Palestinian artists to take to the stage at Edinburgh Fringe
The event last took place in 2015, and thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign and the tireless work of volunteers, it will return to the world's largest performing arts festival in the summer.
READ MORE: UK won't recognise Palestine at UN conference despite 'discussions', reports say
The mini-festival, taking place in Portobello Town Hall between August 12 and 15, will feature a number of Palestinian artists involved in a wide range of different practices – including music (both traditional and electronic), dancers, a puppet show, poetry, a musical, an autobiographical one-man show, live art and lecture performances.
The crowd-funding campaign, which has so far raised £37,979, has paid for the artists' travel and visa costs, as well as the fees they will be paid during the festival.
Artists are travelling from all over the world, such as from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, the US, Ireland, Holland as well as from within the UK.
Organisers are also hoping to bring across several artists who are currently in Gaza, although there is currently "no clear route" to enable this to happen under Israel's brutal bombardment of the enclave.
One of those currently in Gaza is playwright and director Rafat Al Aydi, from Theatre Day Productions, who has translated his play, titled Ruh al Ruh, into English to be performed at the festival.
READ MORE: Israeli forces kill six Palestinians near Gaza aid site
The play was written in one day and one night in Gaza last summer and focuses on a couple trying to come to terms with life under war and occupation.
After the performance, a talk with Al Aydi will then take place if a connection with Gaza can be established.
Other artists in Gaza which organisers are trying to bring over include Lafi, a rap artist from the Jabalia refugee camp, and his sound technician Abdelrahman Nabahin, who is also a visual artist.
'There's joy and warmth in Palestinian art'
Sara Shaarawi, an Egyptian playwright now based in Scotland, is one of the festival's organisers. She was also involved with the festival back in 2015, and hopes this year's event will "give people a chance to feel all the different types of art that Palestinians artists make".
She praised the support from volunteers and those who have donated to the crowdfunder, but stressed more needed to be done to ensure the artists performing at the festival have the best experience.
(Image: Beth Chalmers) Shaarawi (above) said: 'There's a huge amount of donated labour and time and it's been lots of people offering and volunteering their skills, which has been really moving.
'The support is very much coming from the grassroots, which has its challenges and its hazards, but it's also a beautiful thing to see the arts community come together to make this happen.
'While we're almost there and we're confident, we still need about £15,000 to make this fully happen.'
READ MORE: Owen Jones: The UK media has ignored this hugely revealing scandal in Israel
Shaarawi said the money would go towards specialist equipment, "to make sure that performers' work is presented in the highest quality we can", as well as on things like community meals to make the hosting of the artists more "special".
'It's about making sure that we can actually properly host this group of people and make sure they're taken care of and that they enjoy their time in Edinburgh," she added.
The filmmaker said that Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza has made it even more necessary for Palestinian artists to have a space at a festival as big as the Fringe.
She said: 'This festival [the Fringe] came to be post-war as a place of healing, as a place of processing and coming together.
'With what's happening in Gaza and Palestine right now and to the Palestinian community all over, it's really important that they have a space in a festival that's on the scale of the Fringe."
Shaarawi added that it was important for art to "reach out to people and humanise stories, especially when enormous violence happens".
READ MORE: Majority of people in the UK support sanctions against Israel, new poll finds
'The narratives, stories and voices you see in Palestinian art, they're such joy and celebration and warmth and hospitality," she continued.
"At this moment it's particularly important with all the challenges and censorship that they've been facing that they feel they are not only welcomed but celebrated."
Shaarawi also said that artists have an "immense responsibility" to support Palestinian artists.
"Our institutions are not stepping up in the way that they could, our Government is not really doing anything about this.
"It's a way for us to reach out and support our colleagues and friends at a time when things are really difficult.
"As governments and countries are lacking in words, it's important for artists to not only look outward, but to reach outward as well."
The Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine mini-festival will take place at Portobello Town Hall between August 12 and 15. More information can be found here.
