No, James Corden: London doesn't want a mayor like you
Clown. It's a great word, and I use it often. Though not a great fan of emojis, the clown face one is the one I deploy most frequently when answering unwanted and insincere private messages on X. I do this because the meaning of the word 'clown' has changed considerably over the years. Once it meant a jester, a droll, an entertainer intent on causing jollity. Clowns could be wildly different – from Marcel Marceau to Morecambe and Wise – but their basic purpose was to add to the gaiety of nations.
Comedians aren't generally like this anymore. ('Comedian' has also taken on a less cheery alternative meaning; 'Looks like we've got ourselves a comedian!' TV policemen may sneer as an ineffectual criminal lies to them.) They're bitter and angry, mainly because the populace doesn't pay their pronouncements any mind at the polling station; painfully unfunny, lazy thinkers parroting the party line on there state-sanctioned group-think radio station (Radio 4) tittering about Donald Trump and Brexit.
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The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
My grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste
Yes, I did listen to a bit of radio. Even a spot of Radio 4 comedy. Brave, I know, but I do like policeman turned comedian Alfie Moore's It's a Fair Cop (currently broadcast on Monday nights in the 6.30pm slot). But nothing serious. Nothing with any gravitas. Or nearly nothing. I did stumble on the latest series on Radio 4's The History Podcast. Well, I say, stumble but, actually, I was given a nudge by its producer. Read more I'd rather slept on Joe Dunthorne's current series Half-Life. I think I'd read the words 'Nazi Germany' in the blurb and decided it wasn't for me. How much Nazi Germany do you need, after all? But that really wasn't what Half-Life was about, as the arresting opening line testified: 'My grandmother,' Dunthorne began, 'grew up brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste.' Strong opener. Better still was the information that it was his grandmother's father who had made said toothpaste. Half-Life is a family biography that - like all family biographies - weaves into the flow of history. Dunthorne's great grandfather was a Jewish chemist working in a poison gas lab with the Nazis. And that is just the start of it. All episodes are available on BBC Sounds and The Road Through the Mountains, the episode that aired on Radio 4 this week (on Wednesday) was a particularly tough listen. At the heart of it was a telling of the story of the Dersim Massacre in Turkey in 1937 and 1938, when the Turkish government killed thousands of civilians during a Kurdish rebellion; 14,000 is the government figure. Others suggest the death toll was three or four times that number. 'That's why most people say the river was flowing blood,' Dunthorne's guide told him. 'It was not water, it was just blood.' To escape the Nazis, Dunthorne's family had fled to Turkey. His great grandfather may have helped the Turkish government buy chemical weapons from the Germans. Poison gas was then used to kill those who had fled into the mountains. History, Dunthorne is telling us here, leaves a stain on those who come afterwards. In Half-Lifee you can hear it in his voice. Over on 6 Music Tom Robinson was celebrating his 75th birthday on his Now Playing show on Sunday evening. The BBC's present was to take the slot away from him. Mary Anne Hobbs is taking over this weekend. Tom Robinson celebrated his 75th birthday (Image: BBC) Robinson, who has been occupying Sunday night on 6 Music for the last 14 years - in fact he's been a regular on the station for 23 years, all told - drolly opened proceedings by playing Here's Where the Story Ends by The Sundays. What followed was an understandably slightly self-indulgent two hours in which he played quite a few of his own songs - as requested by his listeners - and, for the most part, displayed a commendably stiff upper lip. He did admit that the whole thing was a little bittersweet, though he encouraged his listeners to tune in to Hobbs's show when it started. At least there were plenty of birthday/farewell messages from his fellow 6 Music DJs and the odd musician - Lauren Laverne, Nithin Sawhney, Jason from Sleaford Mods and Peter Gabriel most notably. Tony Blackburn - still going strong at 82 - also offered his congratulations, as did The Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan. The latter was presumably prompted by that old social media meme of Robinson dancing around the studio to Tinseltown in the Rain. Understandably. That tune is one of 20th-century Scotland's greatest gifts to the world. I was at best an irregular listener to Now Playing, but rather like the late Annie Nightingale, it was always clear Robinson had built up a real rapport with his audience. We're promised a 'borderless spectrum of music' on the new Mary Anne Hobbs show. That's her USP, of course. But is that what listeners want at teatime on Sunday? Time will tell. Listen Out For: Bill Dare: Comedy Alchemist, Radio 4, Thursday, June 12, 6.30pm Talking of Radio 4 comedy … This tribute programme celebrates the career of the late radio and TV comedy producer Bill Dare, creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Dead Ringers. Dare was killed in a motor accident earlier this year.
