LeftLion Magazine - December 2010 - Issue 38

Issue 38 Dec 2010 - Jan 2011

THE SOUNDCARRIERS / JEANNIE FINLAY JOHN ROBERTSON / WHITE DOLEMITE ANDY SMITH / VIVIAN MACKERRELL NOTTS EVENTS LISTINGS

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contents

editorial

LeftLion Magazine Issue 38 December - January 2010/11

Well, another year is nearly over and it’s time for festive TV specials, massive tins of Quality Street and arguing with the family about whose go it is at Trivial Pursuit.

But Christmas is also a time for thinking about others.

So please spare a thought this year for all the starving creative people who bring you this magazine. With your help we might be able to afford enough booze to get totally drunk on Christmas eve, rather than just a little bit merry. So please donate to our cause by visiting leftlion. co.uk/buystuff and buying some stuff like t-shirts or tea towels for your loved ones. All proceeds will go towards our dwindling festive alcohol funds.

06 Contain Notts 04 May The news diary that knows you can’t spell ‘Nottingham’ without an ‘M’, an ‘O’, an ‘N’ and a ‘G

05 LeftEyeOn More eye candy from our crack team

of local snappers, this month featuring beefeaters, beefcakes and bling bikes

in New basford 06 AOurCanadian resident alien prepares himself

for everyone’s favourite alcoholiday

Sacred Than Psycho 09 More We speak to the left wing Forest legend John Robertson, who Cloughie once compared to Picasso on Regardless 11 Carry

The Soundcarriers have been

getting press all over the place for their latest LP Celeste, so we thought it was about time we gave them some in their hometown too

credits

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Terrible Cult Lion 12 You 20 Write Withnail and I is a classic of British

The bookworms have turned, with

film, but did you know that Vivian Mackerrell, who inspired Richard E Grant’s character, has strong roots from HoodTown

Affect 14 Sound Local filmmaker and artist Jeanie

Finlay talks record shops, press reviews and running over George Michael

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Triumph Dolemite White Dolemite is a gung-ho action hero from the mean streets of HoodTown. In between getting the girls and killing the baddies he took time out to chat to us

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Music Reviews Anxieteam, Burly Nagasaki, Hhymn, Inkrument, Will Jeffery, Red Rack’em, The Silver Factory, Solomon Grundy and Strange Attraktors have been on the LeftLion stereo this issue

Editor in Chief Jared Wilson (jared@leftlion.co.uk)

Screen Editor Ali Emm (ali@leftlion.co.uk)

Editor Al Needham (nishlord@leftlion.co.uk)

Stage Editor Adrian Bhagat (adrian@leftlion.co.uk)

Linchpin Alan Gilby (alan@leftlion.co.uk)

Cover Mat Rhodes (videomatdesign.com)

Deputy Editor Nathan Miller (njm@leftlion.co.uk)

Contributors Wayne Burrows Derrick Buttress Niall Browne Alastair Catteral Rob Cutforth Krisit Genovese Katie Half-Price Adele Harrison John Marsh Frank McMahon Nicola Monaghan Sarah Morrison Roger Mean Beane Noodler Tom Quickfall Pytor Stepanovitch Jim Stewart-Evans Nik Storey Andrew Trendall Brian Walter

Designer Becca Hibberd (becca@leftlion.co.uk) Art Director David Blenkey (reason@leftlion.co.uk) Marketing and Sales Manager Ben Hacking (ben@leftlion.co.uk) Literature Editor James Walker (books@leftlion.co.uk) Music Editor Paul Klotschkow (paulk@leftlion.co.uk) Photography Editor Dominic Henry (dom@leftlion.co.uk)

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poems about TV dinners and crime scenes as well as reviews of six new books from authors based near you

Expectations 22 Crate Portishead collaborator and northern

soul enthusiast Andy Smith has a new residency in Notts. But he’s still not played DJ Hero

Listings 23 Events Everything you need to know about

going out in HoodTown over the festive season, including all the local New Year’s Eve parties

Noshingham 28

Under review this month by our

team of highly-trained eaters are Ania, Café Nomad and Hart’s Nottingham

30 Horrorscopes Plus the Arthole, LeftLion Abroad,

and Notts Trumps

Photographers David Baird Jon Holland Tom Jacques Vikas Sandhu Tim Schnetgoeke Daniel Swift Adam Woodfield Illustrators Judit Ferencz Rikki Marr Mike Schofield Rob White LeftLion.co.uk received twelve million page views during the last year. This magazine has an estimated readership of 40,000 people and is distributed to over 300 venues across the city of Nottingham.

If your venue isn’t one of them, please contact Ben on 07984 275453 or email ben@leftlion.co.uk.

This magazine is printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests. Our printers are ISO 14001 certified by the British Accreditation Bureau for their environmental management system.

Poetry Editor Aly Stoneman (poetry@leftlion.co.uk)

Want to advertise in our pages? Email sales@leftlion.co.uk or phone Ben on 07984 275453 or visit leftlion.co.uk/advertise

We had quite a lot of fun putting this issue together. We laughed hard at the brilliant tongue-in-cheek taglines on Video Mat’s White Dolemite posters and liked him so much that, after the interview, we asked him to work with us on the magazine cover too. We were intrigued by the story of Vivian Mackerrell and the thought that the inspiration for Richard E Grant’s iconic performance in Withnail and I had strong roots in Nottingham and were eager to find out more. We were also fascinated by filmmaker Jeannie Finlay’s banter about record shops and the thoughts of The Soundcarriers about making it nationally without really being that well known in their home city. We then had a chat with Portishead collaborator Andy Smith about music from the fifties and his new residency at Moog.

You will notice that this issue also contains a magazine inside celebrating thirty years of a local music institution.

Everyone who spent their youth in Nottingham has memories of Rock City, whether of rocking out the moshpit to your favourite bands, awkwardly fondling gothed-up girls and boys or falling over drunk on the sticky black floors. The place has provided endless musical nights out for Nottinghamians over the last thirty years and on behalf of the whole LeftLion team I would like to wish all those involved with ‘Citeh’ a very happy birthday!

Still wondering what to do this New Year’s Eve? There are plenty of options as you will see in our listings section. But us LeftLioners will be jiving the night away at the Golden Fleece on Mansfield Road with the likes of Ronika, The Eviltones and Rebel Soul Collective in tow. For reasons still unknown to me our music editor has also decided to install a fancy dress theme of ‘eighties films’ on the night.

So come along dressed as a Ghostbuster, a Karate Kid or a Goonie and you might even win yourself a (more than likely beer-related) prize. It’s £6 to get in and tickets are available from behind the bar at the Golden Fleece as well as online at leftlion.co.uk/nye Bye for now ducks. All the best for 2011. jared@leftlion.co.uk

Rebecca Hibberd

Designer Rebecca Hibberd moved to Nottingham by accident. She’s not really sure what she is doing here but knows she is having a lot of fun doing it. Being fairly new to the LeftLion team she tries her hands at all sorts and has recently helped to design the Rock City 30th Anniversary magazine. She is currently obsessed with both Doctor Who, Louis Theroux and Pancho’s mixed kebabs.

Mat Rhodes

Cover artist Mat showed his mother the new White Dolemite exhibition work recently. She said “Oh Matthew, why can’t you just design something nice for a change” quickly followed by “And I don’t think anyone really wants to see you naked” But that’s what Mat does, he designs things: posters, flyers, artwork for bands, movies... anything. And every now and then, he takes all his clothes off. Sure beats having a real job. videomatdesign.com leftlion.co.uk/issue38

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TUITION FEES DEMONSTRATIONS The only explanations I can see for this massive rise is that it is in the interests of the State to ensure people are in debt, they are easier to control. theonelikethe I think the pro-cuts media spiel (“it’s tough but necessary - now, here’s something shiny to cheer you up”...etc) has been so successful that the State could get away with more or less anything right now.

M_B The students are going mad. I love it!

Manchurian Bring on the revolution!

RebelRhymes At the end of the day, although the Sun can espouse about ‘Leftie Thugs’ and ‘Yobs’ - £10,000 of damage was done to Millbank Tower. Which is about the same amount of financial damage each one of those students will face each year for their education.

Jared Disgraceful scenes to be honest. It was quite clear the majority of protestors where there for a peaceful protest, but the day was hijacked by the minority who just wanted to cause trouble.

Daysleeper A protest for a just cause ruined by some absolute twats. String them up by their mummies’ and daddies’ purse-strings!

Seamus Flannery When I saw it I thought “’Ello, ‘ello, the paid provocateurs are at it again” but it seems these weren’t, just idiots who wouldn’t know how to make an effective political statement if they went on a three year uni course on the subject.

NS The problem is that peaceful protest gets nowhere especially when we have politicians who are so desperate and greedy for power that they are happy to abandon all of their principles.

MetricMike It’s a shame that all of the people on the protest are now being portrayed in the media as rag week hooligans, but if nothing had got broken, they wouldn’t have been portrayed at all. I don’t want to condone political rowdiness, but it’s a fact that riots get results (and attention) in a way that peaceful protest marches just don’t.

New Jupiter Mining Corp But it also got the Tories up with the whole “I’m sure the entire house will join me in condemming etc etc waffle waffle.” As we speak they’re presenting themselves as the sensible side doing the necessary things that need to be done. And making yourself look sensible gets a lot easier when the other side is on TV smashing windows Khongor

ANYONE GOT ROOM FOR TWO CATS? My mate has decided to embark on a career as a nurse. Unfortunately it means she can no longer afford her house and she needs someone super nice to give her two cats a new home. They’re about six years old, super cute, litter trained and like long walks outside and cuddles. One is long haired, one is normal haired. Let me know if you want to meet them.

Metal Monkey I’ve got a sack and I know where the Trent is.

Daysleeper I demand a two-day forum ban for Daysleeper theonelikethe Surely someone has space for two beautiful cats... :( Metal Monkey Local Chinese takeaway?

Daysleeper I had a whole Basset Hound for my lunch - don’t think I could fit two cats in as well. How big are they? What flavour?

ROB Kitten Tikka agent smith - dataset

MAY CONTAIN NOTTS with Nottingham’s ‘Mr. Sex’ Al Needham

October - November 2010 1 October

The off-licence at the bottom of my street has a refit, which includes the world’s scariest shop frontage: massive skulls laughing at me while they writhe in the flames. Along with a massive photo in the window of a cob, that should have had fangs dripping blood. Seriously, look out for it if you’re ever going past the Lidl on Mansfield Road; it looks like the kind of off-licence Cypress Hill would run.

6 October

Goose Fair. I wasn’t going to go, but I heard rumours of a £2 pot of peas, which I spend ages searching for so I could get suitably irate, tut loudly and screech ‘forteh bastard bob?’ at people. I didn’t find it. The rest of the fair is the usual Happy Shopper Alton Towers rammel and not worthy of further comment.

7 October

A woman from the Meadows gets done for necking nine – nine! – litres of White Storm cider, mistaking the headlight on a cyclist’s helmet on Forest Road for a CCTV camera, and clonking him in the face while trying to nick his iPod. Personal rule: never drink anything that sounds like a Nazi skinhead band.

5 November

A school in Eastwood bans Dobby and its manifold variants for health and safety reasons, like a bunch of jessies. When I was their age, we used to play Wally with rubber dog balls, and a game called Deathball, where you lobbed a ball onto the roof of the youth club and the other lad had to catch it on the full without being able to see it. If you were good enough, the poor sod would end up with a dislodged half-brick coming at him. Sigh. Happy times.

Some mouth-breather on Mansfield Road decides to commemorate the attempt to overthrow Parliament by chucking a banger into the Fish Man’s basket and ruining his stock. Two absolute heroes grab said bell-end and proceed to ruin his face. Speaking of which, and seeing as pretty much absolutely arse all happened in Notts this bi-month, MCN launches an appeal on behalf of the Fish Man; have you or someone you know got an awning for a small Sprite caravan? Some scabby gets slashed up his old one up at Americana, and he needs a new one for his wheelchair-bound grandson, so he can have a holiday. If you’ve got one to sell or give away, fire over an e-mail to fishman@leftlion.co.uk now!

19 October

7 November

12 October

It’s announced that plans to chuck £700m at Broad March in order to make it look something other than a huge concrete turd from the arse of Pound Shop Satan may be scrapped. I went through there the other week and saw a bloke running a wholefood stall holding out a tray of nuts like a Victorian matchseller, trying to get indoor whales with scraped-back hair to eat something healthy. I nearly roared for him.

21 October

David Cameron and his – and I’m sorry, but there’s no other word for this - bum-chum Nick Clegg visit the Meadows, resulting in coppers everywhere, but nothing happens. Obviously they’d been briefed not to try and sell anyone one a wrapped-up wodge of oregano, or get ‘NG3’ tattooed on their necks.

29 October

East Midlands Airport cops headlines all over the world when they discover explosives in a cargo plane. How stupid it was it to drop ‘Nottingham’ from the name now, everyone? Barack Obama would have been on the telly saying our name and everything.

That would have been mint. Incidentally, the first two things people see when they arrive at East Midlands Airport are 1) a Greggs, and 2) a Spar. Why don’t they have a duty-free pound shop there, while they’re at it?

30 October

And yeah, I know; a duty-free pound shop wouldn’t be called a pound shop – it’d be an 82½p shop, or summat.

31 October

May Contain Notts is invited to help judge a Miss Zombie Nottingham contest at Spanky Van Dykes. The last time it was part of a judging panel was for a pilot episode of a Channel 5 show called Amateur Stripper Night. It never made it to TV, but MCN met a Welsh stripper there who wanted help getting into the world of grot. She sent a tape of her in action, whereupon MCN couldn’t help but notice there were only two fingers on the hand of her partner. Then, right near the denouement, the tape crashed into a recording of Lady Di’s funeral.

MCN discovers that the mushy pea stall at Viccy Market has shut down, sparking off a week of mourning not dissimilar to North Korea after Kim Il Sung snuffed it. Did you know that for years, that place had a multi-coloured Swap Shop sticker on the back wall that kids were encouraged to look out for when Cheggers did a massive swap on the Forest?

18 November

A massive fire takes down Templars, also depriving the city of Posh Spice, the curry house named after the world’s most famous non-eater, which never actually opened. Did it?

19 November

Rejoice! Viccy Market start advertising for a new tenant to take over the pea stall! Idea: repanel the entire place in wood, call myself ‘Prince Of Peas’ and mince about in a Michael Praed mullet to the Bryan Adams song.

22 November

No, even better; a late sixties-themed bar with scatter cushions and bongs filled with mint sauce called Give Peas A Chance.

24 November

Or Pea-Funk, where I totter about dressed up like Bootsy Collins and blast out Funkadelic tunes. No, a more early-90s, Ravey vibe.

Called Peas Are Good, Peas Are Good

26 November

A snake is rescued from a house fire in Radford.

28 November

Viccy Market announces that it’s in high-level talks with a prospective new owner of the pea stall. Yesss. leftlion.co.uk/maycontainnotts

Still waiting two months for your MCN fix? Are you thick or summat? The May Contain Notts newsletter hits Nottingham every Friday(ish), with chelp, mither, rammell, and hugely important updates of what a gwan in LeftLionLand. Slap leftlion.co.uk/mcn in your browser and stop fannying abahht, youth...

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LeftEyeOn

Images of the last two months from the cream of our local photo talent.

Left to right from the top: Season of mists - Wollaton Hall’s red and fallow deer reign supreme on the rolling parkland during the autumn rut.

(Tom Jaques / Flickr: jacques-t) Blue Bankers - Barclays would like you to rest assured that your money is in safe hands with their dancing guardsmen... no really.

Just don’t ask about the billions they lost and borrowed.

(Jon Holland / Flickr: jonfholl) Dear Santa - I is wantin’ a proper bling mountain bike for Christmas, proper gangsta! Yer get meh?

(Vikas Sandhu / Flickr: vikdaddy) Dodgers demo - People getting angry with Vodafone on Saturday 6 November. The mobile moguls have allegedly evaded £6 billion in tax. That’s a lot of hospitals!

(Daniel Swift / Flickr: DanS79) You lookin at my bird? - Just like Oceana only in lycra pants.

Ezekial Jackson shows Jack Ryder who’s boss at the WWE RAW showdown at the Trent FM Arena on Sunday 7 November.