Click here to donate to the group's fundraiser.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
8 hours ago
- Spectator
The pensioner Intifada
To anyone brought up in the seventies and eighties, the fact that so many Palestine Action protestors are themselves in their seventies and eighties is the least surprising fact of the year. These people were the original 'Boring Old Hippies,' those dreary teachers and lecturers whom so many of us had to suffer the first time round. Since age confers a harmlessness on everyone, it was rather sweet to see them again, enjoying one last stab at rebellion before marching off to that Great Student Demo in the Sky. And yet when I was growing up, these 'rebels' were the very people we rebelled against. Musically, we couldn't bear their Pink Floyd, their early Genesis and those heavy slabs of prog rock inspired by the Hobbit-y tosh of Tolkien. No wonder we embraced the rhythm of reggae, the joy of disco and (initially at least) the rebellion of punk. Punk was very much the middle-class, minority interest successor to prog. It started well, but it was almost instantly colonised and gentrified by the hippies themselves. Long hair sheared, they quickly replaced the Sex Pistols with the Clash, who were more aligned with their values. The Clash's third LP was a triple album and was so pompous and overblown it made Pink Floyd sound like Paul McCartney. Sandinista! was dedicated to the Sandinistas, whose cause in Nicaragua was viewed not dissimilarly from the cause of the Palestinians in Gaza. They would have done well to remember John Lydon snarling: 'You're too old and your hair's too long.' That was exactly how we felt about hippy teachers who tried too hard to be groovy. I'll always remember one flared-trousered example asking us to 'Call me Tony'. As soon as he said this, that vital wall between pupils and teachers – the one that separates respect from ridicule – started to crumble. It's only in recent years that the wall has been re-pointed. You may be aware of the resurgence of school uniforms in state schools. Apparently this is the result of the Call Me Tonys, who'd always decried them, finally shuffling off into retirement. And now, with generous public sector pensions providing free time and disposable income, they're back. And what could be more fun than taking up a cause and a placard? Trouble is, it's invariably the same sort of cause, isn't it? Whether they realise it or not, much of their worldview is still rooted in The Authoritarian Personality, a political and philosophical treatise written in the aftermath of the second world war. Its central tenet was that, because the Nazis were evil and were also right-wing, then everything right-wing is bad and everything left-wing is good. This may explain why our OAP protestors turned a blind eye to mass murder in China and the Soviet Union to embrace the shaky shibboleths of Marx and Mao. And it's why they now condemn the mass slaughter of Palestinians but remain shamefully silent on the mass slaughter of Israelis. The Boring Old Hippies have mostly been a bit quiet since the miners' strike and the end of the Greenham Common protests. I imagine those vintage 'Nuclear Power? No Thanks' badges now fetch quite a price on eBay. Those who wore them vanished from view around 1997, when Tony Blair moved into No. 10. What was there to protest against? His new government may have been nominally Labour, but when Peter Mandelson declared that he was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich', the hippies had the permission they needed to become breadheads. And now, money made and mortgages paid, they can afford a bit of geriatric insurrection. They haven't had a cause like this for years. Extinction Rebellion was a bit fanatical; the People's March a bit 'Waitrose' – but Palestine is perfect. It must have been lovely for them to once again feel the insurgent thrill of being 'busted by the fuzz'. So let them have their fun. They won't be doing this for much longer.
The National
8 hours ago
- The National
Why Darren McGarvey wants out of the prison of his own persona
Given recent publicity, you might think this is a quote from Darren McGarvey's new book Trauma Industrial Complex – but not so. It's a tweet I sent in July 2021 in response to headlines that Prince Harry was to write another 'intimate and heartfelt memoir of his life'. At the time, the comment threw up a response from the Scottish rapper. 'Only if you are a one-trick pony,' he replied, perhaps a tad defensively. 'Confessional is just one facet. Every day I see healing from the identification people get hearing others share. You're right – it can be commodified sometimes cynically. But when done well for the right reasons, it's as legitimate and profound as any other meaningful writing. People are entitled to their privacy. Their stoicism. But that's not everyone's bag.' READ MORE: Israel in talks to resettle Palestinians in South Sudan, sources say Remembering this exchange, I was interested to discover that McGarvey's third book focuses on the dangers of over-disclosure. In essence, the book is a sustained reflection on McGarvey's experiences of going public and the consequences of becoming trapped in the story and the persona which shot him to fame. McGarvey has discovered he might be an unreliable narrator. He's tired of being described as honest and brave and authentic. He doesn't want to be led out onto stages again and