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
I haven't fallen over on stage yet, says Del Amitri's Justin Currie
'I suddenly realised that in between taking mouthfuls of sushi, my hand was shaking and it looked like I was sitting there by myself, conducting a tiny orchestra in between mouthfuls with my chopsticks. Sometimes you can see people looking at you wondering what's going on.' Gavin - the name Currie has given his Parkinson's tremor - knows what's going on. He's been gradually making himself known in the singer's right hand for the last few years, and now he's started taking a real interest in the rest of the 60 year old's body too. 'My balance isn't what it was and if I turn too quickly I get quite disorientated,' said Currie, sitting in a coffee shop in Glasgow's west end, without chopsticks, and remarkably balanced in more ways than one. 'I haven't fallen over on stage yet, but if I do, then I'll probably joke about it.' Read more This wry stance is nothing new for followers of Justin Currie. He's been writing poison-tipped songs about self-inflicted pain for decades, spinning pop gold from imagined tales about being the last to know, taking adulterous roads to ruin, kissing things goodbye and nothing ever happening. Followers of his enjoyably sour online tour blogs have grown familiar with his on–the-road nihilism since he first booted up his laptop in 2008, a vent which will take the form of a book to be released later this summer. Its title, The Tremolo Diaries, is nicked from the Radio 4 documentary he made last year when he came out as a Parkinsonian, as he calls his fellow sufferers Subtitled Life On The Road And Other Diseases it deals with the fall-out from a hellish triumvirate of turns even he would have thought too heavy for any of the characters in his songs. And, funny stories about chopsticks in sushi restaurants or not, Currie has suffered. In a few dreadful weeks at the end of December 2022, he lost his mother to cancer, saw his girlfriend severely debilitated by a stroke and received the dreaded confirmed diagnosis of a condition which has been robbing him ever since of the talent which has made him one of the country's most popular and successful songwriters and live singers. No surprise, perhaps, that one day a few months later, he couldn't get up in the morning. And it had nothing to do with the disease's depletive impact on his motor skills. 'They give you a leaflet when they tell you you have Parkinson's,' he said. 'It's actually a really good leaflet, and on page five it says that everybody who gets Parkisnon's gets depressed. I've never been depressed before, but one day, a few months later, I couldn't get out of bed.' Del Amitri (Image: free) A combination of antidepressants and 'talking about it' helped Currie put his feet back on the ground a few weeks later. He talks about Parkinson's a lot now, and 'really likes' doing it, 'to the point where I tell my mates in the pub to tell me to shut up.' Unsurprisingly, Currie's reflections on the aftermath of his personal 2022 trainwreck have found their way into songs he's written for a new Del Amitri record, which he hopes will be released next year, and which, he warned, are 'definitely grim.' 'But I think they're good,' he said. 'If I thought they were sh** then I wouldn't share them.' Talk about stoking expectations. Currie is, after all, the man who delivered 1989's state of the nation address Nothing Ever Happens, in which he laid to waste the decade's trends of mass consumerism, the hollow monotony of the nine to five and the casual acceptance of ethnic persecution, decades before the first doom scroller logged into their social media. These songs, Currie said, are different from before. 'I faked a lot of emotional pain before,' he said. 'But having gone through all the shit with my mum dying, then Emma's stroke and my confirmed diagnosis, it's all coming from real life rather than invented dramatic scenes. I've written lots of songs about death and disease in the past. Those sorts of songs are easier to write now. One's mother dying at 86 is sad but it isn't tragic. All three things coming at once was traumatic, although I didn't think it was until I started writing songs about it.' As before, the bitter comes wrapped in the sweet. Even at their bleakest, Del Amitri know a hooky melody. Read more 'It definitely has the tunes,' said Currie of the new LP, still in early gestation. 'I was wary at first, but I really like it now.' Whether the Dels will play any of the tunes at this month's gig under the big top at Queen's Park in Glasgow is anyone's guess. Currie doesn't know how well he'll perform, let alone what. 