Book
| 02 August 2011
Former comedian, sex therapist and wife of Billy-Pamela Stephenson-Connelly certainly isn’t letting the grass grow under her dancing feet.
“I happen to be a person who loves good sex,” says Pamela Stephenson-Connolly, the saucy 61-year-old whose shimmering sex appeal on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing made her the star of the show. Never have sequins looked so seductive, a rumba so risqué, or a pasa doble so passionate. Indeed, never has dance so lived up to its reputation as the vertical expression of horizontal desire.
Which is hardly surprising, given that the glamorous blonde, who has been married to exuberant Glaswegian comedian and award-winning actor Billy Connolly for 22 years and with whom she has three grown-up daughters, is something of a sex goddess.
| 26 July 2010
Book yourself a seat to see some of today’s most exciting authors talking about their work. Mark Fisher browses the bestsellers.TARIQ ALI
25 August, 4.30pm
A chance for the forthright author to reflect on 20 years of work as he comes to the end of his Islam Quintet with the publication of Night of the Golden Butterfly.
MARTIN BELL
18 August, 6.30pm
The ex-BBC man reinvented himself as the voice of honesty in politics, putting him in prime position to reflect on the expenses scandal.
| 20 July 2010
With her teenage years “full of angst” and two children for inspiration, it’s no wonder Cathy Cassidy’s books strike such a chord with her readers.When Cathy Cassidy completed her first novel, she didn’t have an agent. Picking one at random “because of her funny name” – Darley Anderson – she sent off her book. Then came two surprises: “‘She’ was actually a very well spoken English gentleman,” she says. The other surprise was Anderson admitting he had never dealt with a children’s author before. “He only confessed when he’d sold it,” she laughs, “and said he hadn’t wanted to miss out on the next big thing.”
| 19 July 2010
Telling the story of Marilyn Monroe’s dog in his own words was an interesting challenge for acclaimed author Andrew O’Hagan.Whenever Andrew O’Hagan is quoted as saying that there weren’t any books in his childhood home, his father is quick to correct him. “He says it’s not true – we had the phonebook,” says the Glasgow-born novelist who grew up in Ayrshire. There was another book too: a biography of Marilyn Monroe.
To the young, hungry-eyed O’Hagan, she was “a modern myth, a fairy story, a woman from a poor background who was magically transformed. She was a manifestation of post-war optimism, and I was completely beguiled by her.” It’s fitting, then, that his latest novel is entitled The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his friend, Marilyn Monroe.
| 19 July 2010
She began her career as a trapeze artist, then became a Hollywood star. So what prompted Emily Woof to turn her hand to writing?Emily Woof has crammed a lot into her life so far. As a stage actor she has written and performed her own material; as a movie star she appeared opposite Rufus Sewell in The Woodlanders, and jostled with male strippers – including Robert Carlyle – in The Full Monty. As a professional trapeze artist, she trained for eight hours a day, building up her strength on a diet of sheep’s livers. Yet she admits that writing her debut novel, The Whole Wide Beauty, was the scariest proposition yet. “When you’re on stage,” she says, “there’s an illusion of being slightly in control. You can hide behind characters and feel that you’re somehow steering the thing. Writing fiction is far more open, especially as most of the characters were slightly different versions of me.”
| 16 July 2010
Presenter and novelist Baron Melvyn Bragg has always been at the forefront of the arts scene in Britain, and is passionate about making the arts accessible to everyone.
Life for Melvyn Bragg has always been a juggling act. Best known as the driving force behind the flagship arts series, The South Bank Show, the prolific broadcaster, writer and former Controller of Arts at ITV has 21 novels and 13 works of non-fiction to his name. Diversity is his trademark: during The South Bank Show’s 33-year history, we were as likely to be treated to an insight into Dolly Parton or Billy Connelly as more highbrow subjects such as Francis Bacon or the Royal Shakespeare Company. “That’s exactly what I set out to do when I was given my own arts programme back in ‘77,” he says. “I wanted to bring popular art into the same tent as established art. It wasn’t going to be the odd tokenist gesture. Everything from pop music to grand opera to theatre and TV would all be given serious attention.”
| 02 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
31 August, 11.30
It’s lucky for Antonia Fraser that narrative histories became fashionable. Obviously she has reaped great success from its return a la mode, but also because one gets the impression Lady Fraser simply could not constrain herself to simply tell us the facts and trends.
