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23 Paul Kitching AMBITIOUS AND
ADVENTUROUS CHEF
Kitching was the only Michelin-starred chef in Manchester, but upped sticks and headed for Edinburgh, where this year he and partner Katie O’Brien opened a lavish and unusual restaurant called 21212. Their leftfield approach hasn’t been universally embraced by locals, though outsiders (including
MY ROBOT FRIEND Claire Sawers speaks to Tommy Perman, of the FOUND collective, about their moody, social- networking-obsessed musical instrument, Cybraphon
In the past, the Edinburgh art- pop collective FOUND have used robots, lasers and sewing machines in their live gigs. It was their creation of Cybraphon though – the mechanical, musical wardrobe with a heart – that won them a Scottish BAFTA.
Tommy Perman and Ziggy Campbell joined with engineer Simon Kirby to make a popularity-obsessed band, inspired by orchestrions from the 1900s. Cybraphon plays music, but is also linked to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and feels a range of emotions – from desolation to delirium – depending on how many people are tweeting about him, or how many Facebook friends he’s got.
The public got so into the
project, they started sending Cybraphon tins of furniture polish or trying to cheer him up online with jokes, flattery or flirting. ‘The morning when we woke up
and saw Cybraphon had made it onto a Texan news programme, that was pretty amazing,’ says Perman. ‘It was one of those shows that looked just like a Brass Eye spoof, but the fact that Cybraphon had travelled so far, and created such a buzz, without us really having to do anything, that was great.’
Since its birth during the Edinburgh Festival, Cybraphon has featured in newspapers in China, Brazil, Italy and Spain and has now been offered several collaborative projects. (CS)
30 THE LIST 17 Dec 2009–7 Jan 2010
many top London critics) have been wowed. (DR)
22 Steven Thomson GLASGAY! DIRECTOR
Whether it was the extended funding that allowed him to commission work in advance, or the media furore that led to him personally defending the work of festival artist Dani Marti, Thomson’s Glasgay! programme this year was relevant, exciting and incisive. Getting political suits him. (KI)
21 Jen Hadfield PRIZE-WINNING POET
The TS Eliot Prize is the most prestigious award in poetry, usually awarded to the likes of Ciaran Carson and Seamus Heaney. This year, though, it went to a Shetland-based shop assistant. At 30, Hadfield is the youngest ever winner, and Nigh No Place, her prize-winning collection, is a beautiful book. (KI)
20 Tom Kitchin MICHELIN-STARRED CHEF
Among Scotland’s swelling ranks of Michelin-starred chefs, Kitchin still stands out. This year he published his debut cookbook and had a Top 10 ranking in Restaurant magazine’s annual UK round-up and a spot in the final of the BBC’s Great British Menu. He even gave AA Gill his ‘best and most agreeable’ dinner of the year. (DR)
19 Matthew Lenton & Vanishing Point
INTERIOR INNOVATORS
We’re saluting Vanishing Point for being one of the most consistently interesting theatre companies in Scotland, and continuing to experiment in unique ways with sound, music and projections. The exquisite Interiors was acclaimed across the board in April; their futuristic, rowdy take on The Beggars Opera might have polarised critics, but still roused heated debate. Never, ever dull. (KI)
18 Cybraphon MUSIC BOX
See panel, left.
17 Alan Bissett LITERARY ASSET
Might be an idea for the Falkirk lad to take a breather in 2010 given his achievements in the last 12 months. He’s published his third novel, Death of a Ladies’ Man and written two plays (The Moira Monologues and The Ching Room) while his film with Adam Stafford, The Shutdown, did great things. He also appears regularly at the excellent literary/comedy night DiScomBoBuLaTe. (BD)
16 Andy Murray TENNIS HOT SHOT
This year saw the younger of Dunblane’s Murray brothers further establish himself among the upper echelons of world tennis, as wins in Doha, Rotterdam,
Jen Hadfield
P H O T O :
C A R O L N E I
F O R B E S
Miami, London, Montreal and Valencia equalled Tim Henman’s 14 career titles. Consistently ranked in the world’s top 4 last year, in May 2009 Murray became the first British player in the Open era to reach number three in the world rankings. (AC)
15 Frankie Boyle LINE-TREADING COMIC
He may have called his October memoir My Shit Life So Far but our favourite ginger Glaswegian comic seems to have it made. Caught up in various media storms about the bounds of comedy, he quit his column in The Record and announced his departure from Mock the Week as the tabloids went ape over a three-year-old comment he made about the Queen’s nether regions and observations about an Olympic swimmer. (BD)
14 Trongate 103 CUTTING EDGE ARTS SPACE
An Edwardian warehouse in Glasgow’s Merchant City has been transformed into a centre for some of the city’s most cutting-edge contemporary art. Three years in the creation, the six-storey arts hub houses galleries, workshops, artists’ studios and production spaces such as the Transmission Gallery, Glasgow Print Studio and the Russian Cultural Centre, with early programme
highlights including the John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins retrospective at Street Level Photo Works. (AR)
13 Hudson Mohawke MASTER OF ELECTRONICA
Glasgow producer Ross Birchard, or Hud Mo, released his debut Butter on Warp in October. It received a deluge of praise, from fans and critics all loving his molten plastic mash-up of hip hop, wonky electro and glitchy pop. A founding member of LuckyMe, the art collective that featured 16-year-old Hudson Mohawke when he DJ-ed at Glasgow hip hop nights back in 2002, he’s been unofficially crowned the great multicoloured hope of Glasgow’s electronic scene. (CS)
12 Kevin Bridges COMEDY NEWCOMER
The kid from Clydebank became a man this year after appearing on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow in May. Having just announced that he was to play a Pleasance cupboard during the Fringe, demand was so astronomical that he immediately added dates in some of the venue’s grander spaces. Quantity was matched by quality as his excellent set earned him a spot on the Best Newcomer shortlist. (BD)
11 Rona Munro LEADING PLAYWRIGHT
Munro’s The Last Witch, specially commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, was a thrilling melodrama based on the true story of Janet Dorne, the last woman to be burned for witchcraft in Scotland, while her irreverent translation of The House of Bernarda Alba transferred the action of Federico García Lorca’s drama to Glasgow’s East End and featured a mouth-watering cast of Scottish female acting talent. (AR)