(Dom Henry / domhenry.com) leftlion.co.uk/issue38

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Rob Cutforth braces himself for everyone’s favourite alcoholiday - New Year’s Eve...

I have been in exactly three proper fights in my life. I know that probably sounds like a lot to you, the average Nottinghamian, but I’m from a small Southern Alberta town and there’s not a lot to do out there. Caving each others faces in is outranked only by ‘designing beer bongs’ and ‘burning stuff’ in the list of top ten prairie pastimes. Growing up in Brooks and only being involved in three fights makes me a bit of a pantywaist by Albertan standards.

My first fight was a result of a junior high intramural floor hockey kerfuffle with a kid named Mike.

This is exactly how the fight went: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Mike put me in a headlock, threw me to the ground, sat on top of me and asked; “Do you give up?”

I said; “No!” He punched me in the face.

I said; “Yes!” He got off me and went back to his floor hockey game while I had a bit of a cry.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: I am truly crap at fighting. I swore I would never put myself through that again. It took a little thing called ‘New Year’s Eve’ to make me break that promise. Twice.

I’ve never been much of a scrapper, even when I’ve had a few. On a normal night out when my body has decided I’ve had too much to drink, my stomach sends a signal to my brain that says, “Screw being social - fried chicken and bed are needed immediately.” Thirty minutes later, I am tucked up in bed covered head-to-toe in the Colonel’s spices while my mates (and often my wife) are back at the bar wondering where I’ve gotten to. People who know me back home have long gotten used to my disappearing act and dubbed the phenomenon my ‘Robbie Auto-pilot’. Robbie Auto-pilot usually kicks in sometime around the forth or fifth pint, which has saved me from making a dickhead of myself many times. I love Robbie Auto-pilot.

New Year’s Eve is Robbie Auto-pilot poison. Robbie Auto-pilot doesn’t understand why it’s so important to drink J-Bombs and champagne at midnight, or why no one will let him go home. What these people don’t understand is that if Robbie Auto-pilot is stopped from leaving and forced to carry on drinking past his limit, he becomes Robbie-Asshole. And the only way to get Robbie-Asshole back into his box is to punch him back in.

My second fight started at the end of the night on New Year’s Eve 1999. Robbie Auto-pilot had a foot out the door, but was stopped by my best mate, who turned him back in and bought him a bottle of champagne. Robbie-Asshole repaid him for his generosity by calling his girlfriend a whore. I have no recollection of what happened next; I do know that I woke up the next morning with a sore face and a distinct absence of fried chicken. My third fight happened two New Year’s Eve’s later; different guy, same insult, same result.

(Who even says ‘whore’ anyway? It’s a ridiculous word. I don’t know where Robbie-asshole has picked this up; only 70s porn stars and saloon owners in spaghetti westerns say ‘whore’) It goes without saying that NYE - like most things which involve copious amounts of alcohol – is taken more serious over here than it is back in Canada. For starters, my pals back home have learned that if Robbie Auto-pilot wants to go home - even if it’s ten to midnight on New Year’s Eve - it’s best to let him go. My English mates aren’t quite as enlightened; previous attempts to at that time were met with utter contempt. Also, you people have this horrible ritual called ‘rounds’, and on 31 December, these rounds are expensive. If I’ve bought a round of champagne for everyone, I can’t leave before I get my own back, because while Robbie Autopilot has my personal safety at heart, he’s not an idiot.

New Year’s Eve is celebrated in this city the same cack-handed way that every other holiday outside of Christmas is celebrated. It always starts with good intentions; Bands are booked, tickets are printed, champagne is chilled, party poppers are bought. But by half ten the champagne’s been quaffed, the poppers popped and the bar is a sweaty, steaming mass of shouting, slobbering faces, gyrating arms and legs and flying sparkly bits; Frankly, you’re lucky to get out alive.

In my first New Year’s Eve over here, I was rugby-tackled by a massive guy dressed as Dennis the Menace. I escaped a severe humping by said man, but only just.

My second limey New Year’s Eve started with tequila shots and ended in me dislocating my shoulder wrestling a mate on the sidewalk. We actually counted down to 1am that night; everyone was so paralytic that no one noticed that midnight had passed. Oh, and last year my brother-in-law pulled me away from the bar before Robbie-Asshole got my face pounded in for calling a woman at the bar a, quote, “Whoring she-chav”.

This year, the idea of going to a New Years party in fancy dress is being bandied about.

Ordinarily, I despise fancy dress, but it might be a good idea for my own protection. I’ve decided to go either as Pudsey Bear or as George Osborne, the thinking being that no one can get angry at a giant Pudsey bear, no matter how sweary it gets, while if I go dressed as George Osborne, people would half expect me to call them ‘whores’. I could walk the streets kicking pensioners and disabled people in the balls with boots made from gold bullion and people would think it was part of the act. Oh, look at that crazy George Osborne; he’s set that guy in the wheelchair on fire, what a nut!

I will try to make sure Robbie Auto-pilot remains intact this year, but if you do happen to see a bloodied Pudsey on the street this New Year’s Eve walking around aimlessly, don’t speak to him - just point him into the nearest SFC. He’ll take it from there.

Read more from Rob at leftlion.co.uk/cinb

SoundNewofYear’s theEveLion 2010 Ronika

Rebel Soul Collective

The Eviltones

31 December 7pm - late At The Golden Fleece

• Eighties Film Fancy Dress • LeftLion Pub Quiz • DJ’s on until late

Tickets and more info at leftlion.co.uk/nye

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£6 entry

LeftLion Advertorial October 2010.ai 22/09/2010 19:37:44

More Sacred Than Psycho

interview: Al Needham / illustration: Judit Ferencz

John Robertson was your archetypal terrace favourite for over a decade at Forest. In part it was because he obviously liked his pies, pints and fags, but mainly for providing the cross that Trevor Francis got on the end of in 1979, the goal that beat Hamburg in 1980, and all those photos of kids holding up the European Cup in Nottingham pubs thirty years ago.

You were at Forest for five years before Brian Clough arrived.

What are your memories of the pre-Clough era?

Well, I was doing really well under Dave McKay in the old Second Division, but then I got a bad injury and he left to take over at Derby after Clough and Taylor. The new manager Allan Brown called me ‘Jimmy’ on his first day, which I was not fond of. We didn’t get on at all. My whole attitude changed; I didn’t particularly live right at the time. I was in a phase that a lot of players get into, where they blame everything else but themselves for what’s going wrong. And then Clough and Taylor took over.

Five years later, you were scoring the winner in the European Cup Final. What did Clough do to turn you and Forest around?

He was like a whirlwind. You immediately got the impression that he meant business. What he and Peter Taylor brought to the club in general and me in particular was confidence; the fact that they could take me to one side and tell me what was wrong with me - but that they believed in me - was brilliant.

One of the great stories about you is when you were warming up at Anfield before a Liverpool game and miming the penalty kick that won the League Cup in front of the Kop. Is that true?

It was actually with a tennis ball. And it wasn’t the League Cup final penalty; it was the first away game in the league since we knocked them out of the League Cup semi-final in 1980.

I’d scored a penalty in both legs and then we had to play them in the league the week after.

The Kop were giving it the usual. I could hear them shouting abuse at me, so I took the tennis ball, put it on the spot and rolled it in. Your basic wind-up.

To people of a certain generation, you’re the icon of that era. Why do you think you’re remembered so fondly?

Well, people get remembered for scoring the goals that matter, but I dunno – I was there since I was a boy, Nottingham Forest were my only real team. I was a good player, I’m not going to say I wasn’t, but I was fortunate to be there during the most successful period of the club’s history, and I’m very flattered to have been a part of that.

I’m sorry to say that I can’t see it being done again; the Big Four are the Big Four and football is not the level playing field it was in my day.

You were always seen by Forest supporters as one of us.

Yeah. I don’t think I ever changed. I was always that boy from a council house background. I’ve always been one of the boys, I’ve never had delusions of grandeur, I liked my pint…I was just an ordinary Joe who was good at what he did.

Talking of pints, what pubs did you hit up on a night out?

When we were in our pomp, we’d get a right good turn-out at a little place called McKay’s Café in West Bridgford for chip butties, and then on to Uriah Heep’s wine bar on Byard Lane, next door to the Cross Keys. What’s it called now? Dogma.

Didn’t you go to the Beer Keller opposite the train station as well, that was panelled on the front to look like a massive beer barrel and had an Oom-Pah-Pah band?

That was before the Clough era. The younger lads like me and Viv Anderson used to go to places like that, as well as the King John and The Bodega. But as soon as Forest started to go places, we got a bit upmarket - even me! The great thing about that side was that once a week, on a Wednesday if there was no midweek game, we’d all meet up and have a social evening. There’d be a great turnout - even people like Archie Gemmell, who didn’t drink and lived in Derby. There was a great team spirit amongst the lads.

Peter Taylor is still a criminally undervalued part of the story even now, isn’t he?

Well, the best times at Forest were always under the both of them, weren’t they? I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a statue for Pete as well.

Was there a day, or a game, or a moment of truth when you finally realised that Forest were actually going to do what they did?

Everyone points to the day when we beat Manchester United 4-0 at Old Trafford in the championship season, but that was in December, when we’d been top of the league for a while. For the players, it was long before that - I’d say it was 20 minutes into the first game of that season, when we beat Everton 3-1 away, and thinking; “Hey, we’re not actually too bad, here.”

How did you get away with not being a typically conditioned athlete - even by seventies standards - and still being a genius player?

Well, thank you very much for calling me a genius. Do you know what, I’ve always found the game of football to come very easily to me, as far as what my brain decided I was going to do on the pitch. It was just something that I never particularly had to work hard at, as far as ability was concerned – I just had to work hard at the workrate side of things. I was never particularly a good runner, so I always found training difficult. I was always out of breath and I never enjoyed it.

You must have felt like kings when you went out in town…

Nottingham was buzzing at the time. Before we got going, it was all Robin Hood. Even now, it’s a toss-up between him and Brian Clough as to who the real legend is round here.

Scoring the winner for Forest against Hamburg SV in 1980 or scoring the winner for Scotland against England in 1981: what means more to you?

Scoring against England at Wembley is a really big thing to me.

When I was a little boy, I only thought the European Cup was for the Di Stefanos and the Puskases of the world - it was a different planet. But Scotland v England was once a year, and a hugely important game. You’d dream about playing for your country and scoring against England, so to actually achieve it? (clenches fist).

But I saw that as an attainable goal, however difficult. It never crossed my mind that I could score in a European Cup final, because I felt it would be totally outside my realm. When I think about it, I have to say that I’m a lucky boy to have done both.

You were part of the Scotland 1978 World Cup squad. Did you and that squad really think you were going to win the World Cup, or were you shocked at the expectations that were foisted upon you?

Ally McLeod raised the expectations of the nation, for sure, but why not be optimistic? It was a great team of players. I only got my first cap at the Home Internationals, when McLeod announced the World Cup squad, and I think that if he’d waited

until after the Home Internationals, I wouldn’t have gone. I had an awful debut against Northern Ireland; Martin O’ Neill was on the other side and knew my game inside out, and told Bryan Hamilton how to play me. I remember coming off and telling my Dad; “Well, at least I’ve played for my country.” Argentina wasn’t a great experience for me. I didn’t enjoy it.

What was Ally McLeod really like?

I don’t really know. I never really spoke to him very often. I don’t know why he picked me - maybe there was some pressure on him to pick me, as Forest had won the league. I look back on it now and think I probably shouldn’t have gone.

There’s the famous news footage of the Scotland squad stranded on the coach after the 1-1 draw with Iran, with supporters outside going mental. What was that like?

It was dreadful. But those supporters had a right to vent their anger, because we’d disappointed them. The thing is, there’s no-one more upset in situations like that than the players. I played in that game - we were awful.

What happened to Scottish football? There seemed to be a constant stream of world-class players that dried up in the early eighties…

I really don’t know. I don’t seem to see so many great Scottish players these days. But even with the great players that they had – Denis Law, Jim Baxter, Kenny Dalglish – Scotland didn’t particularly do much better. So while people wax on about those great days of yore, they forget that there weren’t that many in the first place.

Do you think there was too much importance put on beating England?

No, because I think it is important to beat England. Any way you can (laughs).

Practically every book on Brian Clough states that your transfer from Forest to Derby in 1983 was the incident that destroyed the friendship of Clough and Taylor. How do you feel about that?

I don’t agree at all and never have. I think Peter had had enough of football and Brian Clough sorted him a deal to leave. Then the Derby job came up, and I think Brian was disappointed when Peter took it. As for me, my contract was running out at Forest.

Yes, I chose to go to Derby - I remember my wife saying to me on the day I went in there; ‘whatever you do, don’t sign’, but I did.

I knew after a month that I wasn’t going to enjoy it there. I was having an awful time with my daughter’s health problems, so my mind wasn’t on football. I thought it was time for a change, but looking back it was a mistake. Nothing to do with Derby or anyone anyone there did. But it’s the only mistake I made in my career.

Did you enjoy living in Nottingham?

I still do. Apart from the five years with Martin O’Neill at Celtic, I’ve been here since 1968. I love it.

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9

22 January – 27 March 2011 www.nottinghamcontemporary.org

Jack Goldstein

Anne Collier

Jack Goldstein, Still from Butterflies, 1975, 16mm, color. Courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz, KĂśln/Berlin and The Estate of Jack Goldstein Anne Collier, Eye (Enlargement of Color Negative), 2007. C-print. Courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery, New York, Marc Foxx Gallery, LA and Corvi-Mora, London Logo by Ryan Gander

interview: Wayne Burrows photo: Adam Woodfield

Carry On Regardless

The Soundcarriers - Adam, Pish, Dorian and Leonore - caused a splash with their psyched-out debut LP Harmonium. Now, their latest LP Celeste is being properly bigged up by the heavyweight music press.

So isn’t it time Nottingham took them to its heart?

We heard that the band first came together over a shared love of John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. Is that true?

Pish: We were all listening to similar things and that was one of them when we started. But that LP does sum up the mood - or moods - we often go for. It’s got a beautiful cinematic feel, that’s also mixed with psychedelic experimentation, harmonies, grooves and other sounds. It’s a real journey from start to finish and that’s what we’d like to achieve on our own records.

Bands usually have an image that unites the members, but when you’re on stage it can look like you’ve all wandered in from different bands and genres.

Pish: Yeah, I suppose we do all look pretty different, but it’s not contrived. I don’t think we’ve ever thought much about our image, to be honest - maybe we should start.

Adam: We all listen to different things, and we all listen to so much different music on a day to day basis I suppose it’s inevitable. I think we looked a bit less different when we started, but we’ve always been four individuals rather than the kind of gang who all do the same things, and all like the same bands.

Your first album Harmonium is a very catchy, poppy kind of record, while Celeste seems to have much more improvisation, riffing and jamming going on within the songs...was that a deliberate decision?

Pish: I think it’s fair to say we really wanted the first album to sound much more like this second one than it eventually did. Harmonium was like a prototype for Celeste.

In the sleeve-notes to Celeste, it says it’s impossible to tell if your sound comes from Nottingham, the West Coast or Saturn...

Pish: Well, it’s what a lot of people have said, which is probably why we get a lot of Stereolab and Broadcast comparisons. I suppose they’re other bands who are hard to place, so in that way I don’t mind at all - but it gets a bit ridiculous when every review has the same comparisons.

You’re in the unusual position of being better known nationally than in your home town at this point, in that you’ve had a lot of press in the London-based music magazines and newspapers like The Guardian and The Independent, but don’t seem to have been quite as well covered locally...

Pish: It is strange that not that many people know us in Nottingham, and we don’t get to play that much here. I’m not sure why that is - maybe it’s that thing of not quite fitting into any particular scene. We seem to get bigger audiences in other places, like Manchester, Sheffield and London, but maybe that’s starting to change. We’ll have to play more gigs here and find out!

Do you all still live here?

Adam: Yes, me Pish and Dorian all still live in Nottingham and Leonore’s in Manchester, which is also where our label Melodic is based.

How did you get involved with Melodic?

Pish: Initially we were on a smaller label called Heron, who put out the first 45, and we were going to do an album with them, but that didn’t quite work out. When Melodic heard the rough mixes and demos we’d done towards it, they offered us a deal. It was quite easy in a way... and it was very important to us that they could do vinyl as well as the usual CD and download releases. I think we’re the only band Melodic do vinyl issues for, but we wanted that in our agreement with them from the start.

