Brian Donaldson

Katherine Ryan: Little Miss Conception

Canadian comedian's hits Edinburgh with show about crucial early years

6 Jul 2011

As a little girl growing up in the Canadian smalltown of Sarnia (not a made-up place), Katherine Ryan’s parents put her forward into those pageants that only north Americans are capable of laying on. Yet even at an early age, Ryan showed a healthy…

The best free and cheap things to do in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Visit a library, go for a walk, bake a cake or see some cheap theatre

21 Jan 2011

Beat the January blues with these guaranteed pick-me-ups, suggested by our writers and some friends of The List. They’re all free, or cost just a few quid, so you’ll come out of winter with your bank balance intact and a smile on your face

Glasgow-set Lip Service may have more than just homophobes turning it off

Is new BBC3 drama just The L Word with rain?

17 Feb 2011

A recent poll by the BBC found that one in five people felt ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘very uncomfortable’ with gay people having their stories told on television. A mere 16 years after the ‘Brookside kiss’, such a stat can either be read as slow progress or…

Highlights from the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe programme

Daniel Kitson, Billy the Mime and Paolo Bianchi set to appear

22 May 2012

The Fringe madness is looming on the horizon and as long as the nation isn’t holed up with Olympics fever, this could well be another record-breaking year. You’ll be less than surprised to hear there’s a massive amount of comedy on show, including a…

US drama Revenge suffers from an absence of likeable characters

The drama stars Emily VanCamp and Madeleine Stow

22 May 2012

Now here’s a new US show that might well have ideas way above its station with an on-screen quote from Confucius hinting at the multiple tragedies which lie ahead. Revenge (E4, Mon 28 May, 9pm) is populated by characters who take boats down to Haiti for…

Tracy Beaker Returns

7 Jan 2010

Anyone who tunes in to CBBC from time to time might not know it, but it’s five years since the last new episode of the show featuring the abandoned and shouty Tracy Beaker. But that constant loop of archive 20-minute snapshots of life within the…

Profile - The Wee Man

29 Nov 2007

Who’s he then? Creation of Neil Bratchpiece, smallest comedy member of the not very tall Bratchpiece Family, The Wee Man is a pure wee basturt Burberry fiend whose stage demeanour ranges wildly from quite threatening to really very threatening…

US TV comedy reviews - 2 Broke Girls and Suburgatory

Two sitcoms let down by overt product placement

18 Apr 2012

There could be a theme developing here. In the pilot episode for New Girl, scatty teacher Zooey Deschanel discovered her live-in man was cheating on her and left to wind up rooming with three guys. In the opening episode of 2 Broke Girls (E4, Thu, 9pm…

Lucy Porter

A set down to its bare bones

14 Aug 2008

While it may have been slightly dispiriting for Lucy Porter to hop out on stage to a less than packed auditorium, there's little in her jovial demeanour to suggest crushed hopes. To spend an hour in Porter's company is akin to having a litre of Jelly…

Kid loves - Children's books round-up

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Harry Potter may have played his last game of Quidditch and Lemony Snicket’s series of events have unfortunately ceased to be, but there are still plenty of iconic figures hanging around in children’s literature. Brian Donaldson finds ten of them…

Comedy picks for the Edinburgh Fringe 2011

20 Jul 2011

David O’Doherty Two shows this year from the beloved man of lo-fi musical comedy with the high-laugh quotient. His usual brilliant sit-down/stand-up fare, David O’Doherty is Looking Up, is augmented by his debut on the one-man comic play scene. Rory…

Merlin

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA It would perhaps be unfair to describe this new BBC1 post-teatime ‘is it ok to let the kids watch?’ show as ‘Robin Hood meets Doctor Who’, but you can see what the schedulers were going for when they plopped this fresh take on the Arthurian…

Kids Events

14 Aug 2008

When Miranda Richardson so memorably played the child-like Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder, a career in entertaining kids seemed to be in the offing. With Horrid Henry (16 Aug) she appears to have finally grasped that opportunity by voicing the little…

Births, Deaths and Marriages

New radio sitcom from Alan Partridge regular David Schneider

22 May 2012

The old triumvirate of hatch, match and dispatch will surely prove fertile for the big comedic brain of David Schneider as he launches his new radio sitcom. Set in a Local Register Office, chief registrar Malcolm Fox (not Ian Rankin’s post-Rebus…

