Archives for February 2010

I got a text from my husband earlier. Simply said "Derry shortlisted for City of Culture." Beats asking what's for tea. Margaret Hodge the Culture secretary had just announced it, in time for BBC Radio Foyle's lunchtime news. They led with it as a breaking story. The second story was that this Friday is D-Day for the city's name change. From Londonderry to Derry. So if the city did win what would the first UK City of Culture be called?

Eighteen years ago I worked on IMPACT 92 a major international festival of culture, art and leisure in the city. The acronym stood for International Meeting Place for the Appreciation of Cultural Traditions. Basically the names of the city were the twin elephants in the room. Despite the unwieldy title, it was a great year.

I even managed to brush bottoms with Richard Eyre, then director of the National Theatre, as I reached for a vol au vent at the after show party of the NT's production of Electra. We had just seen a stunning Fiona Shaw, shaven-headed, covered in dust and literally spitting out her lines. The venue was the Templemore Sports Complex. Badminton and five-a-side football, the usual fare. But for a few nights sport made way for the raw power of theatre. 

But 1993 came and went as did another and another. And now the city has another chance at cultural gold. This time it's faced those old elephants and called the bid Derry~Londonderry. So good they named it twice?

It's now one of four cities in the running. The other three cities are Birmingham, Sheffield and Norwich.

I immediately phoned Oonagh McGillion, Derry City Council's acting head of development. I've been on and off the phone to her for the past few weeks asking "any news?". The bid team, led by the city council, is also made up of ILEX, the city's urban regeneration company and the Strategic Investment Board for Northern Ireland. They're pleased, but want to start the work now. 

As Oonagh says: "There are no cups won for this". They're waiting now for a detailed assessment report to be posted out which will show the strengths and weaknesses of the initial bid. Now that will make interesting reading.

We talked about the other three cites. She's not surprised Birmingham is there. Would have been more suprised if it was left off. Durham didn't make it. She thought it had a very strong bid.

Sheffield? Like Birmingham she feels it's been doing a lot of rebranding lately, and has delivered already on the "step change". Stay with the step change jargon as this is a key part of the City of Culture lingo. Basically the judges want to see if the winning city will be significantly enhanced by the City of Culture title.

Norwich? "the dark horse" she says. It's got a big student population. While it might not deliver on bigger audiences, the potential for culture to impact on the student life of the city and future generations would be the step change talked about. I feel the same about Norwich. That and having Stephen Fry as its cultural ambassador. Better check if he's tweeting about it.

So this is it now. This is where the bid ups a gear. Yes, Seamus Heaney supports it. Feargal Sharkey went in person to tell the commitee why he thought the city should win. But while Lauren Laverne is one of the judges she might not be an Undertones fan.

Derry~Londonderry now has until the 28th of May to submit final proposals. What will make it win? Apart from a new name?

Tuesday afternoon and I've taken a temporary absence from the airwaves. Can't shake off this sore throat and cold. Going into its fifth week. Me and the rest of you. If you haven't got the stomach bug that's now doing the rounds you're probably blowing your nose and coughing up yuck.

Usually having a cold is great if you're a female broadcaster. It lowers the voice, gives us a more bassy sound and is generally considered more attractive. So they say! The alternative is smoking 20 Woodbine a day. Which I am not recommending. 

Except last Sunday night, Sounds Classical, I went on air at eight with a certain catch in my voice, and thought of Dervla Kirwan's voice wooing us in those ads for M&S food. I could do for classical music what she has done for high street ready meals! 

The bubble burst nearly two hours later, five-to-ten, halfway through an interview with Brian Irvine when I had the biggest coughing fit ever. Ironic seeing as Brian is the Ulster Orchestra's Associate Composer and on all their concert programmes there's the warning to stifle your coughs while the music is playing. 

All I can remember is feeling the tickle start and then watching Brian's mouth open and close as the Herculean effort involved in stifling the cough made tears pour down my face. So now I'm coughing very loudly and crying at the same time. The more I tried to stifle it, at one point I was under the desk, the worse it got. 

I knew I was in serious diffs so I handed Brian his own flyer and croaked a strangled sounding "you" followed by *cough* "read " another strangled "it" *cough* "out".

So can I apologise now to Brian and say that his new project "Rain Falling Up" sounds great, the bits I heard, and that it's on in the Waterfront Hall Belfast on the 20th March at 7pm. The Ulster Orchestra with 400 school children and nearly 100 elderly people singing the story of a boy called Jake who builds a gravity defying switch and floats off into outerspace.

Where I wished I could have gone at 21.55 on Sunday night past.

.

I'm waiting for the postman. He's got my Friday night entertainment. No I'm not channelling Jessica Lange. Its a DVD, series two of Damages. The first five episodes.