'It's harder with Parkinson's. I can't play as well as I used to, and that's endlessly frustrating.' The band last performed a double header in Barrowlands at the turn of the year. Gavin is noticeable on Currie's right hand when he sings, and has been for a few years, but the impact on the overall quality remains distinctly minimal. Nevertheless, the band have had The Chat about knowing when to call it quits. He's already killed off any notion of playing solo again, but with the support of his Dels mates he hopes there's road ahead yet. 'The only thing I know how to do is write songs and sing them somewhere,' he said. 'I don't want to get obsessed by that thought. It'll happen when it happens.' Del Amitri play Summer Nights on the Southside, Glasgow, on June 26, with King Creosote, Withered Hand + Kathryn Williams and Alice Faye
Daily Record
01-06-2025
- Daily Record
Romesh Ranganathan opens up about turbulent childhood as dad sent to jail for fraud
Comedian Romesh Ranganathan has opened up about his teenage years as his life was turned upside down when his father went to prison. TV presenter and comedy star Romesh Ranganathan has recently opened up about his turbulent childhood when his father was sent to prison for two years for fraud. Opening up on Radio 4's show Desert Island Disc, the comedian shared how his life was completely turned upside down due to his father's actions. At the time of the imprisonment, Romesh was a teenager living in Crawley. He recalled that he was attending a private school at the time when he, his younger brother and mother were forced to move out of their family home and into a Bed and Breakfast. He said: "My dad had fallen into financial trouble. What it turns out is that he'd lost his job and he was trying to make money in this sort of Sri Lankan Del Boy way, and it wasn't working out. "And he couldn't keep up the mortgage repayments on their house. And they couldn't afford, even with my scholarship, they still couldn't afford the fees at this school I was going to." To make matters worse, it soon became apparent that his father Ranga was having an affair, reports the Mirror. When is father disappeared for several days, Romesh recalled having to ask the "other women" where his dad was. In doing so, Romesh found out that his father had been arrested. He explained: "She tells us that my dad had been arrested three days previously, and he had been involved in some sort of fraud case. I don't know why we'd not heard, why he'd not got in touch, but this lady knew. "He ended up going to prison for two years, or just under two years. You know, I remember my dad being convicted and going to prison the day before my birthday. "I think it's my 15th birthday. And so my friends are having a party for me. I just went and pretended that wasn't going on because you want some normalcy." "Because for a while, we moved out of the house, and then a counsellor gave us a room in a bed and breakfast." Speaking to Lauren Laverne, Romesh said that he remembered his mother crying during this period of time and that she managed to get a job as a cleaner to help provide for her sons. When his father did come back home after being imprisoned, Romesh said they were able to patch up their relationship over time. The 47-year-old said: "On my dad's 60th birthday, by that time, our relationship had really kind of improved. I'd had kids at that point, and I saw the way that my dad was being with my children. "I was like, I've never seen this side of my dad, and we're in a really good place. My memory of my dad is of like a flawed tornado." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Romesh also candidly spoke about his struggles with mental health on the Radio 4 show, admitting that he had thought about taking his own life more than once and saw it as a solution to his emotional turmoil. While he admits that he has experienced serious dark periods in this life, he has now learned how to manage those times. He touches on some of his experiences through his comedy shows, but he is aware that he needs to be careful about how far he goes. He explained: "You got to be careful because it's triggering. I'm trying to destigmatise (mental health) but you do also have to be mindful of the fact that people may have been affected by that and then if I suddenly say I had thoughts about taking my own life and somebody's lost someone through that or they've had those moments themselves, you have to be sensitive to that and you don't always get it right but I think the rewards outweigh the risks."
