The List Issue 777

DECEMBER 2023–JANUARY 2024

ISSUE 777 LIST.CO.UK FREE

WHICH SCOTS CAME TOP IN OUR CULTURAL COUNTDOWN?

Discover our Wondrous World

Moments from the Scottish Highland Distillery where we dream up our delicious whiskies, lies our boutique hotel Glenmorangie House.

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Find out more and book your stay today.: www.glenmorangie.com/glenmorangie-house 4 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

contents

FRONT The Insider

8

Our critics choose their cultural highlights of 2023

Head 2 Head

9

Is the new Mean Girls a Hollywood rehash too far?

FEATURES Hot 100

11

Who will follow in Ncuti Gatwa’s footsteps as our no 1?

EAT & DRINK Food trends

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We look at the changes heading on to your plates in 2024

Drinking Games

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Happiness is a warm pub

TRAVEL & SHOP Akureyri

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It’s not just mum who’s going to Iceland

The Blankfaces

53

The fashion house aiming to end homelessness

GOING OUT Emmanuel Sonubi A comic for whom dying on stage is no laughing matter

Future Sound

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The music acts set to rock our world in 2024

The Boy And The Heron

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SCREENWRITER TONY MCNAMARA ON ADAPTING POOR THINGS, STARRING EMMA STONE

Studio Ghibli’s leader makes a fond and fantastic farewell

Café Royal Books

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Documentary photography from an analogue age

STAYING IN Lasagna Ganja

84

Railing against those who take pot shots at stoners

Society Of The Snow

85

A true-life survival story that will chill the bones

Peter Gabriel

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Does the eccentric progger/blue-eyed soulster still have it?

BACK Hot Chip and Hot Shots A fun Q&A and some lovely pictures

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”

It’s a gothic imagination and the piece is so wild

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December 2023–January2024 THE LIST 5

welcome

CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHING

There are plenty people who scoff at those who love a good list. Clickbait and lowest common-denominator stuff, they would probably say. And yes, we’ve all been repulsed by the ‘26 celebrities who are older than they used to be: what’s with that!?’ type ‘article’ which always reeks of being tossed out and coughed up in a single lunch hour. The Hot 100, friends, was not a 60-minute job. Almost from the time we released last year’s rundown into the wild, an Excel spreadsheet (other spreadsheet templates are available) has been almost literally buzzing with names being constantly added to it.

And 12 months later, here we are again with another impressive collection of Scotland’s cultural icons, prospective superstars and everyone in between.

If you haven’t caught the results online and not already jumped ahead 30 pages, then there will be no spoilers here. But suffice to say, we are pretty pleased with the end result. If your favourite act (or maybe even you) hasn’t made the list this time around, take solace in the tale of a young Paisley troubadour who was placed at 100 last year and has now rocketed into the top ten.

Of course, reflecting back across the year isn’t the be-all and end-all of this issue as we’re projecting forward over two months (and much longer with some 2024 preview coverage). We managed to score interviews with hip-hop legend Ice Cube, Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Emmanuel Sonubi, Lasagna Ganja podcast co-host Tammy Pettigrew aka The Cannabis Cutie, and Poor Things screenwriter Tony McNamara, while Olga Koch told us about a mad holiday and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor had a darn good go at our Q&A. Plus, in a weird quirk of coincidence, we’ve zeroed in on two of Falkirk’s finest: Forbes Masson who is on one-man Jekyll And Hyde duty at the Lyceum, and Arab Strap who are marking the 25th anniversary of their classic Philophobia album with some special gigs. I suspect we’ll be writing more about those guys in precisely 12 months’ time . . .

CEO Sheri Friers Editor Brian Donaldson Art Director Seonaid Rafferty Sub Editors Paul McLean Megan Merino Eat & Drink Editor Jo Laidlaw Travel & Shop Editor Megan Merino Designer Isabella Dalliston Writers Ailsa Sheldon, Becca Inglis, Brian Donaldson, Claire Sawers, Claire Stuart, Danny Munro, David Kirkwood, Eddie Harrison, Emma Simmonds, Fiona Shepherd, Gareth K Vile, Greg Thomas, Isy Santini, James Mottram, Jay Richardson, Jay Thundercliffe, Jo Laidlaw, Katherine McLaughlin, Kevin Fullerton, Leah Bauer, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Mark Fisher, Matthew Hayhurst, Megan Merino, Murray Robertson, Neil Cooper, Paul Dale, Paul McLean, Rachel Ashenden, Rachel Cronin, Rebecca Crockett, Suzy Pope Social Media & Content Editor Megan Merino

Brian Donaldson EDITOR

Senior Business Development Manager Jayne Atkinson Online News Editor Kevin Fullerton

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Media Sales Executive Ewan Wood Digital Operations & Events Manager Leah Bauer

ICE CUBE

Events Assistant Eve Johnston

Published by List Publishing Ltd 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU Tel: 0131 623 3040 list.co.uk editor@list.co.uk ISSN: 0959 - 1915

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THE 7TH GUEST VR 6 THE LIST December 2023–January2024

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TO P 1 0 B E S T V I S I TO R AT T R A C T I O N I N T H E U K *

1 hour g u id e d tour

St e p d ow n i n to Edinburgh’s

h i dd e n h i story

Fo llow Ed inburgh ’s past re s id e n t s in un d e rgro un d al l e y ways an d hear t h e ir re al sto rie s.

Free language audio guides *according to Tripadvisor

REALMARYKINGSCLOSE.COM REALMARYKINGSCLOSE.COM 7 THE LIST September 2023

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 7

front

For this final Insider of the year, we ask a number of List people about their personal highlights from a busy 12 months in art and culture

LUCY RIBCHESTER Seeing Monet X Change perform live, with her beautiful bass voice, was beyond wonderful.

Genderfuck is common in opera, but hardly ever do you see it this way round. She’s a queen.

GREG THOMAS

DANNY MUNRO Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s War Pony, a beautifully shot depiction of the modern-day indigenous experience featuring countless triumphant performances from a largely inexperienced cast.

Going to visit the artist and writer Gloria Wilson in her terraced house in Saltburn, Yorkshire. Wilson’s detailed and groundbreaking writing on Scottish fishing craft was a big influence on the (much more famous) artist and writer Ian Hamilton Finlay.

ZARA JANJUA

PICTURE: VICTOR JEFFREYS

The entire world was swept into a tidal wave of pink with the release of Barbie starring Margot Robbie.

Greta Gerwig became the highest grossing female director ever as Barbiemania took hold.

I was fully onboard the Barbiecore bandwagon.

MURRAY ROBERTSON After several years’ absence from the Fringe, it was an absolute joy to see Adam Riches back with two superb character-comedy sets. His afternoon lothario show was an excruciating masterpiece.

BRIAN DONALDSON

PICTURE: LUKE DYSON

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the kitchen, The Bear roared its way into our lives again with a second hi-tempo, high-temperature season.

Much attention has been rightly given to that family-Christmas episode but the show’s true brilliance came in the quieter moments especially with Will Poulter who you forgot wasn’t an actual chef.

Plus: ‘I wear suits now’.

CLAIRE SAWERS At Counterflows we discovered incredible new music from Scotland and around the world on a ferry, in community halls and the 1960s brutalist Pyramid at Anderston. We danced at the old Arches, then watched tap dancing, whip cracking and live vegan-dumpling making.

With deliberately clashing styles, hypnotic rhythms and crazy talents, it was another belter of a weekend.

PAUL MCLEAN The Mighty Hoopla festival in London. Two days of sheer pop heaven: Soul II Soul, Jake Shears, Roísín Murphy, Years And Years, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Eurovision queen Loreen belting out ‘Euphoria’. Oh, and a George Michael disco too.

the insider 2023 special 8 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

This issue’s playLIST is a Hot 100 special, featuring the ceremonious sounds of artists featured on our curated list of influential Scottish cultural contributors. Dip into songs by Joesef, Young Fathers, Simone Seales, corto.alto, Terra Kin, Fred Deakin and many more . . .

Scan and listen as you read:

2

hea d MEGAN

hea d

No film has become a more potent symbol of the early 2000s zeitgeist than Tina Fey’s teen comedy Mean Girls. Still regularly referenced in popular culture 20 years later, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a modern classic. However, the trailer for a new 2024 remake has received some scrutiny from fans, as captured in this YouTube comment: ‘There is nothing they could do to beat the original movie. This is almost an insult to our nostalgia.’

Of course, what the two-minute trailer (misleadingly set to ‘Get Him Back!’ by Olivia Rodrigo) fails to mention is that this isn’t a remake of the original, but in fact a film adaptation of the 2017 award-winning stage musical. The difference? All the original songs and choreography, for two, but also its slightly tweaked script that caters to a new generation of high schoolers (and which also won Fey two Tonys).

Starring new pop sensation Reneé Rapp as Regina George, with cameos from Fey and Ashley Park of Emily In Paris fame (who played the original Gretchen on Broadway), there’s a lot of heft to this seemingly vapid remake. Although the studio and marketing team are clearly hesitant to push the musical-theatre component, I think it is precisely the thing that justifies its resurrection.

FRONT

from the archive

play LIST

We look through The List’s 38-year back catalogue to see what was making headlines this month in decades gone by

Back in 1988’s festive issue, cover star Rikki Fulton was set to take up his usual spot on Hogmanay TV in Scotch And Wry, which was celebrating its ten-year anniversary. We caught up with the comedic actor backstage at a Scottish Opera production of Iolanthe in which he was playing the role of Lord Chancellor (much to the surprise of even himself). Also inside, we spoke to The Steamie star Katy Murphy, put together an unorthodox ‘Twelve Days Of Christmas’, and rounded up the films of 1988, where Rambo 3 sat alongside Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Thou Shalt Not Kill, the inaugural European Film Award winner.  Visit archive.list.co.uk to read our past issues.

We gently ask Megan Merino and Kevin Fullerton to take a seat, ponder a contentious piece of current culture and debate the whys and wherefores. As the next big-screen version of the Mean Girls thunderbus looms, does this prove beyond doubt that Tinseltown has, like, totally lost its glitter?

KEVIN

Another month, another cash cow to whinge about in Hollywood’s carousel of creative bankruptcy.

Shrek, Pretty Woman, Heathers, Mrs Doubtfire: the list of musicals adapted from hit movies seems never-ending, with more people breaking into a song-and-dance routine than Strasbourg’s Dancing Plague Of 1518 (never say The List is lacking in topical satire).

Presumably studio execs spend most of their days packed inside a satanic boardroom barking, ‘MAKE IT A MUSICAL! MONEY MONEY!’ at an underpaid scriptwriter, before pondering how they can use an AI chatbot to replace 90% of their workforce. As Mean Girls crosses the next Rubicon by adapting its musical adaptation back into a movie, those same execs presumably screamed, ‘AGAIN! ADAPT IT BACK! MONEY!’ before vomiting a portal back to the hell dimension from whence they came.

Mean Girls will probably be a decent laugh but Hollywood’s thuddingly boring cultural recycling operation is nothing more than evidence of corporate monoliths spinning their wheels. In a sea of adaptations, biopics, MCU rehashes and superfluous sequels, is it too much to ask the world’s largest film studios to remove their risk-averse blinkers and embrace the shock of the new?

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 9

HOT 100

The debate has been had. The arguments are over. The battles have been won and lost. And now we’re left with a 100-strong list of those who have made contributions to Scotland’s cultural landscape over the last 12 months which range from significant to groundbreaking. Side note: we thought it would be a nice idea to remove last year’s top (yes, magnificent) seven from consideration to make room for a fresh set of current icons and future stars.

We’re sure Ncuti won’t mind. So, did we get it right? Judge for yourselves as we start the countdown to our hallowed number 1 . . .

Writers: Ailsa Sheldon, Becca Inglis, Brian Donaldson, Claire Sawers, Claire Stuart, Danny Munro, Eddie Harrison, Fiona Shepherd, Gareth K Vile, Greg Thomas, Jay Richardson, Jay Thundercliffe, Jo Laidlaw, Kevin Fullerton, Leah Bauer, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Mark Fisher, Megan Merino, Neil Cooper, Paul McLean, Rachel Ashenden, Rachel Cronin, Suzy Pope

10 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Carnival A4 Poster 23.indd 1

28/09/2023 14:45

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 11

100

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These committed republicans almost certainly regarded it as a badge of honour when ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ was axed at the eleventh hour from the King’s Coronation playlist; anyway, they were too busy touring latest album Dentures Out until Charlie Reid’s voice-loss put a hold on their concert juggernaut. (FS)

This comic appeared on last year’s list for being one half of the What’s The Script? podcast. Still a leading voice on the Scottish ’cast scene (he’s also one third of the equally funny Some Laugh), it’s his well-crafted and deservedly sold-out Fringe show Love That For Me which earns him a solo spot. (MM)

HOT 100

THE PROCLAIMERS

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DANIEL PORTMAN

STUART MCPHERSON

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LAWRIE BREWSTER

To some he may forever be Brienne Of Tarth’s loyal squire Podrick Payne, but in the past year this Glaswegian formerly known as Daniel Porter has stepped away from the shadow of Westeros and into equally dark territories as a pub landlord in Black Mirror and one of three vengeful sons in Kill. (BD)

Amicus went toe-to-toe with the iconic Hammer brand in the 1970s, and fans appreciated Brewster’s plans to re-establish the imprint ‘as a beacon of independent British horror’. Working with writer Sarah Daly, their first Amicus feature, In The Grip Of Terror, is currently crowdfunding, and is the portmanteau shocker you’d expect. (EH)

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The buzz around Fife’s Kinneuchar Inn was rightly rewarded when it scooped The Good Food Guide’s Best Local Restaurant In Scotland title. Chef Ferguson and front-ofhouse supremo Palmer exploit the area’s natural larder to deliver culinary magic at this 17th-century pub and restaurant. (PM)

Argyll-native Hamill co-edited the re-issued Frances Tolmie Collection, a rich storehouse of traditional Gaelic songs, many of which were out of print prior to Acair’s awardwinning re-publish. As musical director for the book’s accompanying concert series this year, Hamill and friends wowed audiences at Celtic Connections and the Royal National Mòd. (MMT)

JAMES FERGUSON & ALETHEA PALMER

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AINSLEY HAMILL

KEITH INGRAM

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After a career in academic research, Bruce has created one of Scotland’s most sustainable distillers. Highland Boundary, based at her rewilded farm near Alyth in Perthshire, produces botanical spirits and this year the doctor created Wild Scottish Bitters, the country’s first aromatic cocktail bitters made using sustainably harvested wild ingredients. (JT)

Assai Records has become a fixture in Scotland under Ingram’s stewardship, quietly increasing its chain of record stores without diluting its commitment to quality music.

Alongside opening a new shop in Glasgow, the brand has programmed intimate sets from major acts and expanded its gorgeous selection of Assai Obi vinyls. (KF)

TERRA KIN

Cambuslang-bred singer-songwriter Hannah Findlay first broke through as Terra Kin when Fred again.. used their sultry vocals on ‘Hannah (The Sun)’. Now signed to Island Records, this mellow jazz-influenced vocalist released their Too Far Gone EP in late 2022 and was deservedly crowned BBC Introducing’s Scottish Act Of The Year in April. (FS)

12 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

DR MARIAN BRUCE

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HOT 100

PICTURE: KAI GILLESPIE

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MICHAEL PELLEGROTTI

In a difficult year for festivals, The Reeling was an encouraging success story. This new Celtic music festival from Skye Live co-director Pellegrotti made its debut in East Renfrewshire’s picturesque Rouken Glen Park with sure-shots such as Skerryvore, Peatbog Faeries and Blazin’ Fiddles on the bill. (FS)

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CONOR MCCARRON

McCarron’s quiet intensity has been put to exemplary use this year, earning him his first Scottish BAFTA nomination for homelessness drama Dog Days, while his affecting performance in male mental-health short Induction caused a buzz on the festival circuit. He’s one of those rare actors whose eyes contain multitudes. (KF)

89

LUCY IRELAND & JIM MANGANELLO

A dance with death is often best avoided, but in Ireland and Manganello’s assured hands (and with their nimble feet), the touring Totentanz was an amusing and occasionally surreal delight. These co-artistic directors and performers of dance-theatre company Shotput succeeded in showing that mortality is to be confronted not feared. (BD)

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LOIS CHIMIMBA

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This year, the Glasgow-born actor who is perhaps best known for her role in Netflix’s The One, appeared in Apple TV’s insomnia romcom Still Up. She also made a brief appearance in the last season of Sex Education, played a music lecturer in Dog Days, and could be heard in the Doctor Who: Redacted podcast drama. (RC)

87

JAMES YORKSTON

One of Fife’s finest revived his collaboration with Sweden’s Second Hand Orchestra, but this time alongside a very special guest vocalist, the luminous Nina Persson. They created the gentle whimsy of The Great White Sea Eagle album, and the Yorkston/Persson odd-couple live roadshow beguiled across the land. (FS)

86

AMY MATTHEWS

The promise of Matthews’ early career was fulfilled this year with her Fringe hit I Feel Like I’m Made Of Spiders, a show that mined personal trauma for laughs without descending into indulgence (lesser comedians take note). We’ll be amazed if Matthews isn’t conquering the telly circuit very soon. (KF)

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 13

HOT 100

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From taking the patriarchy and the Kens by storm in a powder-blue tweed suit as Lawyer Barbie, to leaving us in stitches in the third season of Jerk with her dry wit, Glasgow-born Rooney was on fire this year. (LB)

As the adapter of Anna Karenina at Edinburgh’s Lyceum, Hart brought a fullblooded energy to Tolstoy’s novel. As an actor, she put her fellow cast members through their physical paces in Nat McCleary’s Thrown for National Theatre Of Scotland as well as being killed off in River City after five years as Sgt Lou Caplan. (MF)

SHARON ROONEY

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JOSIE KO

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KYLE FALCONER & LAURA WILDE

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DOUGLAS MACINTYRE

MacIntyre was already a one-man art-pop cottage industry before putting Strathaven on the musical map with FRETS, a series of bespoke acoustic concerts in the bijou confines of the Strathaven Hotel. There he has tirelessly hosted kindred spirits including Lloyd Cole, Callum Easter and Robert Forster. (NC)

PICTURE: TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

Fresh from the Glasgow School Of Art scene, KO’s unmistakable DIY-aesthetic sculptures took centre stage in the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries show and Fruitmarket’s Poor Things exhibition. To further her explorations of Black Scottish identity, she was also awarded the Bothy Project’s Visual Arts Scotland Residency. (RA)

LESLEY HART

There was decent buzz around this couple’s jukebox musical No Love Songs before its release, but the emotional impact that this simple story of post-natal depression had on audiences still felt like a welcome surprise. An insightful and funny depiction of a relationship that will surely run for years in Scottish theatres. (KF)

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BRIAN COX

Beyond the final season of Succession, Dundee’s finest export has taken to his newly minted reputation as wizened luvvie with aplomb, fronting a BBC Maestro series which teaches acting. His reprisal of Bob Servant for a Christmas special shows that, despite his fame, Cox remains a local lad at heart. (KF)

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ANNE LYDEN

On New Year’s Day 2024, Anne Lyden will become the first female director-general of the National Galleries Of Scotland. Having worked in curatorial positions at NGS for a decade, Lyden most recently served as interim co-director of collection and research, where she furthered initiatives to diversify the nation’s collection. (RA)

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PÀDRUIG MORRISON

Hailing from the Isle Of Grimsay, Morrison was commissioned this year to write a classical-Gaelic crossover piece for new Scottish string ensemble Thirteen North, celebrating human connections and responding to themes of generation, culture and tradition. Meanwhile, at Orkney’s St Magnus International Festival, his ‘Fadhail’ for cello made its world premiere. (MMT)

14 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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@glasgowfilmfest

www.glasgowfilmfest.org

Glasgow Film is an operating name of Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT). GFT is a company limited by guarantee, registered in Scotland No. SC097369 with its registered office at 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB. GFT is a registered charity in Scotland No. SC005932 December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 15

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HOT 100

SUSAN RIDDELL

‘Yodelay-yodelay-do-you-want-your-hole?’