Adam: I think more bands are going for vinyl now. It feels like a more permanent document of what you’ve done - like having a book in your hands or something.

So you’ve got two albums done now, do you have any ideas about where you’ll be going next?

Pish: I think we’ll just put out a double album with nothing but white noise on it, like our own Metal Machine Music, you know? Actually, I’ve no idea.

Adam: So far our approach has been very simple, with space to play and a tape recorder, basically, and we’re thinking about doing the next record in a different studio. We did some mixing for Celeste at Chickenshack Studios, which has lots more space than our usual place, so we might try to do some recording there. You notice that where you record makes a difference to the sound and because we’re interested in going for a bigger sound it makes sense to record in a place where we’ve all got more elbow room and can bring in additional musicians if we need them.

I’m guessing The Soundcarriers isn’t yet making enough for you to give up your other jobs...

Pish: Not yet, though we do make some income off the band, so I suppose you’d say we’re semiprofessional musicians at this point. My day job is working with Jim Cooke, formerly of Selectadisc, selling records online. It’s a great job and nice to have that feeling that my work with the band and with Jim are at least kind of related.

Adam: I’m more an odd-job man myself - though I just got sacked, but I won’t go into that.

However, it’s been the usual stuff you’d expect a musician to be doing to make a living. Some work at bookshops, others do retail jobs or sell records online.

Do any of you play in other bands?

Adam: Not any more, but we’d all been in loads of bands before forming this one. I did a degree in jazz in London, and so I’ve played drums in lots of different line-ups over the years. But we didn’t meet in other bands - me and Pish were at school together in Beeston, and we met Dorian at college, so we’ve known each other for years now.

Pish: We’d had about five different female keyboard players in the band before Leonore. You could say female keyboard players were to The Soundcarriers what drummers were to Spinal Tap for a while, except ours just left rather than suffered all sorts of bizarre accidents. But with Leonore it just really clicked.

Any reason why you’ve always gone for female keyboard players?

Adam: We’ve always wanted that blend of male and female voices in the sound, as we all love the kinds of records that people like Nico and Francoise Hardy used to make and you can’t get that sound without a female voice in the mix.

It’s notable that when you play, it’s very much as an ensemble, rather than singers plus band...

Pish: Yes, that is deliberate and we rarely have anyone at the front on stage. The way you arrange yourselves on stage does have an effect on the sound, and we like to play in a way where we can all see each other and interact. I suppose because our songs are built around harmonies, the way we are when we perform reflects that.

So what’s next?

We’re just itching to get back into a studio at this point and we’re playing some gigs around the country with the new album at the moment. Beyond that, it’s just a case of keeping going, keeping writing, and seeing where we end up.

Celeste is out now on Melodic records and can be bought from record shops on CD, double gatefold vinyl and digital download. thesoundcarriers.com leftlion.co.uk/issue38

11

YOU TERRIBLE

Vivian Mackerrell grew up in Nottingham and was a jobbing actor in the sixties and seventies. He played ‘Fourth Tramp’ in a BBC play and had a bit part in a film about a doll that came to life. Then he retreated back to Notts to work for Paul Smith, eventually becoming a pub legend and dying of throat cancer in 1995. So why has Colin Bacon written his autobiography? Well, he was also Bruce Robinson’s flatmate in the late sixties and the inspiration for the iconic Withnail and I… interview: James Walker / illustration: Mike Schofield

Researching your book was a little more difficult than you imagined...

Initially I was shot down when I contacted the director Bruce Robinson because he’d said all he wanted to say about Withnail and I and had moved on. When I said I was thinking of calling the book In Search of Withnail he became a bit touchy and said ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that’, which took the wind out of my sails a little bit. So initially it was a knock in the teeth but after that everyone I spoke to was incredibly helpful because they all loved Vivian.

Do you think Withnail and I has been a millstone around his neck?

He’s had an active creative life through books and films, and wants people to recognise other things he’s done. But he loved Viv. He definitely had great affection for him, so I don’t think there’s any jealousy. I suspect he’s just fed up with being misquoted and people wanting more from the character than he’s prepared to give. Robinson didn’t make any money from the film and funded the last part of the film himself because of various complications. He nearly walked out on the first day of filming because the producer - who’d worked with the Monty Python crew - had his own view of how Withnail should be portrayed. So I guess to see something like this take off after all of the problems and then become a cult classic without financial benefit - I think he sold the rights - must have been frustrating.

Let’s clear up some of the enduring myths that surround the film. Did the flat exist?

Yes, it was based on the Camden flat on Albert Street, which was owned by their classmate David Dundas, who wrote the score for the film. It’s a pretty accurate portrayal from what I can gather; a typical student flat of the time in bohemian London,

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with some very wealthy people hanging around pretending that they had nothing! They had all of this wonderful furniture and works of art but were living in absolute squalor, surviving off beans and covering themselves in Deep Heat to keep themselves warm - and of course drinking good wine. Both Viv and Bruce developed a taste for good wine as students.

Did the lighter fuel episode really happen?

Apparently so. I spoke to someone who said they were present when it occurred. Certain people have suggested that Vivian’s throat cancer could be attributable to this.

And the Camberwell Carrot?

I didn’t necessarily know it by that name, but people used to roll fantastic joints shaped like television aerials, and great long ones you’d give yourself a hernia trying to toke on. Rolling joints like the Camberwell Carrot was a typical sixties pastime.

Richard E Grant’s remit for the role was a ‘lying, mendacious, utterly charming, old darling’. Is that an accurate reflection of Vivian?

By the time I met Viv, he’d mellowed a lot. He certainly had his opinions, but I never witnessed him being as nasty as the Richard E Grant character. He was quite a Thatcherite, though; he’d see homeless people and say they should be nuked. But he wasn’t embittered, just overly dramatic. Withnail and I had loads of Vivian in it, but the extreme version. He isn’t the character. There’s a bit of artistic licence. And the one thing Bruce Robinson warned me about was that I couldn’t claim that anything said in the film was ever uttered by Vivian or else he’d issue a writ. He’s adamant that Viv didn’t say these things, although he stated in a revised screenplay of the film that although; “there isn’t a line of Viv’s in Withnail, his horrible

wine-stained tongue may as well have spoken every word.” Viv at one point suggested he’d helped him write the screenplay, but I don’t think he did. I’m sure that’s just Viv being a bit extreme in the pub one evening.

How did you meet Vivian?

I’d meet him whenever I used to come back to Nottingham to see friends, after moving down to the West Country in the seventies.

Nottingham had become a lot trendier during this time. The emphasis had shifted from the Playhouse Bar - which used to be the place to be seen in the sixties - to the Lace Market. We’d drink in Jaceys, Brownes, The Carter Club - places like that.

So was he the kind of person who would sell an arse to get a weekend away, or even a free drink?

He wouldn’t need to do anything for a free drink; he was such a lovely bloke that people would buy them for him anyway. He just talked to people and had them in raptures with his asides. If he had someone to drink with, he was happy. Once they couldn’t drink anymore, he’d find someone else. Because he lived on Cecil Street he’d hang about mostly in Lenton, at The Grove. They loved him and I guess they saw him as this eccentric guy and would buy him drinks.

How did he react when the film came out?

He loved the fact that the film had been made. I remember the day he went down to the cinema and returned with the film poster. He was very proud of it. He was always happy to talk about it if it came up, but he didn’t sit with an arrow pointing to his head saying ‘Withnail’. He had too much going for him for that.

CULT In your book, he comes across as a genuinely likable guy who lacked motivation and was completely disinterested in success...

Talking to his family and others, many have said he just didn’t have the energy to make it as an actor - although he certainly had the talent. When he starred as the junior lead in Hadrian VII at the Mermaid Theatre in the late seventies, he got great reviews. They were going to tour it nationally, but he didn’t want to do it - it was too much like hard work. By then of course, he was drinking heavily and this took all of his energy up. He didn’t have the hunger.

Tell us about the Playhouse scene back then. He was on the cusp of a moment...

He was there at the opening in 1963, starring with Ian McKellen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Coriolanus with John Neville. He also got the job as assistant stage manager, so was mixing with this hotch-potch of British talent yet to be discovered like Dame Judi Dench, Leo McKern and Steven Berkoff.

Who were his heroes and inspirations?

All the drinking actors of the sixties - Burton, Harris, O’Toole, Brando. But he adored Elvis. When Elvis died he dragged his girlfriend’s daughter out of school and made her put on something in black and said “Elvis has died, you’ve got to come home and look after me. I’m feeling so low.”

And like Elvis, he was a man of style…

I remember him in the seventies wearing this poncho and cowboy hat with Cuban heeled boots. But in the sixties he used to wear tweed suits and old brogues. He had nice things and not just clothes, stuff around his house. He had a lovely personallymade suit from Paul Smith which he washed so many times it actually went a different colour. But he had his own style.

For a man of his renowned good looks, he seemed disinterested in sexual conquests...

Yeah he didn’t really seem to care and there was some hint that he might have been bisexual. It’s a possibility. Someone told me it was definitely true, but nobody else is aware of it. Irrespective, he was fantastic-looking and a babe magnet who would get the girls interested, but he wouldn’t pursue it. He seemed almost asexual.

How did he cope with his illness?

I wasn’t present during those last few days, but I did visit him in hospital when he’d had his voice box removed. He seemed quite up about it all; he had dope blown straight through the stoma in his neck because he couldn’t inhale. He wasn’t meant to drink, but was such a charmer he could get people to smuggle drink in, even persuading a nurse. When he couldn’t drink through his throat he used a syringe to inject alcohol directly into his stomach. On one occasion they found amphetamine in there.

He doesn’t seem embittered by anything...

He certainly didn’t think anyone had dealt him a bad hand; he just wanted more drink. I guess when people were huntergatherers they hunted to live, and Viv’s purpose was to hunt out drink. I guess the drink kept him alive, as it gave him purpose.

Why do we as a nation glorify drunks?

Because we have a problem with alcohol. It’s like when they introduced all-night drinking and the government thought it would get all continental, but people just went out and got even more bladdered. It’s part of our culture - everyone says “have a drink, it’ll be fine” which it is if you do it in moderation.

If Vivian was alive today, what do you think he’d be doing?

I think it’s pretty obvious he’d be doddering along, doing the same thing. Drinking. If a drug came along he liked the look of he’d take it. I don’t think he’d ever have his road-to-Damascus moment and stop. He would never have gone to AA. Vivian and I is available from Quartet Books for £12.99. quartetbooks.co.uk

WITHNAIL AND US

“I can’t believe Vivian is dead. He got cancer of the throat and they tore his voice out. And the fellow I’d always thought of as being the biggest coward I’d ever met materialised into the bravest bastard I’d ever known. It’s got to be hard to laugh when you’re dying, but I’ll always remember you laughing. That sad, brilliant, bitter face of yours laughing… Goodbye my darling friend. I know if there’s a pub in heaven you’ll be in it. And Keats will be buying the drinks.”

Bruce Robinson, in the introduction to Withnail and I: The Original Screenplay.

“He was incredibly handsome. I went out with him for a couple of months. I got fed up with it ‘cause he never seemed interested in me and the drink was a problem. He stopped washing. He had this theory that the natural oils in his body would keep him clean if he stopped.”

Denny, Vivian’s ex-girlfriend.

“I knew him originally from him coming into the Birdcage. He often wanted things that he couldn’t quite afford.

I was starting to wholesale and sell my clothes to other people in ’77 and he used to help us pack the boxes…

One of the memorable things about Vivian and packing boxes, was that we’d sold about 400 shirts, which was an enormous order for us... I’d go into the back and Viv would be addressing the labels with this old traditional fountain pen, writing the address in this wonderful copperplate writing. Now it would just be a felt tip and sticker.

As we got busier, we had more people helping in the warehouse. They used the brown tape that comes on a machine, it used to be knopi tape, and he always used to pride himself on how perfectly he could do his knopis.

We used to have knopi competitions and Vivian was always the winner because of the immaculate way he could do straight lines.

That was one of the things about Vivian, the fact that whatever happened to him he was amazingly stylish.

There was this exquisiteness about him. I know it might sound terribly snobbish, but there was this breeding about him.”

Sir Paul Smith talking to Colin Bacon in Vivian and I. “In the mid 1980s I shared a house with a guy who ran the Paul Smith shop. A number of people would hang about in the back room of the shop and that’s where I first met Vivian. It was in that room, before Withnail and I came out, that I recall Vivian saying someone was writing a film about him and we just shrugged it off. But there were huge similarities. Anyone who’d met him would recognise the Withnail character. But he was so flamboyant with some of the stories he told I wasn’t sure at first whether I believed him.

He was an extraordinarily stylish person, far more so than the Richard E Grant character who looked dishevelled.

His clothes were very expensive and things like the long coat and scarf were trademarks of Vivian before this character appeared on screen.

I remember when he was once going to a fancy dress party at a wealthy uncle’s house and he needed a costume and didn’t have the money to hire one. So he borrowed a baked potato costume from a baked potato seller and travelled the streets of London in it, only to discover it was actually a black tie do.

The very last time I saw him he was sat on the wall outside Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem on a hot summers day and he seemed angry. I asked him why and he said in his usual, paced tone “Our greatest sporting championship – Wimbledon - has been won by two Nazis.”

Jeremy Hague, an old acquaintance of Vivian’s.

Images from left to right: Vivian in Edna, the Inebriate Woman, Ghost Story and Richard E Grant in Withnail and I leftlion.co.uk/issue38

13

SOUND AFFECTS

interview: Paul Klotschkow photo: David Baird

Originally from the North East, but now firmly established in Nottingham as both an artist and a filmmaker, both music and community have played a big role in Jeanie Finlay’s work. Now the two come together for her latest project, Sound It Out - an observational, documentary portrait about Teesside’s last surviving independent record shop.

How did you start making films?

It was a complete accident to be honest. I was an artist for a long time and I did a lot community art, but I got really fed up of it. I ended up making an interactive documentary called Homemaker where I took up residence in some old people’s living rooms. The project kind of snowballed and I made it into a website and then it won an award, which I went to Japan to pick up.

What was the award?

The Canon International Digital Creators Web Award 2002. It was about South Derbyshire and they liked the localness of the project. So I got commissioned to remake Homemakers there and spent a month in people’s living rooms in Tokyo. It was really brilliant! After that I wanted to make a longer film, so I pitched to Richard Klein at the BBC, who is now head of BBC Four. He was a completely maverick and took a massive risk and commissioned me to make a 60-minute film about four teenagers who spend all of their time in their bedrooms.

It must have been nice to have had that support early on?

He was amazing! It’s only in retrospect that I realise how rare that support is. It was successful too as the film got pick of the day in eight national newspapers. My Grandpa was reading out the review in The Telegraph and I thought “this is crazy, but maybe this is what I should do”.

What attracted you to the idea of making Sound It Out? I grew up in the North East just outside of Stockton and went to school with Tom, the guy who runs the shop. I would go home, get heroically drunk in some North East pub and wind him up that I am going to make a film about his shop one day. I thought this is a chance for me to make a film about where I grew up, about men, music fans and vinyl. Anyone who lives in a small town can relate to having that record store; it’s who you are and about so much more than just the music. Also vinyl is an interesting analogy for what is going on in the North East. Corus Steel has shut down and there is just not that much work.

The film is very DIY...

I liked the idea of doing a film that evoked the spirit of

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independent record shops. Don’t wait, just do it. If you want to be a filmmaker, you have got to make films. I get a lot of emails from students looking for the magic word. But you have just got to get on with it. You don’t need to go to film school, you just need to make films!

Do you have any special memories of shopping in independent record shops?

I used to go to Alan Fearnley’s in Middlesborough on dole day.

It was awful actually, I would go to Kwik Save opposite and buy absolute crap to eat, so I could afford some vinyl. In Nottingham I used to go to Selectadisc, and a long, long time ago I used to DJ. There was always this magic of finding a brilliant tune. In some ways I preferred going to car boot sales; finding that unexpected gem rather than a new release. I got married about eighteen months ago, and we funded part of the wedding by selling off most of our record collection.

Wasn’t that a big sacrifice?

It wasn’t actually, it was exciting. It was really good to see the records that we had loved and treasured make quite a bit of money on ebay and find new homes. We had continued buying vinyl when other people had stopped and we wanted to make new memories, so we thought it was worth it.

