Kirstin Innes

Site specifics: Deep Sea World

9 Jul 2009

What is it? Dah-duh. Dah-duh. Dah-duh dah-duh dah-duh … That was a textual rendering of the Jaws theme, right? Right! Because this fortnight we’re focusing on Scotland’s own shark haven, Deep Sea World! You’re chipper today We just really…

Preview 2009 - Fashion

8 Jan 2009

For years now, predicting the upcoming season’s trends has been a matter of guessing which decade of the 20th century we’ll be nicking our looks from. Mini dresses and go-go boots? Flares? Flares again? Flares on men? All this rifling through the…

The best things to do in Glasgow

22 Apr 2010

Where to … … take a walk Dumbarton Road is Mecca for enthusiastic charity shoppers (tip: start off at the Salvation Army near Byres Road) – make a day of it by wandering round the junk and vintage shops of nearby Ruthven Lane first. (Kirstin…

It’s Only A Movie - An Evening with Mark Kermode launches his autobiography

1 Feb 2010

The Exorcist-obsessed, leather-clad and utterly iconic film critic is in (both) town(s) this fortnight, to discuss his autobiography, It’s Only A Movie, probably in a sardonic and slightly sarcastic fashion. Little-known Kermode fact: he plays double…

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 best Scottish websites

The top 30 websites made for and by Scots

21 Jul 2011

When putting together this list, we weren’t necessarily looking for the biggest or the best-known cultural websites in Scotland. We were looking for unique and interesting ideas, cleverly realised and lovingly maintained on the web. This might mean that…

The rough guide to Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside

Neighbourhood Watch: The best bits by the beach

24 Mar 2011

What’s it like? An utterly charming, slightly wonky area of Edinburgh, characterised by the city’s only beach and a very distinct, anti-corporate local community ethos. Formerly the holiday destination of most Central Belters, a lack of investment in…

Pick-up techniques - interview with Neil Strauss

31 Jan 2008

IceDragon, Scotland’s number one PUA (pickup artist), is trying to lock me into conversation. However, he’s quickly surrounded. Deep Vertigo has perched at his shoulder and five other members of the Glasgow lair are hovering on the fringes. Chance, 20…

Female focused sex shops

4 Oct 2007

This week I’ve been spending time in sex shops. Oh, stop sniggering at the back there. I bet you’re thinking of sticky floors and flickering neon, now, aren’t you? Grubby windows and lone, sweaty-palmed gentlemen who can’t quite meet the cashier’s eye.

All the Queen’s Children

An impressive, unflinching piece of fluid theatre

9 Aug 2010

The teens of Reading Youth Theatre devised this unflinching, impressive piece of fluid theatre themselves around the stories of real-life teenage asylum seekers (some of whom are in the company). Samuel is forced to swim to shore, swaggering, glam Lule…

Interview with Sum author David Eagleman

4 Nov 2009

Brian Eno composed a score for it. Stephen Fry sent sales rocketing when he mentioned it on Twitter and Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker and Miranda Richardson have been recorded reading from it. Kirstin Innes meets David Eagleman, author of Sum, one of 2009’s…

Holocaust Memorial Day

17 Jan 2008

For most of Scotland, the end of January means Burns Night. Whisky, tradition and rousing renditions of ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’; a time for national nostalgia and a noisy assertion, however fleeting, of equality. Perhaps it’s fitting then that a…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

Site Specifics: Edinburgh Castle

14 May 2009

What is it? Do I really have to answer this? It’s that gigantic castle thing on a rock dominating your capital city. Yeah, we know Look, it may seem like rather an obvious choice, but really, when was the last time you actually visited? May is the…

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…

Graffimenco combines live graffiti with flamenco

4 May 2010

Like graffiti art? Course you do. Like flamenco dancing? Absolutely. Well, haven’t you been longing for somebody to put them together into one riotous burst of graffiti-splattered, passionate Spanish dance-art? No, we’re not entirely sure what the…

Chris Packham - Wild thing

30 Oct 2009

Chris Packham recently suggested that we should just let the giant panda die out. As he comes to Glasgow, Kirstin Innes talks to the controversial conservationist.

Site Specifics: The Falkirk Wheel

25 Jun 2009

Occupation? The world’s only rotating boatlift. There are two canals which run through Falkirk but don’t connect, see? The Wheel lifts boats from one to the other. And commemorates the millennium. Aye, nine years ago it was millenniums as far as the eye…

Retro Rebels

19 Mar 2009

This week’s shopping pages were inspired by Margaret Thatcher. Bear with us, here. This is not a dubious excuse to tie the current vogue for padded shoulders back into some monstrous 1980s power-dressing aesthetic, as fashion editors always do whenever…

Underneath The Arches

8 Jan 2009

Glasgow’s Arches, as anyone who’s worked there will tell you, is the sort of place that doesn’t so much defy your expectations as consistently confound them. Audiences might marvel at the sort of building that can stage a theatre show, art exhibition…

Glasgow grins and bares it

29 Nov 2007

Celebrate your cellulite this Christmas! Professional ego-booster Gok Wan is in town for the live How To Look Good Naked roadshow. Two audience members will get the full-on nudie glow, and a host of hairstylists and make-up artists will be doling out…

Shop - Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop

18 Oct 2007

I’ve picked the worst possible time of the year to interview Julia Walton. It’s 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon, just before Hallowe’en, and the door of Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop is constantly jingling. ‘Yes, it’s definitely our busiest time,’ she says…

Chris Cleave - Gold

Well-timed Olympic-themed novel fails to fulfill the promise of its intriguing premise

22 May 2012

There’s something intriguing about the mindset of those athletes who are honed from a very young age into Olympic machines. Lives are altered irrevocably in pursuit of a small gold disc and the too-fleeting associated glory: a strange, self-obsessed way…

Words Per Minute: Five new Scottish writers

Allan Wilson, Neil Butler, Kirsty Logan, William Letford, Simon Sylvester

16 Dec 2011

Allan Wilson. His brilliant debut collection, Wasted in Love, pulls together spare, twisted stories from Glasgow's young and wasted. He's a great reader of his own work, too. Neil Butler. Two great books of short stories by young Scottish gents in one…

Neighbourhood watch: Newington, Edinburgh

A guide to the ares of the Scottish capital dominated by Edinburgh University

27 May 2011

What’s it like? Okay, we’ll get the inevitable out of the way first. There are a lot of students living in Newington. And while we know some of our readers aren’t that keen on students, their presence does imbue the area with a certain bounce and life…