Katherine Ryan: Little Miss Conception

An edgy story of pageant culture

8 Aug 2011

When Katherine Ryan is stopped in her tracks on hearing that someone in the audience has relatives in her very small Canadian home town of Sarnia, it marks a first for her Fringe debut show. There seems very little that will get in the way of this stage…

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Economically-told novella from the master storyteller

21 Jul 2011

(Jonathan Cape) Imprecise memory, lifelong regrets and the inconsistencies between shared histories are at the heart of Julian Barnes’ short and sharp new novella. As a title, The Sense of an Ending refers to the way in which his characters…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

The fame game - 20th century icons

Celebrity impersonations from Madonna to Morcambe

13 Jul 2009

Next year the Fringe will be wall to wall Jacko. This year, Brian Donaldson finds a broad range of 20th century icons coming at us

Different strokes

1 Aug 2007

Having written one of the UK’s finest ever sitcoms, Sean Lock is back pounding the beat on the stand-up stage. Brian Donaldson talks to the man who has finally left bitterness behind

Junior Melting Pot proves kids can be funny

The show features young performers with both established and original material

22 May 2012

Perhaps it’s been a side effect of the old showbusiness adage about not working with children or animals, but when you see kids in comedy sketch shows, we are usually asked to laugh at youngsters saying things that adults might say (more often than not…

Preview of 2012 - Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

Renton, Sick Boy et al are revisited in this Trainspotting prequel

6 Jan 2012

Wonder how Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and co got to be the drugged-up life-rejecting Leith loons in Trainspotting? Well, wonder no more, as the publication of Skagboys brings us a bit more background on the individual and social circumstances revolving…

The Midnight Beast - Book At Us Now

Unfunny pop-parody book designed to cash in on upcoming TV fame

18 Oct 2011

(Coronet) ‘We mock the living hell out of stuff for a living,’ claim London pop parody trio The Midnight Beast. Even in this disposable age, simply poking fun at more talented people can only stretch so far before the game is up. Success rarely…

World Press Photo

The List looks at this year's exhibition

16 Jul 2010

Brian Donaldson casts an eye over the winning shots in the World Press Photo collection and witnesses both horror and heaven. Sometimes even captured within the same image.

The Bridge continues the Scandinavian trend for top-quality television crime drama

The series follows in the footsteps of The Killing and Borgen

23 Apr 2012

Those crazy Scandics are at it again with yet another astonishingly addictive TV drama. After the success of The Killing and Borgen, The Bridge (BBC Four, Sat, 9pm) keeps up the momentum albeit with a show that is a far more raw affair. There’s almost…

Sara Pascoe

Disappointing debut from Freud-studying comic

24 Aug 2010

Given that she’s performing her debut solo Fringe hour, the fact that Sara Pascoe is directing two other shows by more experienced comics might have gone a little to her head. Then again, this show is entitled Sara Pascoe vs Her Ego, and judging by the…

Five of the best free Comedy shows at the Fringe 2010

We count the pennies and decide it’s time to get some laughs for nowt

29 Jul 2010

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Romantic Comedy Back in 1948, two people(s) met at a convention in Geneva and fell in love. But they’ve been at each other’s throats for some time now. Will they ever learn to get along? Perhaps only in a two-person…

An Hour to Sing fo Your Soul - Kevin Bridges' stand-up show

23 Jul 2009

When comics make their Fringe debuts, many of them are hell-bent on working up the biggest theme their minds and mouths can maintain over the course of an hour. Not such manufactured tosh for a guy like Kevin Bridges, the latest in a long line of great…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Perfect Vagina

Channel 4, Sun 17 Aug, 10pm

14 Aug 2008

Get set to cross your legs and grit your teeth as Lisa Rogers fronts a very different kind of scrapheap challenge as part of Channel 4’s The G-Spot strand. We’ve all read the headlines and overheard the news that women are literally queuing up round the…

Alan Warner - The Deadman's Pedal

Evocative and personal rural drama from the Morvern Callar author

22 May 2012

In a literary career which has played down the overly autobiographical tendency (all that writing from a female perspective malarkey for one thing), The Deadman’s Pedal seems far and away Alan Warner’s most personal fiction to date. We return to the…

