Latest news with #Connery
South Wales Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Guardian
Voice coaching with Sir Sean Connery was ‘surreal', Nicola Sturgeon says
She initially thought the famous Scottish actor might be joking when he tried to teach her how to deepen her voice. Recalling how he got her to talk with a bit of paper between her teeth, she said this had 'got to count as one of the more surreal episodes in my life'. It was in 2004, when the SNP were still in opposition at Holyrood, that Connery had asked if she would meet him, Ms Sturgeon said. She spoke about her meeting with the film star to the BBC Newscast podcast as her memoir, Frankly, was published. Ms Sturgeon recalled: 'Sean had been in Edinburgh and asked if I would go see him and I went along to New Club, which is one of these old private members' clubs in Edinburgh, and had this one-to-one session with Sean, where he said he thought I could do with deepening my voice in interviews, and he was going to teach me how to do it.' She continued: 'Basically, it consisted of me with a rolled up bit of paper between my teeth where he gave me things to say, and he said this was how he had learned to deepen his voice in acting. 'And it worked while I was doing it. At first I was like 'is he taking the piss'. 'But then it started to work.' However, she said that while the method 'I guess does work when you are filming scenes as an actor', she said she 'would have looked a bit odd' if she was 'sitting in a television interview with my teeth clamped together'. Connery, a high-profile supporter of Scottish independence, died in October 2020 at the age of 90.
Leader Live
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Voice coaching with Sir Sean Connery was ‘surreal', Nicola Sturgeon says
She initially thought the famous Scottish actor might be joking when he tried to teach her how to deepen her voice. Recalling how he got her to talk with a bit of paper between her teeth, she said this had 'got to count as one of the more surreal episodes in my life'. It was in 2004, when the SNP were still in opposition at Holyrood, that Connery had asked if she would meet him, Ms Sturgeon said. She spoke about her meeting with the film star to the BBC Newscast podcast as her memoir, Frankly, was published. Ms Sturgeon recalled: 'Sean had been in Edinburgh and asked if I would go see him and I went along to New Club, which is one of these old private members' clubs in Edinburgh, and had this one-to-one session with Sean, where he said he thought I could do with deepening my voice in interviews, and he was going to teach me how to do it.' She continued: 'Basically, it consisted of me with a rolled up bit of paper between my teeth where he gave me things to say, and he said this was how he had learned to deepen his voice in acting. 'And it worked while I was doing it. At first I was like 'is he taking the piss'. 'But then it started to work.' However, she said that while the method 'I guess does work when you are filming scenes as an actor', she said she 'would have looked a bit odd' if she was 'sitting in a television interview with my teeth clamped together'. Connery, a high-profile supporter of Scottish independence, died in October 2020 at the age of 90.
USA Today
31-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Donald Trump's new Scotland golf course is ready. How can you play it?
The way President Donald Trump told it, the new Scotland golf course the Trump Organization named in his honor and dedicated to his mother wouldn't have happened without Sean Connery. He even broke out his best Bond impression to praise the late Scottish actor at the grand opening of Trump International Golf Links on Tuesday, July 29 near Aberdeen, Scotland. "The land, they said it couldn't get zoned. It was an impossibility," Trump said at the ribbon cutting ceremony before playing the course's ceremonial opening round with his son, Eric Trump, 2002 PGA champion Rich Beem and Irish golfer Paul McGinley. "Sean Connery said, 'Let the bloody bloke build his golf course.' Once he said that, everything came into line." Connery did offer support in 2008 for what Eric Trump described Tuesday as his father's "passion project," which Trump acknowledged got off to a rocky start with its neighbors. There were environmental concerns due to the resort's intrusion on the region's sand dunes and Trump's alleged tactics trying to acquire land. But Connery cited the potential benefits to the economy when Trump's initial $1.5 billion plan, which also included hundreds of houses that have not been built yet, received approval from the Scottish government. "During tough economic times, this is a major vote of confidence in Scotland's tourist industry and our ability to rise to the challenge," Connery said, according to the Daily Express. "I look forward to seeing a new gem in the north-east that is good for Aberdeenshire and good for Scotland." The resulting 36-hole golf resort, featuring a highly-acclaimed "Old Course" built in 2012 and the new course Trump formally debuted before returning to the United States after a five-day visit to Scotland, will officially open to the public on August 13. Before that, the property is set to host PGA Legends Tour and DP World Tour events the next two weeks. It will join Trump Turnberry, which Trump bought in 2014, as Scottish golf destinations. Tee times and hotel rooms are available starting next month for what the Trump Organization has dubbed "the greatest 36 holes in golf." But it won't necessarily come cheap. Here's a breakdown of how to stay and play at Trump's newest golf course, Trump International Golf Links. How to stay at Trump's new golf course Those wanting to play golf at Trump's golf property outside Aberdeen, Scotland, can stay on property. Trump MacLeod House & Lodge Hotel is billed as a five-star Scottish baronial mansion nestled within the 1,400-acre grounds of Trump International Golf Links, which is located on the former Menie Estate of Balmedie on the Scottish North-East coast. There are 19 "lavish" guest rooms (with personal butler service available), Italian marble staircases, intimate dining and bar facilities, a separate whisky bar, a full spa, outdoor hot tub, traditional log fires and secret stairways. It's available for exclusive use, corporate events and weddings and "minutes" from the property's golf courses. A house or lodge room for the week beginning on Sunday, August 18 ‒ the earliest day rooms are available as of July 29 ‒ costs 683 Euros (about $787) or more, depending on availability and number of nights. "We had an unlimited budget and we exceeded it," Eric Trump said. "This was his (father's) Mona Lisa." There are also golf packages that include hotel stays, with options built around playing one round or two rounds on the two courses at Trump International Golf Links. The two-night version featuring two rounds of golf on the property's old and new course, which includes a two-night stay at the hotel, a welcome dinner and a dram of whisky and breakfast, costs 2,500 Euros per person (about $2,884) or 4000 Euros (about $4,615) for two people sharing a room. The package is available from August 25 until October 31, 2025, according to the property website. The one-night version, which includes one round of golf on the property's old course, a one-night stay at the hotel and a three-course dinner at The Dunes Restaurant & Bar at the golf clubhouse, costs 1,070 Euros (about $1,234) for a single occupancy room and 782.50 Euros (about $903) per person for a double occupancy room. A one-night package with just golf and hotel accommodations costs 985 Euros ($1,136) for a single occupancy room and 697.50 Euros (about $804) per person for a double occupancy room. In November and December, the costs drop to 460 Euros (about $530) per person per night. The property website also advertises a "Winter Getaway for two" package at 495 Euros (about $571). It includes a one-night stay, three-course dinner at "Trump's Restaurant & Cellar," breakfast in the morning and beauty and wellness treatments at the hotel spa. How to play at Trump International Golf Links Golfers looking to play Trump International Golf Links can get tee times on the old course, the new course or "play the greatest 36 holes in golf." Tee times are available on the new course and old course beginning on Aug. 13, with greens fees costing 495 Euros (about $571) per person. There is a combined "Greatest 36" rate as well until October 31. Tee times will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis during the first few months of play, according to the property website. There are also various levels of club membership available for an undisclosed cost. "It's going to be something special and the big question is which is going to be better if there is such a thing," Donald Trump said about the two 18-hole courses, "because we've had such great ratings on the first, I don't know if you can match them on the second, but the second should be every bit as good. The land is of equal quality right on the North Sea and it's going to be good." Golfweek ranked the property's old course No. 31 in the international courses in its 2024 rankings.
Metro
29-07-2025
- Business
- Metro
Trump attempts Sean Connery impersonation after opening new golf course
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video US President Donald Trump gave a rather humdrum impersonation of the late Scottish actor Sean Connery while opening his new golf course in Scotland. Trump delivered his impression of the James Bond star while speaking to guests and media members at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire on Tuesday. 'So I just want to thank everybody. This has been an unbelievable development. The land, they said, couldn't get zoned, it was an impossibility,' said Trump. 'And Sean Connery said: 'Let the bloody bloke build his golf course.' 'Once he said that, everything came into line.' Trump's attempt at speaking like Connery did not elicit laughter from the crowd. Scottish First Minister John Swinney, standing behind the president, smiled slightly with his mouth closed, but only briefly. It was not the first time that the president has credited Connery for helping his development get across the finish line. In a tribute to him after he died in 2020, Trump called him 'the legendary actor, 007 Sean Connery' and 'quite a guy, and a tough character'. 'I was having a very hard time getting approvals for a big development in Scotland when Sean stepped in and shouted, 'Let him build the damn thing,'' Trump said at the time. 'That was all I needed, everything went swimmingly from there. He was so highly regarded & respected in Scotland and beyond that years of future turmoil was avoided.' Connery in 2008 reportedly said of Trump's project: 'During tough economic times, this is a major vote of confidence in Scotland's tourist industry and our ability to rise to the challenge. 'I look forward to seeing a new gem in the north-east that is good for Aberdeenshire and good for Scotland.' However, the Aberdeenshire councillor who headed the planning committee that first rejected Trump's application for the golf resort said that Connery was not involved in the decision to ultimately give him permission to build it. More Trending 'He did not submit a letter of representation to the council, appear at the planning hearing, or at the public local inquiry,' Martin Ford told the Guardian of Connery. 'Opinions offered in press articles are not material considerations in decisions on planning applications.' And David Milne, a neighbour of the golf resort, said Trump's claim that Connery helped him receive planning permits was 'utter bollocks'. Trump celebrated his golf course opening four days after touching down in Scotland and playing a round of golf at his Turnberry course, with footage circulating social media showing him allegedly cheating by having his caddie hit for him. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Who is missing inventor Julian Brown – and why is his 'disappearance' such a mystery? MORE: Everything we know about New York City gunman Shane Devon Tamura MORE: Putin stooge warns Trump has made 'another step towards war with Russia'