| 02 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
27 August, 15.00
It was apparent from the outset that the audience demographic was on the silver-haired side but this did not, tellingly, detract from an interesting and stimulating session.
| 01 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
30 August, 21.00
Don’t be fooled by Margaret Atwood’s appearance. A head of tight, powder-grey curls, hands and feet demurely crossed, she looks sweet, though she avoids fragility, and looks as though she would offer you tea and talk sewing patterns and grandchildren.
| 01 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
30 August 20.00
Normally on entering an event such as this you are reminded, or rather told, to turn all mobile devises off. It would be in Douglas Coupland’s allotted hour that roughly 600 people were asked to swap numbers with someone nearby and ring each other to create a Cell Phone Sonata!
| 28 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
26 August, 20.00
‘Pandaemonium’ is right! Within the first few pages of his new book, Christopher Brookmyre presents us with a bus-load of teenagers bent on farting, singing rude songs, sexual innuendo, wrestling over a guitar... and as if that weren’t enough, someone manages to set the bus (not to mention one of the teenagers) on fire, causing the coach driver to crash and kill a deer...
| 26 August 2009
ScottishPower Studio Theatre
23 August, 19.00
Sharon Olds is a funny mixture. Stepping tentatively onto the stage in her black two-piece, an incongruous sparkly lock in her flowing grey hair, she looks benign and witchy.
| 26 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
24 August, 20.00
Vince Cable has had a multicoloured career. Deputy leader of the Lib Dems, he’s previously been a diplomat, civil servant, high-flying economist, and even acting party leader in the pre-Clegg days. Oh, and, so chairman Brian Taylor delightedly informed a packed RBS marquee, he’s also an ace ballroom dancer.
| 24 August 2009
Scottish Power Studio Theatre
20th August, 12.00
Discussing his new book Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History David Aaronovitch was captivating from beginning to end. It perhaps should have come as no surprise that the audience was full of vehement conspiracy theorists wanting to get their oar in, and David did very well to hold his ground.
| 24 August 2009
Scottish Power Studio Theatre
22 August, 15.30
Sedaris is so unexpected. Dressed in khaki trousers (not corduroy or denim) and a smart shirt, Sedaris, a man short in stature, appears to be normal, or rather, boring. Not at all the type of gentleman that would, moments later, smilingly divulge the horrors of defecated American dressing rooms, or light-heatedly tell a story about the highly-homosexual purchase of a four pound box of condoms and strawberries from Costco.
| 23 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
21 August, 13.30
It’s the conventional approach to read books before attempting to write your own. But to those luckily endowed with a natural genius and wit alike to Griff Rhys Jones’s, this need not apply.
| 18 August 2009
Charlotte Square Gardens
15 August, 20.00
The pressure must be intense. Duffy’s recital is given such a glowing introduction that I feel nervous for this poet of soul-exposing verse, suddenly thrust into the limelight.
| 17 August 2009
RBS Main Stage
Saturday 15 August 18.30
Garrison arrived, luggage in hand, jeans three inches too short, bright red trainers and geeky specs: it was perfect.
| 02 August 2009
Can you dig it?
A lightening bolt of inspiration inspired Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, to write about an unusual fossil hunter from Lyme Regis.
| 02 August 2009
A wanted man
Comic writer Mark Millar talks Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, and why he thinks graphic novels still have a touch of the pirate about them.
| 02 August 2009
King of the road
Frank Skinner’s going back to his roots, compering a variety show for the modern age and writing about the journey he took to get there.
| 02 August 2009
The good fight
After a stolen childhood as a soldier in Sudan, rapper Emmanuel Jal is still fighting, but now it’s for the rights and education of other African kids.
| 02 August 2009
When Cherie Blair’s memoir was first published in May last year, she braced herself for a gale of hostility. “I rather expected it,” she says. “I don’t claim to be superhuman, and not hurt by some of the things that are written about me, but I am used to people having this image of me when they have never met me, let alone spoken to me. The book was my attempt to redress that.”
| 02 August 2009
Poet to the people
Carol Ann Duffy is racking up a lot of firsts – she’s the first Scottish, first female and first openly bisexual Poet Laureate. But is she intimidated? Never.