We’re not in the habit of giving away the jokes of our favourite acts, but this Riddell-penned punchline is an absolute beauty, a complete joy of wordplay and surprise. Her latest show, Wonder Woman, and Material Girl podcast are crammed with similar gems. (KF)

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PETER ROSS

A nine-times winner at the Scottish Press Awards, this well-established journalist’s new book takes us on a touching historical journey through Britain’s places of worship. Steeple Chasing: Around Britain By Church was hailed as ‘a charming odyssey’ by The Times. (RC)

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JASLEEN KAUR

It’s difficult to avoid local-girl-made-good clichés when talking about artist Kaur’s solo show at Tramway this year, a few minutes from her birthplace in Pollokshields. But the exhibition stood on its own terms, using found objects and mesmeric soundscapes to craft a mythic tapestry of Scottish migrant life. (GT)

73

IZUKA HOYLE

A spot on our chart is long overdue for this Edinburgher, who has previously shone in a touring production of Mallory Towers, an offWest End production of Six, and the excellent bittersweet TV comedy Big Boys. She’s finally here for intense kitchen drama Boiling Point as French chef Camille. (BD)

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SIMON ERLANGER

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The MD of Isle Of Harris Distillers, based on the Outer Hebridean island, has overseen some big moments this year. The company’s popular gin reached the one-million bottle mark, just in time to coincide with the release of The Hearach (Gaelic for a Harris dweller), their first-ever whisky. (JT)

LJ FINDLAY-WALSH

Findlay-Walsh programmes the remarkable Take Me Somewhere, where her curation combines provocative performance and an inclusive sensibility. Respecting Tramway’s history as a venue for the unexpected, Findlay-Walsh showcases a diverse range of thoughtful and challenging work that takes audience engagement and aesthetic experience seriously. (GKV)

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LAURA ALDRIDGE, JAMES RIGLER & NICK EVANS

This trio have spent the last couple of years transforming a disused social-work office in Paisley into a sculpture studio. Their groundbreaking funding model sees them pay rent in-kind to the council through activities with local residents. The Sculpture House is already a much-loved institution. (GT)

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STUART RALSTON

PICTURE: JAMES STACK / BBC

Edinburgh chef Ralston has had a stellar year, opening two new restaurants and publishing a genre-defying cookbook/memoir, Catalogued Ideas And Random Thoughts. Italian-inspired Tipo and fine-dining seafood restaurant Lyla are delicious additions to Ralston’s muchloved Aizle and Noto. (AS)

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QUEEN OF HARPS

After honing her skills as a harpist and rapper for several years, Anise Pearson raised the bar this summer when performing at festivals such as Spit It Out and Kelburn Garden Party. She was also a finalist in both BBC Introducing Scottish Act Of The Year and SAY Award Sound Of Young Scotland. (MM)

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LYNSEY MAY

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16 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

The Edinburgh-based writer and former books editor of The List saw her debut novel plastered on billboards across town. Dark relationship drama Weak Teeth deals with the fallout after Ellis discovers her boyfriend has been cheating.

Drawing comparisons with Sally Rooney, May toured Scottish book festivals including Aye Write and Wigtown. (CSa)

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 17

HOT 100

PICTURE: NATHAN DUNPHY

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In what was surely an exhausting yet exhilarating year for this Glasgow singer, his debut album Permanent Damage won him a place on the SAY Award shortlist and scooped Best Album at the Scottish Music Awards (among other accolades). He also performed at TRNSMT and Glastonbury, and opened for Jungle on their US tour. (MM)

A graduate of RSAMD and associate artist with Bard In The Botanics, Cooper is a dynamic interpreter of Shakespeare: her CATS-nominated performance as Lady Macbeth in Zinnie Harris’ Macbeth (An Undoing) was a triumphant reminder of her ability to modernise familiar characters. In Lear’s Fool, she cemented her reputation for versality. (GKV)

JOESEF

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HIFI SEAN

It was a year of looking back and forward for Sean Dickson as he reformed The Soup Dragons for an affectionately received tour.

But the true highpoint was Happy Ending, an atmospheric and entirely home-recorded album by his DJ/producer alter ego Hifi Sean, made in collaboration with the extraordinary David McAlmont. (FS)

NICOLE COOPER

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CHRIS CARSE WILSON

Carse Wilson burst onto the literary scene this year with his risk-taking debut Fray, a haunting tale of the impact of grief and loss on mental health, written in short bursts on his journey to and from work each day. A second hotly anticipated novel is already in the works. (PM)

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Smith has a had a cracker of a year with her debut novel, Hear No Evil, based on the 1817 trial of a Scottish deaf woman. Hot on the heels of recognition in last year’s Bloody Scotland Awards, this year it was shortlisted for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger. (LR)

Good things come to those who wait, but luckily pianist Laurenson didn’t have to hang on very long. Only a week after she quit her bar job to focus on music, she was named BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Of The Year on the final night of Celtic Connections. (BI)

SARAH SMITH

18 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

AMY LAURENSON

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ANDREW FLEMING-BROWN

Fleming-Brown is pushing the boundaries of what club culture means. In the space of a year, he’s launched SWG3’s BODYHEAT system, which converts heat generated by clubbers dancing into energy, opened a new community garden behind the club’s main warehouse, and announced plans to open a new hotel for music lovers. (BI)

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LORNE MACFADYEN

After a busy couple of years with roles in Pistol, Operation Mincemeat and submarine drama Vigil, MacFadyen charmed audiences as Rose Matafeo’s new love interest in the final series of Starstruck. Meanwhile his band Holy Fool gained airplay on Radio 2 and a Radio Scotland Single Of The Week nod. (PM)

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MAGGIE O’FARRELL

It’s one thing to win the Women’s Prize For Fiction once, but to be shortlisted twice is quite the feat. This year, O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait made its way onto the shortlist, outselling all the other titles. Her acclaimed Hamnet also received a theatrical treatment from the Royal Shakespeare Company. (BI)

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 19

PICTURE: IPRODUCTIONS

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HOT 100

SAM GOUGH

After five years as executive director at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre, Gough returned to his previous haunt of Edinburgh’s Summerhall, this time as CEO. In October, he launched the independent Summerhall Arts, a charity to give ‘artists in Scotland more opportunities to be able to compete on the world stage’. (MF)

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LEWIS CAPALDI

Following his sensational debut, Capaldi locked in a second number one album, a revealing Netflix documentary, and a world tour that sold out in seconds. After fans showed their devotion by helping him finish his Glastonbury set, the singer is taking a well-deserved rest to adjust to life with Tourette’s Syndrome. (BI)

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JAMIE BYNG

CEO Byng and the team at Edinburghbased publisher Canongate celebrated the company’s 50th anniversary with Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s A Spell Of Good Things and Tan Twan Eng’s The House Of Doors both being longlisted for the Booker Prize, while Miranda July announced the publication of a new novel with them in 2024. (CSa)

55

HOPE DICKSON LEACH

Writer-director Dickson Leach was responsible for the atmospheric Robert Louis Stevenson film adaptation The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde. Based on her own stage production, it featured at Edinburgh International Film Festival and garnered better reviews than the higher-profile Eddie Izzard/ Hammer collaboration on the same story. (EH)

54

KATIE GOH & KATIE HAWTHORNE

EHFM’s Culture Show is a monthly overview of Edinburgh’s arts and culture headlines, from highbrow to trivial and everything in between. This year, hosts Goh and Hawthorne have interviewed Anoushka Shankar as part of an Edinburgh Festival special, the CEO of Stellar Quines, and many more of the city’s top cultural talent. (MM)

53

JUDE COWARD NICOLL

Young Edinburgh actor Coward Nicoll voiced a leading role in The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse that won Best Animated Short Film at this year’s Oscars. The Broughton High pupil (and product of the capital’s Strange Town young actors stable) is currently appearing in the West End’s The Enfield Haunting, alongside Catherine Tate and David Threlfall. (RC)

52

CHEF THE RAPPER

20 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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PICTURE: PAUL JOHNSTON

Aberdeen-based chef-turned-rapper Ola Akisanya continued to support and advocate for the grassroots music scene via his Cooked With Chef artist consultancy, won plaudits for his own music as a BBC Introducing Scottish Act Of The Year nominee, and collaborated with fellow Aberdonian AiiTee on the In My Element: Water EP. (FS)

48

GAIL PORTER

47

ANDREW MARSHALL

Marshall co-founded the hugely popular Edinburgh Street Food, which champions local, independent businesses and breweries in a vast, vibrant space in the city’s Omni Centre. ESF partners with mental-health charities; in a former role, Marshall and the team at Carlowrie Castle set up Edinburgh homeless charity, The Breakfast Bothy. (SP)

48 51

SIMON MURPHY

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Murphy’s Govanhill exhibition of photographs brought into focus the people in one of Glasgow’s liveliest neighbourhoods. The photographer captured some of the community’s unique individuals with a sense of empathy and trust. A book from the exhibition encapsulates the full power of those pictured. (NC)

50

BECKY SIKASA

Scottish soul vocalist Sikasa made waves home and away, launching her debut EP Twelve Wooden Boxes in Glasgow and Cologne, selling out a London debut, and showcasing her wares at The Great Escape and Wide Days conventions. She sealed a breakthrough year with a slot on the SAY Award shortlist. (FS)

49

RACHEL WALKER & AARON JONES

Walker consolidated her role as one of Gaeldom’s best-loved singer-songwriters this year, working with singer and multiinstrumentalist Jones to bring their spellbinding album Despite The Wind And Rain to audiences. With songs penned in English and Gaelic, the album weaved the unsung stories of Scottish women into a rich musical tapestry. (MMT)

46

DANIELLE JAM

This Glasgow-based Aberdonian will no doubt be a familiar face to theatre lovers across the land. Most recently praised for her portrayal of Mina in National Theatre Of Scotland’s Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning, Jam also conjured up a nomination for Best Magical Being in the UK Pantomime Awards 2023 after her hometown performance in Peter Pan at His Majesty’s Theatre. (RC)

45

FRANKIE ELYSE

Elyse’s face has deservedly been everywhere this year, whether it’s hyping up TRNSMT crowds with a bouncy DJ set, meshing techno and violin with Kintra at Riverside, or heading up Glasgow’s women-led Polka Dot Disco Club. We’re even seeing her on BBC Scotland as The Edit’s newly minted entertainment reporter. (BI)

44

HANNA TUULIKKI

The British-Finnish multi-disciplinary artist devised and performed a new musical composition (titled ‘the bird that never flew’) at Glasgow Cathedral. Commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland with Arts&Heritage, Tuulikki explored the venue’s ornithological connections and sought to ‘raise the alarm for critically endangered birds’. (RA)

43

AUDREY GILLAN

In her deeply affecting podcast Bible John: Creation Of A Serial Killer, Gillan shifted the focus away from that bogeyman who terrorised Glasgow in the 1960s, and firmly onto his female victims and their families, finally giving them a voice. As a result, police are now re-examining the unsolved case. (PM)

42

BEE ASHA

One of the most interesting creatives working in Scotland, Asha’s Spit It Out Festival (cofounded with Léa Luiz de Oliveira) cemented its reputation as a thoughtful and welcoming space to explore issues of consent and inclusion. Unabashedly horny single ‘Shy Guy’ also showed a playful side to her music. (KF)

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HOT 100

This TV presenter turned freelance good samaritan spent her year working for charities tackling loneliness, homelessness, mental health and animal welfare (plus the actual Samaritans too). 2023 involved a fundraising abseil and Porter’s first ever stand-up show, Hung, Drawn And Portered, which gained strog reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and goes on a UK tour in 2024. (CSa)

HOT 100

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41

HELEN NISBET

Shetland-born curator Nisbet has been making waves in the Scottish art world since becoming director of Art Night in 2018.

This summer’s iteration of the much-loved performance-art festival was her last, and her tenure was seen out in style in Dundee, with weird and wonderful happenings across Scotland’s sunniest city. (GT)

40

K PATRICK

Next year brings Patrick’s debut poetry collection, Three Births, but this year was all about Mrs S, their debut novel. Written in lockdown as a ‘horny lesbian’ story, the gloriously taut, thirsty romance explored non-binary identity, queer bodies and butch desire, and was an Observer best debut novel of 2023. (CSa) PICTURE: PETE DIBDIN

39

MAY SUMBWANYAMBE

He’s been one to watch for some time but playwright Sumbwanyambe came into his own with Enough Of Him at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, a knotty drama about the dynamics of slavery and emancipation based on the true story of Joseph Knight. It duly triumphed at the CATS and UK Theatre Awards. (MF)

38

RAB FLORENCE

Florence’s latest live show Biscuity Boyle: Live Sex Comedy may not have visited the Edinburgh Fringe, but it was still the most subversive, filthy and ingenious charactercomedy affair we saw all year. Who would have thought that a decade-old character from Burnistoun could deliver such an effective (and weirdly hilarious) teardown of the modern world? (KF)

37

SUSIE MCCABE

After a Scottish tour, McCabe smashed the Fringe this year with her show, Femme Fatality, receiving nothing but four and fivestar reviews. Delving into personal material on gender and sexuality, the Glaswegian stand-up nevertheless retained a light touch, consolidating her status as one of the nation's most admired headliners. (JR)

36

MARGE HENDRICK

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NEIL FORSYTH PICTURE: CESARE DI GIGLIO FOR CROMWELL PLACE

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22 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Scottish Ballet principal Hendrick dazzled us not once but twice this year. First with her heartbreaking portrayal of Blanche DuBois in the company’s revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, then later in Twice-Born, Dickson Mbi’s five-star triumph set in an unnamed land of mystical rituals and social upheaval. (LR)

The final part of Forsyth’s TV trilogy Guilt put a full stop on his tale of two brothers in epic style. He also penned The Gold, a brilliant six-part drama inspired by the 1983 Brink’sMat robbery, marrying that decade’s free marketeering to working-class aspiration in a trail of dirty money. (NC)

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 23

HOT 100

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34

IAN STIRLING & PADDY FLETCHER

Bringing single malt whisky back to Leith in a big way, Stirling and Fletcher defied expectation and physics with the construction of Port Of Leith Distillery. Claiming a status as the UK’s first vertical whisky distillery, it makes the most of its small footprint in an urban dockside locale. (SP)

33

MARK COUSINS

Fresh from winning the 2023 Heart Of Sarajevo Award for his services to cinema, Cousins launched his latest appreciation of Hollywood. His documentary My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock offered up a spry valentine to the director, after Cousins spent his lockdown period watching all of Hitch’s films in chronological order. (EH)

32

JOSEPH MALIK

Malik’s heroic musical renaissance has been a thing of wonder. After several years absence, the Edinburgh singer/composer/producer returned to become a favourite on The Craig Charles Funk And Soul Show. With Proxima Ebony, the latest of five albums in five years, Malik has truly found his time. (NC)

31

SIMONE SEALES

Glasgow-based cellist Seales has been making waves on the Scottish classical music scene. As well as performing internationally, this year they also released their debut album I Believe In Living, a lyrical and punchy response to Assata Shakur’s poem ‘Affirmation’ which is full of surprise and revelation. (LR)

30

TINASHE WARIKANDWA

Starring with writer Apphia Campbell in Through The Mud, Warikandwa captured the struggles of a young woman engaging with a bitter history, present anxieties and intergenerational trauma. Alongside performances in the imaginative musical A Mother’s Song and The Steamie, Warikandwa is an actor who shines as youthful, determined and passionate characters. (GKV)

29

FRED DEAKIN

Deakin delivered a very personal rewind on his past in Club Life, a smash hit autobiographical excavation of the uniquely styled Edinburgh club nights which this designer, DJ and one half of Lemon Jelly ran in the late 80s and early 90s. More big nights out may follow. (NC)

24 THE LIST December 2022–January 2023

28

TOMÁS GORMLEY & SAM YORKE

HOT 100

Apart from bringing a new Michelin star to Edinburgh for Heron, Gormley and Yorke gave something back to their industry. Skua was pitched as a place for hospitality workers to kick back after long shifts, though its welcoming attitude means the restaurant is popular with all of Edinburgh’s night owls. (SP)

27

HAZEL JOHNSON

Johnson spent the first outing of her tenure as incoming director of Edinburgh’s Hidden Door festival transforming the former Scottish Widows building into an expansive hive of artistic activity. Leading a tireless team of volunteers, Johnson aims to open up even more of the city’s hitherto unexplored spaces. (NC)

26

TONY CURRAN

Curran has long been a top-rate actor but in the two-part drama Mayflies, he displayed and took audiences through a panoply of emotions. Based on Andrew O’Hagan’s novel, Curran brilliantly played Tully, a former teenage rebel who, as a ‘sensible’ adult, has a major decision to make about his own bleak future. He also cropped up in Disney+’s MCU affair, Secret Invasion. (BD)

25

IMOGEN EVANS

This 24-year-old Edinburgh-raised designer has already had her eccentric creations donned by A-list celebs from Madonna to Doja Cat and Anderson Paak. New launches and collaborations with international brands such as Depop have been keeping the Imi Studios brand booked and busy. (MM)

24

GARY MCNAIR

A hugely productive year for McNair included researching, writing and performing in a tribute to the Big Yin with Dear Billy, and putting a distinctly Scottish spin on a Dickens classic with Nae Expectations.