Interview: Irvine Welsh on Trainspotting prequel Skagboys

The new book, Leith, Twitter and the importance of subcultures

25 Apr 2012

Early on in our transatlantic phone conversation, it suddenly becomes unclear whether I’m chatting to Irvine Welsh or Frank Begbie. When I ask whether he might well be the busiest man in Scottish culture right now, the response comes over loud, clear…

Crime books round-up – March 2012

Doug Johnstone, Alex Gray and Mari Jungstedt deliver new crime novels this month

17 Feb 2012

As if to show that fiction readers love a good bit of murder and mystery, death and deceit, blood and booze, there’s acres of it about to be scattered around the nation’s book shelves. Doug Johnstone (of this parish) parks his Hit and Run (Faber) at our…

The Hot 100 2011 - No. 56: Freya Mavor

Moving on after being Mini McGuinness in Skins

16 Dec 2011

All good things, they say, must come to an end. So with the Skins policy of changing casts every two series, Freya Mavor may well be currently filming her final scenes of the popular E4 show. ‘I feel petrified of leaving my baby behind,’ Edinburgh’s…

Padgett Powell, author of You & I - interview

The writer follows up his postmodern 'questions' novel with a book-length dialogue

18 Oct 2011

When Padgett Powell was a boy, he knew little of the settled life. With a trucker father, his family was constantly on the move and he reckons that he attended ten different schools and lived in 17 houses during his perpetual-motion upbringing. Perhaps…

Advertising, Mad Men and the future - John Hegarty interview

Advertising guru set for Edinburgh Book Festival 2011

8 Jul 2011

"In the end, virtually everything I work on is, to a certain extent, irrelevant." After the best part of an hour's chat in which John Hegarty has pretty much sold me on the unparalleled joys and benefits of advertising, it's a refreshing shock to the…

Ewan Morrison - Tales from the Mall

Author's latest project contains pictures from shopping centres

18 Aug 2010

Can you give us five words to describe Tales from the Mall? Anecdotes, confessions, myths, underbelly, consumerism. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? Wishing fame on a writer is tantamount to desiring their demise as…

Dommett & Lapaert

Material tossed aside for engaging tomfoolery

13 Aug 2010

The bubbling confidence of manic youthery shines through this knockabout gig as Joel Dommett and Eric Lampaert take turns in undermining the other’s half-hour(ish) set. Sending slickness home for the night with a tenner in its back pocket, this is a…

Ventriloquist Nina Conti brings new show to Fringe

Talk to the Hand brings chat-show format to puppetry

29 Jul 2010

Once a reluctant ventriloquist, Nina Conti is now exploring the possibilities of the form. Brian Donaldson hears about weird gigs and strange road trips

William Nicholson

16 Apr 2010

Perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated Hollywood scripts, Shadowlands and the co-written Gladiator, Nicholson is in town to discuss his new, tenth novel (a figure which includes six fantasy tales for kids), Rich and Mad. This one features a young…

5 Things You Might Not Know About... Pam Ayres

18 Mar 2010

1. Her first job was as a clerk in the Civil Service, before joining the Air Force, where she was posted to Singapore. It was there that Ayres first started performing poetry for her mates and when she came home she kept her schtick up by doing shows in…

Kids' Events

Trains and tweens dominate the first week

7 Aug 2008

Trains and tweens dominate the first week The good, the naughty and the hungry are all in evidence in the opening salvo of the kids programme, with the whole shebang kicked off in boisterous style by queen of tween Cathy Cassidy (9 Aug) who presents…

House of Windsor

Regal sketches with crowning glories to come

9 Aug 2007

With last year’s debut as the Future, Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas received some rave reviews and an awards nomination before ending the summer being ensnared by one of the country’s powerhouse comedy PR companies. This year that soaring promise will…

Interview: Stewart Francis

The Canadian comedian discusses Bill Hicks, Ricky Gervais and the other Stu Francis

28 Feb 2012

When he first arrived in the UK, there was a recurring subject that would crop up around any discussion of Canadian comic Stewart Francis: was he aware of the iconic 80s kids show presenter who shared that name and boasted a catchphrase about his…

Fist of Fun

Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's debut TV appearance given a DVD outing

28 Feb 2012

‘It’s not as good as I remembered’. Thus sprach Stewart Lee about the first series of Fist of Fun, the BBC Two show which first introduced the bequiffed comic and Richard Herring, his cohort of many years, to a TV audience. While it might not be…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

EIBF 2011: five lengthy literary works

featuring Adam Levin, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Stephen King and Tolstoy