Were you never tempted to do a film about Selectadisc?

Well, Selectadisc has shut and also I wanted to make a film about the North East. In a way Sound It Out for me as a film is much more interesting as it’s about a second hand vinyl shop.

Also because of where it is - sandwiched between Porky Pete’s, the fishing shop and the Jobcentre - it is much richer as an environment. I’m not saying it is a better shop, but it had greater documentary potential.

What have you got coming up in future?

The Great Hip Hop Hoax will start filming in January, it’s a piece I’m making with Met Films and I’m working with Jon Burgerman on it, doing animated reconstructions. Basically, two Scottish rappers pretended to be American, got a record deal and lied for five years. But it’s really boring to sit somewhere in a chair and just talk to them, so I want to use animation to try and make

it magical. You can do stuff that you can’t do with standard reconstructions. If I see another bad reconstruction in a film I think I’m going to poke my eyes out.

How much does music play a part in your films?

With Orion and The Great Hip Hop Hoax, they are all music films, but with music as a truism rather than people sitting around talking about music. Didn’t Elvis Costello say, “People talking about music is like dancing about architecture” or something?

I’m probably misquoting him there.

But I’ve worked with some great people like Tim Olden on Teenland and Fyfe Ewing (former drummer in Therapy?) on Goth Cruise. We even got Steve Severin from Siouxsie and the Banshees to record a calypso version of Spellbound for Goth Cruise.

I worked with Pip Norton (who has worked on Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland among other films) on that and I was joking saying I wanted to make another film just so I can work with her again. We recorded and mixed the sound track at Air Studios. I nearly ran George Michael over in the car park.

I’m surprised it wasn’t the other way around. So, what would you say, at this point in time, is you proudest achievement as a filmmaker?

I can’t answer that. I don’t know, because you finish every film and then move on to the next thing. It’s such a long process. It’s not like having a child. Actually, it is like having child, because once you have given birth you forget about the pain and you’ve just got this thing that goes out into the world.

Any final words for LeftLion readers?

LeftLion I’m loving your work.

A special preview screening of Sound It Out is showing as part of Sideshow 2010 on Saturday 11 December at the Sideshow Alley Cafe at One Thoresby Street. See sideshow2010.org for further information. For more on Jeanie Finlay visit her website. jeaniefinlay.com

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Triumph Dolemite

You probably didn’t realise that Nottingham had its very own action cinema icon walking the streets – neither did we until recently. But White Dolemite is to HoodTown what Shaft was to Harlem and alongside his buddy Video Mat (and let’s just say they share a similar relationship to that of Spiderman and Peter Parker) they have been creating some great movie posters over the last few years. The movies themselves are *ahem* not particularly easy to find though… words: Kristi Genovese images: White Dolemite

Who is White Dolemite?

I’m an actor known for sleaze and violence, pretty much. I’ve starred in exploitation movies since the 1970s with the director Video Mat. We both wanted to see the same kind of thing on film which was whitexploitation. Nobody at the time was making films like that and they just got more violent and rude as we went along. White Dolemite is based on the original Dolemite character (played by Rudy Ray Moore), but just a touch more gentlemanly, if that’s possible!

So what sparked the idea for whitexploitation?

We grew up with blaxploitation films and to us it was the pinnacle of cinema, but we thought there was a gap in the market. Whether it was wanted or not, we had a bloody good time doing it. When I had therapy for fear of flying, the doctor told me that I had the most overactive mind he had seen in forty years! I am now using it to dream up all these crazy-ass movie concepts!

There’s a lot of sex and violence in the movies, what attracts you to that?

First and foremost because it’s cool! What we threw into our films was everything we really loved which is guns, weapons, alcohol (particularly sangria), smoking and women. Rest assured that we won’t be doing a rom-com any time soon.

You’ve worked with many co-stars over the years... any favourites?

There have been two co-stars that I’ve worked with again and again. Firstly, I’ve got to mention Kenya Villanueva, an amazing actress from Manila. Basically, if it hadn’t have been for her encouragement, we certainly wouldn’t be where we are today. I think I fell in love her time and time again. Secondly, no matter how crazy things got Kimberley Rose Gardner was with us through thick and thin! I don’t think I could have asked any other co-star to go through what Kimmy went through. Without those two on board, White Dolemite might have ended up a vacuum cleaner salesman!

You have some really cool film posters, are there any other iconic posters out there you like?

Not so much, that’s partly the reason I make my own. Posters today can be really dull and it doesn’t seem you really have to put a lot of effort in to make a nice piece of artwork for a movie in order to sell it. It sells on the strength of the actors or the director, so I think film posters have got a little weak over the years.

Are there any artists who help stimulate ideas for your posters?

Frank Frazetta, the illustrative artist, has been inspirational along with James Gurney. And, although I know I am a total pain in his ass, I run all the new work by my very close friend Stefan Kopinski.

He’s an exceptional artist, and he’s always on hand to help me “up” the gore levels! But the one

thing I’d never do is directly rip people off. I’ve been asked in the past if I can stick a head on Luke Skywalker’s body and make a Star Wars poster but it’s already been done. The thing with the original blaxploitation posters though is that nobody ever really knew who the artists were. But I do keep the layout ideas in mind.

What’s your favourite movie tagline?

The original Alien tagline was cool, “In space no one can hear you scream.” If this had changed into a White Dolemite movie it would be more along the lines of “In bed no one can hear you scream.” I spend so much time thinking of my own taglines. A particular favourite is “We live just to make sure you die” on the blood-drenched poster with Samurai swords.

If Richard Roundtree and Fred ‘the hammer’ Williamson had a real life fight who would win?

Fred Williamson would definitely win. He was a real man and he could hammer your ass! And he kicks vampire ass! If it was between Williamson and White Dolemite, he would probably kick my ass too, but I’d like to see that fight go down.

Tell us about your next exhibition...

It’s hopefully going to be quite an exciting one this time round and we’ve got a few surprises in store.

Hopefully we’ll be premiering the first White Dolemite video and we’ve got guest artists, from fashion designers, cartoon artists and illustrators doing White Dolemite pieces from their perspective. Every bloke that I have starred with has been cut out and it will be called One White Stand, just White Dolemite and lots of women. But the men will be back in the next one, and that will be more brutal with lots of broken bones and fighting. We have a few venues in mind but as the work is not child friendly at all we’re not sure where it will be yet but keep your eyes peeled.

You say your exhibitions are crazy, sexy and dangerous, so what can we expect?

I might get a couple of bands involved just to stir the crowd up a bit. Lots of models will be there, hopefully in costume if I can persuade them. But it’s when the sangria starts flowing that it can start to get a bit messy. There will be White Dolemite cocktails on offer and that could be a little bit crazy too.

Where do you get all your sexy women from?

The first exhibition was a real struggle, it was basically me wandering around asking people if they wanted to be in a poster and people couldn’t really grasp the concept. After the first exhibition, people actually started asking to star in the posters which was really quite flattering! Then I got in touch with a couple of professional models who surprisingly said yes. Sometimes people will be perfect. I met

this girl last week and I instantly dropped her into a seventies Italian-themed poster a little like Rebel Without A Cause, with scooters tearing up the place. I’ve got a feeling that if that movie goes ahead, it’s going to be called Death Without A Cause.

Are there any modern-day film stars that you look up to?

Vincent Cassel is an inspiration definitely. Eric Bana, but solely on the strength of Chopper and Bruce Campbell of course. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for ‘The Chin’ But I’ll give anything a try so everything from Brad Pitt to independents. At the moment I’m really enjoying guys like Steve Carrell, Michael Cera and Seth Rogen, who are like a new wave of independent actors with studio budgets. It’s weird what’s going on in Hollywood right now, but it’s also really interesting and exciting.

What’s been the best film you’ve seen recently?

I really liked District 9 because it took a really interesting alien genre and took it into a place where it would not ordinarily make sense, in Johannesburg. It was stunning and I hope they do not ruin it by bringing out a second one. Most recently though, Gaspar Noe’s Enter The Void. That is one insanely crazy-ass movie. I loved it! I’m also utterly charmed by Up and Wall-E. What’s in the pipeline for the next few months?

Video Mat and I will hopefully film the trailer for Enter The Bastards but it’s going to be very difficult on a low budget. There are lots of special effects and every scene is dripping with blood but we’ll give it a go. I will carry on producing the posters but right now I am concentrating on the next exhibition.

So, in all seriousness, are you ever actually going to make these films?

That would be awesome but making films in this country at the moment is an absolute nightmare. If somebody else was interested in taking my idea I would probably say yes but I would want a hand in it creatively. I’ve got quite precious about it, it’s my baby which I’ve been working on for two years and now it’s almost growing on its own now, which is really cool. What would really concern me is if someone took the concept away and watered it down, whereas if I had the opportunity to make the film I would make it as messed up as possible and it would definitely end up nasty.

Nothing less than a XX rating would be good enough.

Find out more about White Dolemite and Video Mat at videomatdesign.com

Rather listen to the tunes on this page than read about ‘em? Better wrap your tabs round Sound Of The Lion, our dedicated music podcast, available at leftlion.co.uk/SOTL. And if you want your own tunes reviewed - and you’re from Notts - hit up leftlion.co.uk/sendusmusic Anxieteam

Burly Nagasaki

Let’s Eat Soya/Lonely In The Digital World (Hello Thor) There’s something special about vinyl, as local label Hello Thor demonstrate with almost all their releases. But there’s something extra super special about their latest release from electropop-making, ukulele-strumming duo Anxieteam; because when two world-renowned artists start making music, they’re bound to start scribbling on things - namely, the utterly stunning picture disc that carries their debut double a-side single.

Let’s Eat Soya’s side carries an anthropomorphic depiction of happy, smiling vegetables drawn by Jim Avignon, and the song itself is a sing-along jaunt espousing the joys of a vegetarian life and its ability to get you talking to pretty girls.

It’s chock full of Anxieteam’s trademark whimsy with a chorus that will never leave your head, and if you listen very closely, some decidedly filthy analogies beneath its innocent exterior...

The flip-side houses Lonely in the Digital World, with its grooves embedded in Jon Burgerman’s unmistakable doodles.

It tells the story of a video game character making his way through a never-ending game, full of bleeps, bloops, zombies and all manner of delicious electronic wonder, but in a wider sense, it tells how very isolating life can be in the modern technological world.

This record is worth having two-fold - you get beautiful artwork, and music that will make you dance and grin.

Sarah Morrison Available online. anxieteam.com

When There’s Nothing Left To Talk About…There’s Always Scatter (Self Release) Do you like Elvis, dead babies, milkshakes and James Bond? If so, check out the debut album from Nottingham’s own Burly Nagasaki.

Starting with the sound of a gun being locked and cocked, opening track It’s Too Heavy then kicks into an onslaught of lo-fi tub thumping from Theresa Fists and some old school James Bond-esque riffery. Make no mistake, this is an album to leave you both shaken and stirred.

Scatter is a sickly sweet blend of xylophone, spaghetti western guitar and desert howling, which works well as an off-kilter, nauseating moment of out of time sweetness worthy of The Mouldy Peaches. Milkshakes At The Roller Rink continues the tongue in cheek geek-rock aesthetic. It’s either mocking or paying tribute to 1950s skiffle-pop, but it could definitely pass for a Weezer track.

The deliciously titled Look At All The Babies We’ve Killed is as haunting and unnerving as it is pleasant. It sounds like the lovechild of George Formby and Wayne Coyne. “I’m gunna have a sandwich fit for a king,” growls singer Joey Chickenskin with all the whiskey-soaked menace of Tom Waits on Fools Gold. The song charts the preparation of the sandwich that killed Elvis, and if it’s as heavy as this it’s no wonder.

Either way, I’ll come back for seconds. Andrew Trendell Available from gigs. myspace.com/burlynagasaki

Inkrument

Will Jeffery

Rrrare (Dealmaker Records) The Hip-Hop Classics Archive of Nottingham has just received another entry in the form of Inkrument’s debut. Freshly released on the Dealmaker Records imprint, Rrrare demonstrates the label’s affinity for the sounds of hip-hop’s glory days. Twelve tracks of golden era-infused production from former UK beatbox champion Foz are paired with the intelligent couplets of Samwise, an MC as much a master of social commentary as he is of slick wordplay.

DJ Dan Rattomatic mans the decks, and it’s his cuts that kick off proceedings with Eveything I Am, a Curtis Mayfieldsampling head nodder best avoided by those with neck problems. Next, the album’s title track works perfectly as a showcase of the group’s talents, with Samwise pointing out modern day rarities over metronomic beatbox and tight cuts.

A stylish remix appears as the album closer, featuring Notts hip-hop royalty and long time Foz collaborator Karizma.

Monday Through Sunday and Blow Tescos show the group’s satirical humour, while the ominous bounce of Times Have Changed has shades of early Task Force (check out the beatmaking video on youtube). I’m In Love With The Sky and the uplifting This Is are skilfully constructed, but it’s Walk On By, with its thought-provoking verses and intriguing production, that really catches the ear. These boys obviously work hard at their craft, and evidence can be found throughout this proficient debut. Tom Quickfall Available in record stores and online. inkrument.com

The Silver Factory

The Silver Factory (Self Release) The Silver Factory have created four tracks of pure summer on this self-titled EP; each song title could easily have a little smiley after it. A refreshing five-piece with mellow vocals, catchy indie guitar riffs and citing Dylan and Stone Roses as influences to their care-free sixties vibe. Opening with The Sun Shines on You, they strum straight into a Happy Mondays-esque intro. The lead singer’s voice melts into the track with the lyric “all of these things and the sun shines on you” finishing this neat bit of rock‘n’roll rapture. Strawberry Eyes and 45s is lust for life and love, whiling away days of sunshine and listening to your favourite vinyl. The pace picks up to a harmonica loaded finale which is nothing short of smile inducing. The vocals resonate like an early Bernard Summner through Your Turn to Cry with sumptuous harmonies and a tragic undercurrent. Tomorrow’s Today is the finale and it’s a shame it has to end but it certainly leaves you hoping for more.

In a little over twelve minutes for all four tracks, The Silver Factory have given a fantastic taster of uplifting modern bluesy rock’n’roll, characterised by their own recognisable sound whilst still managing to stay true to what makes this genre so enjoyable. The verdict: pure gold. Nik Storey Available from gigs. myspace.com/24hoursfromheaven

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The Day Off (Farmyard Records) Like Bob Dylan entrenched in a Sunday afternoon hangover, the new offering from Will Jeffery, oozes with a lugubrious, shabby charm. Heavy Hearted Man veritably wheezes in, sheepishly crossing the kitchen to cadge a roll-up from your pocket before slumping in the chair by the fire. Nevertheless it’s as bittersweet a note as you’re likely to hear for a while, paying testament to Jeffery’s talent of being able to blend nagging pathos and warming optimism in quite such a way.

Hanging Tree has haunting fiddles swishing in and about its branches as the singer suggests “Take me, dancing in the moonlight...” before unfolding the story, revealing the invite’s Faustian undertones. The EP’s title track pushes the fiddle accompaniment out onto centre stage and the results are a most wonderfully exotic, gipsy jig on which Jeffery can deliver his plaintive tale of stifling domesticity through a larynx of medium-to-well-toasted sawdust. Saving his best until last, though, Montague Grizzly sees the songwriter fully hitting his stride. Switching between bluesy shuffle and full pelt R‘n’B clatter, by the time it reaches its coda the song boasts a small gospel choir to keep its brass and string sections in good company. And with it, Jeffery makes a good fist of relocating Mardi Gras to the streets of Nottingham. Al Draper Available online. myspace.com/willjeffery

Hhymn

These Hands (Denzien Records) Hhymn have quickly emerged as one of Nottingham’s most exciting new acts. Their brand of honest indie-folk has created a storm of hype, including a spot on Tom Robinson’s BBC Introducing show.

Although this single is hardly a new development (it was on their debut EP), it is definitely something to be excited about.

These Hands highlights Hhymn’s unique sound, and uncanny ability to capture the emotions of anyone listening. The track opens with soft forlorn crooning by lead singer Ed Bannard (reminiscent of the heartbreaking vocals of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole), only to be quickly lifted off the ground by swelling trumpets, and haunting lyrics about the pain of unfulfillment. Amid swells, the emotionally exhausting track stays grounded with march-like battery percussion played on a lone snare drum, and a steady ukulele rhythm part. This gloomy march is perfectly complemented by a final layer of sparse yet whimsical chime accents.