Upcoming in the New Year, he revisits his own fresh take on Jekyll And Hyde. (BD)

23

HANNAH LAVERY

22

LIAM SHORTALL

As the bandleader of Glasgow jazz collective corto.alto, this multi-hyphenate took to the stage at Glastonbury and a sold-out headline show at Glasgow’s QMU. But it was the launch of his debut album Bad With Names that made the year unforgettable for Shortall. (MM)

PICTURE: JAMIE SIMPSON / BBC

Edinburgh Makar Lavery offers a poignant and powerful voice of dissent through theatre and poetry. Her latest script Protest (a collaboration with National Theatre Of Scotland, Imaginate and Fuel) articulates her distinctive blend of personal and political, a reminder of theatre’s capacity to bring nuance to cultural conflicts. (GKV)

26 December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 25

HOT 100

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JOHNNY MCKNIGHT

The most extravagant dame in the pantosphere finishes the year as the Macrobert’s Widow McTwank. That’s after directing Nat McCleary’s Thrown for NTS and taking writing credits on two musicals, No Love Songs and Meet Me At The Knob, plus a handful of River City episodes. (MF)

20

SADIQ ALI & DAVID BANKS

Circus artist Ali and former MMA fighter Banks won our admiration for Stuntman, their no-punches-pulled exploration of masculinity and one of our highlights at this year’s Fringe.

The breathtakingly candid piece turned its lens on violence in both action movies and real life. (LR)

19

EILIDH LOAN

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DUNCAN DORNAN

After a six-year multi-million-pound refurb, the spectacular Burrell Collection finally reopened its doors in 2022 and was justly rewarded this year when Glasgow’s museums head Dornan picked up the largest prize of its kind in the world: the £120,000 award for Art Fund Museum Of The Year. (PM)

17

JANEY GODLEY

Despite terminal cancer, Godley produced some career-best comedy this year. Billed as her final stand-up tour, Not Dead Yet drew deep from her well of memorable anecdotes, while Radio 4 series, Janey Godley: The C Bomb, was dark but life-affirming. Next year, the tour resumes and she stars in featurelength documentary, Janey. (JR)

16

RACHEL MACLEAN

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Maclean’s sugar-coated nightmare world has been touring Scotland, with a series of fake shops (walk-in artworks where nothing is for sale) popping up across regional town centres over the last 18 months. Known for her acid-trip spins on pop imagery, the artist’s new venture comments on consumerism and bullshit self-help culture. (GT)

PICTURE: BRIAN HARTLEY

The Renfrewshire actor was a witch in the RSC’s Macbeth, and as understudy enjoyed several turns as Lady Macbeth. As writer/ director, she oversaw the National Theatre Of Scotland revival of Moorcroft and filmed her debut short, Soul. On screen, she appears in acclaimed movie How To Have Sex and the upcoming series of Doctor Who. (MF)

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 27

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Screenwriter Laverty’s run of successful collaborations with Ken Loach came to an end as the veteran director retired with The Old Oak. This drama about Syrian refugees affecting life in a mining-community pub demonstrates Laverty’s gift for creating relatable drama from today’s social issues, in his own upbeat, humanistic way. (EH)

Joining Caroline Polachek on stage in London to play her pipe solo on ‘Blood And Butter’ was just one small part of an epic year for Chaimbeul. She also had a sold-out show at The Glad Cafe and a SAY Award shortlist spot for her album Carry Them With Us. (MM)

HOT 100

PAUL LAVERTY

14

SOLÈNE WEINACHTER

Weinachter is rapidly carving out her own niche in the world of dance theatre, with a surreal, satirical style. Alternating between wry and earnest, her exploration of death rituals, After All (presented at this year’s Fringe), was a laugh-out-loud yet strangely moving experience. (LR)

BRÌGHDE CHAIMBEUL

12

12

SIOBHAN MACKENZIE

Mackenzie’s fashion designs feel like they have been ubiquitous across festival season this year: Pale Waves, Self Esteem and Greg James are all on her client list, so she must be doing something right. Mackenzie takes traditional kilt-making and subverts it with flashes of leopard print, sequins and intricate beading. (CSt)

11

LIAM WITHNAIL & CHRISTOPHER MACARTHURBOYD

These two comedy scamps had a rare old time with their playful podcast Enjoy An Album, while also romping home laden down by plaudits for their solo Fringe affairs: Withnail for Chronic Boom and MacarthurBoyd with Scary Times. (BD)

THE MAGNIFICENT 7 As this year’s centurions are being celebrated for making a significant cultural impact on Scotland’s landscape, Rachel Cronin tracks last year’s triumphant top septet to see what they’ve been up to over the last 12 months Since the Barbados-born artist slid into number 7 last year, Alberta Whittle has continued to combat colonialism and express the Black experience through her art. The Glasgow-based creator’s major solo exhibition create dangerously is showing at National Galleries Of Scotland: Modern until 7 January. It seems Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun is still making ripples after its initial splash last year. Winning Debut British Writer at this year’s BAFTA Film Awards and scooping up several other gongs, it’s clear Wells is very much still riding that initial wave of success.

Ayrshire’s finest rapper Bemz nabbed another SAY Award nomination for 2023. As well as having the cutest album cover out of the nominees, his third EP Nova’s Dad secured a solid spot on the SAY shortlist.

He was also crowned the Sound Of Scotland at the Scottish Music Awards. Fergus McCreadie was the first jazz musician to win Scottish Album Of The Year in 2022 and was the only Scot nominated for last year’s Mercury Prize. But of course, he hasn’t packed away the piano yet. Playing with the incredible corto. alto to promote their debut album Bad With Names, working on his new album due next year, and playing solo improv gigs in Glasgow has no doubt kept McCreadie on his toes.

Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of) won her a 2022 Olivier Award, and after her absurd reading of Austen, Isobel McArthur went to town on RLS’ Kidnapped. Meanwhile, at the Edinburgh Fringe she took Wes Anderson’s aesthetic and kicked up the chaos several notches for The Grand Old Opera House Hotel.

Nicola Benedetti has had a hell of a year since snatching second place in 2022’s Hot 100. The awardwinning violinist tackled her role as the first woman director of Edinburgh International Festival while continuing to perform. But no one’s been busier than last year’s hottest of the hundred, Ncuti Gatwa.

Fife’s fizziest actor released his Kenergy in Barbie and delivered more iconically camp lines as Eric in Sex Education’s final season. Gearing up for his cosmic entrance into the Doctor Who universe as the first Black Doctor, there is no doubt that Gatwa will be fully booked through next year and beyond.

28 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

10 KHALEDA NOON & SARA ELBASHIR

10 9 KIERAN HODGSON Kieran Hodgson bookended a successful 12 months with the scurrilous Prince Andrew: The Musical on Channel 4, an allsinging, all-dancing portrayal of the Duke Of York sweating (or not) his association with Jeffrey Epstein, and the seventh series of Two Doors Down, BBC One’s hit Glasgow comedy in which he plays highly strung Gordon. In between, his Fringe show Big In Scotland, the only slightly embellished account of how this proud Yorkshireman conquered Caledonia (or at least came to call it home), garnered him his fourth Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination.

Endorsed by Elaine C Smith, Gordon Brown and, er, Harry Lauder within the show, among those queuing to see it were Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Andrew Marr and Ian Rankin, a roll call of celebrity that Hodgson modestly attributes to the cheerleading zeal of his Two Doors Down mother-in-law-to-be, Arabella Weir.

‘A curse in my life is that I’m always desperate to be friends with the teachers,’ admits Hodgson of his passionately in-depth, painstakingly researched live hours. ‘This was very much me presenting my essay on Scotland to the headteacher of a Scottish cultural school and saying “is it good?” All these worthies giving it the thumbs-up gratified the part of me that wants to show I’ve done my homework correctly.’

Resuming touring in January, Hodgson hopes there’s enough in Big In Scotland’s ‘fish out of water’ dynamic to turn into a sitcom.

Unfortunately, he sighs mock-airily, ‘my ambitions tend in too many directions’. Indeed, this avid rail enthusiast is ‘desperate’ to make a show about HS2. ‘I’ve kept my love of trains in reserve as a matter for discussion on stage,’ he explains. ‘But there’s sufficient drama around that decision to justify doing something about it.’

Paraphrasing Orson Welles, he was handed the ‘world's biggest train set’ with the Prince Andrew show: now he’s writing Liz Truss: The Musical. ‘It’s a story with a perfect beginning, middle and end in our national consciousness that needs revisiting as often as possible,’ he smiles. ‘It’s both hilarious and quite emblematic of the mess that the Establishment can create, but also the swiftness with which it can clear that mess away.’ (Jay Richardson)

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December 2022–January 2023–January 2023 2024 THE LIST 29

HOT 100

If you saw Ezra Collective’s bandleader Femi Koleoso accept this year’s Mercury Prize and dedicated it to the South London youth club that fused the group together, you may begin to understand the importance of an organisation like Intercultural Youth Scotland.

Represented here by CEO Khaleda Noon and Creative Lead Sara Elbashir, IYS advise the Scottish Government on anti-racism education, provide safe spaces for BPOC youth to socialise and access mental-health support, and give young people a much-needed place to explore their creativity. By facilitating practice spaces, talent showcases, workshops and opportunities at local festivals, youngsters are being exposed to the performing arts in an environment where the stakes are as high as they want them to be.

We can see the impact of IYS rippling through the Scottish music scene with alumni acts such as Bemz, Chef The Rapper, Queen Of Harps and Supermann rising up the ranks. This past year, IYS have also collaborated with Gilded Balloon on their regular SixFive music event, alongside leading our first LISTLIVE gig and hosting their own slot on EHFM. At a time when public services like this are being ruthlessly axed, IYS exemplify the importance of nurturing talent from the grassroots. (Megan Merino)

PICTURE: HANS-PETER VAN VELTHOVEN

HOT 100

8 PAOLO NUTINI Having returned from his eight-year musical hiatus in sensational style last summer with the triumphant Last Night In The Bittersweet, Paolo Nutini has treated 2023 like one elongated victory lap. After making it to the SAY Award shortlist, the Paisley native has made good use of his solid collection of new tracks, leaving no stone unturned as he traipsed the Bittersweet experience across the US, Canada, Europe and Britain.

While he may not have collected the grand prize at the SAY Awards, Nutini did not go without compensation for his continued contribution to this nation’s music scene. Seventeen years on from its release, Nutini’s debut album, These Streets, earned the ‘Candy’ singer the Modern Scottish Classic Award, placing him in the rather esteemed company of previous recipients Frightened Rabbit and Cocteau Twins.

And Nutini’s showcase moment came in August when he headlined a sold-out Royal Highland Centre, where, in tribute to late rock hero Sixto Rodriguez, he granted the Edinburgh crowd their ‘Last Request’. Thus, Nutini finally resurrected the iconic noughties hit that had sadly been omitted from previous setlists since his return. (Danny Munro)

8 7 SEKAI MACHACHE

30 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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This autumn, Zimbabwean-Scottish artist and curator Sekai Machache took over Mount Stuart on the Isle Of Bute. It had been over two years since Machache meticulously pitched every detail of her desired exhibition at the historic home, which curates a lively and innovative visual arts programme. Emerging from an intensely productive period of creativity during lockdown, the artist devised Svikiro. An utterly immersive expanded cinema experience, Svikiro featured seven films specifically designed for seven imposing rooms in Mount Stuart. In some shape or form, Svikiro will live on at the Venice Biennale in 2024, where Machache will be representing Zimbabwe.

With fervour, Machache explains that the word ‘svikiro’ derives from the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It translates as, she explains, ‘spirits, but also relates to spiritual conduits in which they help people from their community with healing modalities, roots, herbs and dream interpretations.’ The theme of healing modalities turns up again in Machache’s The Divine Sky, a long-term project of hers.

A thorough excavation of the colour indigo and ‘its connection to the transatlantic slave trade’, The Divine Sky has been supported by a 2021– 23 residency at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. For Machache, working with indigo offers a ‘healing modality’ and this cathartic release of colour sings across each of the project’s 12 stages; these multidisciplinary components (comprised of poesis, storytelling and photography) reflect the stages of the indigo dyeing process.

Although Machache frequently centres her own image in The Divine Sky, she is quick to clarify that ‘it is not about [her] or [her] identity as much as it might seem’. Instead, she offers a psychoanalytic interrogation of the notion of the self by playing different characters.

Citing her Blackness and queerness, she works through the self’s construction as defined by dominant forces of white supremacy.

Breathtaking photographic stills which capture a figure majestically navigating the endless blanket bog of the Flow Country in Caithness were recently acquired by The Fleming Collection. In particular, ‘Light Divine Sky 2’ currently features in the Scottish Women Artists exhibition at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, and at Crafted Selves by Fife Contemporary (currently showing in St Andrews, then Kirkcaldy in 2024).

The mesmerising imagery of Machache is quickly becoming embedded in Scotland’s visual consciousness. (Rachel Ashenden)

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 31

HOT 100

This is the second time Jenny Niven has made it into the Hot 100, and she’s feeling rather sheepish. When we speak on the phone, she’s in the middle of a programming meeting with her Edinburgh International Book Festival colleagues. They have been gently teasing her about this accolade, a sign of the collegial office where she recently took the lead. ‘A book festival specifically suits me because they are so collaborative,’ she says. ‘They’re this brilliant showcase for Scottish writers and creatives generally. I’m delighted to be at the centre of that.’

Since Niven was named as the festival’s director in June, she’s been busy planning its next chapter. ‘The voices that are publishing their stories are more diverse than they’ve ever been: is our festival truly reflecting that?’ she says of the team’s new vision. ‘Also, readership: more people read than go to sporting events, believe it or not. How do we make sure all those people feel they can be part of the festival?’

Steering the Book Festival is a big job, so Niven is stepping down from producing Push The Boat Out, the literature festival she cofounded with Kevin Williamson. She will, however, stick around on its board, which accompanies its newly minted charity status.

‘From setting it up in 2021, which was the craziest time to set up anything, it’s amazing to see it now have its own life,’ she says.

She’s also wrapped up Dandelion, a nationwide project that demystified sustainability and food security through creative collaborations. Does she feel that Dandelion met its goal? ‘It definitely succeeded in its aim to bring communities together around music, food and ideas, and the rich work that went on at a community level,’ she says, specifically naming the Unexpected Gardens element as one highlight, which fed communities and food banks in places such as Alness and Stranraer.

Looking at the projects Niven has worked on, there’s an admirable energy in her approach. What is it that drives her?

‘There’s something really satisfying about taking a concept from an initial idea to a packed audience clapping at something that’s really moved them,’ she says. ‘Reading is a solitary activity. Bringing audiences together is a collective act. I get so much motivation from that.’ (Becca Inglis)

5 ADURA ONASHILE There’s a telling scene in Adura Onashile’s debut feature Girl, in which mother Grace (Déborah Lukumuena) shares a bathtub with her daughter Ama (Le’Shantey Bonsu). Her child wants to graduate from soaping her armpits to using a fragrant deodorant, but her mother is keen for her to remain a child, an understandably protective attitude since Grace had precious little girlhood herself, giving birth to Ama at just 14.

While the scene is understated, it’s a gentle moment typical of the tender regard that Onashile has for her characters, and typifies a new voice in Scottish film. Previously a regular collaborator with National Theatre Of Scotland, London-born Onashile moved north to live and work in Glasgow. Shooting in the city back in 2021, this tale of maternal love and immigration reflects insight gained by the writer-director from her own Nigerian roots.

2023 saw the first public screenings of Girl, which premiered at Sundance and then opened the Glasgow Film Festival before going on general release in November. Onashile’s directorial debut offers a non-traditional view of Glasgow, capturing the city in a stylish, luminous fashion that’s a direct counterpoint to the simple, honest family narrative at Girl’s centre. (Eddie Harrison)

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PICTURE: IAN GEORGESON

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HOT 100

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PICTURE: TRUDY STADE

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3 MARJOLEIN ROBERTSON Having begun performing comedy in Amsterdam nearly a decade ago and subsequently emerging on the Scottish scene, Marjolein Robertson has blended nakedly personal stand-up with the folk storytelling rhythms and imagery of her Shetland roots, the two traditions blurred at the edges by her more surreal inclinations.