again to tell pat, pre-packaged stories about his past. I don't love the title. A riff on Dwight D Eisenhower's famous reference to the 'military industrial complex' which criticised the unhealthy relationship between the defence industry and politics in the United States. For McGarvey, the 'Trauma Industrial Complex is the system in which the very real and urgent issue of mass unacknowledged untreated trauma is commodified, medicalised and repackaged for profit, validation and influence'. Like McGarvey, I worry our confessional culture is giving folk perverse incentives to expose more and more of themselves in public, as if confession is inevitably good for the soul. I'm not so sure. Learning to be honest with yourself is one thing. Telling Twitter, another. But then, I don't have a lifestyle built on telling strangers about my private life. And that must alter your perspective a bit, particularly if, like McGarvey, you've now reached the conclusion that you can't afford to live with one of the very things which made you a success in the first place. It sounds like a paradox, but I've often thought confessions can be excellent ways of avoiding responsibility. One of my earliest memories of hearing McGarvey on the radio was listening to an interview he was doing with Shereen Nanjiani. He told the interviewer he'd done things in his past which he wasn't proud of. People had been hurt along the way, he said. Nanjiani immediately responded to this admission by congratulating McGarvey on how brave and inspiring and searingly honest he was being. We progressed, without intermission, from an admission of badness into a patronising round of applause. The moment is emblematic of how McGarvey has often been treated by the media since Poverty Safari won the Orwell Prize in 2018. This dramatic mood shift wasn't McGarvey's fault. I suppose he could have piped up and forced the interviewer to challenge her vacuous transition from a recognition of wrongdoing to the transformation of that wrongdoing into the latest gritty and authentic confession – but why should he? It isn't his fault if people code him in this perverse way. In one striking story from the new book, McGarvey is confronted with a challenging question from a therapist during a more recent stint in rehab. 'You tell stories to protect yourself. Why is that?' he is asked. Over the years, it has been something I've noticed about him too. In December 2023, McGarvey published a startling post on Twitter. In it, he disclosed that he had 'been dealing with longstanding debt for over three years' but was finally free of its burden. In characteristic form, this was written as a triumph over adversity – but with a sting. The 'debt' in question was unpaid income tax. This could have been a dangerous moment for our young hero, but confession did its magic work once again. If one of the more hostile tabloids had got hold of the story first, you could have expected to read headlines along the lines of 'social justice warrior doesn't pay his taxes' – 'socialist boasts of big pig pay cheques but doesn't pay HMRC its due' – but instead, various social media correspondents suggested it was 'inspiring' to hear that this particular new occupant of the higher tax bracket had finally given the exchequer everything it was due. READ MORE: Far-right protest in Falkirk met by anti-racism counter-demo outside asylum hotel McGarvey's account of this debt in the book is given glancing reference – 'my financial illiteracy' – but nothing more is said. It takes real chutzpah to successfully rechart not paying your income tax on time into yet another inspiring redemption arc. I don't recommend anyone else try it, but for McGarvey, it worked because, as he says, he's good at telling stories. THIS book isn't primarily an attack on those who have been sceptical about McGarvey, but on the image of him held by his most uncritical fans. 'I was affirmed, validated and applauded until I literally could not function under the weight of my own bullshit,' he says. The metaphors he uses are striking. McGarvey characterises the persona he has developed for himself as 'a prison', feeling like 'an artist might do if they awakened one morning to find themselves trapped in their own drawing'. He speaks of his fears of 'conditional acceptance from a tribe that loves me only as long as I play my assigned role' – that role being the one with the unhappy childhood, addiction and good old-fashioned poverty that self-loathing, socially-conscious middle classes can gawp at in awed but remote fascination. In another passage, he says he feels 'like an animal caged in a zoo; aware I could overpower my handlers and flee if opportunity presented itself, though what I'd do, or where I'd go after, are unknowns yet too frightening to face'. As that final clause suggests, what is less obvious is whether McGarvey is really prepared to live with the consequences of breaking free of his handlers. In the book, he claims that his recent August Fringe run was 'already sold out' and concludes with a zen-like depiction of himself, reconsecrated to living a smaller and more sincere life, less in thrall to the need for external recognition and online validation, content to be setting up for recovery support sessions, putting on the kettle in draughty halls, setting out plastic chairs. His obvious agitation about waning interest in his output on social media suggests that he may not be quite as reconciled to