Scotsman
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Book review: Against Identity by Alexander Douglas
Alexander Douglas teaches the history of philosophy at the University of St Andrews. His book, Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self, is published by Allen Lane on 19 June. A study of three major thinkers by philosopher Alexander Douglas is one of my highlight books of the year so far, writes Stuart Kelly 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... The late William McIlvanney told a wonderful anecdote about meeting Sean Connery in the café at Edinburgh Zoo. A young waitress asked, nervously, 'Are you who I think you are?', to which Connery replied 'No'. But as McIlvanney archly and wisely observed, Connery was not who he thought he was either. This exemplifies some of the ironies and complexities in Alexander Douglas's lucid and absorbing study. For a subject which is daunting, he writes with both enviable clarity and, more importantly, honesty. In the conclusion, he writes about the 'philosophy of going against identity': 'I cannot claim to understand it in any practical sense… I have not escaped the mire of identity… Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Try as I might to embrace the teaching I have presented here, pride manages to keep sneaking back into the driver's sear of my actions'. I don't care if this seems like reading too much into the text, but the tenor of his words, and the reference to 'the driver's seat', seems haunted by Muriel Spark (Douglas is a resident of Edinburgh). The book is a study of three major thinkers: Zhuagnzi, (c. 369-286 BC), Spinoza (1632-1677) and René Girard (1923-2015). It is worth commending simply the fact that represents strands not normally brought into dynamic relation to each other; a Chinese sage whose own historical reality is in doubt, a doubly-ostracised Enlightenment Jew and a French-American deconstructionist and theologian. All of them saw their respective periods as moments of profound unsettlement, potential turning points when old certainties were called into question. All three internalised this sense of the precarious. The parable of Zhuang Zhou dreaming about being a butterfly is given a strong re-reading in these pages. It is not about uncertainty, a kind of Schrödinger's cat situation where we can open the box and know definitively whether Zhuang is a human or butterfly. The original says 'between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there had to be a boundary. And this is known as the transformation of things'. For there to be a change between them, they must be acknowledged as separate entities or forms; what is paramount is whatever 'it' is, 'it' has the capacity, the plasticity, to be both. A thought experiment underpins the book's concerns: how many of our markers of identity truly constitute us? It is akin to Locke's distinction between primary and secondary characteristics. For Locke, erroneously, something like colour or dimension was secondary: a sphere can be red or green, have a diameter of a millimetre of a mile, without affecting its intrinsic sphere-ness. How many of our characteristics – Douglas lists, among others, ethnicity, politics, clothing, sports teams, opinions on metaphysics – can we change without changing our elusive 'self'? On a personal, somewhat flippant, level, after an operation and an extensive blood transfusion, I lost my taste for coffee. It didn't change my sense of self, but cataracts operations meaning I don't need glasses after 45 years rather did. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The urgency of this book can be highlighted by noting that one of the students (and remember, students often set themselves up as Oedipal antagonists to their mentors) of Girard was the technocrat Peter Thiel. With him – and Musk, and Zuckerberg, and Altman – we can see the monetisation and enforcing of competitive identities, and even the atomisation of anything like a self into a flurry of ticks and likes. Douglas looks at the fictive aspect of identity, its basis on imitation in Spinoza, and the constructed nature of desire in Girard. Girard is a great exponent of St Paul and his awful realisation: 'For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do'. If our concepts of identity are so many cobwebs, they are also very dangerous ones. As he puts it: 'Aggression, performative contempt, public humiliation – anything that might fill its targets with enough shame to want to be somebody else – these are the right tools for the job' [of changing the minds of others]. But the idea of self-liberation is quixotic too. 'Anyone who feels suddenly freed to 'be themselves' is warned that they will in reality exercise a freedom to 'be somebody else'. The governing myth which Douglas invokes is that of the mythic emperor Hundun. Hundun was trapped between the competing rivals Shu and Hu, and welcomed them equally and with equanimity. He, however, had no features so Shu and Hu decided to drill and bore facial openings into him, in the process killing him. The myth horrifically conjures identity as a violent imposition, and something that paradoxically erases. Even if we take the position of Saussure on identity – that it doesn't matter which actual engine is the 4.50 from Paddington, as long as we all agree it is the train leaving at 4.50 from Paddington – there is an element of coercion. Are you merely what everyone else agrees you are? Identity politics can be summed up by the old New Yorker cartoon – why do you have to be a non-conformist like everyone else? The most interesting aspect of the argument here is the stress on having no identity, not having a different identity. There is something appealing about existing in a state of positive provisionality rather than deracinated neutrality, though it might require a degree of sanctity to achieve it. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