Refining her approach year on year, with ever-more sophisticated, theatrical structuring, it’s a shame that it took trauma in her personal life for her to all but perfect the process. However, this August’s Edinburgh Fringe show, Marj, was a tour-de-force performance of varied and difficult subject matter, that saw her not only commanding The Stand’s main room but transforming it into a place of intimacy, magic and mischief, wrapping the audience around her finger. An award nomination and strong reviews followed.

Despite being a BBC New Comedy Award and Funny Woman finalist last year, Robertson is currently below the radar of most of the UK comedy press. Don’t expect that to last. It’s not really an issue anyway, as she’s already built a sizeable following online that’s bypassing the mainstream media, delivering her offbeat, otherworldly humour to a dedicated fanbase. (Jay Richardson)

4 MARTIN MACINNES 2024 will mark the 30th anniversary of James Kelman being the first Scot to scoop a Booker. It took another 26 years for literature’s most vaunted prize to reach Caledonia with Douglas Stuart picking up the award for his debut Shuggie Bain. This year, Martin MacInnes took a firm stride in his career (sales and publicity-wise) by being longlisted with his third publication, In Ascension. But he perhaps shares less in common with those gritty, social-realist authors and more with a fellow Invernesian, Ali Smith, who has made the shortlist on four occasions with a highly ambitious and innovative set of books.

Epic and intimate are words that have also been used to capture the breadth and depth of MacInnes’ science-fiction tale (he’s fine with that genre definition), in which a Rotterdam marine biologist escapes the memories of her difficult childhood and plunges into the Atlantic depths where a previously unexplored vent is causing some fascination among scientists. Later, she becomes involved in exploration of a different kind, this time at the far end of the solar system where life beyond Earth takes on new shades, forms and meaning.

Admitting to being fairly astonished but extremely grateful for the Booker judges’ longlisting nod, MacInnes has been reluctant to say too much about further projects. But there’s little doubt that this singular talent will be one to watch. (Brian Donaldson)

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 33

HOT 100

2 FERN BRADY After years building her profile on the stand-up scene allied to a careerboosting turn on Taskmaster, 2023 saw Fern Brady add podcast host and bestselling author to her burgeoning CV. This change in direction has her star shining even brighter, says Kevin Fullerton

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34 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

PICTURE: RAPHAEL NEAL

hy are Scottish comedians so good at writing memoirs? Is it the constant dreich weather?

The need to rebuff crap jokes about deep-fried Mars Bars, and fruit and veg deficiencies?

The years of repression that, like a 3am heart-to-heart in a nightclub, spill onto the page in a torrent of openness and relief? Whatever the answer, Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character sits alongside Limmy’s Surprisingly Down To Earth, And Very Funny in the proud niche of Scottish comedians writing brutal and frank works on the importance of understanding the minds of others.

The book, which charts Brady’s life growing up in Bathgate and Edinburgh while living with undiagnosed autism, is filled with nuggets of information on how she negotiates a world shaped for allistic behavioural traits. Dismiss it as ‘another comedy memoir’ at your peril: creating rich insight into smalltown Scottish living, Catholicism, feminism, and the clear class divide which still festers in universities, it’s a sharply written piece of work which pulls readers through incredible trauma with a morbid sense of humour and genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Perhaps more importantly, it’s smashed open the conversation about autism in the popular consciousness.

Every chapter is solid gold, but a real highlight involves Brady’s time working at the various strip clubs which littered Edinburgh in the late 2000s. They’re stories which will be familiar to fans of this acclaimed comic’s stand-up, but their expansion in the memoir showcases the forthrightness and tonal precision which characterises her writing. Across fewer than 30 pages, she crams in a feminist diagnosis of the men who visit the clubs, funny but empathetic portraits of her co-workers, an incisive examination of sexuality for autistic women, and a unique survey of strip clubs that, as she points out, are worlds away from the male fantasies portrayed on film and television. This should feel overstuffed, but Brady’s intricate combination of jokes, autobiography and thoughtful analysis make it an exhilarating balancing act.

On an entirely different note is Brady’s excellent new food podcast What A Combo!, in which she discusses eccentric (and usually disgusting) food combinations with an array of celebrity guests. If you’ve ever wanted to understand why Tim Key stuffs Hula Hoops with cheese, or hear Brady nonchalantly discuss visiting a hypnotist to cure her love of bread, or learn why CMAT despises liquorice, it’s the podcast for you. Between What A Combo! and Strong Female Character, it feels like Brady is being given the space to shine. And with a comic voice as unique as hers, we hope she occupies that zone for a long time to come.

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HOT 100

Young Fathers 36 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

PICTURE: STEWART FULLERTON

HOT 100

1

And so we arrive at our number one, and who else could it have been but the mighty Young Fathers. The band’s Kayus Bankole reflects with Megan Merino on a year that brought a third SAY Award win, glowing reviews for latest album Heavy Heavy, a Mercury nomination, and barnstorming live appearances

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oung Fathers have already enjoyed many peaks throughout their 15-year career; from winning a Mercury Prize for their debut album Dead (they reached number four on our Hot 100 that year) to being the only band to win the SAY Award twice when they were victorious with Cocoa Sugar in 2018.

But despite all of those accolades, 2023 could easily be considered the Edinburgh trio’s most seismic year yet. The release of their fourth studio album Heavy Heavy in February landed them multiple covers (ours included), and a flurry of four and five-star reviews from titles spanning the NME, Financial Times, The Scotsman and, unsurprisingly, The List. For the first time in their career, they entered the top ten UK album charts and reached number two in Scotland while bowling critics over with their rousing live shows.

All in all, it was a comeback of epic proportions. But what does one third of the band, Kayus Bankole, make of it now he’s had some time to reflect?

‘It feels like an eternity ago, to be honest,’ he says with a long exhale, a few days after completing a UK tour which culminated in two sold-out shows at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. ‘I think it’s because of the time it took to make the record.

This is the longest that we’ve spent recording, actually trying to finesse everything in terms of the final mixes, the order and post-production stuff as well.’

Made entirely by the band’s three members, this album marks the first release without Timothy London on co-production duties. ‘There wasn't another body to kind of give us perspective. So we had to trust our instincts and trust each other again.’ Produced throughout lockdowns in Leith’s Out Of The Blue studios, Heavy Heavy is, in part, a product of and reaction to

human isolation. Its rallying cries and anthemic hooks carry both frustration toward a failing government and communal catharsis. ‘In a world where there’s a huge emphasis on individualism, we wanted to counteract that with a sense of togetherness,’ he insists. ‘That was the catalyst for creating the live show. That extended to the amount of bodies we have on stage with us: two backing singers, having Callum Easter join us, and our drummer Steven being part of the mix. The artwork, which came after the record was done, was trying to represent the fire that’s burning, the eternal dread but mixed with joy at the same time.’

The result earned Young Fathers another Mercury Prize nomination and a record-breaking third Scottish Album Of The Year Award win, not to mention invitations to play at Glastonbury and go on tour across the US with Depeche Mode. However, as Bankole explains, rave reviews and accolades don’t carry too much weight in the eyes of the band. ‘Just putting the record out would have been a success in itself to us; that we finished it after such a long hiatus.

The guys were saying this album was another arm that we’ve grown, but to me it’s more than an arm, more than a limb. It’s like wings, and it displays the wonderful weirdness that we possess.’

That ‘wonderful weirdness’ is what contributes to Young Fathers’ singular sound; the special quality that makes their music immune to neat genre tags or comparisons. ‘In our previous records, we’ve had to label it and say “file under rock and pop”. With this record we’ve just given in, to going, “if we can’t define it and you can’t define it, let’s not define it”. Let audiences define it a little bit more and see how that goes.’

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 37

38 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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Floods, fire and a global pandemic: it’s not been an easy few years for chef, broadcaster and food writer Nick Nairn.

But he and wife Julia have rallied, using some of the time after a blaze at their Bridge Of Allan restaurant to focus on refurbishing their other site, where Nick’s At Port Of Menteith has been joined by a refreshed Nick Nairn Cook School.

Many of the classes will be led by Nairn, with dishes and techniques spanning continents, and ingredients sourced from the kitchen garden in its grounds.

(Suzy Pope) n nairns.co.uk

eat & drink

NICK NAIRN COOK SCHOOL

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 39

40 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 41

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42 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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EAT

On trends What’s next for Scotland’s eating and drinking scene? We get the lowdown from some key players about what to expect in 2024

ccording to global trendspotters The Food People, 2023 was all about magenta tones, finding joy in dining out and retro comebacks. From our (admittedly Edinburgh and Glasgow-centric POV) charcuterie boards and wine bars reigned supreme, potentially due to the cost of switching on a commercial oven. So, what’s in store for ’24? Part of Scotland Food & Drink, The Knowledge Bank collates data on dining trends across the country, and their buzzwords for the coming year include ‘conscious cuisine’, ‘value for money’ and ‘experiential dining’.

Here’s what some other food and drink folks have to say:

Edinburgh Street Food (top pics) and Fhior (bottom pics)

Andrew Marshall, co-founder of Edinburgh Street Food Conscious cuisine is on people’s minds. More and more, people want to eat somewhere that aligns with their own values: plant-based, ethically sourced, community minded or zero waste. During the cost-of-living crisis, there is much more pressure on a single dining experience than there ever used to be, and that’s only going to continue as interest rates and energy bills remain sky high. People are working harder for their extra cash, so they don’t want to spend it on something that doesn’t line up with their core beliefs. It’s why we remain fiercely independent and work with local mental-health charities.

Scott Smith, chef-patron at Fhior, Edinburgh There’s been a decline in footfall, but those that do come in are opting for the full ten courses rather than seven. It seems like people are more conscious of what they spend their money on: saving for a full-on dining experience is more important than just popping out for dinner because there’s nothing in the fridge. It’s why we’re introducing a series of ‘mixtape’ sessions, showcasing menu highlights in a private dining space for small groups.

Suzy Pope, writer at The List Smith and Marshall are at two ends of the dining spectrum (street food and fine dining) but their views overlap. Both suggest a shift to eating out as a considered event where planning is key, whether that’s checking out ethical credentials before a visit, skimming prices online or reserving weeks in advance. And it’s true that venturing out without a reservation fills me with a quiet, pulsing anxiety these days. I have to force myself to be spontaneous (kind of defeats the point). Settling on a sub-par meal leaves me deflated, feeling I’ve just wasted my (very) limited expendable income. I’ll still be searching for dining joy in the new year, but like everyone else I’ll be doing it in a more considered way. The stakes are higher, even for a casual catch-up, with far less room for error, be that ethically, environmentally or quality-wise. Does that make for a trend? Maybe not. But perhaps that’s no bad thing.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 43

street food

EAT

We choose a street and tell you where to eat. This time around, Suzy Pope wanders the cosy basements of Edinburgh’s St Stephen Street for late-night cocktails and sophisticated dining

THE ANTIQUARY You might hear accordion chords drifting from this basement bar on their regular Thursday folk-music night. Aside from toetapping musical sessions, the food is classic and comforting, real ales and craft pints are on tap, and the maze of little rooms gives this pub a warm, inviting atmosphere.

BELLS DINER Locals have beaten a path to Bells for more than 50 years. That this tiny, few-frills burger bar has kept pace with so much change (there are plenty of vegan options) while holding onto such a strong sense of its place in the community (the pickle tray remains the same) is truly something to celebrate.

KIM’S BULGOGI It’s small, it’s fast and it’s no-frills. Kim’s Bulgogi is all about Korean comfort food.

The signature is, of course, bulgogi: rice or noodle bowls topped with chilli-warm pork or soy chicken, deliciously charred. There’s also a selection of bibimbap and a handful of smaller starters to pad out a meal if you’re really hungry.

PURSLANE RESTAURANT A five or seven-course tasting menu is the only dinner option at Purslane, leaving you in the very capable hands of chef and owner Paul Gunning. The menu changes seasonally but is always an ode to Scottish produce and fine French technique, with haggis and whisky sauce making a regular appearance.

SATINE SAINT STEPHEN With all the candlelit allure of a Parisian bistro, Satine Saint Stephen embraces relaxed neighbourhood dining with a little French flair.

Pigeon breast, venison and the delicately marbled cuts of beef for their signature chateaubriand come from nearby George Bower Butchers, and the sauces are rich.

44 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Jo Laidlaw wraps up all the food and drink news featuring second spots and second comings

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dinburgh is seeing its fair share of empire-building with a clutch of second branches in the pipeline. Stockbridge’s Earls Burger Co is heading up to Morningside Road for its #2, while chickenslinging favourite Buck’s Bar opens a second spot in the capital on Hanover Street. Following suit, though heading further afield, Kahani has opened in Stirling, while Matto Pizza is bucking the trend: its new place on Newington Road is its third.

Also in the capital, W Edinburgh is set to finally open its doors, adding Sushisamba, W Lounge and Joao’s Place to St James Quarter’s plentiful selection of eating and drinking opportunities. Congrats to them, and also to our pals at Panda & Sons on Queen Street, who are celebrating their inclusion in The World’s 50 Best Bars list.

It’s not all good news though, and the end of 2023 will see the loss of some well-kent places. Vesta and Aurora are closing in Edinburgh, but hopefully the sale of The Laurieston and Gamba in Glasgow will be balanced by a couple of second comings. The team behind Sinclairs are busy re-inventing their Sinclair Drive spot as Pisces, with a focus on pizza, while Neil Connolly, driving force behind the much-missed Moskito, is opening a new charcuterie joint in the Merchant City: Pania will run all day and concentrate on Spanish and Mediterranean snacks. Finally there’s a whole new bar to explore at Platform, as Platform 1 aims to transform the venue’s Argyle Street entrance with a split-level café/bar and restaurant.

side dishes Panda & Sons

tipLIST

Researched and compiled by The List’s food and drink team, our tipLISTs suggest the places worth knowing about around Edinburgh and Glasgow in different themes, categories and locations. Having launched our tipLISTs at the start of 2023, we’re rounding this year off with a selection of the local hospitality scene’s best new openings and arrivals

Best new arrivals of 2023 The Black Grape

Grab a bite near . . .

Royâ

Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre EAT AND DRINK

PICTURE: TWO BEARS STUDIO

EDINBURGH

GLASGOW

ARDNAMURCHAN 325 Hope Street, ardnamurchan.biz Scottish cuisine with balance and big flavours. The mushroom and chestnut risotto has foraged girolles from Loch Lomond, while the venison stew uses meat from Ardnamurchan Estate itself.

Market menu until 5.45pm.

THE BLACK GRAPE

CIVERINOS

240 Canongate, theblackgrape.co.uk The Black Grape transformed a once-familiar space with Scandi-chic and muted green and grey tones.

There’s both a casual bar and more traditional seating area to enjoy an extensive choice of wines and aperitivo, with luscious small sharing plates.

9–13 Radnor Street, civerinos.com Edinburgh’s pizza specialist’s first spot in Glasgow takes you diving into skater culture with plenty of fun food to be had. Big New Yorkstyle slices dominate a menu that also features deep dish options and a giant mozzarella stick.

EDINBURGH STREET FOOD

NON VIET BA

Omni Centre, Leith Street, edinburgh-street-food.com ESF have hit on a winning formula for their street food market. It caters to all (Antojitos’ Mexican fare for vegans, The Peruvian for a bit of spice, plus regular guest traders), with app ordering to the long, shared tables keeping it convivial. Great fun.

279 Dumbarton Road, nonviet.co.uk The youngest member of the trio of Vietnamese restaurants in town is a tasteful wee diner in Partick. They’ve ditched all animal products in their fresh and vibrant menu, featuring spring rolls, hue and pho soups, curries and more.

JUNK

ROYÂ

LITTLE VIETNAM

59 Elmbank Street, royarestaurant.co.uk Persian cuisine is celebrated at this attractive corner tenement opposite the King’s Theatre.

There’s a luxe feel to an interior that wears its theme lightly, with excellent dishes coming tapas-style, from kebabs and pide to shawarma and more.

24 Renfrew Street, littlevietnam.uk The first Glasgow venture from Edinburgh’s Pho Viet team. All the favourites are available including glossy and deeply aromatic bowls of pho, and lots of elegant small plates to nibble on.

USTA

24 Cambridge Street, instagram. com/seoul.korean.bbq The tables have roasting plates for the full Korean BBQ experience, but pretheatre and lunchtime diners are equally well catered for. Dishes such as pork bibimbap or stir-fried fish cakes in spicy sauce bristle with punchy heat.

58 South Clerk Street, wearejunk.co.uk After winning a clutch of street-food accolades, Junk expanded into this permanent spot. Puntastic sandwiches and artfully presented small plates populate the evening service, with a democratically priced fixed menu. The service is charming and the cocktails are banging.

SINGAPORE COFFEE HOUSE 5 Canonmills, singaporecoffeehouse.co.uk Discover the incredible diversity of Singaporean cuisine at this snug café, inspired by the chef’s childhood visits to traditional kopitiam (coffee shops). The roti canai is a must, paired with a sweet cup of traditional kopi and condensed milk.

1024 Argyle Street, ustaglasgow.co.uk Sister venue to neighbour Meze Meze, Usta delivers much the same Mediterranean food, touching on Turkey, Greece, Morocco and beyond. The charcoal grill is king, dishing out mezze, kebabs and mighty burgers that are among the best in town.

KELP 114 Cowcaddens Road, kelp-restaurant.com Small plates seafood spot with a playfully composed and caringly prepared menu. Expect dishes like sardines bolognese on toast or Shetland coley with peppercorn sauce.

