DANNY ROBINS' EVENTS GUIDE: MARCH 3RD 2011

Pancakes!

It's Pancake Day on Tuesday, or, to give it its correct title, Shrove Tuesday. My old deputy headmaster Mr Gibson used to get proper narked off if we called it Pancake Day, but, let's face it, these days, it's all about the Nutella, the maple syrup and the lemon juice and sugar, and what better way to enjoy a pancake than to race with it.

Pancake races seem to be all the rage. There are long running (no pun intended) racing traditions in Winster in Derbyshire, and Lichfield in Staffordshire. The most famous race is in Olney in Buckinghamshire. It's for women only and has been going since 1445. Legend has it that it originated when an Olney housewife got so caught up making pancakes that she forgot the time until she heard the church bells ringing. She raced out the house to the church still carrying her pan and pancake. Today, women still race to the church, tossing their pancakes as they go. The winner is the first person to cross the line having tossed their pancake a certain amount of times.

In London, there's the Great Spitalfields Pancake Race - a trendy newer alternative to the traditional races mentioned above. People in outrageous and silly costumes (some of them I suspect just what people in East London normally wear) race up a street near the Old Truman Brewery.

It's organised by Alternative Arts. You can register in advance on their site, but I think you can also just turn up on the day. It's for charity, as I think are most of the other races.

A Couple of Friday Night Tips

The Cellars at Eastney, a nice little music and comedy venue in Southsea, near Portsmouth, is holding a night called 'A Chance To Be Indie' that sounds quite fun. Four young up and coming local indie bands get to be their heroes for the night in a sort of Indie Stars in Their Eyes.

This Evening's Entertainment will be Kasabian, The Tilt (who I've listened to and thought were rather good) are The Pigeon Detectives, Guilded Youth will don the acoustic garb of The Jam and Capital Fuzz get to be The Arctic Monkeys

It kicks off at 8pm and is £5 advance/£6 on the door. The Cellars

And over in Luton, you could check out A Weekend With Shane Meadows at The Hat Factory arts centre. Sadly, it isn't literally with the great director but is dedicated to his world. Friday night features a conversation with Jack Thorne the screenwriter who collaborated with meadows on This Is England 86 and a screening of the final episode of that series. On the Saturday there's a double bill of Scorsese's Mean Streets, cited by Meadows as his favourite film, followed by his own A Room for Romeo Brass, the first film he did with Paddy Considine.

And a heads up for some upcoming things...

Shrek - The Musical hits the West End in May. Ticket booking is now open. Word on the street is it's actually good; the Broadway version was a big success. It stars a slightly surprising combination of Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, 'Britain's answer to Will Smith' Richard Blackwood, Nigel Harman (nasty Dennis from Eastenders and Nigel Lindsay (best known as Barry the Muslim convert from Chris Morris's Four Lions. https://www.shrekthemusical.co.uk/

And from a green ogre to a dark knight, on March 26th, the BFI Imax is doing a Batman All-Nighter. It's 4 films - 2 from Tim Burton's Batman era (Batman and Batman Returns) and 2 from Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, featuring Heath Ledger's Joker). Free tea and coffe between films to keep you going till dawn. If you love Batman and hate sleep, get in there, it will sell out.

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