
Hear Hear. Utter shite. Ed.
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.
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!
Sodom and Gomorah were two Jordanian cities in the book of Genesis.
From Wikipedia “The Lord reveals to Abraham that he would confirm what he had heard against Sodom and Gomorrah, “and because their sin is very grievous.”
The sins of the wholly Catholic characters of Gomorrah fall fairly squarely into the camp of “grievous”. Indeed, not one of them can be in any way excused. And yet, we love them. Tony soprano, and his mates, by contrast, appear almost saintlike.
For Gommorahns are bad bad people. Not bad in a tut tut sort of way, bad in a callous, pointless, hollow and frankly evil way.
The level of violent revenge, the principal driver of Gomorrah, is breathtaking in its brutality and its unforgivable ness.
And yet, we grow close to some of them, notably Ciro and Patrizia.
The story, over 48 episodes with 12 more to come in Serie 5, centres around the Camorra wars of Napoli, a city I have been fortunate enough to visit twice, and love dearly (probably my favourite Italian city).
The city is carved into gang ‘owned’ neighbourhoods focussing primarily on Secondigliano, a Northern slum of the city, famous for its four sail shaped Brutalist tower blocks – rabbit warrens of hidden streets that house the wealthy drug dealers that rule the community.
Genarro Savastano, son of Don Pietro Savastano, is the central character (the Tony Soprano figure). his presence underpins the whole series although he by no means dominates the action. We see him rise from a fat wimpy kid into a ruthless killer who tries hard, at times, to leave his life of crime and rebuild his reputation as a more philanthropic business tycoon. But family honour and preservation of his reputation keep sucking him back into his ways.
He’s a dick.
He’s also, like several of the characters, probably saved from his extraordinarily narrow acting range by the fact that the entire show is performed in Italian and the beauty of the language masks a nagging feeling that he cannot really act.
His facial expressions, dominated by a biting of his bottom lip as he stares off camera, are limited in the extreme. Patrizia (his rags to bitches sidekick) played by Cristiana Dell’Ana fares little better, her range runs from resting bitch face to surly pout.
Either this is method acting par excellence or it’s not. Decide for yourself.
Either way, it doesn’t really matter because its gripping and compelling from start to finish.
The endless wars (and endless car journeys) are more repetitive than a week with Phillip Glass, again it doesn’t matter because what the series does evoke a unique mood, driven by a complex and exhausting narrative that’s utterly spellbinding.
The directors favour a tableaux composition of gang members that are certainly biblical and always beautifully realised; in car parks, warehouses, underpasses, doorways and alleyways and the spectacular graveyards that are commonly visited.
The music, whilst overly directional in its use of receptive themes, is magnificent and underscores the action to perfection.
The shadow of the Catholic church is impossible to escape. Many a killing is precursed by its perpetrator blessing him or herself with a sign of the cross. Many of the drug dens and meeting places of the gangs are in churches. Many of the killings (and there are literally hundreds) happen in places of worship. It reminds us of the inglorious history and commercial greed of the Vatican.
I can say with certainty that no TV series has ever taken me in to this extent (not the aforementioned Sopranos, not the West Wing, the Wire, Breaking Bad, nothing) so for that reason I have to proclaim it the greatest TV series ever made.
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.
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.
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.
Jesus Christ
The Prophet Mohammed
Hitler
Prince
Bruce Springsteen
Justin Currie
Bob Mortimer
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.
This blew me away from the first bar of Mogwai’s omnipresent, brooding, lurking, evil, insidious, dangerous, murky, scary score.
In fact Mogwai is one of the reasons this programme scored a perfect 10 for me.
It’s electrifying. The violence is brutal but necessary and the story, although often complex, is worth disentangling.
It’s the best use of multi POV I’ve seen in a long time. Very long scenes that start with an innocuous framing device; a door, a forklift truck load of jalapeños, for example, become the jumping off point for two, occasionally three, ‘takes’ on a plot-critical scene. It’s genius.
The acting is obscenely great and as it develops it’s the Hodgkinson-suffering drug dealmaker’s son, played by Dane DeHaan, that eventually sits atop a masterful pile of gritty, entirely believable characters. Outstanding.
It’s a three level story about cocaine smuggling by the mafia from the Mexican Narcos via a New York shipping family (Andrea Risbourgh, DeHann and Gabriel Byrne) who broker a $60m transaction and oversee its calamity-ridden transfer from A to B via most of Africa (the bad bits).
And being Catholic takes a right good kicking by the way.
It’s white knuckle from start to finish (thank you Mogwai) and thrillingly filmed. At one point I said to my wife “I wish I could see this in cinema”.
I expect this to clear up in awards season. Bravo!
Another cracker from the BBC (and Frontline PBS) narrated superbly by brave and intrepid journalist Josh Baker who surely puts himself at risk as he ventures in and out of Syria for both this Syria and his journalistic day job.
It tells the story of a perhaps radicalised hometown queen American Samantha Sally by her Islamic husband, Moussa Elhassani.
I say perhaps because it’s not clear from the off whether Samantha’s coercion by her husband into the depth of Daesh territory, indeed into the Caliphate is willing or otherwise.
Her two children, especially son Matthew, become poster kids for ISIS as they are forced to make anti-American propaganda films.
The story is complicated and the layers of truths, half truths and lies are difficult to disentangle but this is what makes for such compelling listening.
It’s brilliantly told by Baker and is terrifying in what it reveals, true or otherwise because whether Samantha Sally’s story is true or not, others’ like her surely are.
Gripping and superbly produced this one is well worth the long listen.
The thing that marks out this spectacularly honest documentary is Aretha Franklin’s melancholia.
It’s as if she’s been transported there by another being. Her God? She is so in the moment. So devoid of ego, unlike her entourage, as to make it a truly ‘religious’ experience, not just for her but for the viewer too.
The melancholia manifests itself as a lost look. Separated from the action, the film making onluy there for one reason. To sing.
And there is zero theatrics. Zero showmanship. Zero bullshit.
just an honest to goodness outpouring of singing as best as she can muster and her best will just have to be good enough. Cos that’s all she’s got.
I’ve never seen a music documentary so compellingly believable about the motivations of its maker, that motivation appears to be the love of her God and her fellow humankind.
![Amazing Grace [Official Trailer] - In Theaters April 5, 2019 - YouTube](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ypHZbtqSU48/maxresdefault.jpg)
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