SEOUL KOREAN BBQ

TIPO

WEST SIDE TAVERN

RISHI’S INDIAN AROMA

110 Hanover Street, tipoedinburgh.co.uk Up a set of stairs on Hanover Street, a window table at Tipo is a great chance to people-watch over a glass of crisp soave. Tipo combines the smart-casual feel of a wine bar with Italian flair.

Follow the small plate trend or buck it completely with a filling bowl of strozzapreti and sausage ragù.

162 Dumbarton Road, westsidetavern.co.uk New York dive bars and Italian-American food and culture are the vibe at this bar-diner next to Kelvinhall subway. Quality pizzas and pastas, classy cocktails, and a big outdoor area have solidified its place on the Subcrawl.

61 Bath Street, rishis.uk/glasgow A local favourite doing South Indian classics (and the rest). Dishes aren’t afraid to be mild and sweet. The Malabar fish curry and any of the dosas are well worth trying, as is the tapas lunch menu if it’s an afternoon show you’re off to.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 45

THAI

EAT

ROSA’S THAI A glance at the first Scottish outpost of Rosa’s Thai (a second has just opened in Edinburgh) suggests something a little quainter than what lies within. The clever work of a brand (and it’s a helluva brand these days), Rosa’s began life on London’s Brick Lane before taking over an old caff in Spitalfields, keeping the name ‘Rosa’s’ because they couldn’t afford a new sign.

That was in 2008. Fast forward and there are now more than 20 Rosa’s in London alone, with plenty elsewhere in England.

There’s a notion that each spot slots into the energy and vibe of its neighbourhood, with fluid colour schemes and décor. For Glasgow, that means a bright red front with blue canopies giving off a chirpy café atmosphere. Inside though, it feels expansive and assured, with strategically hung bric-a-brac and posters.

The menu focuses on Thai food with a broad appeal. So, alongside starters like fish cakes or pandan chicken parcels, there are ‘Thai calamari’ (with a dusting of tom yum powder) or chicken wings with a honey sriracha glaze: not too sweet, not too spicy, safely does it. Many menu items are fried and served with iterations of sriracha or sweet chilli dips, which will likely go down well.

It’s all reliably solid. A duck red curry has lean shreds of meat, leading with pineapple before giving way to a mild, murmuring heat. Pad Thai is equally surefooted, with controlled use of tamarind, noodles nicely coated and silky, and a thorough sprinkling of crushed peanuts: it’s somewhat lip-smacking. If some diners want more punch, oomph and funk, this maybe isn’t the place for them. Ultimately, Rosa’s Thai is clear in what it sets out to do, and does it perfectly well. (David Kirkwood) n 41–43 West Nile Street, Glasgow, rosasthai.com

GREEK

KUZINA The Greek archipelago has a dynamic and varied food culture, even if the familiar fare of its holiday resorts suggests otherwise.

Thankfully, Kuzina proves an enjoyable introductory evening class to a world way beyond kebabs and pitta bread. Owner Konstantinos Karvelis and head chef Konstantinos Sakellariou are passionate about sourcing the best Greek ingredients, fusing traditional family recipes with a fine-dining approach. Dishes are beautifully plated and proudly presented, every ingredient carefully considered.

Bouncy house sourdough is made with trahana (a traditional mix of fermented yogurt and grain) and is delicious dunked in fresh, grassy olive oil. Meltingly soft marinaded Cretan artichokes arrive with creamy graviera cheese from the same island, and little pools of smoky almond skordalia, bright herb pesto and grapes.

An octopus salad has the most tender tentacles, balanced on a homely split-pea salad which contrasts beautifully with the sweet octopus, while marinated fennel adds freshness. Prawn dolmades are parcels of sea lettuce, filled with black rice and juicy prawns, in a pool of citrus bisque dusted with powdered oyster leaf.

There’s a lot going on, but it works.

A simpler dish of perfectly flaky hake with spinach and Swiss chard, bound in a creamy lemon avgolemono sauce, is also a hit, while dessert goes on a full culinary odyssey. Ekmek kataifi is a delicate nest of shredded filo pastry, caramelised pistachios, berries and kaimaki ice-cream: that’s sheep’s milk, flavoured with mastiha oil and orchid root flour. Who knew? (Ailsa Sheldon) n 18 Howe Street, Edinburgh, kuzina.co.uk PICTURE: AILSA SHELDON

46 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Drinking Games

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Steering hospitality journalism into a ravine from which it cannot escape, Kevin Fullerton is back with his latest beverage-fuelled adventure. The challenge this time around . . . find an Edinburgh bar warm enough to thaw the essence of my frozen soul

DRINK

tripping down to my pants in the car park behind Teuchters Bar & Bunker may seem strange, but it’s actually the most professional behaviour of my career. If I was to review the cosiness of three pubs in the Haymarket area, then I must understand the purest form of cold imaginable. There in the moonlight, goosepimples standing to attention on the cavernous husk I call my torso, I experienced the kind of disdainful chill usually found in the souls of serial killers and politicians. I was method. I was the Robert De Niro of local drinks journalism.

I replaced my garments and wandered into Teuchters to bask in its radiation system.

Alongside the mahogany panelling and lively atmosphere of this William Street haunt was a heat that made me feel like an archetypal hobo satisfied by his newly lit bin fire.

The beer selection won’t inspire an epic poem, but Teuchters’ hipster bothy stylings were warming even without the seismic gas bill racked up by the owners. Soul-thaw rating: 7/10 (approximately the warmth of a reluctant primary-school teacher).

Back outside, strip off, five-minute freeze-time, clothes on. To The Green Room next, a Parisian-style haunt with a wine menu that’ll make you scream, ‘HOW MUCH??!!’.

Continental where Teuchters is tourist-baitingly Scottish, and quiet where Teuchters was brimming with life, it nonetheless offered the kind of amiable service that felt like a tender hug. Its cocktails (I opted for a rum, lime and ginger beer) had the balance and flair of a liquified Vaslav Nijinsky. I’ll be back, Green Room, as soon as my nips are less frigid.

Soul-thaw rating: 9/10 (approximately the warmth of an affectionate beagle).

Back out, strip off, duel with the elements, scream ‘I’M ROBERT DE NIRO’ at the moon as rum and ginger beer and lime careens from my mouth. Land in Ryrie’s Bar, an Edinburgh institution for anyone with a thirst before a stumble into Haymarket Station.

Ignore the imposing train timetable on the widescreen telly and you’ll find an auld guy’s pub that’d make Jack and Victor chant a wee tune. Not quite cosy, but cosy-ish. Soul-thaw rating: 5/10 (approximately the warmth of a misunderstood 15-year-old boy who secretly cries to boygenius songs).

BAR FILES Creative folks reveal their favourite watering hole

SINGER-SONGWRITER TOM WALKER

PICTURE: FRANK FIEBER

Whenever I’m asked to recommend a bar in Glasgow, it’s always King Tut’s. It’s been the place for many family reunions with my gran and uncles, usually until we get kicked out. The downstairs bar has a great atmosphere and their own lager is a good pint. The food’s great too, and one of the perks of my job is I’ve never had to pay for a meal there. When you play, they’re always incredibly welcoming, even the first time when I’d only sold about three tickets. I’ve sold it out a few times since and now I’ve got the ultimate honour of having my name on the stairs which, as any musician will tell you, is a very big deal. n Tom Walker’s new single ‘Freaking Out’ is out now on Relentless Records; he plays O2 Academy Glasgow on Tuesday 30 April.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 47

P-p-p-pick up your skates and hop over to Rockhopper Rink at Edinburgh Zoo!

EDINBURGH’S ONLY ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY SKATING RINK

48 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

This pioneering Stockbridge business opened its doors in 2021 when it became the only bookshop in Scotland entirely dedicated to women’s writing. With its online book club, reading guides and lucky-dip book generator, Rare Birds has creatively managed to build a community of readers far beyond the parameters of its bricks and mortar store. This festive season, the shop is offering a 24 Days Of Reading advent calendar (readers can pick four books based on their favourite blurbs inside each door), as well as a late-night shopping event on Thursday 7 December where drinks and snacks will be served alongside personalised gifting advice. (Megan Merino) n 13a Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, rarebirdsbooks.com

travel & shop

RARE BIRDS BOOKS

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 49

TRAVEL

wanderLIST: Akureyri

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As we enter the start of European ski season, Suzy Pope explores an alternative snow-sport destination in Iceland with plenty of off-slope appeal

kureyri in north Iceland sits on the quiet Eyjafjörður fjord, sheltered by snowdusted mountains. The 35-minute flight from Reykjavík across the country’s untamed landscape feels like a sightseeing experience in itself. Five kilometres out of Akureyri, the Hlíðarfjall resort is Iceland’s prime skiing area, with thick snow, alpine downhills and long-distance cross-country routes. Up here, incredible views over the shambling town and glass-like fjord might distract you from the piste.

Tour companies around Akureyri also offer heli-skiing experiences that see you dropped at the top of mountains by helicopter for guided runs along snowy sea cliffs and down the side of isolated mountains. A confession: after childhood trips to Edinburgh’s Hillend dry slope resulted in carpet burns, skiing is not my bag. Luckily, there are plenty of alternative activities around Akureyri while everyone else hits the slopes.

The main street houses a handful of coffee shops alongside restaurants serving New Nordic cuisine, and a classic Icelandic hot-dog stand (lamb hot dogs with remoulade and onions are kind of a big deal in Iceland). The Akureyrarkirkja, an imposing church designed by the same architect as Reykjavík’s Hallgrimskirkja, presides over the centre. Strolling around town, I admire clapboard wooden houses dating back to the 18th century and enjoy a waterfront walk along the Eyjafjörður. Meandering through the Arctic flora of the hillside botanic gardens is a delight, while a glasshouse coffee shop with its wood-burning stove is a cosy spot for cake.

Day trips from Akureyri take in the geological wonders that bless the landscape of north Iceland. While south Iceland’s Golden Circle route is packed with visitors, the equally awe-inspiring Diamond Circle from Akureyri is less crowded. Horseshoe-shaped Goðafoss Waterfall is the first stop, particularly pretty dusted with snow. Amid the volcanic plains surrounding Lake Myvatn, I pause to unwind in the milky blue Myvatn Baths, a geothermal spa to rival the Blue Lagoon.

Then it’s on to the thundering cascade of Dettifoss (featured in 2012 sci-fi Prometheus’ opening scenes) before stopping in the quaint village of Húsavík, the whale-watching capital of Europe.

From Húsavík harbour, boats chug out to Skjálfandi Bay to spot humpbacks, minke and even blue whales frolicking in the water. I confess I’m drawn to Húsavík’s tiny, quirky museum dedicated to Eurovision: The Story Of Fire Saga which was filmed in this picture-perfect town.

Back in Akureyri, as the snow bunnies return from slaloming down hills, darkness descends early and there’s a good chance of spotting the Northern Lights. Akureyri offers a diverting alternative European ski destination to the Alps and Pyrenees, with plenty of activities for non-skiers too. visitakureyri.is/en

50 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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Buy tram tickets here December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 51

on your doorstep As party season rolls around, Ailsa Sheldon recommends three places in Scotland to bring in the new year THE TAYBANK Jump on a train to Dunkeld for a proper Hogmanay ceilidh.

Start with fizz and a four-course feast in The Taybank’s gorgeous restaurant, then get your jig on with local band Rohallion. Toasting the new year with a dram by the outdoor firepits sounds like the perfect way to welcome in 2024. n £120 (without dinner £50), Tay Terrace, Dunkeld, thetaybank.co.uk

PICTURE: RACHEL SHERLOCK

TRAVEL

CASABLANCA COCKTAIL CLUB No need for subtlety at this one: go big, brash, loud and fun with the Casablanca Queens at Donatella’s Drag Disco.

Hogmanay promises to be a cocktail-fuelled celebration of camp classics and the greatest party hits of the year. n 235 Cowgate, Edinburgh, casablancacocktailclub.com

GREENHEAD COTTAGE Pack your pals and the dog, and settle in for a cosy week at pretty Greenhead Cottage in the Scottish Borders. Start the new year surrounded by gently rolling hills, filling your lungs with fresh air on hearty country walks, then coorie-ing in by the fireplace at night. Pick up supplies in the market town of Kelso (there’s an excellent deli, butcher, fishmonger and baker) or perhaps treat yourself and book a private chef for the night. n Sleeps six, £1779.50 per week, crabtreeandcrabtree.com/properties/greenhead-cottage

my favourite holiday Comedian Olga Koch’s love of admin and moustaches combine in her dream trip to Tokyo

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t the beginning of the year, I found myself at a wedding in New Zealand, talking to the most attractive man I’ve ever seen in my life (read: he had a moustache). One thing led to another, and after taking the moustache for a ride, we decided to do it again. There was one problem: he lives in New Zealand and I live in the UK. The only logical solution was to meet three months later . . . in Tokyo, Japan. Over the next three months, we planned the trip of a lifetime. I love admin: I’m a freak in the sheets (the spreadsheets). We had a perfectly curated spreadsheet, an email chain, a text thread, a shared playlist; we were even reading the same book so we could book-club it when we arrived in Japan. Some days I’d wake up to a nude from my new friend (hot), but other days I’d wake up to an email summarising his ventures into hotel price-comparison websites (even hotter). We planned a detailed tour of Tokyo’s listening cafes, we bought tickets to Disney Sea, we even booked a night at an onsen with a private outdoor hot tub. It was the best holiday I had ever planned and that planned holiday is still my favourite by far. As for the real thing, all I’ll say is this: I’ll never forget that night in the hot tub . . . where he showed me his favourite episodes of University Challenge.

The Taybank

52 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Olga Koch: Prawn Cocktail, Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Friday 26 January; The Stand, Glasgow, Thursday 29 February.

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Using fashion and design to help those experiencing homelessness, The Blankfaces founder Gerard McKenzie-Govan tells Claire Stuart how his shop is giving people a voice

SHOP

everse Social Decay’ is less of a tagline and more of a mission statement for The Blankfaces, the UK’s first fashion label aimed at ending homelessness. Each design is created or inspired by someone in that awful predicament, with a share of the sales going directly to them. The Glasgow-born label is a passion project for founder Gerard McKenzie-Govan who has taken his lengthy involvement of working in retail and fashion, and channeled it towards creating social good.

‘Homelessness is growing year on year and people [experiencing it] are getting younger and younger,’ says McKenzie-Govan. ‘I wanted to try and tackle it differently. I wanted to strip away the stigma and preconceptions of people experiencing homelessness by showing the human being instead of a statistic. The Blankfaces is a platform to tell their story. We give people a voice.’

Since launching in 2018, The Blankfaces has moved from pop-up markets to permanent homes in Glasgow and Manchester. The name is a nod to the anonymity that can be endured by those affected and aims to give people back their autonomy through a collaborative design element, while creating tangible good on the ground.

Their Glasgow store doubles as a local feedback centre as well as housing a tuck shop. From food to sleeping bags, the back of the store is open to everyone who may need it, no questions asked. In pursuit of growing the community element, McKenzie-Govan has also teamed up with Jo Nethery and her team at Five March, who supply fresh, nourishing hot meals to the shop every Wednesday.

The Blankfaces might not be able to reverse social decay overnight but they are making the world a little bit better, one t-shirt at a time.

427 Great Western Road, Glasgow, theblankfaces.co.uk, @the_blankfaces on Instagram.

shop talk PARK LANE MARKET This independent destination market in Glasgow’s Southside runs the first and last Sunday of each month. With an ever-rotating roster of makers and designers, it’s a relaxed spot to grab a coffee and discover some hidden gems from local traders, be that mid-century furniture, unique prints or quirky ceramics. n 974 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow, parklanemarket.co.uk, @parklane.market on Instagram.

THE LEITH COLLECTIVE With 400 artists and makers from all over Scotland focusing on reusing and recycling items destined for landfill, this community collective has just launched their Winter Coat campaign to

Weekend markets, statement jewellery and second-hand initiatives make up Claire Stuart’s trio of retail recommendations this issue collect and redistribute cosy outerwear to those who need it. With locations at Ocean Terminal and Fort Kinnaird in Edinburgh and St Enoch Centre in Glasgow, shoppers can spend with a purpose this season. n theleithcollective.co.uk

PURE METTLE Sam Kerr is the mind behind this brand, making handmade sculptural jewellery from her workshop in Glasgow. Her bold and chunky designs can vary from statement pieces to buildable stacks. Head along to her ring-making workshops to have a go at making one yourself. n puremettlejewellery.bigcartel.com, @puremettlejewellery on Instagram.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 53

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ALL TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.co.uk In person from Tickets Scotland Glasgow/Edinburgh and usual outlets 54 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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PICTURE: TIM TOPPLE

NADINE SHAH For a full decade, Nadine Shah has produced a series of noirish pop and post-punk records, covering subjects such as ageing, Islamophobia, suicide, gentrification and political demonisation of her north of England birthplace. Shah was on the Mercury shortlist for 2017’s Holiday Destination and has a new album out in February entitled Filthy Underneath in which she places ‘melody and movement front and centre’. That’s certainly the case on lead single ‘Topless Mother’ with its swirling chorus and word-association non sequiturs (‘Sinatra, Viagra, iguana/Sharia, Diana, samosa’) during her blackly comic number about an exchange with a therapist. (Brian Donaldson) n Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Sunday 28 January, as part of Burns&Beyond; OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Wednesday 31 January.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 55

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People not laughing is the least of my problems Edinburgh’s Hogmanay isn’t just about a big garden concert or an amazing fireworks display. There’s also some top-notch stand-up on the bill this year. Jay Richardson chats to lauded comedian Emmanuel Sonubi about tricky punters, performance anxiety and quite literally dying on stage

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eflecting a colourful and varied professional résumé that’s included bouncer, Bollywood choreographer, musical theatre performer, cyber security consultant, and latterly, comedian, Emmanuel Sonubi’s 2023 Fringe show Curriculum Vitae earned him his second successive Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination. And whatever television exposure may follow, after a mere three years as a full-time stand-up, he reckons that he’s a live comic to his bones.

