Latest news with #EdinburghFringe
Edinburgh Live
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Live
Heartbreaking reason The Chase star 'finds it tough' on Edinburgh stages
The Chase star Paul Sinha has been performing at a stand-up comic for decades, though admits he now 'finds it tough' at the Edinburgh Fringe. The 55-year-old was once a a festival diehard, adding that he excelled in the 'exercise of masochism' of tiny, packed clubs. His 2006 solo show at The Fringe, 'Saint or Sinha?' won several awards - and he's taken to the stage in the capital almost every year since. However, since his Parkinson's diagnosis in 2019, Sinha admits finding it increasingly difficult, reports Liverpool Echo. "I now find with my health not being what it was, and my general energy levels, I find it a lot harder – not least the heat," he admitted on Tim Lihoreau's Guess Who's coming To Dinner podcast. "The rooms at the Edinburgh Festival are really hot, the performing rooms, and I find it hard." After addressing his discomfort, Paul, who celebrated his 55th birthday this week, explained: "I don't think I could ever go to Edinburgh and leave early, because I just wouldn't feel like I was part of the gang. "You've got to be genuinely suffering to a degree to feel that you're part of the gang." Paul received his Parkinson's diagnosis in 2019, after "worrying about why a right-sided limp was now getting worse." Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological disorder which causes parts of the brain to become progressively damaged. It's marked by tremors, and problems with balance, as well as sleep abnormalities, psychosis, and mood swings. As of yet, there is no known cure. Sign up for Edinburgh Live newsletters for more headlines straight to your inbox Paul, nicknamed by The Chase fans as The Sinnerman, said that many of his friends, who were still working in medicine, had spotted the early symptoms, but it wasn't until he saw his consultant for a second time that his symptoms were identified. "I went to see him and he said, 'I've just been watching you on Taskmaster, I wish I'd known. I would have diagnosed you far quicker'," he told The Sun, adding: "there were telltale signs in the way I adjust and move that he said were diagnostic." Paul said most people are familiar with the tremors that Parkinson's causes, but aren't aware that the disease has other, less common effects on the body. One of the earliest warning signs of Parkinson's is a loss of sense of smell, which can strike several years before other symptoms develop. Nerve pain, problems with peeing, and memory problems can also be a cause of concern. Join Edinburgh Live's Whatsapp Community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. Paul recalled on Loose Women how a seemingly innocuous ache was an early warning sign: "I presented one morning with a stiff, painful right shoulder. I never had a stiff joint before," he said. "I didn't think anything of it, I thought, 'this is just going to go away,' and then it just never went away." Paul works hard to manage his symptoms. Concerned about cognitive decline, he plays an online speed quiz every day at 6pm called Tea Time Trivia to keep his brain sharp: "It's something that's always on your mind because my brain is my tool," he said. "If I become more physically disabled, I'll still be able to do The Chase and I'll still be able to do stand-up comedy."
Scotsman
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Festival Fringe performers to get married live on stage in 'first legal wedding' in 78 years
The pair are believed to be the first performers to have a legal wedding with a ticketed audience at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers 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... A pair of Edinburgh Fringe performers are to get married live on stage in the 'first legal wedding' in the festival's 78-year history. Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, stars Of Gwyneth Goes Skiing and The Fit Prince, are to tie the knot on August 16 - hours before they return to the stage to perform their show. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Billed as a show on the Pleasance Grand stage, with tickets available through the usual Fringe channels, the event is dubbed 'Awkwardprods get married (but for real)'. The event will include a legal marriage ceremony conducted by a licensed officiant. Guest performers and musical elements are expected – with the final line-up to be confirmed. Linus Karp and Joseph Martin are to get married live on stage at this year's Fringe. | Linus Karp and Joseph Martin The couple, who co-founded Awkward Productions and have been together for ten years, said they believed this would be the first legal wedding with a paying audience in the Fringe's 78-year history, and likely the first LGBTQ+ wedding to be staged as part of the official programme. In a joint statement, Mr Karp and Mr Martin said: 'I do.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Their show, The Fit Prince (Who Gets Switched On The Square In The Frosty Castle The Night Before [Insert Public Holiday Here]), is a queer parody of the holiday movie genre. Their previously-run show, Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, is meanwhile also returning to this year's Edinburgh Fringe for a short run, in which Linus plays Diana and Joseph voices Charles.