the consequences of ripping the painting out of the frame as the concluding chapters suggest. I don't blame him. Writing and publishing this book must have been a terrifying experience. It is one of the most unstinting repudiations of a public self I've ever read, and if McGarvey is concerned about reactions to it, I can understand why, because this book assertively rejects key parts of his public appeal, activity and authority claims over the last five years. If it is taken seriously, it should have consequences, but I imagine an irritatingly large number of people will still say they find it brave, authentic and challenging – while ignoring the elements of it which are truly courageous, sincere and difficult. McGarvey writes with a combination of well-earned pride about his achievements and a degree of bitterness about how uninterested people are when he tries to escape his genre. 'Any time I've ever floated the idea of producing a piece of work that was not about my poverty, addiction, or some adjacent topic, it's been met with resistance or disinterest,' he says. 'I find myself continually drawn back to the same story. My audience, in many ways, won't let me move on from it. Or, at least, that's how it feels sometimes. Any work I produce which is not anchored in my own suffering in some way draws tangibly less interest from both audiences and, in some cases, commissioners – a problem when your whole career is based on you being the product. 'Without it,' he frets, 'people may lose interest in anything else I have to say.' But as other creative spirits have discovered, killing off the character who made them famous often has the consequence that people aren't interested in you at all any more. McGarvey is clearly conscious of this risk. And there's the big anxious, unanswered question underpinning this book. Without Loki, without the misery memoir appeal and the no-mean-city reminiscences, does anyone care what Darren McGarvey has to say? 'Will I ever just be accepted as a professional in my own right, like everyone else?' Time will tell, I suppose.
Scotsman
2 days ago
- Scotsman
Michelle Collins makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Motorhome Marilyn
Michelle Collins makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut with a play about a Marilyn Monroe lookalike in Motorhome Marilyn. | Lucy Hayes The EastEnders actor has made a career out of stepping out of her comfort zone Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... EastEnders actor Michelle Collins is fulfilling the ambition of a lifetime by making her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with her one-woman show Motorhome Marilyn. A dark comedy, the play was inspired by a real life Marilyn Monroe lookalike Collins saw emerging from a trailer years ago in LA and explores our relationships with icons, ageing and what happens when dreams don't come true. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I'm terrified. But I've always wanted to do the Edinburgh Fringe. It's always been on my bucket list,' she says, when we talk ahead of her run. 'Being live on stage terrifies me but I still love it. I don't trust an actor who says they don't get scared on stage. Judi Dench still gets scared on stage. Doesn't everybody? I think all the good actors should get scared because it's good to be scared. And also I've never done a one-woman show. So there's only me up there. Oh, with a pet python.' A real python? Collins won't be drawn and is keen to avoid spoilers but promises unexpected twists and turns in the play written by Ben Weatherill (whose Frank and Percy starred Ian McKellen and Roger Allam and sold out across the UK and in London) after Stewart Permutt, and directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones. Michelle Collins as Denise in Motorhome Marilyn, her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe | Lucy Hayes Surprises are nothing new for Collins who is back stalking Albert Square in killer heels as Cindy in EastEnders after a gap of 25 years, returning in 2023. In the meantime the 63-year-old has four decades of stage and screen credits ranging from TV roles in Coronation Street, Doctor Who, Miss Marple, Two Thousand Acres of Sky, and The Illustrated Mum, for which she won an international Emmy and Bear Grylls Mission Survive, while she's appeared in numerous plays and musicals including Daddy Cool, Calendar Girls, Cleudo, Thoroughly Modern Millie and A Dark Night in Dalston, which she also produced. Films include Black Road and last year's Gangster's Kiss, 2024, with John Hannah, Martin Kemp and Patsy Kensit. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Collins recounts how the inspiration for the play which she originally collaborated on with her late friend, the playwright Stewart Permutt, came about after she saw a woman dressed as Marilyn Monroe emerge from a motorhome in LA a few years ago. 