Their sound may bear an unavoidable comparison to the Balkan inspired music of Beirut, but with a genuine quality that Beirut themselves have never quite been able to ascertain. This song is part of a series of single releases, leading up to the release of Hhymn’s first full length album. If this is an indication of things to come, all of Nottingham has something to look forward to. Brian Walter Available online. myspace.com/hhymn

Red Rack’em

The Early Years (Bergerac) From the opener Dance Valet, it’s immediately apparent what is happening here. The squelch bass, the spacey synths, the late night atmospherics, throw in some deep house with a dash of funk, hip-hop and elements of jazz and you have The Early Years. It’s not surprising that Gilles Peterson’s ears have pricked up to this. Comparing this to anybody else simply does not do the album justice for its craftsmanship but here goes: it employs the minimal aspects of Steve Bug (but with more influences shining through), it could be a downbeat Chromeo (but they’re just a bit rubbish), DJ Format’s genre-hopping is in there and you can imagine every song ending up on a Gilles Peterson compilation.

Many of the tracks have only seen extremely limited vinyl releases, with some coming from 2008’s disco-tinged Hot Coins. You Can’t Pray For Your Soul is a seventies New York disco basement roll complete with “I wanna pray for you” rhetoric. How We Do is late night space disco that brings back something from the nineties. Christmas Day is an incredible six-minute extravaganza with its jazz piano samples, hip-hop and acid jazz colliding with deep house. Picnic and Beginning End are about as downbeat as it can get. Ashley Clivery Available in all good record stores and online. redrackem.com

Strange Attraktors Solomon Grundy

Solomon Grundy (Self Release) Named after the character from the Batman comics who lived in a sewer; this isn’t the only thing that is underground about Solomon Grundy. As soon as the EP staggers in to life through the hazy blizzard of feedback that kicks off opener How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, before it all kicks off under an avalanche of howling vocals and discordant, buzzsaw guitars, it’s clear that this is a band enthralled to and well versed in all things Black Flag, Fugazi, At The Drive In and their ilk.

At any point you feel like this EP will collapse under the weight of its own guitars and drums as they bam, thwack and wallop their way all over the four tracks. Elephant Grass is the most immediate thing here, with the drums going at it like a pneumatic drill in overdrive, whilst the band sound like they have taken razor blades to the amps as the guitars have this raw, visceral edge to them. Meanwhile, Satellite is all relentless, screeching noise and shouting one minute, and tranquil moments of almost nothingness the next, taking the whole quiet/loud dynamic to the extreme. The EP ends with Beeston Marina Anthem, which must be the most interesting thing ever to be connected with that Nottingham satellite town. This EP comes on like a fatal blow to the head.

Paul Klotschkow Available online. solomongrundy.bandcamp.com

Strange Attraktors (Self Release) Despite the recent Michael Rother gigs and new(ish) albums by Faust, new Krautrock music seems in rather short supply. Strange Attraktors, a three piece made up of drums, synth and bass, fill this gap. Although you could accuse the band of being derivative (clearly, Neu! have been used as a strong rhythmic, melodic template), the three tracks on this EP are forward thinking in their approach. The first two tracks, Searchmode and Future Systems are similar in their classic motorik, euphoric sound. The bass and beats are heavy and the rhythms are interlaced with anthemic synth riffs. The third track, Maximum/Minimum is a little more delicate and a little darker.

As with similar compositions by Neu!, these tracks are not designed to shock the listener with rapid changes. They aim to hypnotise with repetitive beats and dense grooves. Nor is the music too clinical or controlled. Strange Attraktors understand that the devil is in the detail and that beauty can be created by the layering of dense, organic sound. During a recent and all-too-rare live set at Cafe Bar Contemporary, the band displayed an even freer approach, extending these songs and developing the groove. My only (slight) complaint is that the track lengths on this EP really only allow the songs to get going before finishing and leaving the listener wanting more.

Pytor Stepanovitch Available from gigs. myspace.com/strangeattraktors

Write Lion

The glut of TV Cookery programs jamming our channels has provoked a response from one of our forum poets, while Derrick Buttress reminds us that finding a job (and keeping it) has never been easy. And as for those people who pretend they are from somewhere else and change the way they say bath - well they had it coming!

If you’ve got any wordy needs, please contact books@leftlion.co.uk or visit leftlion.co.uk/writelion

Beth

Growing Pains

by Derrick Buttress I’m singing in clover until they hit me with the bill for my youthful, histrionic years of tantrums and defiance.

Now comes the end of happiness, the innocent, juvenile diversions.

On my last day as a hooligan I’m scrumping fruit to pelt my hare-brained pals.

Then Monday slaps me in the face and I’m pounding the streets scared stiff and searching for a job that pays more than peanuts.

By Friday I’m a factory hand learning to feed a machine that eats fingers.

I’m a citizen now, but don’t know the rules.

I can’t stop feeling like a kid, start a fire in the boiler room, burn out the motor on the rickety hoist, a skill in calamity picked up after years of studying The Beano.

Sacked, and back on the street, I leg it for the darker side of town.

Alone and in strange rooms I try to figure out the transitory nature of filial love, the truth of who owes what to whom, the debt that no-one ever pays.

by Alastair Catteral You look like The still centre Of a hurricane A calm Typhoon And although You have most likely Forgotten Saying that You saved me From slipping On a night I Can barely recall, But feel consuming My heart a consummate Not that things Have gotten any Better recently But I’m writing Once more And with this, I will follow you Endless into the void

On The Telly

by David Severn Reporting murders in the East on One, sitcoms on Two, car commercials on Three, disfigurement documentary on Four.

TV Dinners

by Jim Stewart-Evans First it was a hiss Then it was a roar Ladles clanged on saucepans As they went to war.

They’d rustled up some mischief A most rapacious menu Each of their objectives A television venue.

Their schedule was fastidious As they started to invade Encircling White City With a zesty marinade.

The olive oil was smoking As they besieged ITV Catapulting meatballs With a lusty 1-2-3.

The essence of their battle Reached the nose and did persist The executives were famished Oh, how could they resist?

First they dripped out in a trickle Then poured out in a rout To be served potato gratin And succulent poached trout.

Oliver was knighted Ainsley reigned as king Delia preened beside him Gordon cursing in the wing.

Hestor was imprisoned For releasing mustard gas; His guards were James and Ali Who forgot and let him pass.

The hairy bikers made fresh doughnuts Sue trilled out “We’ve won!”

Then they went back to their kitchens Whilst the ghost of Floyd drank on.

Crime Scene

by Frank McMahon You grew up in one of those unfashionable places, but your changed accent shows you’re denying all traces of a home town reduced to a crime scene in your mind.

Your changed voice is the washing away of blood, the getting rid of evidence.

Your occasional mentions of it deride it but you can’t completely hide it, especially when you’re angry or pissed.

It’s in your DNA It won’t go away.

You’ve changed the way you say bath.

Katie Half-Price Ayup meh ducks. Not done any reviews this ish cuz publishers have bin sendin’ meh death threats instead of books.

The miserable gets. But I’m not bovvered cuz I’ve just gorra PR job @ Harper Collins. They paid Rooney five mil to write a five volume autobiographeh and the daft twat didn’t have owt ta write other than ‘scored another goal’. Borin’. So I tode him ta score with some prozzie mates a’ mine and threaten ta leave United. Now he’s gorra pay rise and Colleen’s threatening to leave him! The second volume will be called No Woman No Kai. See, there’s more ta meh than two gigantic knee shooters. Lol!

Before the Earthquake

A Darker Shade of Blue

Attention Deficit

Depresso

City of Ruin

Destinations

Maria Allen tindalstreet.co.uk, £7.99 This is the story of Concetta, a sturdy peasant girl who is injured in an earthquake and awakes to find herself pregnant, with no idea who the father is or how it happened. She then spends several months unravelling the mystery and recovering her memory. Allen was in the same year of the Nottingham Trent MA as I was when she started work on this book. The years she spent completing it show. It’s beautifully crafted, every sentence feeling carefully wrought and not a word out of place. The period detail is convincing too; I felt transported to rural Italy at the turn of the century.

This is a compelling story, beautifully told. Already recognised by a shortlisting for the Desmond Elliott Prize, as well as a spot on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, Maria Allen is a talented writer and one to watch for the future. She also appears on the WriteLion8 podcast. Nicola Monaghan

Brick knockabout.com, £12.99 This graphic novel kicks off with the main protagonist convinced he’s got the Big ‘C’ because one of his gonads has swollen. However, it turns out he’s depressed and has been for the last forty years.

Depression has only recently been made socially acceptable thanks to ‘outings’ from the likes of Alistair Campbell and Steven Fry, so Brick has a solid foundation to build on. We see him deploy various coping mechanisms for the illness which include; religion, travelling, therapy, meditation, medication and masturbation, over 262 beautifully illustrated pages. But nothing works. He even has ‘an aversion to aversion therapy.’ The problem is simple; he thinks too much and is too hard on himself.

For example, he feels intimidated by his intelligent friends, rather than seeing them as a reflection of his good taste.

This is an earnest and entertaining read; just hope, for obvious reasons, that you don’t receive it as a Christmas present. If you do, skip to page 221 and enjoy the happy ending. James Walker

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John Harvey randomhouse.co.uk, £7.99 John Harvey’s Detective Resnick is one of the best loved characters to come out of Nottingham, doing for our city what fellow crime writers Ian Rankin, Graeme Hurley and Peter James have done for Edinburgh, Portsmouth and Brighton. In this collection of eighteen short stories, Harvey revisits numerous characters from previous novels, all of whom are united through an economic prose and gift for dialogue. Harvey’s strength is his ability to construct convincing and compelling situations, no matter what the word count, inviting us into the murky underworld of the metropolis. This won’t please the tourist board and politicians certainly won’t like the recurring moral; justice often prevails for the strongest rather than the deserving. The darker side of urban living is not pretty, but when a writer can convince you that a paedophile is trying to go straight, as with Sack O’Woe, you know you are in the capable hands of a master craftsman. John Marsh

Mark Charan Newton panmacmillan.com, £16.99 Since the first in the series, Nights of Villjamur, the story has advanced and moved away from the political intrigue to more practical matters, like feeding a city with a war coming and ensuring there is an escape route for the civilians. The forthcoming invasion by the Okun has to be prepared for and as always, everyone has their own problems to distract them. To add to all of this, things are getting a little weird within the city itself.

The characters are delightfully complex, the most repugnant behaviour tempered by some sympathetic moments; these are characters to fret about between chapters. The story moves along at a good pace, and strikes a level between action, personal matters and investigations. There are strong elements of both fantasy and sci fi and at times it all gets delightfully strange. A brilliant second book following a strong first. Adele Harrison

Nigel Pickard weathervanepress.co.uk £7.99 This is Nigel Pickard’s follow-up to his debut novel One. The book, which is set in an inner-city Nottingham school, follows Harry and Lewis; a teacher and a pupil whose lives are on a collision course as they both struggle to stay afloat in lives which are capsizing.

Pickard’s punchy prose and fast paced writing style add an urgency and readability to this thoroughly enjoyable 21st century novel. The dialogue and situations are painstakingly real (possibly due to Pickard’s background as a Nottingham teacher) and while it may not be for everyone, it does offer a vast amount of entertainment and (at times dry) humour. Lewis’ patchy, and often indecipherable writings, along with Harry’s witty exchanges with other characters, give the novel a cross generational appeal which should give adults and teenagers an insight into the similarities between these two very different generations. Niall Browne

Derrick Buttress shoestringpress.co.uk, £7.50 Finding a job and the pursuit of Saturday night diversions - “Music helped a week of tedious work to fade away” - are as relevant to life now as they were sixty years ago, although the abrupt end to childhood in Growing Pains, the opening poem of this new collection, reminds us of a time when the last day at school (aged fourteen) starkly equated to the first day of adult work. Much celebrated as a working class poet - (how the world loves its labels!)

- Derrick Buttress has been widely broadcast and published across TV, radio and print. In section one of Destinations he evokes the Nottingham of his youth, before roaming further a-field in section two with poems inspired by the exploratory scientific journey of Alexander von Humboldt in 1799. The poetry world’s answer to Alan Sillitoe if you insist, but truly an original.

Aly Stoneman

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LEFTLION featured listings...

LISTINGS CRATE EXPECTATIONS December - January 2010/11

TICKETS ON-LION Buying tickets for events in Notts? From the latest DJs at Stealth to the latest bands at venues like Spanky Van Dykes and The Rescue Rooms, you can get them all through our website, at no extra cost. Even better, thanks to our partnership with gigantic.com, every time you buy one through us some of the funds will go towards LeftLion and a bit more goes to those nice folks at Oxfam.

words: Ali Emm / photo: Tim Schnetgoeke

DJ Andy Smith put work in for Portishead back in the day. Now he’s one of the most influential deck-diddlers in the world - and on a mission to inject the timeless thunk of Northern Soul into your unenlightened tabs, at Moog, on a monthly basis...

leftlion.co.uk/tickets

THREE DECADES OF ROCK Rock City have pulled out all the stops to celebrate their thirtieth birthday this December with a bigname line-up. Protest-singer Billy Bragg kicks it all off on 2 December with his brand of politics-infused folk, before Californian rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club bring their fuzz pedal-heavy licks the day after.

Nineties throwbacks Reef then threaten to “blow you away” like the millennium never happened on 4 December, followed by New York indie-poppers The Drums rolling up for a Sunday session.

The centrepiece of the celebrations is Tuesday 7 December as Suggs and co play a very special oneoff Madness gig in a venue about a tenth of the size of what they’re used to. Expect the whole of Talbot Street to be shaking by the time the intro to One Step Beyond kicks in.

Yorkshire shoegazers The Wedding Present take the stage on Wednesday 8 December, before Spear of Destiny (featuring Rock City veteran Kirk Brandon) return to the venue for the umpteenth time with their punk-influenced power rock.

Fatboy Slim is in town on 12 December - arguably the nation’s favourite DJ, there’s no-one bigger in the world of British electronic music, so why try harder?

Irish rockers The Saw Doctors take over on 14 December, before US heavy metal band Fear Factory attempt to bring the house down in a frenzy of fast drums and powerchords. Mancunian monkeyman Ian Brown has the penultimate gig of the birthday celebrations on Thursday 16 December and reformed British rockers Skin end it all on Saturday 18 December as part of their own farewell tour. Catch ‘em while you still can and raise a glass to three decades of a Nottingham institution at the same time.

Rock City officially turns 30 on Saturday 11 December, but the celebrations take place from Thursday 2 – Saturday 18 December. rock-city.co.uk

CHRISTMAS VERSE

Christmas and poetry go together like a horse and carriage, so head to The Flying Goose in Beeston on Tuesday 14 December (7pm) with Scottish poet Alexander Hutchinson, Aly Stoneman and more. For a poetic start to 2011, Shoestring Press presents Sue Dymoke and Lawrence Sail on January 18 at the same venue, same time.

Avid writers should check out the Saturday Night Sunday Morning Short Story Competition. The judges are Killing Jar author Nicola Monaghan and David Sillitoe, son of the legendary Alan. Prizes are a proper Saturday night out in Nottingham and publication online, so get writing! Full entry details are available from tinyurl.com/36dcjmo The WriteLion events team will be taking a break during December and January to plan more great events. But Shindig! will be back with our first event of 2011 on Sunday 20 February. For information about our upcoming events, please join us at facebook.com/ writelion. Or if you are interested in getting involved and performing at our live literature events, please contact books@leftlion.co.uk.

For even more listings, check our up to date online section at leftlion.co.uk/listings.

If you want to get your event in this magazine and on our website, aim your browser at leftlion.co.uk/add.

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You’ve got a new album out at the moment...

Yeah, Andy Smith and Dean Rudland Present New Orleans Funk Experience. The label it’s on do a series of albums based on different cities. Although it’s called the Funk Experience, it’s not just funk - there’s some old r’n’b on there, some northern soul. It’s a cross-section of old tunes from New Orleans, basically.

Tell us about the Jam Up Twist nights...

It’s the night I’m doing at Moog every month. I do a night in London on a Saturday, which I’ve been doing for four years, and we play fifties and sixties stuff all night. Loads of people are really getting into it there. I figured I wanted to do that on a Friday, so I just made my own regional twist night. I’ve regressed basically - I just love fifties r’n’b and sixties northern soul and ska, rockabilly.

