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Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Jeremy Vine: The Cornish beach we'll never forget — for the wrong reasons
Jeremy Vine, 60, is one of the country's most acclaimed broadcasters with his own shows on Radio 2 and Channel 5. He grew up in Cheam, Surrey, with his brother, Tim, a comedian, and his sister, Sonya. After completing a journalism training course he quickly became a regular on TV and radio, hosting everything from election coverage to Crimewatch. Vine has been married to the journalist Rachel Schofield since 2002. They have two daughters and live in west London. After we turned 18, some of my mates and I decided to go on a Club 18-30 holiday in Sitges, Spain. Your 18th birthday was a big deal in the early Eighties, because it meant you could go on one of these fabled party holidays. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite as we'd planned, because when we got there we discovered that we'd booked a gay resort. But, c'mon, four lads on their first holiday away from their parents — sun, sea and all that. And the really strong memory I have from that holiday is how brilliant the music was in the bars and on the radio. After 1976 and the start of punk, my generation really was spoilt. Looking out over the Mediterranean, listening to Elvis Costello with a cold beer … I didn't imagine life would get any better. Soon after that trip I became a journalist and ended up working for the BBC's Today programme. That was in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, and one morning I got a call from the office saying, 'Grab your passport and go to Heathrow.' The Soviet Union was collapsing and I was sent into the Russian heartland to interview ordinary people. I ended up flying to Tomsk, a city in Siberia. Tomsk had been the site of a nuclear arms factory and a lot of it looked like the surface of the moon. Everything I saw seemed to be falling apart, but nobody there was allowed to say things were 'broken'. It was always remont, the Russian for 'being repaired', but the economy was literally unravelling in real time. I remember going for a haircut and the ruble had lost 10 per cent of its value by the time I got up to pay. But there, among all the chaos, was our very clean, very grand-looking hotel, surrounded by luxury cars and Zil limousines. The food was great, and service was wonderful. I said to our guide, 'How come nothing's happened to the hotel?' He explained that it was the government hotel where all the local dignitaries and politicians stayed. And me! • 24 of the best holiday villas in Spain When you become a foreign correspondent it gets hard to distinguish between work and travel. I was the BBC's Africa Correspondent from 1997 to 2000 and ended up visiting 18 countries. I used to call it a high-speed holiday: Gabon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, sleeping under the stars in Congo-Brazzaville … and spending an afternoon with Robert Mugabe in Harare. It was one of the last interviews he ever did with the BBC because he decided that we were all gay gangsters or something, but he came across as a surprisingly intelligent, sophisticated man. Very cultured, quoting Shakespeare and telling me how often he went to the theatre. Sadly, things weren't going quite so well for ordinary Zimbabweans. The phrase I kept hearing was, 'We are suffering.' In fact, you heard that throughout most of Africa. At times, there were revolutions taking place before our eyes. In Lesotho we came under fire as we drove past the barracks and one of the cameramen had to hide in a field for the night while the soldiers looked for him. It's at moments like that when you realise just how pale our own news agenda is, compared with what's happening around the world. • Read our full guide to South Africa Despite all that, I fell in love with Africa and was actually back in South Africa recently for a holiday with my wife and youngest daughter. The culture is fascinating, the people are amazing and the drive from Franschhoek to Cape Town will take you through some of the most beautiful landscapes you will ever see in your life. We stayed at the Mont Rochelle Hotel in Franschhoek and came across a rather incongruous tourist attraction called the Franschhoek Motor Museum. Over 200 vehicles, dating from the late-1800s, including a fleet of high-end sports cars lined up in the middle of the mountainous winelands. I'm not a petrolhead, but I would recommend it to anyone. I've seen more of this planet than I ever thought I'd get to see, but my heart is still drawn to the West Country, where I occasionally potter about on my electric bike — and am very grateful for the assistance on some of those 45-degree