‘It’s quite a profound moment when you realise this isn’t just what you do, it’s who you are,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I could do anything else now. I did well in all of those jobs, but being nominated was the first time in my entire life that I’ve ever been considered one of the best. To be held in such high regard for something that you really love is amazing.’

Unlike most comedians, Sonubi’s theatre background ensures that he doesn’t find performing for three and a half weeks at the Fringe an endurance test, ‘because I’ve done two years of someone else’s show that I don’t really care about. So to do my own show, which I do care about, for a month, is a joy. I could have done another week.’ Returning to Edinburgh to host Ho-Ho-Hogmanay at the Assembly Rooms (a line-up that also features Susie McCabe, Fred MacAulay and Larry Dean), he is similarly unfazed by the reputation of festive comedy gigs for drunken rowdiness and an attritional battle of wills with the crowd. ‘A gig is just a gig,’ he states baldly. ‘If I let these things get into my head and start overthinking it, it’ll change the way I perform. You’re liable to beat yourself up before you begin.’

Worth observing is that the 6’3” former amateur rugby player, raised in a household with five older sisters, is also built like the proverbial brick shithouse. And, while it’s exceptionally rare for him to be heckled, he brings a doorman and seasoned compere’s experience to interruptions, defusing and incorporating them into the show. Even so, on his UK tour, kicking off properly in April, Sonubi welcomes the unpredictability that audience interaction can bring. ‘I’ve allowed a lot of it to be out of my control and let go of the reins a little,’ he says. ‘I ask a few open questions that I’ve no idea how they’re going to react to, and that can really change the concept. I like that.’

A dash of perspective also helps. Four years ago he was on stage in Dubai when he suffered heart failure and was rushed to hospital. ‘It’s made me more carefree,’ he suggests.

‘My biggest fear as a comedian was dying on stage. And then I almost did it: literally. After that, people not laughing is the least of my problems.’

All of which makes it rather surprising to hear that Sonubi still suffers nerves as a performer.

‘Every show until about five minutes from the end,’ he admits. ‘But they’re healthy because they keep me sharp. Even if I’m doing a club night, I’ll watch the whole show if I’m closing.

I watch the audience; I watch the other acts to see what people are responding to. Are there any idiots in the room that want to be talkative? Do I need to shut them down quickly?

You’re playing this mental chess of how you’re potentially going to react. And if something does happen, you’re happy about it because you’ve completely prepared.’

Emmanuel Sonubi hosts Ho-Ho-Hogmanay, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Friday 29 December.

56 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

PICTURE: JIKSAW

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 57

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Bringing it in (from top): Torchlight Procession, Björn Again, Massaoke, Sprogmanay

PICTURE: ROBIN MAIR

58 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

PICTURE: FOREVER LIVING

aunching four days of festivities on 29 December is the Torchlight Procession, returning after a four-year hiatus. This revamped version brings scorching street performances and music to its new starting point at the Meadows, and creates a fiery atmosphere as it makes its way through the Old Town. Participants won’t just be lighting the way to 2024 either, as the event has partnered with Social Bite, so a portion of ticket proceeds will help fund the fight against homelessness.

Then on 30 December, forget your hiking boots and step into those dancing shoes as the Night Afore Disco Party kicks off beneath Edinburgh Castle. Headlined this year by ABBA tribute sensations Björn Again, there’s support from live-band singalong troupe Massaoke. They’ll have plenty of pop bangers and disco throwbacks to warm up vocal cords ahead of the big countdown.

Speaking of which, Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Street Party is set to welcome 40,000 revellers from all over the world to Princes Street on 31 December. The city centre will be split into three zones: The Pop Zone, which will broadcast Sheffield legends Pulp as they headline the Concert In The Gardens, their first live show in the capital for 20 years; The Tartan Zone, bringing the best of traditional piping bands and ceilidh dancing to Waverley Bridge; and finally The Disco Zone; a joyous silent disco may be every Edinburgh native’s worst nightmare but at least they have their own designated area, right?

Tucked away in St Giles’ Cathedral is something for the more tranquil merrymakers. The first three cantatas from JS Bach’s rousing Christmas Oratorio will be performed at a Candlelit Concert, marking the cathedral’s 900th anniversary, and featuring its resident choir and camerata, with support from skilled soloists.

There are some free activities to get you in the party mood too with the First Footin’ live music trail snaking around city centre attractions, pubs and venues on New Year’s Day. Talent such as Lau, Fergus McCreadie, Kathryn Joseph, Cloth, and Hot Chip will quell the first hangover of 2024. For the wee ones (and their slightly fragile grown-ups), Sprogmanay takes over the National Museum Of Scotland for an afternoon of performances and interactive activities which are sure to tire them out by supper.

edinburghshogmanay.com

PICTURE: LLOYD SMITH

Saved by the bells

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When staring down the barrel of Hogmanay, some may baulk while deciding exactly where they should be as the clock strikes 12.

But never fear, reassures Rebecca Crockett, there are plenty highlights to enjoy in Edinburgh across a busy New Year season

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 59

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Everybody wants to paint a pretty picture, but everybody knows that’s not reality Hip-hop legend Ice Cube is pulling out the hits from his long career as he descends on Britain for a massive arena tour this winter. Kevin Fullerton caught up with the rapper, actor, producer and all-round icon to chat about artistic freedom, arena performances and the legacy of NWA

Your music career sometimes feels like it’s been outpaced by the enduring success you’ve had as an actor. What motivates you to keep making hip hop? The freedom to be a true

independent artist, like a painter. When you’re doing movies it’s such a big production. You have to get over 100 people to buy into a concept.

Hip hop is a different kind of production. Making a record, I can do that with the beat and my engineer, and it can be pure thought, pure expression. Lyrically, I can go anywhere I want to go. So, you know, it’s the freedom that hip hop has always given me; a mental freedom.

PREVIEWS

That freedom is what makes your music, particularly your run of solo albums in the 1990s, so bracing and sometimes shocking. Do you ever feel like you have to pull your punches when writing lyrics? I want to cut through but I’m not a shock jock.

I could say a lot of things that can just shock people and blow their minds when I’m rhyming. But I’ve really tried to get over concepts and thoughts and reality as I see it, as well as be lyrical and ride the beat like I’m supposed to, and make it entertaining and interesting enough to absorb. What I’m always doing is speaking the truth as I see it.

Your lyrics are so potent that the sheer quality of some of the beats you’ve produced is easy to overlook. How do you know when you’ve hit on a good beat? I like beats that are

cinematic, beats that make you move. I think West Coast hip hop has prided itself on catching the groove every now and again, and then you add the lyrics and it’s a full experience. It’s really just about making the music fit the rhyme and making it tell your story.

How do you bring that cinematic experience to a space as large as an arena? I want to give people a pure hip-hop experience,

but I’m not big on a lot of production. It’s really about grip and rip, go through 35 years of hits to make people get out of their seats, move and dance. I’ve got a lot of different songs I can go to and, you know, sometimes I’ll dial them up on the fly because of the audience’s energy.

I think it’s important when you have a big back-catalogue to keep churning it. I’ll keep that playlist flipping.

Like Nirvana or The Beatles, NWA have become one of those bands that every generation rediscovers. What do you think they’re responding to? I mean, it’s top of the line music. It’s kind

of like having a great meal on a great day. You’ll have other meals that are great and you’ll have other days that are great, but you can’t quite put your finger on why you remember that one day so much.

NWA is like that; it’s capturing a piece of time. And you can still feel the energy on those records. DJ Quik said the studio vibe goes on to the tape as well as the music, and those recordings caught our vibe as well as the music. It’s just true to itself.

60 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

The influence of NWA and your solo career has cut through rap and into popular culture. Were you aware of the influence you were having on other bands at the time? People like Sinéad

O’Connor and Metallica used to rock out to our albums before they went on stage, and even bands like ZZ Top loved us. And we ended up loving their music as well. It was humbling. I’m appreciative to be a part of that whole era.

You’re one of the first artists to take gangsta rap to a mainstream audience. What are your reflections on the legacy of that genre? It’s music that’s always pointed out the good,

the bad and the ugly, and it continues to do that. You know, everybody loves good, everybody is intrigued by the bad, but everybody is turned off by the ugly. But when you have ugly things happen in the world, people go and make music about it. If people don’t rap about it, people don’t talk about it. And if people don’t feel safe, they’re going to start talking about all the guns they’ve got and the things they’ll do if you mess with them. Everybody wants to paint a pretty picture, but everybody knows that’s not reality. There are still kids speaking their reality, and I respect them for it.

Ice Cube, Cypress Hill and The Game play OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Tuesday 5 December.

LANA PHEUTAN The Scots Trad Music Awards will bring the traditional, folk and Gaelic music year to a close with a celebratory ceremony at Dundee’s Caird Hall. 2023 once again demonstrated a fine showing not just for Gaelic singing and Highland music, but also the myriad ways that the traditional and contemporary continue to collide and enrich each other. Among the Gaelic-speaking talent playing on the night are Hebridean bands Mànran and Peatbog Faeries, while Gaelic features across a number of categories, with nods going to Julie Fowlis and Rachel Walker.

The six-strong Gaelic Singer shortlist includes Skye native and Valtos vocalist Lana Pheutan, who has also provided vocals for An Dannsa Dub. Both bands will battle it out against Niteworks in the Live Act category, making this a big year for Glasgow-based Pheutan who is currently director of Strabang!, the National Gaelic Youth Theatre Of Scotland. She confesses to ‘never really being into the Mòd’ as a child, finding that this and other schoolbased arts programmes ‘didn’t offer much room for anything different from the traditional’.

Strabang! is just the sort of project that Pheutan benefited from ‘as a young person inspired by drama’ and she hopes to instil her passion in the younger generation. She credits her collaborations with folktronica outfits Valtos and An Dannsa Dub as ‘leading her back to music’ and facilitating a new way to interpret tradition in a contemporary era. It’s set to be a busy end to 2023 and hectic start to 2024 for both Pheutan and Valtos, as they play Astley Hall in Arisaig (Wednesday 27 December) and Portree Community Centre (Sunday 31 December) before arriving in Glasgow for Celtic Connections. (Marcas Mac an Tuairneir)  Scots Trad Music Awards, Caird Hall, Dundee, Saturday 2 December.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 61

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As the old year fades, our column celebrating new music looks forward to 2024. Fiona Shepherd throws a spotlight on five upcoming acts GHOST SINGERS

A new, aptly named and somewhat enigmatic project helmed by Glasgow-based songwriter Brian O’Neill featuring a collective of musicians who have never met in person.

In the style of Soulsavers or Soundwalk Collective, Ghost Singers is a showcase for an array of international guest vocalists from Canada, Brazil, England, Spain and South Africa, among other locations. They’ve all been handpicked by O’Neill via YouTube to sing his fragile, haunting songs about mental illness, addiction, faith and recovery.

O’Neill has been through the mill: a suicide survivor testifying to the power of healing through music. New abum Schizophrenic Lovesick Blues is out now, preceded by the singles ‘Remember When I’ and ‘Takes Like Muddy Waters’, sung by Australian Filipino Beloved Abe and Christy Harrington from Colorado, respectively.

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Another initially solitary project which has grown arms and legs and headset mics since its lockdown inception as a vehicle for Glasgow-based lo-fi indie artist Lloyd Ledingham.

Emerging from his bedroom post-pandemic, he formed a band with guitarist Eilidh O’Brien, bassist Aaron Bisset, drummer Sean Mitchell and keyboard player Reece Robertson to give his low-key songs more pop fizz and harmonic punch. Latest EP The Masochist, produced by former Catholic Action frontman Chris McCrory, was released in October with lead single ‘Ribbons’ boasting gonzo shades of Super Furry Animals and a video featuring the band formation-dancing on the stage at Barrowland.

PIPPA BLUNDELL

Singer-songwriter Pippa Blundell has lately emerged from the Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland’s creative hotbed. There she studied classical voice before choosing to divert from opera to sing with the Glasgow African Balafon Orchestra and perform her own songs of a folkier hue. Blundell has had a busy autumn around the release of her debut EP Sisters, touring as opening act for young jazz dynamos corto.alto and basking in her nomination for the SAY Award’s Sound Of Young Scotland.

CHARLIE GREY

Charlie Grey has been playing fiddle since the age of five, so is maybe not such a new artist. But having performed with pianist partner Joseph Peach and their band Westward The Light, Grey now emerges in his own right as one of Celtic Connections’ 2024 New Voices commissions, drawing on a well of Highland heritage (his grandmother was Gaelic legend Ishbel MacAskill and he inherited his first fiddle from his great uncle). He now plays a bespoke ten-string hardanger d’amore fiddle, to be heard in action in the Strathclyde Suite of Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall on Sunday 4 February.

EDY FOREY

Judging by the talent they’ve drafted in for their forthcoming debut album, Edinburghbased jazz duo Edy Forey (vocalist Edy Szewy and pianist Guilhem Forey) have an impressive contacts book. Ezra Collective drummer Femi Koleoso appears on current gospel soul single ‘The Fire’, engineered by Erykah Badu/Tribe Called Quest producer Bob Power, while Snarky Puppy mainman Michael League and saxophonist Bob Reynolds are among other primo associates contributing to the album Culture Today which is due for a 2024 release.

Keep an eye out for our monthly Future Sound column on acts to watch in 2024.

62 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

PREVIEWS Listen up (clockwise from left): Lloyd’s House, Ghost Singers’ Christy Harrington, Pippa Blundell, Charlie Grey, Edy Forey

PICTURE: OLI ERSKINE

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 63

THE STAND COMEDY CLUB “One of the finest spaces in the world to do and see comedy”

-THE LIST

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EST. 1995 Since 1995, The Stand Comedy Club has been keeping Edinburgh and its visitors in stitches.

Set in a historic New Town basement, this modest club has an international reputation as one of the best places for comedy.

Thai-inspired street food served at selected shows including Christmas Specials

It’s where the likes of Frankie Boyle and Kevin Bridges got started –and it has played host to the best comics from across the globe.

Christmas Specials begin on December 14th and the festivities continue into January with The Best of Scottish Comedy Hogmanay Specials.

We don’t do big groups, stag or hen parties. But if you fancy the best in contemporary comedy in an intimate candlelit club, then The Stand is for you.

More info online at thestand.co.uk or by scanning the QR code.

Photo credit: Jay Dawson

64 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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Stray dogs, late-years love and girl groups are all on the agenda as Katherine McLaughlin catches up with the stars of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s latest slice of idiosyncratic cinema

Fallen Leaves is in cinemas from Friday 1 December.

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With his Apology Comeback Tour show, Martin Urbano (Sunday 14 January) made a strong debut at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, snapping up a Best Newcomer nomination along the way. How can a first-timer make a comeback show, you’re probably not wondering? Well, maybe don’t ask; just revel in an act which is the dictionary definition of ‘not for everyone’. And by ‘everyone’, Urbano would probably count those who are easy to middlingly easily offended.

Also debut-nominated last August was Urooj Ashfaq (Tuesday 23 January), but this Bombay comic took matters one step further by actually wining the thing. Oh No! covers therapy, feeling permanently upset, and Hindu-Muslim relations. By contrast, seasoned performer Sarah Keyworth (Thursday 25 January) is in the work-in-progress stage of a new show. The last one, Poor Boy, went down a storm with reflections on Bo Burnham’s lockdown Netflix special, the late comedy producer Paul Byrne, and being constantly mistaken for a lad. (Brian Donaldson) PICTURE: JONNY RUFF

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cclaimed filmmaker and proud co-owner of Kino Laika, the most dog-friendly cinema in Finland, Aki Kaurismäki has ironically proclaimed his latest film, Fallen Leaves, to be the fourth instalment in his ‘Proletariat Trilogy’. A charming romantic comedy about a supermarket worker and labourer who find connection with one another in the autumn of their lives in a karaoke bar, it’s full of the deadpan humour, idiosyncratic music choices and visual jokes associated with his oeuvre.

Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen star as two lonely souls who face many obstacles on the course to true love.

The Finnish actors are lifelong fans of Kaurismäki’s output and they first met the mysterious director a year before filming began on Fallen Leaves, when it was just an idea and no screenplay had been written. They spoke of ‘society, politics, how we’re treating nature and the art of asparagus growing!’, Pöysti says, her laughter filling the hotel room in which we meet.

Vatanen plays stubborn alcoholic Holappa, and explains how he approached the role.

‘We’ve all had some misfortune in love. Life just hasn’t offered all of its beauty to Holappa yet. He is a lone wolf but when he meets this lady he has to decide if he wants to give up alcohol for this chance of falling in love.’

In the film, the pair watch Jim Jarmusch’s zombie apocalypse comedy The Dead Don’t Die, have an awkward meal together and enjoy live music: at one point the popular girl duo Maustetytöt perform and the two actors really enjoyed getting to know them. ‘They have such integrity,’ says Pöysti. ‘Their name means Spice Girls in Finnish,’ elaborates Vatanen.

‘They are Depressed Spice and Deadpan Spice maybe,’ he adds jokingly.

When love is on the rocks for the couple, Pöysti’s character takes in a stray who was actually played by Kaurismäki’s own dog, making her debut. ‘We had a lot of fun just eating sausages and meatballs,’ laughs Pöysti who was entirely endeared by the dog’s talents.

Notions of freedom and integrity play into the couple’s dynamic, all of which are recurring themes in Kaurismäki’s work. ‘All his films deal with this small person in the jaws of a cold society and what greed does to us,’ Pöysti remarks. ‘The only power we can really have is compassion and loyalty towards each other. If we don’t have that then we’re actually doomed.’

