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Wounded Knee will be performing at Eastern Promise mini-festival in Glasgow AROUND TOWN All aboard! Clyde Cruises, operating the new River Link waterbus on the River Clyde, have announced that due to popular demand over the summer, the trips will now be extended to Sat 16 Oct. Pack your woollies. Elsewhere in Glasgow, Merchant City’s facelift continues with the unveiling of The Quartercentury Monument on Hutcheson Street. Commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the Letter of Guildry, which regulated the role of merchants and craftsmen on the Town Council, the sculpture shows a selection of objects and tools associated with Glasgow, its trades and merchants.
BOOKS Another month, another awards announcement, and this time it’s the turn of the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children’s Books. Following an impressive roster of names last year, 2010’s line-up for Scotland’s largest children’s book award is just as varied. In the Bookbug Readers section (0–7 years), Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, Simon Puttock and Joe Kiddie, and Debi Gliori are all nominated; in Young Readers (8–11 years), Lucinda Hare, John Fardell and Barry Hutchison are up for the prize; while the Older Readers category (12–16 years) boasts writers Catherine MacPhail, Gillian Philip and Elizabeth Laird. The winners will be announced at an award ceremony at Tramway, Glasgow, on 22 Feb next year.
FILM Short documentary competition Bridging the Gap is on the hunt for applicants, with Scottish- based filmmakers being asked to work with the theme of ‘Shift’. Offering applicants the chance of 8 THE LIST 23 Sep–7 Oct 2010
a creative training programme alongside production, this year’s initiative affords five short documentaries the chance to be commissioned at an industry pitching session in December. Deadline for applicants is 6 Oct, so thinking caps should be firmly on.
M U S I C Whatever the season, there’s always plenty of reason to be cheerful in the land of all things music. There’s a new mini-festival brewing in Glasgow’s East End. Eastern Promise (see what they did there?) takes place on 1 & 2 Oct. Acts on the line-up include the Victor Herrero Band, Rachel Grimes, Nils Frahm, Wounded Knee, King Creosote, as well as Malcolm Middleton’s new project Human Don’t Be Angry, FOUND and RM Hubbert. Tickets are £10 per night or £15 for both and are available from Monorail, Tickets Scotland and Platform Box Office 0141 276 9661. See also Five Reasons, page 77. In other happy news, Edwyn Collins has received an honorary degree, in recognition of his contribution to the national and international music industry. Collins received the nod from Buckinghamshire New University and fans can check out his latest offerings with new album Losing Sleep this month. T H E AT R E It’s one-man shows ahoy at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, next year. Funnyman Lenny Henry explores his life through his love of music in April’s Cradle to Rave, before John Cleese’s Alimony Tour. The productions out West are boasting an equally credible casting with the mighty Derek Jacobi primed to be King Lear at the Theatre Royal.
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Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ For those of you who have the deep misfortune of remembering Kitchen, a two-part Glasgow-set Five drama with Eddie Izzard as a laconic, often-drunk superchef who had a problem with motivation, Whites (BBC2, Tue 28 Sep, 9pm) may ring a couple of similar bells. Both of them clang around the lazy central character Roland White, played by another comedian-turned-actor, Alan Davies, whose surname and slightly slicked-back barnet can’t help you think of Marco-Pierre. Into this hellish kitchen of the show’s prestigious country club come a long-suffering sous chef, Bib (Darren Boyd), a permanently annoyed restaurant manager, Caroline (Katherine Parkinson), and an exaggeratedly thick waitress, Kiki (Isy Suttie).
But while they all feel the heat from either White’s tongue or his negligence (he’s too busy dictating his uneventful memoir to ease the chaos in his kitchen), the real conflict of the show looks set to be provided by the clearly malevolent assistant chef, Skoose (Stephen Wight), who has no hesitation in telling Bib he is coming for his job. Most of the humour in a perfectly palatable opening episode comes from White’s obsession with meat and Caroline’s more empathetic approach, impersonating a veggie, crying from having to eat her millionth risotto. Of special interest to Peep Show fans is that Whites is co-written by Matt King, aka Super Hans. Whether the rest of us will develop enough of a taste to hang around like enough lamb on a hook, is another question.
The high tea crowd