24 Aug 2011

The Instructions The story of a megalomaniac 10-year-old boy who may or may not be the messiah takes place over the course of just four frenetic days, but Levin’s massive book takes in Israel’s battle for existence and an entire religion’s search for…

The Baby Diary

Wry play featuring couple soon to be parents

23 Aug 2011

Emily Watson Howes’ wry play features a couple soon to become parents: she’s suitably over-excited, he’s more concerned about losing his pet rabbit Duncan as he relates to his filmed ‘dadblog’. For a piece about the relentless march of technology, it’s…

World Press Photo 2011 in Edinburgh - Jodi Bieber interview

Photo of mutilated young Afghan woman a symbol of tormented times

8 Jul 2011

Bibi Aisha was 18 when the Taliban came calling for her just before midnight. Forced into a mountain clearing in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, she was put on trial and convicted by a local commander. Her crime: fleeing from a violent husband…

5 things you might not know about... Shappi Khorsandi

Some lesser-known snippets about the British-Iranian comedian

4 Mar 2011

1 Khorsandi grew up in west London in the 1980s after her Iranian family fled in exile to the UK. At the age of 11, she wrote to the Ayatollah Khomeini to ask him not to kill her father, a journalist and comedian whose stock-in-trade was political…

Joey Page

A distinctive voice that belongs to someone else

23 Aug 2009

Joey Page comes to Edinburgh for his full Fringe debut with a ringing endorsement in his lugs from Noel Fielding. Which is as good an explanation as any why a large proportion of the decently-numbered Caves gathering look like the sort of people who go…

Janeane Garofalo makes a Fringe debut

Stand-up from a liberal-leaning political satirist

13 Jul 2009

Janeane Garofalo has been to Scotland once before when a former boyfriend appeared in Annie Griffin’s Glasgow-set comic-drama The Book Group in 2002. ‘It was a really beautiful place, but at the time, unfortunately, I had a bit of a drinking problem. I…

Alun Cochrane

14 May 2009

The man who used to do stand-up in a comfy sitting down position with a Call My Bluff-style bell beside him and made probably the best joke about unemployed estate agents at last year’s Fringe heads north once more. Here, he’ll deliver a short set as a…

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

5 Things you might not know about - Lee Evans

16 Oct 2008

1 Before he became a comedic superstar, Lee Evans played drums in a punk band all-too aptly called The Forgotten Five and was assistant to a spiritualist window dresser in Southend. 2 In 1993, the lad who left school when he could barely read won…

13 Kids and Wanting More

22 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY Channel 4, Thu 22 May, 9pm When is enough really quite enough? The subjects of this film clearly don’t believe in the concept, as they churn out child after baby after offspring, some for reasons of faith, others simply because they love…

Travel books round-up - June 2012

New books from Hardeep Singh Kohli, Samanth Subramanian and Terry Darlington

22 May 2012

He may be a man of Glasgow, but Hardeep Singh Kohli knows a thing or two about travelling around London. In The 38 Bus: A Love Song to a Bus Route (Unbound) he pours out the emotions he has for the route which has served the capital for a century…

Ewan Morrison - Tales from the Mall

A wealth of information and anecdotes drawn together to paint a funny, scary portrait of our times

22 May 2012

As Ewan Morrison notes in his introduction, the shopping mall is a potent symbol of the homogenised world in which we live now. You could look at images of shopping centres in Dundee and Dresden and chances are you won’t be able to tell them apart. The…

Interview: Eowyn Ivey - author of The Snow Child

Debut author discusses tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska

1 Feb 2012

Give us five words to describe The Snow Child? Alaskan. Wild. Magical. Rugged. Tender. Name one author who should be more famous than they are now? M Allen Cunningham. His novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow is one of the finest I have ever…

Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

Bombay-centric social drama with tangible atmosphere but little narrative drive

1 Feb 2012

(Faber) Narcopolis begins and ends with the word ‘Bombay’. Although several individuals vie for centre stage in poet Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, the main character here is India’s most densely populated city. Viewed as a solemn and dangerous hive…

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry David's groundbreaking sitcom stays at the top of its game for an eighth season

16 Sep 2011

After the high watermark of season seven’s Seinfeld-reunion storyline, Larry David brings us dragging and cringing back into his world of petty obsessions, chronic misunderstandings and friendships permanently teetering on the brink of abrasive…