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Transferring an iconic and complex Scottish novel onto the big screen was never going to be a task for faint hearts. James Mottram chats to Poor Things screenwriter Tony McNamara about a project where everyone was pushed to the limit

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hances are you’ll have encountered the work of playwright-turnedscreenwriter Tony McNamara without realising it. Scripting both Yorgos Lanthimos’ Queen Anne-era Oscar-winner The Favourite, and Cruella, Disney’s reboot of 101 Dalmatians, the Australian is also responsible for creating and showrunning TV’s sexy, scurrilous costume romp The Great, starring Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning. Now he’s back with the Greek-born Lanthimos for the critically acclaimed period fantasy Poor Things, an adaptation of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel.

The story sees Lanthimos and McNamara reunite with their star from The Favourite, Emma Stone. She plays Bella, a suicide victim found in Victorian London and then re-animated by scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). From there, she learns to walk, talk and claim agency as she discovers her body sexually.

So what is this: a coming-of-age tale? A devilishly funny feminist tract? ‘I think we always call it a gothic comedy fantasy in our heads, with this sort of Frankenstein premise kicking it off,’ says McNamara. ‘That’s how we saw it.’

A story that amusingly paints men in a very dim light, what about Gray’s intriguing title: what does it mean? ‘I’ve always interpreted it as “Fucking poor humans!”’ says McNamara. ‘What are we? All the people in the movie . . . I’m

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Gray matter like, “You poor things”. Just grappling with your own inadequacies and insecurities, and trying to get things from each other. All that. For me, it’s about the whole human comedy of people trying to control each other. People think they love someone, but the manifestation of their love is control. Human comedy, really.’

Already winner of the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, to say Poor Things is out there is an understatement; from Robbie Ryan’s loopy fisheye-lens shots to musician Jerskin Fendrix’s scratchy score. McNamara recalls returning from Budapest where the film was shot, and telling his wife, actress Belinda Bromilow, of the experience. ‘I said, “Well, everyone’s taken a swing. That’s for sure.” Every department. We’re all in. Whatever you can do creatively, there’s no limit. Everyone’s pushing as far as we think any of us are capable of.’

McNamara was unable to meet Gray, who died in 2019, but he did encounter his son at the recent New York Film Festival screening. The movie was given his blessing: ‘he seemed to approve!’ Although one of the changes McNamara made to the book was to ‘controversially’ move its Glasgow segment to London, he is well aware of the Scottish pride in Gray. ‘My local barista is very excited!’ he

laughs. ‘What’s good about it is more people will read his work . . . he’s quite a special writer.’

The same might be said for McNamara, who was born in Kilmore, a small town an hour from Melbourne, and studied screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television And Radio School. Whether it’s Olivia Colman’s spiky dialogue in The Favourite (which saw him Oscar-nominated, alongside co-writer Deborah Davis) or the bawdy utterings of Stone’s character here (referring to sex as ‘furious jumping’), McNamara’s knack for hilariously offkilter lines is spot on.

‘I think that’s why I like genre or history pieces that can be subverted,’ McNamara says. ‘Language and dialogue is the thing I enjoy. My joy is writing dialogue. I think as a writer, you get free. You get free because it’s a fantasy. You get free because it’s a gothic imagination and the piece is so wild that you’re like, “Well, we’re not living in the real world!”’ What advice can he give to budding writers? ‘Hone your craft. Just write,’ he says. ‘And hope that a Greek genius calls you up.’

Poor Things is in cinemas from Friday 12 January.

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Undressed to kill

Arab Strap’s Philophobia cuts to the heart of smalltown Scottish living more than any album that’s come before or since. As Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton tour a record that has just hit the grand old age of 25, Kevin Fullerton’s track-by-track review guides you through its sex-soaked majesty

Packs Of Three

‘It was the biggest cock you’ve ever seen/but you’ve no idea where that cock has been’, will forever be the strongest opening line on any album.

Addressing the fear of HIV/AIDs swirling through the country at the time, this lilting dose of debauchery starts how Philophobia means to go on, frankly exploring twentysomething relationships and cementing Aidan Moffat’s persona as a Don Juan on citalopram.

Soaps

Most relationships don’t end with a bang. As ‘Soaps’ deftly acknowledges, they burn out like a lit fag resting on an ashtray. Watching soaps with his partner acts as the quotidian death knell for Moffat’s latest relationship as Malcolm Middleton heightens the drama with a lo-fi but romantic build on the keyboard.

The Night Before The Funeral

Sex and death intertwine as two lovers meet on the night before a funeral, and mourners discuss Viking burials. Another subtle feat of guitarwork from Middleton, which anchors Moffat’s elliptical storytelling.

Not Quite A Yes

Moffat is slaughtered at the bar trying to impress a prospective partner and Middleton fingerpicks his way to ecstasy. Arguably the slightest song in this collection, but a slyly humorous one nonetheless.

Piglet

An ambiguous story of betrayal and jealousy, made grimmer by the sniping viciousness of male toxicity and possessiveness.

Here We Go

Afterwards

New Birds

My Favourite Muse

An unflinchingly accurate depiction of a drunken couple’s argument, with rain-soaked guitar backing from Middleton. Powerful enough to evoke the grey Falkirk skies in your mind’s eye.

An atypically virtuous track, this spoken-word piece follows a young man’s attempts to resist the devil on his shoulder and avoid an affair with his old flame. ‘You have to remember there’s this other kiss’, intones Moffat, while Middleton’s lurching guitars hint at the broiling lust hidden below the surface.

One Day, After School

Jealousy, betrayal, violence: proof (if ever it was needed) that Moffat is never going to write the next Richard Curtis film. The toxic frailty of the male ego went underexamined in 90s music, soured as the charts were by Britpop’s overwhelmingly laddish machismo. Perhaps that’s why this song (and Philophobia more broadly) remains relevant while the swaggering side of that decade has fossilised.

Islands

An interlude from abject misery into near-ethereality. Moffat and Middleton may not be able to admit to love, but here they can almost submit to contentment.

68 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Post-coital cooldown sounding like a descent into hell. ‘I think tomorrow we might be sore,’ sing Moffat and guest vocalist Adele Bethel, underlining the stark difference between love and lust.

‘I pulled the ex last night,’ remarks Moffat, his resolve in ‘New Birds’ faltering completely. Another drunken mistake which Middleton adds shape to with ghoulish keyboards and gothic chords.

I Would’ve Liked Me A Lot Last Night

An expansive comedown song viewing the thrill of a night out through the warped mirror of a hangover. It’s gloriously miserable, all wailing violins and slowly ascending guitars as Moffat’s voice breaks to a defeated growl.

The First Time You’re Unfaithful

Is it possible for a serial philanderer to turn over a new leaf? That’s the question posed here, answered by the immortal line, ‘She was fairly adamant I’m nothing but a lying cunt.’ After relistening to Philophobia, ‘she’ may have a point. n Philophobia Undressed Tour, Saint Luke’s, Glasgow, Saturday 9 December; Summerhall, Edinburgh, Sunday 10 December.

FRI 12 JULY

SAT 13 JULY

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ALSO PLAYING ACROSS THE WEEKEND

GARBAGE | COURTEENERS | CHASE & STATUS THE SNUTS | RICK ASTLEY | TOM GRENNAN DECLAN MCKENNA | DYLAN JOHN THOMAS | BLOSSOMS SUGABABES | EXAMPLE | CIAN DUCROT | ENTER SHIKARI | PICTURE THIS BABY QUEEN | THE MARY WALLOPERS | CMAT | THE LAST DINNER PARTY

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SUBJECT TO LICENCE

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 69

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PICTURE: MIHAELA BODLOVIC

If we don’t get a move on we’ll be dancing with Zimmers

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From Victor And Barry to Jekyll And Hyde, Forbes Masson talks to Mark Fisher about comedy high life and Victorian lowlifes

ou can’t talk about Forbes Masson without talking about Michael Boyd. It was Boyd who spotted Masson and his classmate Alan Cumming doing a student cabaret act at the then RSAMD in Glasgow.

It was Boyd who invited them to write and star in Babes In The Wood as their alter egos Victor And Barry at the city’s Tron Theatre in 1987. And it was Boyd who welcomed Masson into the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ensemble, where he stayed from 2003 to 2011.

No wonder Masson wells up at the mention of Boyd’s name. The director died of cancer in August at the age of 68 and the actor keenly feels his loss. ‘I can’t tell you how devastated I am,’ he says.

‘Michael was the reason for so many of my opportunities. He’s in my heart and my brain every time I perform. He was an extraordinary man and Scottish theatre owes so much to him.’

Appropriately, it was through Boyd that he met director Michael Fentiman, who has now cast him in a one-man version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll And Hyde. Adapted by Gary McNair, it tells the chilling story of hypocrisy and wayward science from the point of view of Dr Jekyll’s lawyer, Gabriel Utterson.

‘We’re not looking at hairy hands and false teeth,’ says Masson who’s taking on a role first performed by Audrey Brisson in 2022.

‘There’s a subtler approach here. It’s more about the psychology.’

The production will be Masson’s first time on the Lyceum stage in Edinburgh since 2003 when he appeared in Peter Arnott’s The

70 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Breathing House, another story of furtive Victorian impulses. ‘The Breathing House was all about the dark underbelly of Edinburgh,’ says the Falkirk actor. ‘And Jekyll And Hyde was so shocking that Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife allegedly burned the initial manuscript. It has everything from gothic horror to the duality of the soul and a society that is corrupt underneath. It’s about humanity and primal urges. And there’s the stuff that’s happening politically: all those politicians that are supposed to be looking after us and are monsters underneath.’

Ever creative, Masson is also returning to former glories as he works on a musical version of The High Life, the cult BBC sitcom in which he and Cumming played cabin crew members Steve McCracken and Sebastian Flight, camping it up on a budget airline. Working with playwright Johnny McKnight, director Andrew Panton and National Theatre Of Scotland, Masson is writing songs for a show in which he and Cumming will star in 2025, 30 years after they last prepared for landing.

‘If we don’t get a move on we’ll be dancing with Zimmers,’ laughs Masson, who is also working on a 40th-anniversary Victor And Barry book with Cumming, due to be published in July by 404 Ink. ‘It’s going to be fun. It’s lovely that people still remember it fondly. I’ve been watching it again and it does stand up. It’s camp old pish, but it’s funny.’

Jekyll And Hyde, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday 13–Saturday 27 January.

Sarah Wood Project Paradise

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09.12.23–21.01.24 45 Market Street Edinburgh

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 71

Sarah Wood Project Paradise (still), 2023. Courtesy the artist.

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Hayao Miyazaki has created another off-kilter, often baffling animation that will nonetheless leave audiences enchanted. If this does turn out to be the Studio Ghibli master’s swansong, James Mottram considers it a fitting finale

he last time Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of legendary Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli, made a film, it was a decade ago. 2013’s The Wind Rises, a fictionalised biography of the Mitsubishi A5M aircraft designer, was meant to be Miyazaki’s swansong having announced his retirement. But now, aged 82, he’s back with The Boy And The Heron, a new animation certain to delight fans of earlier films such as Howl’s Moving Castle and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away.

It might even be that Miyazaki would prefer this film not to be reviewed at all and for audiences to discover it for themselves.

When it was released in Japan earlier this year, Studio Ghibli took the unusual decision to open the movie without trailers, images, synopsis or casting announcements; just a single enigmatic-looking poster to tease viewers. Such tactics worked, with the film enjoying the biggest ever opening weekend at the box office in Japan for a Studio Ghibli movie, grossing 1.83 billion yen (around £9.7m).

72 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Originally, The Boy And The Heron was inspired by a book, Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, although Miyazaki has taken this in a very different direction. It begins in Tokyo during World War II when the Japanese city faced fierce bombing. A young boy, Mahito (voiced in the original Japaneselanguage version by Soma Santoki) loses his mother in a fire.

Grief-stricken, he must later contend with the fact that his father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) remarries his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), and moves them out to the countryside.

The family relocates into an estate populated by chattering old maids, who like nothing better than smoking and gossiping.

Mahito also encounters a large bird that patrols the grounds.

‘What are you?’ he asks. ‘Not an ordinary grey heron?’ This proves to be rather perceptive: he soon discovers that this feathered beast is a goblin-like creature disguised as a bird.

Moreover, the heron claims that Mahito’s mother is still alive and that he can lead him to her. ‘She is waiting your rescue.’

it’s anchored with an emotional currency. Indeed, for what might well be Miyazaki’s last film, it’s surely his most personal.

Like the characters here, his family relocated after the bombing of Tokyo, and he’s talked before about a strong attachment to his mother. At one point a character mutters, ‘I have grown old’, which feels as if it’s come from the ageing Miyazaki himself.

Aesthetically, the film is a thing of beauty, from Joe Hisaishi’s melodic score to the lush animation. Whether it’s the horrifying fires that open the film, or the tranquil countryside where Mahito’s family mansion is, the artwork is simply stunning. As for the voice cast, the English-dubbed version (available to UK viewers, as is the original) includes Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. But however you choose to watch it, this latest Miyazaki masterpiece will leave you enchanted. And its message, to ‘create a world of bounty, peace and beauty’, is one for the ages.

The Boy And The Heron is in cinemas from Friday 29 December.

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So begins an increasingly strange dip into Miyazaki’s vivid imagination. When Mahito follows the grey heron, he plunges into a fantasy land populated by flocks of pelicans and armies of maneating parakeets. There are also curious white puffy creatures called Warawara, which inflate and float to earth ‘to be born’ as humans.

Mahito (which means ‘sincere one’) is the Dante figure, taken through the circles of this universe by his Virgil-like guide Kiriko (Ko Shibasaki), a seafaring woman with a spirit of adventure.

While Mahito’s stepmother Natsuko also disappears, adding to the film’s layers, Miyazaki’s magical mystery tour centres around a strange giant power-wielding stone, formed by a meteorite, and a tower that’s been built around it. The story goes that the tower was built by Natsuko’s great-uncle (Shōhei Hino), who was said to have read too many books and gone mad.

Of course, he will play a crucial role in Mahito’s journey, one that gets stranger by the second as characters in this underworld begin to resemble those on the surface. However off-kilter The Boy And The Heron can be (and sometimes it is quite baffling),

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Amelia Troubridge’s urban cowboys

Over the last decade, Craig Atkinson’s Café Royal imprint has become a vital platform for British documentary photography.

Neil Cooper reports that a new exhibition underlines its role as a profound window on an old world in motion

Douglas Corrance’s art students

ince 2012, an array of artists have utilised Café Royal’s punky A5 zine-like format across some 600 editions (and rising) to produce a street-smart archive of a population at work, rest and play. These have ranged from short-form photo essays by well-known artists including Martin Parr and Syd Shelton, to less familiar but just as vital fly-on-the-wall witnesses to a pre-digital and pre-gentrified age.

All life is here, be it on red-brick streets, in back-street boozers and social clubs, out-of-season seaside towns and 1990s raves.

Middle-aged matriarchs scream in close-up at 1980s wrestling.

Ballardian breezeblock monoliths reach for the sky in what we used to call concrete jungles.

This exhibition consolidates Craig Atkinson’s tireless vision in collecting and curating the vast swathes of material on show. The front gallery sees every wall plastered from top to bottom with 70 poster-size images culled from Café Royal’s back catalogue. Blown up in this way, pictures of reggae sound systems, carnivals, solitary drinkers and kids posing on the bonnets of burnt-out cars resemble stills from some long lost 1970s Play For Today.

Janette Beckman’s punks

The back room lines up a copy of all 600 pamphlets in order of release, allowing viewers to flick through their contents as one might in their local library (if it’s still open). While some editions take in the sights of a dilapidated New York or Mexico, most stay local in what poet John Cooper Clarke, whose distinctive image features here, once dubbed a sociologist’s paradise.

Work close to home sees Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s a favoured focus of Virginia Turbett, Peter Degnan and Hugh Hood, while John Walmsley captures the life and soul of 1979 Wester Hailes. Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert takes a look at Longannet Colliery, David Levenson zooms in on The Burry Man ritual, and Douglas Corrance takes a broad view of Scotland from the 60s to the 80s.

As an ongoing body of work, Café Royal Books becomes an ever-expanding collection of short stories that make up a much bigger picture of a world in motion, much of which no longer exists. The noise, smoky breath, poverty and pride contained within its pages become collective acts of accidental immortality, captured in a riot of living history.

Café Royal Books, Stills, Edinburgh, until Saturday 10 February.

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76 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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GROUP SHOW

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The Recent 

PICTURE: SALLY JUBB

In Dorothy Cross’ majestic video-work ‘Stalactite’, a just-prepubescent chorister stands beneath a 500,000-year-old stalactite, his lungs and vocal cords filling the Doolin Cave in Country Clare with an ethereal song he’ll soon lose the ability to generate. Above his awkward, backlit frame, shoulders already in the throes of a growth spurt, the millennia-old shard of water-borne minerals hangs as if in judgement of this tiny figure below, mutely measuring the fragment of time during which his body will be animated with life.

This work, Talbot Rice director Tessa Giblin explains, was foundational to the gallery’s conception of The Recent. It brings together 11 artists working on areas connected to deep time, many exploring how human beings can forge patterns of kinship with the rhythms of a non-human universe. Aren’t there enough shows about deep time already? Perhaps, but somehow it seems the wrong question to ask. Unlike other zeitgeisty artworld themes, considering the ancient geological origins of our planet is only going to seem more urgent over as the climate crisis bites. In any case, The Recent combines these concerns with a focus on non-Eurocentric voices and sensibilities, putting a spin on the ideas in play by foregrounding mimetic, affective ways of living and thinking within the natural world that subvert post-Enlightenment empiricism.

Take Angelica Mesiti’s ‘Future Perfect Continuous’, a film in which young performers use clicking, slapping, clapping and rubbing sounds to recreate a rainstorm, based on a game Mesiti overheard in a Paris schoolyard. The sense that we are witnessing some pre-verbal bonding ritual, not only between a group of people just acquiring the full contours of their characters, but with the atmospheric conditions that have shaped human evolution in a grander sense, is palpable and curiously moving.

