A dramatic re-enactment of the movie Titanic, with a toy boat and ice cubes. Comedians acting out Star Trek fans who want to have operations to look like Mr Spock. The world record for most sips in 30 seconds during a Neil Diamond song. When I saw Facty Fact at Fringe World 2015, it was…
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Feb
The Fringe World website suggests that you see a random show. Which is what I did one Monday night at Fringe World 2015. I’d just seen a magic show and was going to a comedy act at a pub, but that wasn’t starting for an hour and three-quarters. I picked The Lion, The Bitch and…
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Feb
Is that a Dalek on top of the falls? The Daleks were the first, and remain the most successful, alien monster in the TV series Doctor Who. Why were they so popular? As as writer, I’d like to think it was the writing. But the Daleks have been portrayed in many different ways. In their first story,…
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Feb
Florida (pronounced flor-EE-dah) is a pedestrian mall in the central shopping district of Buenos Aires. When I walked through the streets of Cusco, Peru (the nearest city to Machu Picchu), I was so obviously a tourist that I was constantly asked if I wanted to: get my shoes polished (odd when I was wearing sneakers); have…
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Jan
What’s it called? My Argentina: Learning Spanish and Loving Thatcher. What’s it about? How I accidentally fell in love with Argentina and learned Spanish, while: buying Evita dolls with clunky shoes; reading sexy political memoirs; witnessing the Earth’s creation near polystyrene palms; and re-living the sinking of the Titanic. Is it tasteful? Extremely. Beyond taste. Do I…
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Jan
Before I went to my first Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in 2014, I scanned through over 3,000 events in the program, picked out those I wanted to see, compiled a list of when and where they were on … but when my friend Sam and I arrived, on that first afternoon, we got to the Royal Mile,…
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Jan
Mainland Antarctica does look chilly here, but the lowest it ever got outside on my cruise was about two degrees below freezing. It was January 2008, the middle of summer, just above the Antarctic Circle, so in theory we were in a temperate zone. Ninety-eight of the 110 passengers were American. For many, it would…
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Jan
If I’d seen Brokeback Mountain without knowing anything about it, I would have said it was a very good movie. Subtle performances, pristine landscapes, haunting music, Jake Gyllenhaal … but it had so much hype, the best film of all time, if not better, that I walked out a little disappointed. It was, I guess,…
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Jan