Daily Record
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Stirling Uni lecturer sets Radio One 'abuzz' with special Taylor Swift cover
Listeners to the Radio One Breakfast Show were treated to an extra special version of one of the pop star's top hits - all from the perspective of a wasp. A Stirling University lecturer played a star turn on the biggest radio show in the country this morning when she shared her extra-special cover - from the perspective of a wasp. Dr Rebecca Boulton is a lecturer in the university's School of Biological and Environmental Sciences who studies the evolution and mating practices of insects. However, she took her mission to spread the gospel about the positives of the often ill-regarded pests to the airwaves of Greg James' Radio One show and treated listeners to her version of Taylor Swift's 'Anti Hero'. Rebecca and host James sang along to the extra-special version - performed from a wasp's perspective - which was first penned by the lecturer and her friend for the Edinburgh Fringe. On the show, she explained about her work and also said the aim of the song was to "change the reputation" of wasps. After singing together live on air, James said to the Stirling expert: "Becky, that is so good, I love you for that and I love your brain. "Not only are you a lecturer, but you're a fun lecturer and that means you've changed the world!"# He then invited Rebecca back on to the show to perform more of her bizarre catalogue, including one track which she says discusses the topic of insect genitalia to the tune of Robin Thicke's song 'Blurred Lines'. On her personal page, Dr Boulton describes herself as an "evolutionary ecologist interested in how animals find mates, how many times they mate, and who they mate with". She continues: "I work with parasitoid wasps which are ecologically and economically very important. "Many parasitoid species attack pest species like aphids and caterpillars; healthy populations of parasitoid wasps can reduce and even eliminate the need for using chemical pesticides."
Sunday Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sunday Post
Life according to... Myra Dubois
Get a weekly round-up of stories from The Sunday Post: Thank you for signing up to our Sunday Post newsletter. Something went wrong - please try again later. Sign Up Myra Dubois on cosmic powers, Paris in spring and Scotland in autumn… How are you, Myra? I am very well thank you, how are you? I love how professionally blurred your background is (on Teams). I feel like I'm watching a very important piece of independent cinema. Thank you! Can you tell me about your new show? Your past shows focused on helping people, but this one seems more introspective. The shows relate to each other, because that's just my natural progress as a creative person. My previous show, Be Well, I was manifesting my manifesto of 'Ad-Myra-ism' across the UK and Ireland (I have to say 'and Ireland' even though I only played Dublin). People started asking questions, I started asking questions – where does this gift of compassion that has been bestowed upon me come from? And my only conclusion is that it comes from the stars. That's nice, isn't it? That's a nice bit of poetry. So, it's really an exploration on where these powers that I have come from, and our connection to the cosmos. There's a little bit of spirituality in there as well, and a lot of reflection on the self. But it's not just going to be a sermon of self. I invite the audience to talk to me, and we'll be discussing some things and having fun along the way. Lest we forget that it's also a fun night out at the theatre. Your fans look to you for advice. Is there anyone you look to for guidance? Oh, yes. Did you see my last show? Don't be bashful if you didn't. I didn't! I was making it easy for you to say you didn't, but you came in there fast like a freight train. Well, I talked about this in my last show, if you'd have been there. I have my own personal wellness guru, Malcolm. He has a practice, a wellness detention centre, that's just on the north-west… it's south… well, it's in Blackpool. But I go there to rebalance myself and bring myself back to me as well with a mixture of things. We do little bit of Reiki, little bit of yoga, and every Thursday, they do bingo. Are you excited to come back to Scotland? Well, I'm not performing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, but I'm doing a few shows in Edinburgh and Glasgow in October. And when you're at the Fringe, you're playing to, you know, Jean and John from Swindon who've come up for the weekend, and they sit there in their cagoules, and you only really get the Scottish audiences towards the end of the Fringe. I like coming to Scotland outside of Fringe season to meet genuine Scottish audiences because I find that they're a little more up for fun, a little rowdy in a positive way, a little more engaging than your standard Edinburgh Fringe audience. People say: 'Aren't you going to the Fringe?' and I'll say: 'No, I'm going in October.' And they'll say: 'Oh, we won't be there then,' and I'll say: 'Well… exactly!' Are Scots really rowdier? Every time I do a press interview, it doesn't matter where it is, they'll always ask 'how do audiences here differ?' and, for the most part, people are people – I think people are largely the same and usually wonderful. However, Scotland does have a reputation. People used to say that Glaswegian audiences in particular would let you know if you're not very good, and that's probably true, but I'm very good, so I've never experienced that. What surprises people about you? People might be surprised to know that I've never visited Paris, it does surprise people – I think it's the Dubois name. But I am rectifying that this year, although I shouldn't say that because I'm not going professionally, I'm going privately, and I can't assure the same international security that I might do if I was going publicly. So – maybe – I'm going to Paris in August. Who can tell… Myra's new show, Cosmic Empath, will visit Glasgow and Edinburgh on October 25 and 26.