'I was walking around Hollywood and saw this woman dressed as Marilyn in that iconic white dress. She had the wig on and was putting money in a meter and visually, it just looked fantastic. She had long red nails and put the money in the metre then sashayed away very elegantly. She exchanged hellos with this guy and walked off. Then she turned around and I saw that she was an older Marilyn, more like 56. So I walked up to the guy and asked who she was. He said, 'oh, that's Motorhome Marilyn. She lives in that trailer and walks up and down and that's how she earns her money'. I was really intrigued. I later went looking for her but never found her or found out who she was. I just became intrigued with the idea and that image always stayed with me.' Discussing the idea with Stewart Permutt, whose play 'Real Babies Don't Cry' won a Fringe First in 2010 and who also wrote the play she produced and performed in, A Dark Night in Dalston, the idea became a script. However Permutt's death meant it was not developed beyond early drafts. Michelle Collins as Denise in Motorhome Marilyn, her one-woman play at the Edinburgh Fringe. | Lucy Hayes 'Stewart was very ill and couldn't write it, then passed away just over a year ago, but he had left me the play and given me permission to let someone else write it so Ben [Weatherill] wrote another version and made it his own. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Collins is at pains to point out that the show is more about Denise, the Marilyn Monroe lookalike, than the iconic American actor. 'I don't want people to think they're going to see another Marilyn impersonation, because it's really not, it's kind of more than that. Yes, Denise has the wig and the white dress, but you will see more about her, an aspiring actress from Southend who goes to Hollywood to escape her life and it doesn't work out for her so to make ends meet becomes a Marilyn lookalike. And sadly, she's still a Marilyn lookalike in her mid to late 50s. Denise feels she's more than a lookalike, that she actually embodies her because there are parallels to their lives and struggles. I would say Denise is a bit kooky, a bit out there. She's fun, but also sad. She's living a life through an icon, who died at 33.' How about Collins, is she also fascinated by Marilyn Monroe? 'I read lots of books a few years back when Stewart and I were first working on the play so I probably could go on Mastermind and talk about Marilyn Monroe as my specialist subject. People dismissed her as being this blonde bombshell but she had more to her than meets the eye. She was a strong woman before her time and cleverer than people gave credit. She started her own production company when people weren't doing that and took the studios to court and won. She was involved a lot in politics with a small p: she was with Arthur Miller through the McCarthy era and did a lot for civil rights. When the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood wouldn't book Ella Fitzgerald because of her race, Marilyn refused to sing until they did and they became friends.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'So she was a very strong empowered woman and I think undersold. And I think Denise feels that about herself. And also for me, as an actor, I feel like I'm taking charge of my career by doing this.' But Collins has had a long and successful career and is on primetime TV in one of the nation's favourite soaps. Michelle Collins is back as Cindy Beale in EastEnders. | Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron/BBC 'Yes, I am on TV now and a lot more visible than I was. But as a woman, as an actress, as you get older, it kind of changes. When I was in my 30s and 40s, I had big lead roles on television, and I'm not grumbling but it kind of diminishes a bit. And I think you have to fight a bit more as a woman for those roles. So I decided I was going to take a bit more charge of my career, particularly in theatre. Yes, I was doing a lot of commercial jobs to pay the bills and everything, but I wanted something a bit more creative for me. I wanted to create those roles for myself. A lot of actors are doing that. I also made a film, which did very well at festivals. I created that, again for myself.' The film is Black Road, which she made with Genesius Pictures and Debbie Gray, who made Good Luck to You, Leo Grande with Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'And then I did a lot of independent film, which I love doing, over the last few years. While Collins was busy creating and collaborating, EastEnders came calling once more, with the return of Cindy after 25 years. 'EastEnders came out of the blue. It was a bit of a shock. And I had to keep it under wraps for a whole year, but it still didn't stop me doing my own stuff. People say, 'how do you do all this, but as I've got older, maybe it's facing my own mortality, I don't know, but I seem to have more energy. I don't know if it's my HRT. I do have an amazing kind of zest for life. I asked EastEnders if it would be possible to have time off to do this play because it's something I really feel strongly about and really want to do and they said yes. I think it's important to let people go and do other things, because when you come back you feel re-energized. Just because you're in a soap you're labeled a soap actor, but we're still all jobbing actors. And for me it's really important to go off and do other things.' 'But I love being in EastEnders. I've been very lucky since I've come back and had great storylines.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Marilyn Monroe is definitely an icon, but does Cindy qualify as another? 'So I'm told,' says Collins. She's been through a lot. She was imprisoned, was in with a gangster, had witness protection, had a baby that was taken away, was in prison… Died in childbirth… 'Yeah, and so she goes abroad, meets a man, falls in love, gets married, has two more children, then finds out two of her kids have died, tries to get away then is told she can't go back to Spain… I mean, honestly, it confuses ME. When they told me the backstory, I was like, blimey 25 years of this, how is this woman coping? 