Then I read this. Series three starts this wednesday BBC 1 at 1045pm. And, spoiler alert, it's telling me what's in series two. I can't stop reading it. William Hurt, a gun, Rosie Byrne pointing it at someone who we suspect is Glenn Close. AHH! NOT FAIR. Doesn't this reviewer know that I can't stay up past 1030pm on a school night? So I missed series two going out on tv. and boxsets are my only catch up.

I've just sent my five-year-old out to check if the postman has been?

She's back, no don't turn up Taylor Swift, granny's in bed. Has he been?

Back in a mo.

Hallelujah, it's here.There was an awful moment when i could only see bills but he hadn't been able to get the DVD in the door. It was kind of stuck in the letter box.

I'm going to dance to Taylor Swift now! Ahh it's Barbie Girl. Breathe. I've got my DVD. I can cope.

Edna O'Brien is sitting in front of me. You can talk to me for 30 minutes she says in that famous County clare burr mixed with an almost aristocratic Englishness.

I've met her before. The John Hewitt bar, May 2006 at the 7th Cathedral quarter arts festival.

She's about to be interviewed on stage by Martin Lynch. She's running late, and so by the time she gets there, there's no time for me to do a short interview for the radio arts programme. So I stay and watch Martin Lynch swoon under her legend and grab her at the bar afterwards. Well you can't grab Edna O'Brien. She's so gracious. She allows you into her orbit. 

 I'm mesmerised by her. Her poise, grace and total self assurance. And yet she tells me during the interview that one of the memories that haunted her in the aftermath of the publication of "Country Girls" in 1960, and the book burning and the censorship, was her family back home telling her how much she had shamed them. She still feels the sting of that comment more so than the ash of her book outside a church. 

She's been in London since the sixties and she dresses like she's on a swinging Carnaby street. It suits her. Black ruched dress with a white enamel flower brooch dead centre. A shaggy black shrug over her shoulders. The only concession to her age is a stick which she says she has left in the other studio. No I don't need it now. She just wants to make sure she doesn't leave without it.

I remark that I'd read that Faber & Faber have bought the rights to her autobiography. It's a memoir she gently corrects me. Much nicer idea. Memoir, memory. That's what she's going to be doing for the next 18 months. Writing it and reading nothing but other people's memoirs.

When she was writing her play "haunted", the reason she's in Belfast as it had just opened in the Grand Opera House the night before, she said she read nothing but plays. The restoration dramatists and Shakespeare.

Before the interview started she had leant towards me. Can you help me? Yes. I need an aisle seat on the flight back to London tomorrow. Don't understand this online booking system.

So as I get the green light from the producer on the other side of the glass to start the interview, my head is full of priests burning "Country Girls" and online airline booking forms.

And yes the booking was done. How could we not make sure the woman who Philip Roth called "the most gifted woman now writing in English" got her leg room?

Bill Drummond was in Belfast this week to make a programme for Radio 4. It's his impressions of the city. He's been coming here since he was three, he said.

He's from Stranraer. His father was a Presbyterian minister and connections with here - and in particular the North Antrim coast - are strong. Hence the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, which he now owns.

WIth the programme's producer, we went for a walk around the city centre at night, down Pottinger's Entry, past the Victoria Square Centre and on to Muriels.

Titty Von Tramp, Northern Ireland's most famous drag queen, was sitting at the bar when we walked in. The barman iced our glasses to make sure the glasses would be as chilled as the wine. The bar seemed to glow. Bill seemed genuinely taken by our surroundings.

It was now 930pm. And even though he'd left his house at 4.50am that morning, been recording since he got off the plane, had already walked the city, spoken to the likes of novelist Glenn Patterson and Marcus Patton and still had another day's recording ahead of him, he was in the mood for talk and argument.

So we talked and argued. When he was manager of Echo and the Bunnymen he insisted they play Belfast in the early 1980s. Was there a certain amount of kudos playing Belfast then? Troubles chic? He visibly bristles. No it wasn't he says sternly. But then thaws a bit and says he can understand why I would ask that.

He doesn't rate the Belfast music scene. There was an early Rudi single he says he liked. Stiff Little fingers I ask? No, he says quite emphatically.

He remembers coming here in his teens and going to traditional music sessions. He would ban them now. Hates the fact that there's so much history in them. It's now my turn to bristle.

Bizarrely his desire to create ground zero with a set of jigs and reels gets to me. I'm not even a major fan of the music but somehow I don't see how banning it and starting from scratch will change anything.

Bill is the man who created No Music day. He tells us he doesn't listen to music anymore. We had been talking about baking earlier. While at the bar we were confronted by some amazing looking cupcakes and it got us talking. I said that I had found a new found enthusiasm for fruit crumbles. He said damson crumbles are the best. So when he mentioned the no music thing later, I asked him what do you listen to when you're baking?

I listen to what's in my head.