hills. Every one of my childhood holidays was spent at a self-catering place near Lusty Glaze Beach in Newquay. These days, most stories about Newquay involve teenagers getting hammered on ketamine, but back then all we had was the Radio 1 Roadshow. I must mention the seagulls. Lusty Glaze Beach and the Vine family all stretched out in the sunshine, listening to the gentle lap of the waves. Suddenly this flock comes dive-bombing in, aiming for us. The only people that got hit were me, my brother Tim, my sister Sonya, and Mum and Dad. I can still hear the splat as I looked up and saw a direct hit on my mum's head. For a 13-year-old, there is not much funnier than seeing your mum's new hairdo ruined by seagull poo. Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine (HarperCollins £20) is out now. To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Shucked review – terrific songs add zest to undercooked corn country musical
Aw, shucks. There's plenty to love about this US import, a country musical with a zany corn obsession and a message about breaking down barriers that suits this open air theatre. But just how much corn-fed wordplay can you stomach? You'll soon find out. There's a maze of maize jokes, some kernels of truth amid the cornball sentiment, a husk of a plot about a corn doctor mistakenly assumed to treat ears not feet and a few painful gags about cornholes. The actors essentially double as standups, delivering one-liners that are often very funny and occasionally enhance character and story but are mostly fired at random as if punslinger Tim Vine had been cloned and let loose. We're in Cob County where Maizy (I'm afraid so) is about to wed Beau. When the small town's valuable corn crop fails, she journeys to Tampa, Florida, for answers and meets conman Gordy who has two dubious claims – one on her heart and one that he can save the beleaguered town. A handsome design includes costumes by Tilly Grimes (dungarees, neckerchiefs, denim), golden lighting by Japhy Weideman and a stage bookended by cornfield thickets and circled by glowing purple rocks. Scott Pask's set features a huge barn, its rafters broken and exposed to the elements, the whole building slanting as if about to be uprooted by The Wizard of Oz's tornado. But it's Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally's songs that often blow you away: hoedowns, lonesome ballads, stagecoach rhythms, loud and proud show tunes, with a five-piece band heavy on the guitars and giving a percussive boost to the humour. Sarah O'Gleby's choreography slowly builds up steam, with performers eventually walking on whiskey barrels and mixing hand claps with foot slaps. Georgina Onuorah thoroughly takes possession of Independently Owned, an anthem of self-determination – no mean feat as it is so closely linked with Alex Newell who won a Tony award in the same role as whiskey-making Lulu. When Ben Joyce (Beau) sings a solo called OK you half want him to do a full country set himself while Sophie McShera makes a yearning case for a world of windows not walls in Maizy's solo. Matthew Seadon-Young has fun with a jazzy number about Gordy's bid to be badder. Under Katy Richardson's musical direction, many shades and themes of country music are present yet the lyrics sometimes lack the genre's reputation for storytelling. The show is moved along by two storytellers, a little like the Mean Girls musical, with Monique Ashe-Palmer and Steven Webb sharing a nice rapport. With a book by Robert Horn, it's presented as a fable, not as you may first think about climate catastrophe but about loving neighbours and welcoming strangers, respecting home yet not being afraid to roam. But when even the thinly drawn characters express alarm at the words they're saying, it's hard to invest in the relationships. Comedies tend to have one wise-cracking role like the goofy Peanut (Keith Ramsay), but here everyone shares the compulsion to deliver bon mots, lollipop stick jokes and small-town homespun humour. It's ultimately exhausting and not only flattens character but reduces dialogue to the same pattern of setup, pause and punchline (many of which you see coming), slowing down Jack O'Brien's rambling production. Would it help if you were familiar with Hee Haw, the country music variety TV show to which it pays homage? Perhaps. But across town, Mischief Theatre are unleashing their own barrage of groansome gags in The Comedy About Spies, a dizzily ridiculous farce which ambushes audiences on many levels, including making you sympathetic towards the unlikeliest characters. Shucked really wants you to laugh and care but to do that would require separating the wheat from the chaff. At Regent's Park Open Air theatre, London, until 14 June
