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…