The taxi leaves him back at a friend's house where he's staying the night. When he gets out the taxi driver asks is he famous? As a shorthand we say he's the fella who burned the million pounds. Oh him, comes the reply. Did he? Burn the million? I don't know I say, I didn't ask him. I didn't want to go into the Irish traditional music debacle or the unprintable reaction to SLF. I do know it's his sister's birthday in a few days' time and he's torn between making her a coffee cake (Camp coffee is the secret ingredient he swears by) or a fruit crumble.

Bill Drummond presents "Belfast- re imagining the City" on BBC Radio 4 9th March at 1130am.

I saw the Ian Dury biopic last night 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll', which featured a bravura performance by Andy Serkis. I won't rehash any reviews of it. My fellow musos - Radio Ulster bloggers Mickey Bradley & Stuart Bailie - have been there, done that and are sporting the proverbial t-shirts!

What struck me though was here's a film with a central character who refers to himself as 'a raspberry ripple', but it isn't a story hung up on disability.

The screenplay by Paul Viragh was beyond box ticking and while it made Dury's disability from childhood polio an important part of the story, the central story was Dury's relationship with his son Baxter.

A very different film to 'Rain Man' (1988). While Dustin Hoffman is textbook brilliant as the autistic Raymond Brabbit, winning an Oscar for his performance, what did it really say about autism, apart from a prodigious talent for doing sums in your head very very fast? 

Twenty-two years later, and a few nights ago on prime time American television, HBO aired another autism-related story. It was 'Temple Grandin' played by Claire Danes, the actress famous to a generation of tweenies in the mid-90's as the heroine of 'My So Called Life'. She's widely tipped to win an Emmy for her performance.

Like Ian Dury, Temple Grandin's story is remarkable. Diagnosed as austistic when she was three-and-a-half, she is now 62-years-old, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and one of the world leaders in the ethical treatment of animals. I don't quite understand it, but somehow her connection to cows in particular helped revolutionise the world's slaughter houses.

I haven't seen the made for tv movie and can't find any info on the web about a UK broadcast date. But if the reviews from the States are anything to go by it would seem that, like 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll', here's another mainstream film that deals with disability, but in the context of an overall complex human life story.

It's good to see that disability can be part of a movie, but not the sum of all its parts.

A young Belfast brother and a sister. Alex and Michael. Finally having their voices heard.

Listen to what they're saying because I didn't last year. 

January 2009 an article appeared in the Belfast Telegraph. The headline was "Ulster Pupils' Mental Health Shock".

If I'm honest I'm only really taking any notice of it now as it's been made into a play.

Bulletproof is the latest touring production by Replay theatre company.

Off the back of the Bamford Report, Replay commissioned Welsh playwright Gary Owen to write a work for them on mental health issues and young people here. He came over and spoke to Belfast teenagers. He used many of their actual words in the work.

"Young people need to understand that feelings of sadness, or despair - even suicidal feelings -are nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be frightened of, and nothing to hide."

It turns out that the brother and sister we meet are older now, looking back at their teenage selves. Alex is in mourning, and as the play moves forward we become aware that Michael is dead, having taken his own life years earlier.

In 25 minutes we get a glimpse of what it must be like to feel so scared and alone that the only way out is suicide.

Bulletproof is touring schools at the moment. Our over 14s are getting to see it. Every performance has a post show discussion, there's an advice pack and alot of help and support from teachers and Replay.

It's difficult, complex stuff, but these are real words said by real teenagers.

Kathryn Torney wrote an important article last January. Gary Owen has gone a step further and put the newsprint onto the stage. And Replay has given voice to the Alexs and Michaels of the world.

Bulletproof comes to the Baby Grand at the Grand Opera House Belfast 15th to 17th February.

Congratulations to Peter J Devlin for his Oscar nomination. The Belfast born sound man is up for his third academy award nomination, this latest one for his sound mixing on "Star Trek".

I met him last year in BBC Belfast. The only thing is I thought he was in on work experience.

Yes I know he's one of Hollywood's leading sound men. He's the man who was Oscar nominated for "Pearl Harbour" "and "Transformers" but how was I to know what he looked like?

In my defence, alot of people come through our office to shadow the programme for a day, week or a month.

So when I came back after lunch and I saw a fella checking his emails on the computer opposite me, I just assumed he was in to see how the show worked.

Then we were introduced, he was back in seeing old friends and work colleagues from his former life as a BBC Northern Ireland sound man.

He had just finished working on "Frost/Nixon" and was heading back to LA to start work on "Star Trek".

He was just glad to be back home to see family.

So I asked him, ok, begged him to come on the show. Maybe the begging went on a little too long, especially in an open plan office, but by then I was in full flow.

He said no. 

At least now, on the red carpet at the Kodak Theatre on the 7th March, in between the Morgan Freemans and the Sandra Bullocks I'll recognise a master craftsman, who didn't talk to me.....this time!