Those tunes used to be such fun - a lot of new music takes itself far too serious these days.

That era of music probably does seem new to the last couple of generations, though.

Exactly. I always think that if it’s music you’ve never heard before - even if it was made fifty or sixty years ago - it’s still a new piece of music. We get young people in, who come up and say; “Can you give a eighteenth birthday shout for my friend?” I think, man - she’s eighteen, she comes to this night, listening to music fifty, sixty years old, and they’re just loving the beat. It’s all real musicians playing, not made by computers and all in time, it’s a bit looser so you can be a lot more free with it. You just want to dance and get into the groove with all those old tunes.

So would you say that’s your favourite era of music?

Yeah, I think it is now. I grew up in the eighties and first got into music in the late seventies. I love what I grew up with; disco and boogie, rare groove, early hip-hop. If hip-hop today was as it was then I’d probably still pick hip-hop. It’s turned into something which I don’t understand or particularly care about anymore.

With original hip-hop, you get into the samples, you go back into the seventies, but you can go back further and there’s even more interesting stuff.

The fifties and sixties nights do seem to be kicking off in Nottingham as well, with Bopp and Shake and Bake...

That’s what it’s all about! I got fed up with hip-hop nights as noone really dances; they just stand around looking cool, showing off their trainers. I’m learning to jive myself, learning northern soul dancing with the spins, it’s great. It works with people who just want to go out and have a laugh, as there’s no preconceptions of what you’ve got to look like; you just get out on the floor and do what you want, have a good time. It’s not like standing around chin-stroking, getting fed up and all that.

What was the first record you ever bought?

Well, apart from The Jungle Book OST, it was actually pretty cool; What a Waste by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. I think my first album was Blondie’s Parallel Lines. I was kind of skirting the edges of punk, but didn’t go for the hardcore stuff. I still love Ian Dury and like listening to Blondie - it’s still relevant to me.

Do you class yourself as a bit of a vinyl addict?

Oh, my goodness, yeah!

How many records do you reckon you own?

Oh, I’ve never counted them… but we’re having a room put into the loft so I can move all my records, which is going to be wonderful. There’s one room that’s pretty much full that I’m sat in now, plus a load more at my mother-in-law’s. I probably buy records every day, more on the internet now rather than shops, which is a bit of a shame.

Do you miss all the independent record stores?

I do, I do. I try to go to record fairs whenever I can. Usually when I’m away from London, I try to find out what record stores are about. I’ll still go to vinyl stores in America but the stores over here, I’ll go to some but there just isn’t the stuff anymore.

Have you ever been to Rob’s Records?

I was talking to somebody about that just yesterday, actually. I heard it had shut.

No, that place is never going to die - it’ll get fuller and fuller with records to the point where you can’t get in…

The last few times I’ve done the Moog night the shops are shut by the time I get here. I can still picture Rob from ten years ago, but it’d be good to go in there. Maybe if I get out of London early enough I’ll go in there again.

Have you ever played DJ Hero?

No. I played Guitar Hero once and I was a bit baffled as to why the whole world and his dog’s into it, to be quite honest. But the DJ one, no I’ve never done that. Shadow kinda endorses all that doesn’t he?

DJ Shadow endorses loads of stuff…

A friend of mine who knows him quite well was sat in this pub in London one day and saw him walking past. He was like, “Josh?

Josh! Is that you, Josh? What are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m doing an in-store in HMV.” “What’s that about then?” “Oh, well, it’s DJ Hero.” I think he was a bit mashed about it - didn’t even tell anyone he was coming to London to do this massive thing in HMV Oxford Street.

Well, you’ve got to keep the pay cheques coming in…

Yeah, he’s got twins like me, I know what it’s like. Can’t blame him on that score…

What is it with DJs and twins?

Something to do with double decks, innit?

Jam Up Twist, Friday 10 December and every second Friday of the month, Moog, Newdigate Street, NG1 4FD. djandysmith.com

music event listings...

Thursday 02/12

Friday 03/12

Brazilica The Hand and Heart Jon Gomm Deux

Heavyweight Audio The Maze £6/£8, 9pm Randall, Vapour, Precise. Rak, Tapedeck, Fozz and G.I.

Matthew Barley and Sanju Sahai Lakeside Arts Centre £12, £15, 7.30pm

Faithless Nottingham Arena £29.50, 7.30pm

Geoff Farina, Chris Brokaw and Shakey Hands Spanky Van Dykes £5 / £7, 7.30pm

Matt Chandler Cafe Bar Contemporary Free, 8pm

Stephanie Finch and The Company Men The Maze £12 adv, 7.30pm Plus Kelley Stoltz Band Bella Hardy Nottingham Playhouse £10 / £12, 8pm F*cked Up The Rescue Rooms £10, 6.30pm Billy Bragg Rock City £16, 6.30pm

Friday 03/12 The Fillers The Rescue Rooms £10, 7pm The Legendary Dolly Disco The Alley Cafe Free, 8.45pm - 12am ish The Barnum Meserve The Central £3, 7.30pm dollop Stealth £10, 10pm Erol Alkan, Factory Floor, Riotous Rockers, D’lex and Dollop DJs. Moonbuggy Jamcafe Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Rock City £15, 6.30pm With support from Dark Horses

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Sound of the Lion NYE 2010 Celebrate New Year’s Eve with the very people who make this magazine at our Sound of the Lion party at The Golden Fleece. Our music team have invited three of their favourite Notts acts of 2010 to make sure that we see in the New Year in proper Notts style: Rebel Soul Collective, The Eviltones and Ronika.

Oldboy - E.P Launch The Maze £2.50

Rebel Soul Collective (myspace.com/ rebelrebelrebel) weld the strut and swagger of Screamadelica era Primal Scream to the explosive indie-dance of Kasabian. The Eviltones (myspace. com/eviltones) are an all together different proposition, but no less thrilling. They reach back to the fifties, taking bits of rock’n’roll, surf and rockabilly and blasting them through a fiery furnace of tight trousers and even tighter licks. Then finally Ronika (myspace.com/ronikamusic), who was so good at our recent Hockley Hustle gig that we just had to have her back, will be bringing her pounding eighties flavoured disco to the party.

Opera Society Christmas Collage St Peters Church £3 / £5, 7.30pm - 9:30pm

In addition, there will be DJs spinning a whole host of party tunes between the bands and long into 2011. Plus, Nottingham’s very own Mr Sex will be hosting a very special festive addition of the LeftLion Pub Quiz, and there will be prizes for the best fancy dress - the theme being 1980s films.

Boobadust Deux

Tickets cost a wallet-friendly £6 and it’s bound to be a big one so get your tickets fast direct from the LeftLion website or from The Golden Fleece pub on Mansfield Road.

Gentleman’s Dub Club The Bodega £6, 7pm

Sound of the Lion New Year’s Eve Party with Ronika, The Eviltones and Rebel Soul Collective takes place on Friday 31 December 2010. Tickets £6 from leftlion.co.uk/buystuff or directly from The Golden Fleece.

Urban Legend The Robin Hood

Saturday 04/12

Kano Stealth £12.50, 7pm Soul Ska Shakedown The Golden Fleece The Smyths The Rescue Rooms £10, 7pm Oldboy E.P Launch The Maze Back To Basics The Maze £3, 10pm Pendulum Nottingham Arena £22.50, 7.30pm Kreepers Club Night The Old Angel 9pm - 2am

leftlion.co.uk/nye

Saturday 04/12

Sunday 05/12

Wednesday 08/12

Wild Wood and Kris Ward Southbank Bar

Pesky Alligators The Navigation Waterfront £3, 9-11pm

The Sword The Rescue Rooms £9, 7.30pm

Mimm Clothing Shop Presents...

The Bodega £5 Adv. from Mimm Clothing Shop, 10pm - 3am

The Drums Rock City £11.50, 7.30pm

Bizarro Tour Rock City £14.50, 6.30pm

Sack Sabbath and Iron On Maiden Rock City £10, 7pm

University Sinfonia Lakeside Arts Centre £4/£5/£8, 7.30pm

Sunday 05/12

Stars In Their Eyes IV The Maze £2, 2pm

Kids Can’t Fly The Maze £4/ £5, 6.30pm With New Riot, Drive Now Dance Later, Your Weapons Are Useless and Nobody’s Fool.

Acoustic Night The Central £3, 7.30pm Michael Lynch, Emily and Simon.

Cadence Noir, Johnathan Millett, and the Jessalyn Duo

Mimm

We Are The Union The Old Angel

Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds Nottingham Arena £42.50 - £60, 8pm

Ded Hot Chilli Peppers Southbank Bar

Thursday 09/12

We Are The Ocean and Giants The Rescue Rooms £7.50, 6.30pm

Monday 06/12

It stands for ‘Music Is My Motive’ It’s probably easier to explain what Mimm isn’t than what it actually is, but here goes; Mimm is a Notts-and-proud brand whose agenda is to fuse fashion, music and art. Operating out of Shop in Canning Circus, the base for numerous local creatives. The aim of the fashion wing is to track down the freshest small labels in the UK and introduce them to your lot, as well as supporting the very best of the local labels. If you’re looking for the likes of Mishka, The Hundreds, Acrylick, Lazy Oaf, Imaginary Foundation, Terratag, Wigflex, G’D UP, Regenerate, Rith Raff, Obsolete, Ghouls & Ghosts and Boom Bear, chances are you’re only gonna find ‘em at Mimm.

But Mimm is far more than a retail outlet; they also put on monthly music sessions every first Saturday of the month at the Bodega Social, with a mission to slap the very best of the underground into your tabs. Recent nights have seen appearances from new school, genre-busting labels such as Planet Mu, Dub Police and Malas Deep Medi, whilst the night will soon be decamping to Rescue Rooms and Stealth. The plan is to put on quarterly fashion shows in Rescue Rooms with live art and clothing stalls, as well as hooking up with local dubstep champions Basslaced to deliver the best in UK house in Stealth on a monthly basis.

With plans afoot to open a music studio downstairs in Shop and monthly art exhibitions already taking place, it’s worth saying that Mimm are going to be worth keeping an eye on in 2011.

Mimm Clothing, Shop, 2 Ilkeston Road, Canning Circus, NG7 3GD. primmimm.co.uk

Marc Reeves’ Album launch The Rescue Rooms Free, 7:30pm Angelo Panzera, The Golden Troubadours, Johnathan Millett and Gerry Trimble.

The Swellers & March of the Raptors Rock City £7, 7pm

Tuesday 07/12 Hatebreed The Rescue Rooms £12.50, 6.30pm The Boy Least Likely To The Bodega £7.50, 7pm Arthur Rigby and The Baskervylles The Malt Cross Free, 8pm Louder with Bare Noize Stealth £4, 10pm Ben Holder Trio The Hand and Heart

Matt Palmer The Hand and Heart Whitemoor The Central £3, 7.30pm Plus The Iron Door Club and Climbing Babel Thea Gilmore The Rescue Rooms £13.50, 7.30pm Sonic Boom Six Rock City £7, 7pm Plus Breadchasers Horowitz, Scumbag Philosopher and Sleaford Mods The Chameleon £5 / £6, 8pm - 12am Roy Stone Southbank Bar The Chakras The Bodega £5, 7pm Runrig Royal Concert Hall £24, 7pm

Friday 10/12 Deli Jamcafe leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 23

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music event listings...

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

Hey! You! The Rock City Crew! Show ‘Em What To Do! Make A Break! Make A Move!

Get the lino out for the Rock City Saturday Reunion Jam

There’s only one cast-iron certainty about Notts in 2011: that the forthcoming B-Boy documentary NG83 is going to blow up like a bastard, so if you’ve not heard about it yet you need to check yersen before you wreck yersen. Telling the story of how hiphop culture grabbed the UK (and Notts especially) by the scruff of the neck, turned it upside down and spinned it on its head, NG83 is rammeth with footage of breakdancing battles of yore and interviews with those who were there.

Tuesday 14/12

Thursday 16/12

Municipal Waste The Rescue Rooms £12.50, 6.30pm Plus Saviours and Ramming Speed.

The Music Exchange Presents: Black Powder Cafe Bar Contemporary Free, 8pm

Good Shoes The Bodega £8, 7pm

Friday 17/12

The Saw Doctors Rock City £21.50, 7.30pm

As you’ll notice, quite a bit of that footage was shot at Rock City. Yes indeed, it wasn’t all goth-poncery and grebularity at Citeh back in the day; the place was the venue for a seminal Saturday afternoon session that became a veritable spawning ground for the UK B-Boy scene, dragging in people from all over the county and providing the arena for some of the fiercest battles outside of New York. By the mid-80s, the likes of Goldie and Jason Orange had ground their foreheads into the hallowed floor of Citeh in confrontation with the club’s very own breaking crew, and Nottingham had become a key outpost on the hip-hop map. If you weren’t there due to birth, location or not-really-getting-it-at-the-time issues, your chance to catch a whiff of those heady times comes your way on Saturday 11 December, in a one-off reunion session.

Ricky Tomlinson Live The Approach £15, 7pm Plus Gary Skyner.

In attendance with poppers, lockers and breakers old and young will be some of the people who made the original thing happen; DJ Jonathan and the P Brothers will be manning the decks together for the first time since their sorely-missed Friday night sessions at the old Muse, alongside DJ D2, whilst mic duties will be handled by original Notts emcees Docta D and Frisco Boogie. On the floor, and proving that this is far more than a revival of an old fad, will be the UK’s youngest breaking crew The Future (average age: nine) and Derby’s Trinity Warriors.

Scissor Sisters Nottingham Arena £30, 6.30pm

Apart from being one of the best ways of spending a Saturday we can think of, there’s a serious purpose to all this; all proceeds will be going towards the funding of NG83, who still need cash to clear rights for an array of music tracks. If you want to invest in Nottingham Culture, get yourself over to indiegogo.com/NG83-Documentary and claim your stake in this hugely important social document.

Rock City Reunion Jam. Saturday 11 December, Rock City, Talbot Street, NG1 5GG. £3 adults, £1.50 under-14s rockcity.co.uk

Friday 10/12

Saturday 11/12

Sunday 12/12

Summerlin and Kiss Corona Rock City £5, 7pm Plus Just Me Again

The Amber Herd The Old Angel £3 if dressed in black, £4 otherwise

Status Quo Nottingham Arena £34.50, 7.30pm

Oxjam Night Out The Malt Cross £3, 7.30 – close With Cecille Grey, Delta Sun, The Other Left and Charlotte Carpenter.

Sound for Sore Eyes The Boat Club £5, 3pm - 8pm With Lorna, Strings of Seville, Japanese Sleepers, The Saboteurs and The Amber Herd.

Sounds of the Asylum The Central Deli Jamcafe Pesky Alligators The Fox at Kirton Steve Pinnock’s Cafe Du Monde Cafe Bar Contemporary

Leggomen The Robin Hood Sapphire Lane live at The Maze The Maze £3, 7pm Plus Cleaverhook and Jezebel

Only Men Aloud Royal Centre £20 - £29.50, 7pm

Sugarhill Southbank Bar

Buster The Robin Hood

Richard Snow The Robin Hood

Joe Strange and The Herb Birds Southbank Bar

Stiff Kittens The Bodega Free, 10 - 1am

Basslaced Stealth £10, 10pm 100% Pantera The Rescue Rooms £8, 7pm

Saturday 11/12 Purple Radio’s Big Fat Knees Up Moog Free, 3pm - 3am Wildside Club Night The Central £10, 7.30pm - 3am Outriders Deux The Men They Couldn’t Hang The Rescue Rooms £15, 7pm Coda Cola Jamcafe The Chitlin´ Circuit Bad Juju £3, 8pm - 2am

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Sunday 12/12 How to make a living as a guitarist The Old Angel £25, 12pm - 18 Emarosa Rock City £8, 7pm Plus Yashin and All Forgotten Wiretap The Central £5, 7.30pm Plus Broken Teeth, Ark of the Covenant, Eisberg, Parisio and Silvertown Dry the River The Bodega £5, 8pm Asking Alexandria The Rescue Rooms £7.50, 6.30pm Notts In A Nutshell The Maze £3, 7.30pm My Red Self, Autogenic, Dreaded Monkey and The Dead Will Dance

The Fab 4 Southbank Bar

Monday 13/12 Rockstar Taste of Chaos Nottingham Arena £25, 5.45pm Disturbed, Papa Roach and more.