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie review: 'a tale of toxic masculinity, pettiness and hysteria'
In Charlotte Runcie's new novel, set during the Edinburgh Fringe, an actress takes inventive revenge on a theatre critic who sleeps with her after panning her show. Review by Stuart Kelly Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers 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... If Graham Greene is correct and an author requires a splinter of ice in their heart, then a critic needs a glacier; along with a brass neck, an iron constitution, steel nerves, and possibly an acid tongue. Charlotte Runcie, an arts journalist, poet and memoirist, clearly has guts, as her debut novel, set during the Edinburgh festivals, is about critics and public criticism. There are other poachers turned gamekeepers – James Wood wrote the novels The Book Against God and more recently Upstate; Leo Robson has just published The Boys; Sam Leith's The Coincidence Engine is underrated in my mind. It is tempting to turn the book's grabline ('A One Star Review. A Five Star Payback') against it and give the novel the equivalent of a beta minus, but it skewers the pointlessness of star ratings fairly well. Charlotte Runcie | Sophie Davidson The narrator is Sophie, a junior arts writer on a newspaper, of which 'she can't give you the name… but let's just say it's considered by some people to be the last remaining newspaper of decency, and by other people to be a rag of unforgivable bias'. This should be warning enough to dissuade readers from treating it as a roman-à-clef, and any comparisons to real people are indications of a generic type, not grounds for claiming defamation. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sophie is back from maternity leave (her partner is an academic), and in some ways still emotionally adrift: her father has a new family, her mother has died of pancreatic cancer. She is sharing a flat with the paper's star theatre critic, Alex Lyons, who is famously waspish, arrogant and charming. He looks like a greyhound, says things like 'since I turned thirty, getting laid has become embarrassingly easy', and is able to name drop Adorno, Derrida and Stanislavski as well as 'deferential feminist stuff' such as Greer, Butler and the late Sarah Kane. It is maybe just me, but Stanislavski rang a little untrue and slightly old-fashioned here, and given the nature of the narrative you might have expected a nod to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty or Vinterberg and Von Trier's Dogme 95 or even Marina Abramović. If you need a mental shorthand, think of AA Gill or Giles Coren. The spark of the story is Alex reviewing a dreadful one-woman show by Hayley Sinclair called 'Climate Emergence-She' (kudos to Runcie for creating a title as groanworthy as much of the Fringe). Having filed his copy, he goes for a drink, meets Hayley by chance and sleeps with her, without mentioning his job. Her reaction is to change her show completely: it is now called 'The Alex Lyons Experience', details his shabbiness and (audience participation) asks for other women to share their memories of him. Alex has never made any moves on Sophie, and the pressure-cooker flat takes on different charges of protectiveness, attraction, and betrayal. Now a cause célèbre, Alex is swiftly becoming a #MeToo totem. Tragedy literally means 'goat-song' and had a sacrificed scapegoat at its religious centre; but this, alas, is a comedy. Alex is the child of famous actors, and there is much railing about his 'nepo baby' status. It is not, I think, unfair to mention that Runcie is the daughter of James Runcie (author of the deft Grantchester novels), and granddaughter of the former archbishop, Robert. This is relevant because she seems too nice to exploit the story's potential. There is a fleeting reference to Waugh's Scoop, but the mixture of toxic masculinity, creative solipsism, bad faith, pretentiousness, pettiness and hysteria really requires different skills. Writers like Shalom Auslander, Julius Taranto or Timur Vermes have the necessary capacity of going too far and not knowing when to stop. If it were filmed, it should be in the hands of Armando Iannucci, or, better yet, Chris Morris. The other option would be to drop the comedy altogether and write something serious. Having reviewed and admired Runcie's non-fiction book, Salt On Your Tongue, I rather think it would be a more natural fit. There are important things to say about how to be discerning in a culture which uses the word 'judgmental' as an accusation. In terms of exploitative arts culture, critics are pretty negligible, lower even than the writers. The old joke about the starlet so dumb she slept with the writer to advance her career does make a serious point about where actual power lies: with studios and producers. The 'everyone's a critic' paradigm means that the greater the number of critics, the more the gaussian curve will settle to three out of five stars. This is not whaur extremes meet, as MacDiarmid famously wanted. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Certainly moral judgements are ten a penny these days, and it's hard to argue that Alex isn't 'a f***ing piece of shit'. Does that justify the opinions 'journalists are truly the worst of humanity' and 'find me a critic that isn't an arsehole?' I will always stand up for critics having different opinions, even when I read reviews by others and wonder if they're thick or wicked or shills. At least they're still humans.