EIBF 2011: five book-to-screen adaptations

Featuring Joe Dunthorne, Val McDermid, Michel Faber, Alan Hollinghurst and Alexander McCall Smith

17 Aug 2011

Joe Dunthorne With his debut, Submarine, the Welsh poet and author captured the peculiar, rainy-day awkwardness of adolescence, and Richard Ayoade’s film, with Dunthorne’s assistance, did a fair old stab at bringing it further to life. 19 Aug…

Holly Walsh - The Hollycopter

A brave and bittersweet recollection

17 Aug 2011

When her fellow comics were padding about the Fringe in August 2010, Holly Walsh was clowning around on Worthing Pier. Unfortunately, her charity leap into the West Sussex sea resulted in a shocking injury that led to national media coverage for the…

Rebecca Hunt's Mr Chartwell examines nature of depression

Winston Churchill's 'black dog' basis for debut novel

23 Sep 2010

The idea of the ‘black dog’ as representing a cloying cloud of depression will forever be associated with Winston Churchill. But what if that dog had a name, could walk on two paws, wore a suit and was able to chat with his victims with a healthy dose…

Ava Vidal

Short-lived comedy lessons

23 Aug 2010

When is a Fringe hour not a Fringe hour? When it’s Ava Vidal clocking off at just under 40 minutes. Which was a shame (for paying punters and the comic herself) as she was busy delivering a captivating story about her recent break-up from a ‘bad man…

Top 5 kids shows at Edinburgh Book Festival 2010

The festival’s last lap features some iconic characters, authors and places

22 Aug 2010

Julia Donaldson Along with Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, JD’s first event contains an impressive amount of songs, stories and drawings, while event number two is a solo affair in which she will regale the nippers and their guardians with a tale…

Jessica Ransom

What would you do with a million?

9 Aug 2010

The bunker that is the Pleasance Cellar has been a launch-pad for several notable Fringe careers. Rhod Gilbert and Jason Manford both performed their debut solo shows in there and last year Jonny Sweet swept to Best Newcomer glory on that stage. Mind…

If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask for One - Stewart Lee interview

25 Feb 2010

In his new show, Stewart Lee compares himself to a raft of personalities who appear to have let themselves go: Ray Liotta, Morrissey, KD Lang and Terry Christian among them. In the flesh, 41-year-old Lee might be barely recognisable from the comedic…

Cardinal Burns

Turkish delights amid the prop failure

10 Aug 2009

If there’s one thing you can be certain of from sketch duo Cardinal Burns, it’s a clean show. Not that there aren’t moments of splendid filth and degradation, but the opening sequence of an ironing, pampering and spraying duo fills the sweaty air with…

5 Things you might not know about - Derren Brown

28 May 2009

1. The man you have to initially blame/thank for the unstoppable rise of Derren Brown is Jerry Sadowitz. They first met in a magic shop in London and after swapping tricks soon became pals, with Sadowitz helping Brown get his first lecture gig for…

The Hot 100 2008

11 Dec 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

Christmas Comedy DVDs

11 Dec 2008

With one recent internet poll naming Peter Kay as the funniest British comedian who has ever lived while Michael McIntyre steamrolls up the DVD charts, it seems that comedy is not unlike the other genres when it comes to ‘popular’ ‘opinion’. There was a…

TV: Rab C Nesbit: Christmas Special

11 Dec 2008

BBC2, Tue 23 Dec, 9pm With his dishevelled demeanour and manky string vest, Rab C Nesbitt may look exactly the same as he did when we last eyeballed him staggering from our screens in the summer of 1999, but the wise old nutter fae Govan is a…

Michael McIntyre

The accent is on over-familiarity

21 Aug 2008

Last year, Michael McIntyre apparently harangued two judges on the if.comedy panel for doing this nation the great disservice of not handing him the award on a plate. Still, he could at least reassure himself of his genius with all those flattering star…

Andrew Lawrence

8 Aug 2006

It’s not easy spending an hour in the company of a stick-thin psychotic with the voice of a Joe Pasquale on two packs of Marlboro (the red kind) a day and the kind of glare Charlie Manson took years to cultivate. Even less so when the comic in question…

5 things you might not know about Jeremy Hardy

The Perrier award winner is antagonistic towards the far right

22 May 2012

1 Hampshire lad Hardy got into the stand-up game in the early 80s and scooped the Perrier in 1988 beating off competition from fellow nominees such as Doug Anthony Allstars and Robert Llewellyn. 2 His radio show Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation was…