'I think she's a complex character and I love playing her. I like her because she's unapologetic. And she's got balls. She's strong, vulnerable, dysfunctional, but passionate. And she's all these things that women really shouldn't be. She's a bit crazy and I know people sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed watching, thinking what's she doing now? But I think they also love to see what she's up to. Everywhere she goes she creates drama and she's just so visible and I love that.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I think it's fantastic that older women are represented on screen. Also, why can't older women have affairs? Ok, I'm not condoning it, she did have an affair with her husband's stepson, which probably isn't a cool thing to do if you want to be accepted back into the family. But, you know what? Why not? Women of 60 can go and have affairs and I think people also want to see that on TV and I think that's really important. 'Soaps have always been really great in championing women, matriarchal figures and older women as well.' Michelle Collins plays Denise, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike in Motorhome Marilyn. | Lucy Hayes If Collins' career hadn't worked out the way it has, could she ever have seen herself going down the lookalike route? 'Oh God, I think I can. I remember getting a Kylie look alike for my daughter's birthday party. Yeah. There are people who have made careers out of doing something like that. But when I think of all the jobs I did when I was very, very young, it never really occurred to me to ever be a lookalike. Let's face it, anyone could be a Marilyn lookalike. Just get the blonde wig and iconic dress. Denise, my character says, 'Anybody can get the outfit on Amazon, but I'm different'. She feels she actually embodies Marilyn.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'You know, I did go to America when I was 17 with a boyfriend who became a very successful production designer in the film world, and we stayed in Venice Beach and I had the most brilliant time and people said to me, 'stay here and be an actress in America.' And I was tempted, and I do think what would have happened if I'd stayed? But I hadn't finished college here and came back. Sometimes I think what if? I didn't get into drama school but I've worked a lot. Life for me is about successes that come out of failures. I think having to struggle makes you a better person and a stronger person.' 'There are still a lot of things I haven't done and I'm still ticking these boxes. As an actor, as a woman, even more so now, you've got to have a lot of strings to your bow. Because it's very hard, particularly if you're from a working class background,' says the actor who was raised in north London along with her sister Vicki by a single mother who went back into education when Collins was 14 and got a degree. 'So it's important to create things for yourself and be in charge of your career.' After the Fringe, Collins will be back with a bang on EastEnders, but what else is on her bucket list of things she'd love to achieve? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I suppose I've never been asked to work at the National, the Donmar warehouse, the RSC. I've never been asked on Desert Island discs. I'm desperate to do that. There's lots of things. I don't know. I still feel I maybe have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about certain things but that's fine, I'm not angry about it. The other side of it is I feel very lucky and think I'm very privileged to be a woman of a certain age, still working, still doing something I really love. I'm proud I was pretty much a single parent and managed to have a career at the same time and be a creative. Sometimes you have to take jobs you don't really want to do but they're money jobs and then there are the other jobs, the creative jobs, like the Illustrated Mum, which I loved doing, I went to New York to get the international Emmy, and it won the three BAFTAs. So I've had a very varied career. But I'm not one of these people that pats myself on the shoulder. I don't like that. I'm confident but I'm insecure at the same time. I suffer from imposter syndrome like a lot of people but I keep on kicking away and trying to do new things and reinvent myself. And do things out of my comfort zone which is what I'm doing at the Edinburgh Fringe.' Michelle Collins in Motorhome Marilyn. | Lucy Hayes 'You have to be brave. I think to myself what could be worse? I could be doing Bear Grylls again. I'm not at the top of a mountain having to abseil down. That was really terrifying.' 'So who knows what the future holds? You can never be complacent or take anything for granted. I've learned that in life. And I want to enjoy every minute and every day because I've lost so many people over the last few years, my mum, good friends, and sadness and grief creep up on you but also give you strength to move forward and be strong. It's also given me a sense of freedom to go and do my own thing. 'I hope Motorhome Marilyn goes well and people love it. But you know what? It's something I've done, and I needed to do for myself and for Stewart. And to prove that I can.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