Brother The Bodega £6, 7pm

The Johnny Johnstone Quintet The Hand and Heart

Wednesday 15/12 Shona Munroe The Central £5, 7.30pm Plus Mood Indigo Fear Factory Rock City £16.50, 6.30pm Plus High On Fire and Daath and Daath.

Thursday 16/12 Me and Mrs Jones The Hand and Heart Spyritus The Central £3, 7.30pm Plus Internal Conflict, Scarlets Wake and Incinary Ian Brown Rock City £25, 6.30pm

Henry Clooney Plus Supports The Central £8, 7:30pm Letz Zep The Rescue Rooms £12, 7pm Patriot Rebel Jamcafe Mona The Bodega £6, 7pm Illuminatus LP Launch Party The Maze £3, 7pm With DAOR, The Engines of Armageddon, Bloodguard and Way Of The Atom.

Rebel Rebel The Robin Hood Gold Rush Southbank Bar Joe Strange Band and Richie Muir Southbank Bar Antonio Forcione and Adriano Adewale Nottingham Contemporary £15, 7pm - late Support from Cecille Grey.

Saturday 18/12 Senegalese Sabar Drum and Dance Workshop Sneinton Hermitage Community Centre £15 / £20, 4pm - 9.15pm Back In Black Club Night The Central Launch night of new Classic/ Melodic Rock/ AOR night

Sculpt your bod at The Pod

Gym membership for a mere £15 a month? Yes please…

It’s January. You’re a fat get, and feeling guilty about being an indoor whale.

You want to join a gym, but you’re terrified to lay out cash so soon after Christmas. What do you do? You either shut up whittling and get stuck into the remainder of the Quality Street tin like the spineless maggot you are, or you get proactive and get yourself over to The Pod – Nottingham’s newest and most affordable gym.

Opening in January, The Pod is a new breed of gym that cuts out all the unnecessary faff associated with health club membership in order to make fitness affordable for everyone. Not only is it a piddling £14.99 per month, you’re also not locked down to a contract and you can leave at any time without notice, making it perfect for those of you who fancy a go without seeing chunks of your hard-earned cash fly away for months after you’ve stopped going.

Why is it so affordable? Because unlike other gyms, the frills and mither have been pared down to a bare minimum.

That doesn’t mean you’ll be reduced to lifting manky old car tyres strapped to a broomstick, though – they’re laying out over 200 pieces of new gym equipment, with a range of facilities including a ladies-only gym, a nightclub-style Power Zone gym with a dark room, neon lights and big tellies, a free weights area and a separate spinning room.

The Pod will be opening its doors at Fletcher Gate in January, but the first 100 people who register this month will be treated to no joining fee whatsoever. Want further details? Check the back of this mag immediately, and make sure you give your old school kit a proper airing as soon as possible…

The Pod, Bottle Lane, Fletcher Gate, NG1 2FS fitness4less.co.uk leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 24

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music / comedy event listings...

Saturday 18/12

Wednesday 22/12

Euler The Central £3, 7.30pm Euler and Jasmine

Jasper Cain The Central £3, 7.30pm

Zen Arcade Stealth £5, 10.15pm The Undercats Deux Skin Rock City £15, 6.30pm Más Y Más Cafe Bar Contemporary Free Space Ritual The Old Angel £10, 7pm Tim Minchin Nottingham Arena £35, 7pm Kaox The Robin Hood The Money Southbank Bar Artnot -Wasp Sound System Sideshow Alley Café £5 / £7

Sunday 19/12 Kate Rusby Nottingham Playhouse £18 / £20, 7:30pm Sticky Morales Southbank Bar

Monday 20/12 The Bootleg Beatles Royal Centre £23.50, 8pm

Tuesday 21/12 Deli The Hand and Heart

Sharp Knees The Central 7.30pm Offcut Records presents...

The Maze £3, 7.45pm Liam O’Kane and The Stabilizers, Stuck In 2nd, The Sights, Marvin Brown and James Thompson.

Thursday 23/12 Nightworks The Hand and Heart Pesky Alligators The Factory £2 after 10.30, 10pm-2am The Money Southbank Bar

Friday 24/12 Jay Stone The Robin Hood The Joe Strange Band Southbank Bar

Tuesday 28/12 Brazilica The Hand and Heart Abba Mania Royal Centre £23, 7.30pm

Wednesday 29/12 Moonwhiskey Soul Jam The Maze £3, 7.30pm With Bonus Beyond

Thursday 30/12 The Money The Approach Free, 9pm

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

This One Goes Up To ‘11 Detonate’s Countdown 2010: Massive.

If you live in Notts and have the slightest affection for Uncle Drum and Auntie Bass, you’re already aware of Detonate and their Zen-like ability to throw a serious multi-venue, multigenre party on even the most inconsequential Bank Holiday Sunday. Obviously, you’d expect the stops to be pulled out for their New Year’s Eve do, but the width and breadth of their line-up this year is frightening.

Where to start? Well, take the Rock City leg of the night; Chase and Status have decided to end the year that they took the genre by the scruff of the neck, with an exclusive midnight set in the NG, as they preview a new LP that’ll ensure their dominance across 2011. Hospital Records’ very own Danny Byrd has also had a busy 2010, with a string of massive tunes and the recent Rave Digger LP. Chuck in the one and only Goldie doing a strictly DnB set, a three-deck tour de force from DJ Friction, Black Sun Empire jet in from Holland and Shy FX, the Original Nuttah himself, rounds off a ridiculous line-up.

But that’s only a chunk of the night; the mighty Skream & Benga (aka the live act, Magnetic Man) host their own room, taking to the decks themselves with a two hour set. Guests include The Scratch Perverts, Mistajam and Instra:mental, with Pokes and Youngman MC on the mic. Meanwhile, the dubstep arena will be hosted by Basslaced, with a line-up including Rinse FM representatives Plastician, N-Type and Youngsta alongside Emalkay and The Others (signed to Caspas Dub Police imprint).

Chuck in a soundclash between local crews Mimm and Cult, seven different arenas, Funktion One sound throughout, loads more acts we haven’t got room to mention, and 4,000 people hell bent on having it from eightthirty in the eve til’ six in the morn, and it’s no wonder that this event sells out long before you get to digest your advent calendar of manky chocolate. Tickets are on sale now for the early bird price of £25 (plus booking fee) from the Detonate website, but if you prefer the personal touch, get your block-rocking arse over to the Golden Fleece or the Rock City box office right now – or hit up the credit card hotline at 0845 413 4444. Go on!

Detonate Countdown 2010, Rock City, Rescue Rooms and Stealth, Friday 31 December, £25 (plus booking fee) detonate1.co.uk

Friday 31/12

Friday 31/12

Friday 14/01

LeftLion - Sound of The Lion NYE The Golden Fleece £6, 7pm With Ronika, The Eviltones, Rebel Soul Collective and DJs tbc.

An extra special festive edition of the LeftLion pub quiz hosted by Nottingham’s Mr Sex. Prizes for fancy dress, the theme is films of the eighties.

Hed Kandi Gatecrasher £15 adv Jim Breese, Steph Jay and Scott Brooker

Will Bailey The Central 7.30pm Plus Kunt and the Gang

Countdown 2010 Rock City / Stealth £25, 8.30pm Chase & Status, Alix Perez, Goldie, Fake Blood, Friction, Scratch Perverts and loads more...

Wildside NYE Party The Central 7.30pm - late

Centre Larks The Just The Tonic Christmas Show is back No sooner have Just The Tonic got their feet under the table at the Forum – which used to be EQ, which used to be Jumpin’ Jaks, which used to be the Evening Post building before it became The Cornerhouse – than they’re decamping up the road to the Royal Centre for their annual Christmas show on Friday 17 December. Seeing as previous participants have included Alan Carr, Reg Hunter, Ed Byrne, Daniel Kitson, Rich Hall, Jim Jeffries, Stewart Lee, Kevin Bridges and Johnny Vegas, it’s no surprise that this is one of the biggest comedy events of the year in this here town.

This year, as always, JTT are dropping a – pardon the expression - serious line-up. Mock The Week regular Sarah Millican takes a detour from her 121-date sell-out tour of the UK to make a rare appearance in Notts, alongside another MTW guest, Milton Jones – both of whom have also featured on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow this year.

JTT’s policy of championing the newest acts to the hilt has paid off big time with Seann Walsh, who has just started to do the rounds on TV after being part of JTT’s Big Value Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Festival - here’s your chance to see him before he really takes off. The whole night is compered by Rob Rouse, a long-time favourite who hosted the first series of The Friday Night Project. He is one of the promoter’s favourite acts and his buoyant fun approach, make him the perfect host. All this can be yours for a mingy £17.50 people, and we haven’t even mentioned the possibility of a special guest appearance by LeftLion hero, The Fish Man. Just The Tonic Christmas Show, Friday 17 December, the Royal Concert Hall. Tickets available from the Just The Tonic website or directly from the Royal Concert Hall. justthetonic.com

Alexandra Burke Royal Centre £30, 7pm NYE Black Tie Ball Southbank Bar With the Joe Strange Band New Year’s Eve The Malt Cross £8, 8.30 – close Wholesome Fish and DJ Pete Bradley, more tbc.

Pesky Alligators The Robin Hood Free, 9pm-1am

Tuesday 04/01

Juan Martin Flamenco Dance Ensemble Lakeside Arts Centre £15 / £18 / £20, 8pm Pesky Alligators The Robin Hood

Saturday 15/01 That Sunday Feeling Rock City £5, 6.30pm Plus GO-X, Exit Avenue, Hey! Alaska and A Far Cry From Innocence Ruckus The Central £3, 7.30pm Ruckus, The Swiines, The Forgotten Rejects and Shoot The Poets

JLS Nottingham Arena £31.67, 7pm

Wildwood The Robin Hood

Friday 07/01

Sunday 16/01

Kingship The Central £3, 7.30pm

Latitudes The Old Angel £5, 7.30pm Hammers and Year Of The Flood

Salomagindi The Robin Hood

Sunday 09/01 Birthmark (Nate Kinsella) Spanky Van Dykes 5, 7.30pm Plus Crash of Rhinos, Elk and more.

Tuesday 11/01 JLS Nottingham Arena £25.54 - £31.67, 7.30pm

Thursday 13/01 Kevin Montgomery and The Roadtrippers The Maze £15, 7.30pm

Justin Townes Earle The Maze £11, 7.30pm

Friday 21/01 Dodgy Plus Supports The Central £10 / £12, 7:30 Gold Rush The Robin Hood

Saturday 22/01 Keep It Cash The Maze £10, 7.30pm Devil’s Advocate The Robin Hood leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 25

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4 - 30 DECEMBER

THEM

WITH

TAILS

TALL STORIES AND NETWORK OF STUFF Co-commissioned by Brighton Dome and the Roundhouse

ALL TICKETS £7 Running time: 50 mins approx Suitable for ages 5+ and families

LAKESIDE ARTS CENTRE UNIVERSITY PARK, NOTTINGHAM BOX OFFICE: 0115 846 7777 BOOK ONLINE: WWW.LAKESIDEARTS.ORG.UK

SUNDAY 6 FEBRUARY 4.30PM ADMISSION FREE

CHINESE NEW YEAR SPECTACULAR & FIREWORK FINALE AT LAKESIDE

Wrap up warmly, bring the family and join us in Highfields Park to welcome the Year of The Rabbit in style. With stage performances including dragon dancing from 4.30pm onwards and the firework finale over the lake at 6.30pm.

theatre/exhibitions/comedy event listings...

THEATRE Saturday 04/12

EXHIBITIONS

Aladdin Royal Centre £10 - £24.50 Runs until: 16/1

John Makepeace Harley Gallery and Foundation Runs until: 24/12

Dick Whittington Nottingham Arts Theatre £10 / £12, 7.30pm and selected 2pm matinees Runs until: 12/12

Wednesday 01/12

Wednesday 01/12 The Heuristics Laboratory Malt Cross Runs until: 02/12

Saturday 11/12

Gods and Rockers - David Blandy Wasp Room / Tether Runs until: 05/12

Tom’s Midnight Garden Lace Market Theatre £6 - £10, 2:30pm / 7.30pm Runs until: 18/12

Tuesday 07/12

Monday 10/01

‘Magics’ Touring exhibition NCN Lace Market Gallery Runs until: 16/12

The Trial Lace Market Theatre 7.30pm, 2.30pm matinee Runs until: 15/1

Saturday 15/01

Friday 21/01

Saturday 22/01

The Rape of Lucrece Lakeside Arts Centre £6 / £9 / £12, 8pm

Anne Collier Nottingham Contemporary Runs until: 27/03

Tuesday 25/01

Jack Goldstein Nottingham Contemporary Runs until: 27/03

Annie Get Your Gun Nottingham Arts Theatre Runs until: 29/1

Nora Fok: A Retrospective Harley Gallery and Foundation

for more: leftlion.co.uk/listings

You’re having a Folk n’ Laugh, aren’t you?

The Glee Club: home of top-drawer comedy and songs about dead fishermen

It’s only been here for a few months, but the Glee Club has already firmly established itself as a major draw in town, with the some of the best in live stand-up comedy every Friday and Saturday throughout the year. But that’s only half the story; it’s also a kick ass music venue, as the likes of Tim Robbins and Lloyd Cole have already demonstrated.

And that unique duality will be pushed out even further this winter, with the launch of a new folk club night featuring some of the world’s finest folk, acoustic and roots musicians getting all intimate on the Waterfront.

The series is launched by Scottish singer, guitarist, interpreter of traditional ballads and writer of incredible contemporary songs, Alistair Roberts, on Friday 28 January. After that comes Bellowhead co-founder and ‘a folk song a day’ maestro Jon Boden. Other highlights in this exclusive folk series include former Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble, the Brit Award-winning Eddi Reader and Radio 2 Folk Awards 2011 nominees The Unthanks, Chris Wood and Kris Drever.

Meanwhile, the comedy end of the bargain is well and truly held up over December with Andi Osho – of Mock the Week, Stand Up For The Week, and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow fame - heading a line-up on Saturday 11 December alongside Rob Rouse, Dave Fulton and Sean Percival. Andi will be back at The Glee Club in April with her Afroblighty show, and Rob will also be returning next year with his solo show, so why not catch ‘em both on one bill right now? For full ticket info, check the website..

The Glee Club, British Waterways Building, Castle Wharf, Canal Street, NG1 7EH glee.co.uk

Friday 10/12

Monday 13/12

Saturday 15/01

Rock n’ Roll Circus Bunkers Hill £8, 7.30pm

Henning and Otto Forum £10, 8pm

Nina Nastasia Glee Club Nottingham £12, 7.30pm Plus Sons of Noel and Adrian

High Tease Glee Club Nottingham £15, 7.30pm

Wednesday 15/12

Just The Tonic Forum £5 / £10 Steve Hughes, Seann Walsh, Duncan Oakley and Darrell Martin

Sunday 05/12

Saturday 11/12

Saturday 29/01

Josie Long Forum £10, 6.45pm

Nick Page Bunkers Hill £7, 7.30pm

Liz Carr: It Hasn’t Happened Yet...

Lakeside Arts Centre £6 / £9 / £12, 8pm

Monday 06/12

Monday 13/12

Dar Williams Glee Club Nottingham £12.50, 7.30pm

Angelos Epithemiou Glee Club Nottingham £15, 6.45pm

Thursday 27/01 Dance4 presents episodes2011 Nottingham Playhouse £5 / £6 / £7 / £8 Runs until: 28/01 Nottinghamshire’s finest young dancers present two nights of energy, creativity and brilliance.

COMEDY

Saturday 04/12

Them With Frozen Tales Did Lakeside put a Panto on this year? Oh no, they didn’t It might be Panto season, but just because it’s the time of year to ram a bar of Dairy Milk down the gobs of the smaller people in your life at the theatre doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make them watch low-level transvestites, or people who were in Hollyoaks. For example, take Them With Frozen Tales, the improvisational show for kids that’s running throughout December at the Lakeside Arts Centre.