First Writes - Elaine Proctor, author of Rhumba

The books tells the story of a Congolese boy’s life in London

22 May 2012

Give us five words to describe Rhumba? ‘They had horns and tails’. Can you name one author who should be more famous than they are now? Mark Gevisser is the brightest, most original witness to the complicated condition of being a global South…

Howard Marks in discussion event with MC5 manager John Sinclair

The two can offer different takes on the 1960s counter culture

22 May 2012

Every generation needs a figurehead to accentuate the fun side of drugs. From Thomas de Quincey to Sherlock Holmes and through to Timothy Leary, the Beatles and Bill Hicks, it’s not all been bad trips and cold turkey (if there any wags out there…

The Just Joans - Buckfast Bottles in the Rain

Underwhelming concept album from the indie-poppers

23 Apr 2012

(weePOP!) Naming themselves after a notoriously annoying tabloid columnist might be mistake number one, but it isn’t the worst of The Just Joans’ crimes. Claiming to have created an ‘audacious artistic undertaking’ of Bowie and Zappa-like proportions…

5 things you might not know about Simon Amstell

18 Apr 2012

1 Amstell’s first major TV exposure was as the rather cocky team captain of the Essex All-Stars on Channel 4’s GamesMaster in 1993, the show which featured Patrick Moore’s head. Amstell was 13 at the time, had his cap on back to front, and wore massive…

Jenni Fagan, author of Panopticon - interview

Debut features teenage girl trapped in a disturbing social experiment

17 Apr 2012

Jenni Fagan takes on this issue’s debut author Q&A. Her first book features a teenage girl trapped in a disturbing social experiment. Give us five words to describe Panopticon? Gutsy, violent, philosophical, beautiful, sad. Name one author who should be…

Iain Banks - Stonemouth

The spiritual follow-up to The Crow Road is slightly flawed, but still a page-turner

27 Mar 2012

For those Iain Banks fans not overly keen on his sci-fi work, it will be a blessed relief to see no mention of a middle initial ‘M’ in his name here. For those who loved the prickly relationships and family machinations in the smalltown Scotland of The…

US drama Homeland treads familiar territory

The series, starring Clare Danes and Damian Lewis, bears some resemblance to 24

28 Feb 2012

Damian Lewis seems to be the go-to guy for US dramas about tortured souls with a secret past. In Life, he played Charlie Crews, a detective released from prison after 12 years for a crime he didn’t commit, and in Homeland (Channel 4, Sun, 9.30pm), he’s…

Interview: Comedian Chris Ramsey's Offermation

The genial Geordie discusses offensiveness and award nominations

2 Feb 2012

During Chris Ramsey’s stand-up appearance on Russell Howard’s Good News from 2010, there’s a moment when the camera cuts to a shot of happy, laughing people. In among them is one seemingly less than amused woman who appears to have taken offence at the…

Chris Isaak - Beyond the Sun

Listenable but redundant take on some of Sun Records' finest

5 Jan 2012

(Vanguard Records/Rhino) During its 1950s heyday, Sun Records churned out standards by the bucketload from the likes of Elvis, Cash and Orbison. During the recording of Beyond the Sun, David Lynch’s favourite bequiffed rockabilly star was presumably…

St Andrew's Day - The best books from Scotland

Our editors pick highlights from Scottish books through history

25 Nov 2011

First up, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). The ultimate doppelgänger novel, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fiction about the goodly doctor and his hairy malevolent side may be officially set in London but to all intents and purposes this is a…

Sarah Hall - The Beautiful Indifference

The Booker nominee delivers a short story collection with an eye for spectacular imagery

15 Nov 2011

(Faber) Four books into her literary career and a Booker nomination in the locker (for 2004’s The Electric Michelangelo), Sarah Hall is being touted as one of the key British voices of her generation. There is little doubt that she can weave some…

The Hazey Janes - The Winter That Was

Unoriginal effort from the Dundonian indie-poppers

12 Oct 2011

(Armellodie Records) For those looking to uncover evidence that the reservoir of originality has truly dried up on contemporary music, this new effort from Dundee’s Hazey Janes might well seal the deal. After an intriguing, brief opening salvo which…

