Jonny Ensall

The best places to eat breakfast in Glasgow and Edinburgh

We select the best cafes for the most important meal of the day

22 Mar 2010

What did you have for breakfast this morning? A thin slice of processed white toast, smattered with vegetable oil-laced spreadable butter? A dry cereal bar, full of shrivelled fruit and bound together with sugary glue? Worst still, a Sausage and Egg…

Edinburgh gets first IMAX screen

Cineworld Fountain Park to launch IMAX cinema with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

20 Dec 2011

Cineworld Fountain Park is to introduce Edinburgh's first IMAX screen from 21 December. The new cinema promises, 'ground-breaking, crystal clear digital projection, cutting edge audio technology and one of the largest screens around'. With 3D…

Summer Festivals 2012: Community

Solas, Leith and West End Fests among the best community-focused fests around Scotland this summer

25 May 2012

West End Festival Where: Various venues, West End of Glasgow, 1–24 Jun, westendfestival.co.uk Price: Free–£20 for bigger gigs Line-up: James Yorkston, Howard Marks, Suzanne Vega, Michael Marra, We Were Promised Jetpacks You want to learn Gaelic in…

Summer Festivals 2012: Best dance music live shows

Which of this year's superstar DJs have visuals to match their beats?

25 May 2012

Picture the scene. Dusk has fallen on the festival site. Tens of thousands of inebriated and euphoric festivalgoers have assembled at the main stage. They’re waiting for the headliner, whooping and hollering in anticipation. Then it happens: a guy…

Summer Festivals 2012: Ones to watch

A selection of industry experts and List writers choose their musical highlights for this summer

25 May 2012

Lanterns on the Lake Chosen by Jonny Ensall, Editor, The List What does that name bring to mind? Boats on the water? A night to remember? An ethereal choir of knitting together a sense of the magical past and the optimistic future? You’re spot on with…

Friends - Manifest!

An insidiously hooky album that's sometimes brilliant, sometimes bloomin’ annoying

22 May 2012

There are songs you can’t get out of your head, and then there are songs you wish you could get out of your head. In the latter category: ‘Hey Baby’ by DJ Otzi. In the former: Friends’ ‘Friend Crush’ and ‘I’m His Girl’. The Brooklyn band’s well-blogged…

25 things you might not know about Tom Waits

17 Jul 2008

The chance to see Tom Waits, one of the planet’s true music raconteurs, is worth £100 of anyone’s money. But did you know he once worked for the coastguard? If not, Jonny Ensall suggests you read on…

Tim Key interview: the poet discusses Edinburgh, Alan Partridge and 'sexy baths'

Comedy Award winner brings his Masterslut show to the 2011 Fringe

21 Sep 2011

The List has just presented Tim Key with two pages of facts about himself. ‘This is a very good piece of research,’ he says, commending the 16-year-old work experience person who compiled them. ‘I didn’t get to do anything like this on work experience.

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.

Austra, The Unthanks and Richard Hawley set for No Direction Home 2012

New festival with focus on quality from team behind End of the Road

23 May 2012

End of the Road has been the latte-drinking, glam-camping Guardian reader's weekender of choice almost since it's inception in 2006. Picking up plaudits from The Times and The Guardian (of course) as well as an award for 'Best Small Festival' last year…

Pere Ubu, Mogwai, Thomas Truax and Zombie Zombie set for The Glasgow Music and Film Festival

17 Feb 2010

The Music and Film Festival is a strange beast, full of contradictions and tangents that threaten to pull apart its coherence, but ultimately make it the most exciting strand of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. Co-curated by the Arches, and featuring…

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…

Metronomy - Joe Mount interview

Metronomy hit paydirt in 2011 with a perfect summer album

28 Jun 2011

As if to prove a point about Metronomy’s newfound popularity, the first time The List tries to ring front man Joe Mount for a chat he’s engaged. ‘Sorry, did you just try and get through a second ago?’ he apologises, when the phone connects. ‘The…