Suitable for nippers aged five and upwards, Them With Frozen Tales is partly created by theatre company Tall Stories (who were responsible for the massively successful stage adaptation of The Gruffalo), partly created by Network of Stuff (a touring company from Bristol) and partly created by the kids in the audience. It’s a mélange of two funny chaps, some arctic animals, and some improbable, impossible, seasonal physical storytelling – and it’s perfectly complimented by Lakeside’s interactive exhibition in the Wallner Gallery that gives kids the opportunity to create new stories of their own, as well as drama and storytelling workshops for those aged 4-5 years.

And even though we haven’t had our own New Year yet at the time of writing, it’s never too early to flag up an event that Lakeside have practically taken ownership of round here: the Chinese New Year celebrations. Highfields Park will be the perfect place to see in 4708, the Year of the Rabbit; there’ll be a Chinese lion dance, traditional folk songs, premieres of new Chinese dance performances, and a huge fireworks display over Highfields Lake.

Them With Frozen Tales, 4-30 December, all tickets £7.

Chinese New Year, Sunday 6 February, 2011, free. Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park, NG7 2RD. lakesidearts.org.uk

NCF Comedy Night Canalhouse £5, 7.30pm

Friday 17/12 Just The Tonic Xmas Special Royal Centre £17.50, 7.30pm Sarah Millican, Milton Jones, Seann Walsh and Rob Rouse

Sunday 16/01 Laughing Horse Bunkers Hill £4, 7.30pm

Thursday 20/01 Smoke Fairies Glee Club Nottingham £7, 7.30pm

Pulse Comedy Club Night New Venture Club £12.50 / £15, 7pm – 12am

Terry Alderton Lakeside Arts Centre £6 / £9 / £12, 8pm

Sunday 19/12

Friday 21/01

Just The Tonic Forum £10, 8pm Glenn Wool and Andrew Lawrence.

Just The Tonic Friday Night Forum £5 / £9, 8pm Rob Deering, Isy Suttle, Carey Marx and Jarred Christmas.

Friday 31/12 Just The Tonic NYE Special Forum £25, 8pm Wes Zaharuk, Matt Kirchen, Eric Lampaert and Darrell Martin Stand up and after show party Jongleurs £40, 6.30pm Mandy Knight, Simon Bligh and Deliso Chaponda.

Friday 07/01 Just The Tonic with Phil Nichol Forum £9, 8pm Josh Howie, Mick Ferry & Matt Reed.

Runs until 09/01

Friday 14/01 Just The Tonic with Steve Hughes Forum £9 / £5, 8pm Plus Seann Walsh & Duncan Oakley.

Friday 28/01 Alasdair Roberts Glee Club Nottingham £10, 6.45pm Just The Tonic Friday Night Forum £5 / £9, 8pm Jason John Whitehead, Gordon Southern and guest

Saturday 29/01 Just The Tonic Forum £5 / £10, 8pm Jason John Whitehead, Gordon Southern and guest

Sunday 30/01 Marty Stuart Glee Club Nottingham £20, 6.45pm

leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 leftlion.co.uk/issue38 27

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Another issue, another chance for the emaciated LeftLion scribes to take a break from the keyboard and get some snap inside them. If you want to be featured on this page email noshingham@leftlion.co.uk

words: Aly Stoneman, Ali Emm, Jared Wilson

Ania

Café Nomad

Hart’s

This family-run business in Sherwood is rated number one on tripadvisor.co.uk for Nottingham restaurants, attracting tourists and locals alike. Ania, (the eponymous owner), explains that good reviews and word of mouth has kept business buoyant since they opened nearly four years ago.

Café Nomad is situated on the Carrington end of Hucknall Road and offers a range of culinary fayre to Nottingham’s vegan and vegetarian residents. Stepping inside from the cold we were greeted by a warm, softly lit room with an open kitchen releasing some tantalising smells into the air.

The Mediterranean and African paraphernalia adorning the walls, along with the welcoming smile from the proprietor, immediately set us at ease in this intimate eatery.

Hart’s restaurant is one of the big boys of fine dining in Nottingham. Consistently up there in the various ‘restaurant of the year’ awards, it’s known to be pricey by Nottingham standards, but your stomach may thank you for the investment.

Polish off your whole plate

We choose a table by the window and order two bottles of Polish lager (Zywiec and Lech £2.75 each) before turning our attention to the menu. The names of the dishes are in Polish, but fortunately they are described in English underneath. Soup of the day is borscht (£2.50) - my favourite, although slices of hard boiled egg nestling within the shredded beetroot come as a surprise. Ania explains this is made Ukrainian style and a firm favourite with her weekend regulars.

My companion opts for the vegetarian golabki (£3.50) as a starter - corpulent parcels of cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and vegetables wallowing like hippos in a rich mushroom sauce. I have ordered golabki (£7.95) for my main course and am savouring the treat to come. But when it does, I realise we are talking big portions on big plates. My companion is served a battalion of vegetarian pierogi ruskie (£6.95) - ten pieces of lightly pan-fried discs of pasta stuffed with cheese, potatoes and onions, accompanied by sauerkraut and beetroot salad, the latter surprising my tastebuds with an exciting zing of horseradish.

The food is delicious and beautifully presented, but after I consume my first golabki there are still two to go. My companion has powered through the pieroggi and I’m worried that the owner will be annoyed when she comes to take my plate. Instead, she offers me a doggy bag and returns with two tupperware boxes containing my leftovers. That’s lunch tomorrow sorted then. Ania says that her customers expect big portions, but people with smaller appetites are welcome to order two starters instead of a starter and a main. It’s all very laid back.

Now when I was a kid, if you didn’t finish your dinner, there were no puds to follow. But hurray, I’m not a kid anymore, and it would be criminal to miss out on that homemade apple cinnamon cake with crumble on top and ice cream! So we share a piece, and if it isn’t quite a ‘Lady and the Tramp’ spaghetti moment, it’s really quite romantic.

But it seems there is still one course to go - ‘Polish medicine!’

Jokes Ania. A shot of cherry vodka arrives - a real winter warmer. Outside afterwards, ice is forming on the pavement, but I’m just toasty.

558 Mansfield Road, NG5 2FS. Tel: 0115 9858666 tinyurl.com/38gr247

Vegan food finds a home in Carrington

They serve from Wednesdays to Saturdays from 5-10pm and although the menu isn’t particularly extensive, there was enough on offer for us to spend ten minutes making our minds up. We chose mushroom pâté with rosemary crackers (£3) and soup of the day (£3). The large serving of soup was piping hot so we got stuck into the pâté whilst waiting for it to cool. This was no hardship though as it was creamy and went perfectly with the crunchy crackers and well dressed side salad. The short wait for the soup was worthwhile as it turned out to be smooth, thick and hearty – the perfect antidote to the autumnal night.

Judging by their menu, being a vegan is more interesting than just plain vegetables and rice. My guest got dibs on one of the specials, squash and spinach terrine with a couscous salad (£12) whilst I went for the Moroccan tagine with flat bread (£12.50). Tucking in, it became apparent where the alluring aromas on arrival had emanated from. The tagine had a wonderful balance between sweet and savoury with the light handed addition of apricots as well as being full of texture thanks to the cashew nuts and firm chunks of potato.

My companion’s dish looked unassuming but went down quickly due to the layered flavours that ran throughout. The cold side salad was the ideal accompaniment and my ‘just a taste’ turned into about four before he started glaring at me for enjoying it too much.

Almost too full for dessert, we went halves on the chocolate pancake (£3). A creamy, rich layered cake with hidden pear slices adding a welcome freshness. Now I’m not vegetarian or vegan and see lambs as cute and tasty. However, at the end of this veritable feast, I didn’t feel I’d missed out. Except on maybe a glass of wine – Café Nomad is unlicensed but, if you’re inclined, bringing your own is encouraged.

This was an affordable meal that lacked nothing in the cuisine or service department. Cast aside any prejudices and treat yourself to a diverse and delicious dining experience that lacks pretention.

118 Hucknall Road, Carrington, NG5 1AD Tel: 0115 9692239 cafenomad.co.uk

Modern British hospitality

Perhaps surprisingly, the whole Hart’s complex is located in Nottingham’s former Victorian hospital. Indeed the restaurant is based in the old accident and emergency ward and the hotel is made up out of rooms that once housed the patients.

Obviously things have changed a lot since those days and the restaurant décor is now light and airy with the memories of the ill banished well into the past.

We began with a round of starters. I went for the roast pigeon (medium rare) salad with apple, blackberry and walnut (£8.75). I wasn’t disappointed, the fruit and nut flavours complemented it succinctly, though it’s fair to say that the portion size was a little petite. My guest had the hand dived scallops, with spiced lentils, smoked duck and mint yoghurt (£13.95). The scallops were tender and delicious and the lentils were spiced perfectly, tangy but not too hot, bringing out the flavour of the dish superbly.

For my main I had a fillet of venison, with port-cooked beetroot, Brussels sprouts, quince purée and venison sauce (£22.50). The venison had a strong distinct smokey flavour, which was accentuated by the sweetness of the beetroots.

The Brussels sprouts were surprisingly tasty too - normally at home I turn my nose up at these, but I wolfed them down here.

My guest tried the pan fried sea bass, with wild mushroom gnocchi and baby leeks (£19.50) and found it delicious.

For dessert we decided to share two between us and the white and dark chocolate pave (£8.50) proved to be the favourite. Served in an edible chocolate cup, it contained three kinds of chocolate mousse and raspberry sorbet and looked and tasted sublime. The orange crème brûlée (£7.50), however, was almost as tasty and came with a shot of orange spirit to wash it down.

Dining at Hart’s is a real treat, but it could be pretty heavy on the wallet too. A three-course meal for two with wine will set you back somewhere in the region of £120 - although they do have a three course deal for £25, but this offers comparatively limited options. It’s only right to treat yourself from time to time, so if you’re feeling a bit flush, round up a loved one and get yourself here. It might be just what the doctor ordered.

Standard Hill, Park Row, NG1 6GN Tel: 0115 988 1900 hartsnottingham.co.uk

Our resident fast food expert Beane continues his quest to eat at every takeaway in Nottingham…

Brick Oven

Surely there can’t be many more places on Mansfield Road to review I hear you cry? Well my friends that is where you are wrong. I don’t call it “The road of dreams” for nothing and newish pizza joint the Brick Oven has added to the colourful patchwork of late night eateries upon that stretch of hallowed concrete turf. Deciding to concentrate on selling only pizzas was a brave move, considering most others in the vicinity provide endless options for the late night reveller - but it’s a wise one as they’ve mastered their art to almost black belt proportions. It might not be the best pizza you’ve ever had but at these prices you won’t be arguing - you get what you pay for and more. With friendly service (which is a rarity these days) and a proud owner who will happily cajole you with a story or two, you’ll find yourself bought over before you’ve even munched down into that crispy base. For those doing the long trek from town to home, I feel your pain, so pop in, load up and enjoy as this is the last outpost before home.

209 Mansfield Road, NG13FS

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Woodthorpe Tandoori

At the very other end of Mansfield Road (and we’re talking quite a way here) lies Woodthorpe Tandoori. Now, first things first, I know what your thinking and yes, it is a restaurant but any food gaff that does take away and delivery counts in my book. How to describe this wonderful place?

Well, without question it has to be one of the nicest places I’ve had tandoori food from and believe me, I’ve had a lot. I’m not usually one for an appetiser when it comes to these sort of places, but the hot meat starter, although maybe not the most imaginarily titled dish, sure packs a hell of a punch. Follow that with what you wish for a main dish as all the menu sings loudly. But in a joint like this you should really opt for one of their special tandoori dishes which rarely disappoint. I’m often too stuffed to finish them off which is a compliment to their value for money. A shining star in the Nottingham eatery crown - I can’t recommend it enough.

774 Mansfield Road, NG5 3FH

Leo (July 24 - August 23) Disney has a lot to answer for. In today’s society there is too much emphasis on Christmas being the ‘best time of the year’ and how we should all be the perfect happy family eating dinner around a table full of smiley, happy family people. The reality is that you will eat your turkey alone and cold this year. But you might find solace in the fact that you won’t be the only one doing so.

Virgo (August 24 - September 23) Oh, come, all ye perverts. Come and have an orgy, oh, come ye, oh, cum ye, in brothels galore.

Come and get plastered and let’s find us some ho-girls. Oh, come, let us enjoy them. Oh, come, let us enjoy them. Oh, come, let us enjoy them gals from Forest Road.

Libra (September 24 - October 23) So you want a real Christmas tree, but you’re sick of pine needles getting all over the floor and causing you, the kids and the pets problems? Simply wrap the Christmas tree in an old bed sheet before you put it up and give it a good shake. This will solve all your needling problems. You can do the same thing to remove some DNA evidence from a corpse too.

Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) When I was eight years old I stopped believing in Santa, but my parents desperately tried to keep up the illusion. They’d previously bought me a Walkman with a recording facility that activated when a noise was made. Thus I proved to them on Christmas day that Santa did not exist and presented them with recorded evidence of them discussing it the night before. This is a true story of Christmas day horror.

LEFTLION ABROAD Rock City (aka Kule Bar) – Bodrum, Muğla, Turkey No, Rock City haven’t decided to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary by purchasing bars on foreign shores and renaming them in their honour.

Sagittarius (November 23 - December 22) Crashing through the snow, in a stolen Ford Capri. O’er the cliff we go, shrieking all the way. Bells and sirens ring, marking where we crashed. They put us in intensive care and they don’t think we will last. Jingle bells, funeral bells, ringing all the way. Oh, what fools we were to ride in that stolen Ford Capri.

To the best of our knowledge this bar exists totally independently from the most legendary music venue in HoodTown. But we had a quick look through their website (kulebar.com) and there were loads of photos of beardy men, scowling youths and middle-aged cougar ladies who would not look out of place at citeh on a Saturday night.

Capricorn (December 23 - January 19)

When I was a teenager we lived in a big house with a large open fire. My uncle, a trained chimney sweep, thought it would be a good idea to actually come down the chimney dressed as Santa Claus to further the belief of my younger siblings. However, he didn’t realise how quickly I was able to start a fire thanks to my scout training. This is a true story of Christmas day horror.

Aquarius (January 20 - February 19)

Looking to remove tricky price stickers from presents so that your relatives don’t realise how cheap you really are? There are two main methods for this: first you can use a soapy sponge, or secondly a hairdryer (obviously don’t overheat the item). You can do the same thing to remove some DNA evidence from a corpse too.

The photo was sent in by LeftLion reader Christy Fearn (pictured) who went there for an oversea day trip this summer, whilst on holiday in the Greek island of Kos. Famous people associated with the island of Bodrum include ancient Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60BC) and Turkish classical musician Zeki Müren (1931-1996).

Pisces (February 20 - March 20) You better break out, the black robes and wine. A golden goblet and some candles in line.

Because Satan is invading your town. He sees you when you’re naked and when you take a shite.

He sees you masturbating and he’ll watch you sleep at night.

Aries (March 21 - April 20)

Memo from the desk of Mr. S. Claus: Mary, please let the people know that I’m sick of brandy and sherry. I don’t know where this idea came from that I like them, but I am strictly a Bourbon man!

Oh, and Rudolf wants people to realise that he eats all kinds of vascular plants and lichens. There are only so many carrots that a reindeer can physically consume in one day, you know.

Taurus (April 21 - May 21)

Lacy things, the wife is missing. I didn’t ask her permission. I’m wearing her clothes, her silk pantyhose, walking round in women’s underwear. In the store there’s a teddy, little straps like spaghetti. It holds me so tight, like handcuffs at night, walking round in women’s underwear.

Going somewhere exotic? Take a copy of the Lion, wave it about, send it to us, and then you can bore the arse off the whole of Notts with your holiday snaps. Lob them pics and details to info@leftlion.co.uk

Gemini (May 22 - June 22)

Making your own Christmas crackers this year? Why not add some extra oomph to your celebrations by upgrading the cracker snaps with a bit of homemade flash powder? Obviously if you put too little in it won’t be effective, but too much will bring the whole house down. You can use the same thing to remove some DNA evidence from a corpse too.

Cancer (June 23 - July 23) In my early twenties I realised that girls called Natalie, Carol, Holly or Eve were usually born around Christmas and New Year. Thus, if I dated girls exclusively with those names then I didn’t have to shell out for more than one present each year or make much further effort to go to their parties. This is a true story of Christmas shopping horror.

Mince pies

Pukka pies

LeftLion wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Keep yourself warm and keep your eyes out at the end of January for our first issue of 2011!

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