Susan Hill - The Woman in Black

Sinister ghost story with an already-established pedigree

16 Sep 2011

(Profile) As the longest running stage production in Britain after Aggie’s Mousetrap, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black clearly has an icy grip on the theatre-going public. And with news that this classic ghost story will make it onto the big screen in…

Doug Stanhope - Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere

Live DVD from the controversial stand-up

24 Aug 2011

(Roadrunner Comedy) In a short introduction to this wonderfully unhinged film, Doug Stanhope (glass of lager clamped in hand) prepares the viewer to expect the unprofessional. Anyone picking up a copy of Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere…

Chris Ramsey: Offermation

Enthusiastic natural wit is impossible to resist

23 Aug 2011

With Offermation, this lively comic discusses the cult of delivering unwanted information without prior consent, centring around some letters sent to his family. The central theme is somewhat undermined by an uplifting finale, but Ramsey’s enthusiastic…

Piff the Magic Dragon

A laconic but jaw-dropping set

17 Aug 2011

It’s not enough these days for a magician to simply get up there on stage and do some jaw-dropping trick. A gimmick is always an added extra and in John van der Put’s case, he’s chosen to dress like a dragon, give himself a suitably puntacular name and…

Meryl O’Rourke - Bad Mother

Some funny and moving material on mixed heritage

16 Aug 2011

O’Rourke won’t be the last Fringe comic to reference the street-riots but it was perhaps unwise to let us hear a better joke on the subject from her spouse. It’s an early off-note that she makes up for with some funny and moving material about her…

Toby - Lucky

Divisive duo spark a riot of tutting and scowling

12 Aug 2011

If this performance of Toby’s Lucky was set in front of a focus group, clear scientific findings would have been concluded. The semi-surreal double act are loved by student blokes in their early 20s and loathed by fortysomething women. At one point…

Five Edinburgh Book Festival guests you'll know from TV

Lucy Worsley, Bettany Hughes, Alexei Sayle, Kirsty Wark and Peter Taylor

9 Aug 2011

Lucy Worsley Delving into the intimate history of old homes and buildings is Worsley’s prime passion and her BBC Four series and book If Walls Could Talk pretty much sums it up. During her years of research, she has uncovered the fact that bedrooms…

Catie Wilkins: A Chip Off the Odd Block

Enthusiastic and wry story about parents

8 Aug 2011

While children can be so cruel, parents are nothing less than a walking embarrassment to their offspring. Especially if they, like the blood-line guardians of Catie Wilkins, are an over-emotional firecracker (mum) and a cold, pedantic robot (dad).

Surrealism and stupidity of Dr Brown Brown Brown Brown Brown kids show

Absurdist comic Phil Burgers a refreshing antidote to corporate Fringe

29 Jul 2011

Anyone who saw last year’s late-night Fringe anarchy from Dr Brown may raise an eyebrow to learn that he’s now doing a kids’ show, as well as another full-on physically comedic adult hour. To the man behind the mask, absurdist American comic Phil…

Vic & Bob's Afternoon Delights

The anarchic duo's web-based sketch comedy fails to capture their former glory

21 Jul 2011

Here we go again: seems that the death of television has marched a big step closer because Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer have stuck their latest work online rather than on the box. Hot on the heels of the excellent Alan Partridge comeback Mid Morning…

Channel Hopper: The Hour

Taut, Abi Morgan-penned period news drama starring Ben Wishaw, Romola Garai and Dominic West

21 Jul 2011

Let’s get this straight: here we have a modern BBC drama about a 1950s BBC news programme called ‘The Hour’ with each of its six episodes lasting an hour? Yes, The Hour (BBC2, Tue, 9pm) may originate from a confusing place, but through the spandex-tight…

Debut novelists at 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival

Rebecca Hunt, Adam Levin and Mary Horlock among visiting authors

8 Jul 2011

Charlotte Square Gardens will be teeming with quality first novels for the whole of August, one of which will receive the EIBF's Newton First Book Award. Brian Donaldson looks at the cream of this year's debutants

Five interesting things about... Dylan Moran

Irish comedian shares hometown with Tommy Tiernan and Pierce Brosnan

23 May 2011

1 Irishman Moran has been living in Edinburgh for some years now, but is originally from Navan, a small, five-lettered palindromic town, like Kivik in Sweden or Catac in Peru. Tiny it may be (according to the 2006 census, 3710 people resided there) but…