Sounds of the Summer 2011 Spotify Playlist

The best summer listening, as chosen by List music critics

25 May 2011

The List: Sounds of the Summer Playlist 2011 You've bought your sausages, you've scrubbed your charred old BBQ back to shiny, chrome perfection, and you've invited your most lithe and beautiful friends around to your back garden. Everything's in…

Bombay Bicycle Club, The Maccabees, The Big Pink and The Drums set for Shockwaves NME Awards Tour Glasgow date

3 Feb 2010

The latest NME tour brings another collection of bands – Bombay Bicycle Club, The Maccabees, The Big Pink and The Drums – looking to put a modern twist on familiar sounds. With sharp, noisy guitars and quivering vocals all round, the tour harks back to…

Florence and the Machine - Florence Welch interview

2 Dec 2009

Florence and the Machine’s frontwoman Florence Welch is a surprisingly normal 23-year-old, albeit one blessed with the looks of a 19th century beauty and the best singing voice of her generation. So why is she so mired in doom and gloom? Jonny Ensall…

Exposure: Broken Family Band

21 Jan 2009

The Broken Family Band are something of an anomaly. They're a British band (from the heart of folksy Cambridge no less) that have the educated Americana sound of such stateside alt superstars as Calexico or The Decemberists. Lead singer Steven Adams…

Just what is a Midgie anyway?

1 Oct 2008

For those who have recently arrived in Scotland - as opposed to residents who know these blood-sucking terrors all too well - the midgie (or midge) is a small biting insect that swarms across the Scottish countryside, delivering sharp nips to anyone…

Video: animated street art at Newhaven

Edinburgh artist Spaceboy animates a 150 metre-long mural along fishmarket shutters

4 May 2012

Edinburgh artist Mike Inglis, aka Spaceboy, has collaborated with Red Stripe on transforming the shutters of Newhaven fishmarket into a Jamaica-inspired animation. The first cut of the video can be seen below. Spaceboy pasted his illustrations…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 54: Summerhall venue offers something special

Festival debut marks beginning of major creative space in Edinburgh

16 Dec 2011

Before this August it seemed the Edinburgh Festival was already home to every sort of show and venue imaginable. So, when an entirely new major space sprang up, it was difficult to see what it might offer above the usual. On the programme at…

It's Funtime - Edinburgh pub quiz that thinks it’s a 70s gameshow

The all-singing, all-dancing brilliantly twisted world of It's Funtime

18 Nov 2011

All across the country this coming Saturday night families will sit down in front of the TV to watch people be mocked and derided in the name of entertainment. They’ll gawp at the outrageous outfits worn by the mentally unstable on X Factor. They’ll boo…

Remember Remember, Miaoux Miaoux - Glasgow Science Centre, Sat 8 Oct 2011

Fantastic electronica double-bill in impressively apt surroundings

19 Oct 2011

It’s a simple enough idea. Two nights of live music (Saturday and Sunday) inside the Glasgow Science Centre planetarium, with the performances broken up by lectures from Simon, the centre’s laser pen-wielding resident stargazer. Simple but brilliant.

John Peel’s Shed

Intimate musings on the joy of radio

8 Aug 2011

In 2002 author John Osborne won a competition to write the best two-sentence description of John Peel’s radio show and win a box of the DJ’s records. ‘Songs you want to hear. Played by a man who wants you to hear them.’ earned Osborne the prize, and he…

Dr Brown Because

Physical comedy for willing idiots

15 Aug 2010

Watching Dr Brown provides a good opportunity to test the theory that taste moves in circles. Or more specifically that something can become so stupid it will eventually plop back into the realm of bizarre genius. It’s a difficult call to make, but this…

Backbeat - Stuart Sutcliffe story comes to Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow

And the beat goes on

3 Feb 2010

This season’s major show at the Citizens Theatre is more than just a Beatles biopic. Writer/director Iain Softley explains why to Jonny Ensall