In a similar vein are Australian artist Mikala Dwyer’s vivid wall murals alluding to Aboriginal cave paintings, Regina de Miguel’s eco-surrealist gouache and watercolour pictures, and Otobong Nkanga’s lush textile frieze. These and several other pieces have the capacity to re-sensitise the viewer to something of the wonder and mystery of being in this world. (Greg Thomas)  Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Saturday 17 February.

Mikala Dwyer's Diamonds

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ALL OF US STRANGERS

(Directed by Andrew Haigh)  Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s follow-up to his acclaimed drama 45 Years is a free adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s ghostly 1987 novel Strangers. The 80s are a big influence on this version, which re-fashions the book’s hetrosexual narrative as a gay British love story, but Haigh’s mixing of that Japanese novel’s supernatural elements with local pop culture creates jarring cultural whiplash.

Andrew Scott plays Adam, a frustrated writer living in a seemingly deserted yet modern tower block. The only other inhabitant is Harry (Paul Mescal), who makes an awkward pass at the remote, introverted Adam. As the men’s tentative relationship develops, Adam slips into a fantasy world to meet his own deceased parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy), who died in an accident some 30 years previously. Harry and Adam enjoy ketamine-fuelled outings together, but is the weight of his unhappy past too substantial for Adam to escape and enjoy a future relationship with Harry?

With a stellar cast assembled, All Of Us Strangers is an awards front-runner, but Haigh’s lofty intentions prove intermittently mawkish here. The notion that Adam’s parents could potentially be evil spirits isn’t well developed at all and, by the third play of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power Of Love’, audiences may feel that Haigh is as much in thrall to the story’s nostalgic trimmings as Adam is.

All Of Us Strangers is a story about a gay man seeking validation: from partners, from parents, and even from ghosts. The reliably intense Scott is an ideal choice to play the cerebral yet naïve Adam, while Foy and Bell manage to make his parents more than just dated sitcom caricatures. An acting masterclass elevates All Of Us Strangers, but increasingly excessive sentiment stops Haigh from hitting the dramatic high spots he’s previously achieved. (Eddie Harrison)  In cinemas from Friday 26 January.

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(Directed by William Oldroyd)  Anne Hathaway bewitches in a slow-burn thriller about an unlikely friendship that ignites between two prison workers and threatens to destroy them both. Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed 2015 novel becomes a slippery devil of a film, one whose modern sensibility and female focus fuses with Hitchcockian stylings and an askew, Samuel Fuller-like spin on noir.

Viewed through a grainy, retro lens, the film tells the story of Eileen Dunlop (Jojo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie), a secretary at a New England juvenile detention facility in the 60s. Drained by the demands of her alcoholic, former police-chief father (Shea Whigham), Eileen fixates on Hathaway’s glamorous, convention-flouting counsellor Rebecca when she arrives in her life. Unfortunately, Rebecca bears all the hallmarks of a classic femme fatale as she draws her young co-worker into drinking and danger.

Scripted by Moshfegh in collaboration with husband Luke Goebel, this is the second feature from Lady Macbeth director William Oldroyd, and shares that film’s doom-laden atmosphere, though leavened by dashes of well-employed humour. Bringing a smattering of Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling to her portrayal, McKenzie excels as a dowdy, faintly disturbed smalltown girl who senses an opportunity for escape. Alongside blonde bombshell Hathaway, they make an invigorating odd couple. (Emma Simmonds)  In cinemas from Friday 1 December.

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COMEDY

FRED ARMISEN

Comedy For Musicians But Everyone Is Welcome 

PICTURE: DAVID MOIR/NETFLIX

78 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Fred Armisen’s comedic abilities are beyond question. He’s the co-creator and star of Portlandia, undertook a decade-long stint writing and performing in Saturday Night Live, and is the guy who regularly pops up in a raft of other US TV shows from Wednesday to Curb Your Enthusiasm. His musical capabilities have also been proven over the years, through memorable SNL parody songs and in his criminally underrated Documentary Now! series.

But in his guise as a live comedian, Armisen is relatively untested. Comedy For Musicians is the follow-up to his debut show, Standup For Drummers, released as a Netflix special in 2018. For the most part, this new one consists of exactly what its title concisely alludes to. If you go in expecting a series of barely connected music-based observations that all begin with ‘have you ever noticed?’ or ‘this is my impression of’, then you’ll leave happy. Many of these disjointed skits elicit a chuckle, but when the person performing them is as talented as Armisen, their simplicity can feel like a case of wasted potential.

One example: his history of punk strumming is hilarious in its accuracy, but as soon as he’s pastiched one genre he’s onto the next without giving those jokes any room to breathe. Hyper-specific impressions are very funny and bolstered

by Armisen’s winning persona, but his reliance on a pre-programmed iPad for their execution becomes wearisome.

That’s not to say the audience didn’t have a great time. Even the more banal moments elicited frenzied applause, and Armisen finished his lukewarm hour to a standing ovation as though through some alchemical act he’d turned this British audience American. For those less in thrall, this is an erratic and at times self-indulgent roll call of the performer’s party tricks. For Armisen’s next tour, he could benefit from ditching his iPad and returning to the DIY ethos of the punk music that he’s so clearly enamoured with. (Matthew Hayhurst)  Mono, Glasgow, Monday 4 December; reviewed at EartH Theatre, London.

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Released to mark the rebranding of our premium Scotch whisky, the new look has been created to capture Scotland’s cultural connection with ‘the water of life’.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 79

PREVIEW OF 2024

PREVIEW OF 2024 As we say ta-ta to ‘23, it’s time to look at 24 of the hottest individual events occurring across this upcoming year. Along the way, you’ll find a history of video games, a surrealist Australian stand-up, a seminal modern movie’s sequel, and the biggest musical of our times

ART

GEORGE WYLLIE: SPIRES To launch a new museum dedicated to the influential legacy of this legendary Glasgow artist, Spires investigates Wyllie’s sculptural project that he began exploring in the early 1980s, believing these objects to signify community and unification.  The Wyllieum, Greenock, Thursday 28 March– Sunday 11 August.

KIMONO: KYOTO TO CATWALK It may be a fashion item that not many of us can carry off in public, but this wide-ranging exploration should offer a different perspective on this iconic garment.  V&A Dundee, Saturday 4 May–Tuesday 7 January.

GAME ON

PICTURE: ALEX LAKE

Just over 20 years after first opening its doors in Edinburgh, this interactive exhibition covering the history of video games is back and fully updated to cover the huge developments which have occurred since.  National Museum Of Scotland, Edinburgh, Saturday 29 June–Sunday 3 November.

ROMESH RANGANATHAN Are people inherently good or is working the angles the only way for humanity to succeed?

The all-conquering comic and podcaster asks this question as he brings us some Hustle.  King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 5 & Saturday 6 April; Edinburgh Playhouse, Thursday 16 & Friday 17 May.

TOMMY TIERNAN The Irish firebrand will be casting his insightful eye and unmatched wit upon the world as he sees it with, and it had to happen sometime, Tommedian.  Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, Saturday 6 April; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sunday 7 April.

DANCE

CARLOS ACOSTA

SAM CAMPBELL

On Before is this Cuban icon’s most personal work yet, as he pays homage to his late mother with a score ranging from Handel to Omar Puente.  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 16 & Saturday 17 February.

The 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner brings us more of his extraordinary and unique stand-up in Wobservations. If you haven’t experienced the Australian's chaos in a live setting, you might have seen him set fire to Taskmaster.  Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Wednesday 6– Sunday 10 March; The Stand, Glasgow, Monday 11 March.

A revival of Matthew Bourne’s take on the Tim Burton movie is arguably the most visually exotic work his New Adventures team have created to date.  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 14– Saturday 18 May; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tuesday 21–Saturday 25 May.

COMEDY

80 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

ROSIE JONES Nominated for Outstanding Show at Melbourne, Triple Threat continues to raise this comic’s stock: is she a national treasure or a little prick? Her words.  Glasgow Glee, Wednesday 27 March.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

Clockwise from left: Ballet Black, Edward Scissorhands, Argylle, Romesh Ranganathan

BALLET BLACK

FILM

ARGYLLE This looks a blast: a spy action-comedy about an author (Bryce Dallas Howard) whose espionage novels appear to be coming to life.

Sam Rockwell, Dua Lipa, Samuel L Jackson and Catherine O’Hara are a mere sample of a starry ensemble cast.  In cinemas from Friday 2 February.

BORDERLANDS Eli Roth directs this sci-fi action-comedy based on the 2009 video game, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershon and Jack Black.  In cinemas from Friday 9 August.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX No one was expecting a sequel to Todd Phillips’ Oscar-winning 2019 epic, but here it comes anyway. And it’s a musical! Joaquin Phoenix is back in the title role with Lady Gaga transforming into Harley Quinn.  In cinemas from Friday 4 October.

WICKED PART ONE As its title suggests, this is the first of a two-part cinematic telling of the classic modern musical.

Digging into the origin story of the two witches from Wizard Of Oz, it stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba with Ariana Grande playing Glinda.  In cinemas from Wednesday 27 November.

KIDS

TALKS

THE BADDIES

CANDACE BUSHNELL

Joe Stilgoe provides the songs as Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s 2021 tale of a witch, a troll and an ancient ghost takes the stage.  Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 4–Sunday 20 October

Fans of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte can rejoice as their creator takes her True Tales Of Sex, Success And Sex And The City (quite a mouthful, that) on the road.  King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 9 February; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Saturday 10 February.

MUSIC

SCOTTISH OPERA: MARX IN LONDON!

JON RONSON

Jonathan Dove’s grand-farce opera makes its UK debut, featuring Roland Wood in the role of Karl Marx as we follow the iconic thinker during one madcap day in 1871.  Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tuesday 13, Thursday 15, Saturday 17 February; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 22, Saturday 24 February.

Fifteen years after his first investigation into them, the journalist and broadcaster wonders whether psychopaths are now finally running the world.  Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, Tuesday 22 October; Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 23 October.

SNJO: NU AGE SOUNDS

Quite simply the most lauded musical in modern history makes it way north for a two-month residency. Will you be in the room where it happens?  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 28 February–Saturday 27 April.

Gathering up for a pair of very special gigs is a collection of the country’s finest jazz stars including Fergus McCreadie, Kitti and corto.alto.  Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Saturday 2 March; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sunday 3 March.

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Damian Barr co-adapts his own memoir of coming out in North Lanarkshire during the time of Thatcher.  Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wednesday 8– Saturday 11 May; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 11–Saturday 15 June.

He may have largely recused himself from the music industry many years ago, but Matt Johnson still reels the fanbase in whenever he announces a new tour. This is his crew’s first Scottish date since 2018.  Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 25 September.

Directed by Elizabeth Newman, Pitlochry will be alive to the sound of this iconic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.  Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Friday 15 November–Sunday 22 December.

It’s Tay Tay time!  Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Friday 7– Sunday 9 June.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

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Mthuthuzeli November and Sophie Laplane (choreographer-in-residence at Scottish Ballet) combine to produce a double bill under the umbrella of Heroes.  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 18 June.

82 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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staying in FESTIVE TV Sitcom Christmas specials? Check.

Agatha Christine whodunnit and a spot of family-friendly animation? Yup. Quiz shows and reality extravaganzas reaching their grand finales? Present and correct. We could all probably create our own perfect Christmas smallscreen viewing schedule but people get paid serious money to get it right at this time of year. Among the more intriguing looking TV treats is All Gold, with Spandau Ballet’s Kemp brothers taking themselves even less seriously than they did with 2020’s All True; CBBC modernises The Famous Five; there’s a miscarriage of justice tale in ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office; and Netflix airs the Chicken Run sequel, Dawn Of The Nugget. (Brian Donaldson) n See list.co.uk for TV reviews in the run-up to Christmas.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 83

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New podcast Lasagna Ganja aims to uncover home truths about all things marijuana. Co-host Tammy Pettigrew, aka The Cannabis Cutie, talks to Rachel Cronin about decriminalisation and demolishing lazy stoner stereotypes

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eed. Green. Grass. Magic cabbage. Cannabis has hundreds of slang names, but there’s so much more to pot culture than what you call it. DCP Entertainment’s new podcast demystifies the herb-heavy layers that make up this so-called ‘ganja lasagna’, while smoking out myths and misconceptions about marijuana. Lasagna Ganja is hosted by multi-platinum rapper Xzibit (when he’s not performing with 50 Cent) alongside cannabis educator and advocate Tammy ‘The Cannabis Cutie’ Pettigrew. Joined by celebrity guests and pot professionals, our dope duo cover everything from plantrelated politics and legislation to their own highs and lows with the herb.

Recorded in California where cannabis is fully legal, Lasagna Ganja advocates for wider decriminalisation.

‘Criminalising the usage of a plant is inhumane,’ exclaims Pettigrew, one half of our pro-hash hosts. ‘It’s cruel.

It just does not make any kind of sense. Like can you imagine being penalised for eating grapes? Or tomatoes?

Or, you know, oregano? In America, if you get the crime of a cannabis conviction, we can legally discriminate against you. We can say, “you can’t live here. You can’t go to school here. You can’t buy a house. You can’t have a passport. You can’t vote.” So, decriminalisation needs to be the first step.’

On top of talking dope law, the first few episodes showcase our hosts’ best anecdotes and first-time experiences with marijuana. The Cannabis Cutie herself was a self-proclaimed ‘square’ until she was in college. Receiving consistent bad grades while watching the campus stoner overachieving, she was prompted to turn over a new leaf. ‘I was like, “you know what, if you’re doing good in school, and I’m over here struggling, then maybe this isn’t so bad after all”,’ continues Pettigrew. ‘I consumed cannabis for the first time and it changed my life forever. And then I made honour roll four times.’

A new episode of the podcast is released on listening platforms every Thursday, where our hosts and special guests will continue to contradict the seedy stereotypes associated with stoners. ‘Once upon a time, the “lazy stoner” was a trope,’ explains Pettigrew. ‘But if you look at Sha’Carri Richardson, the American track star, she was disbarred from competing because it was considered a performance-enhancing drug. Your body was engineered to receive this plant. You’re not crazy to think that it’s helping you with three different things at one time.’  Episodes on dcpofficial.com/lasagnaganja

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84 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

Our alphabetical column on viewing marathons reaches the letter T When Kevin remarks to his brother Randall that he learned to swim because of the river of tears that filled their house when growing up, viewers of This Is Us (Disney+) knew exactly what he meant. Has there been a show before or since that evoked everything from gentle weeping to outlandish wailing each and every single episode? Despite its potentially convoluted era-hopping structure to follow a family across several generations, the writing, performances and casting are flawless as we track the Pearsons, helmed by wannabe singer mum Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and perfect yet haunted dad Jack (Milo Ventimiglia).

No such heightened emotions really mattered when it came to Twin Peaks (Prime Video/NOW) which was just too busy rewriting the rules of television from its 1990 inception through to a 2017 return (called The Return). David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surreal soap was a murder mystery, family drama, offbeat comedy and existential musing on life, death and the outer limits. Among its many vivid characters are The Log Lady, The One-Armed Man, The Man From Another Planet, The Giant, Killer Bob, a cop called Harry S Truman, FBI special agent Dale Cooper, an uppity llama, and a gossipy myna bird called Waldo. (Brian Donaldson)  Other T binges: Then You Run (NOW), This Is England (Channel 4), The Thick Of It (BBC iPlayer).

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The audience has to feel they are inside the plane

Society Of The Snow is in cinemas from Friday 15 December and on Netflix from Thursday 4 January.

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In one of this year’s most visceral film experiences, Society Of The Snow brings a gut-churning true survival story to the screen. Director JA Bayona tells James Mottram why he’s pulling no punches in retelling the horror of this 1972 Andes plane crash and its nightmarish aftermath

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hen Spanish director JA Bayona was researching 2012’s The Impossible, his staggering telling of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated parts of Thailand and beyond, he came across Pablo Vierci’s book Society Of The Snow. Published in 2009, it remains the definitive account of what happened in October 1972 when a plane from Uruguay carrying 45 souls (many from the Montevideo-based Old Christians rugby union club) crash-landed in the Andes. With rescuers abandoning all hope of finding survivors, those who weren’t killed on impact were left to battle hostile surroundings, with little food and plummeting temperatures.

While the events have previously been portrayed in the 1993 film Alive, Bayona became determined to adapt the story himself in Spanish, an ambition that’s taken over a decade to realise, and one he’s achieved with remarkable verisimilitude. ‘I wanted to be as close as possible to reality,’ he says. ‘The audience has to feel they are inside the plane. You can understand what they went through only if you understand and feel the context that is the loneliness up there, the cold, the lack of food and being so hungry.’

As anyone aware of the story will know, those who survived (a torturous 72 days) did so by eating the flesh of those who died. Bayona doesn’t soft-soak the horror. ‘The families were very grateful for the fact that we never tried to sweeten up things,’ he says. ‘We showed the real life, what they went through, so each one of the audience can make their own idea about what happened.’

Casting Argentinean, Mexican and Uruguayan actors to aid authenticity (including Enzo Vogrincic, the charismatic newcomer who plays the film’s narrator Numa Turcatti), Bayona shot at a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Granada, Spain. But he also travelled to the Andes to film the very spot where the plane crashed. ‘We had to be there to understand what it was to do the film,’ says Bayona. ‘And it was very, very impressive.’

From the devastating plane crash, as seats buckle and legs snap, to the horrifying avalanche that later hits survivors, Society Of The Snow is one of the most visceral films you’ll see all year. Even tiny moments, like watching one person’s urine turn black due to malnutrition, sends shivers down the spine. ‘To me, cinema should feel like an experience,’ says Bayona. ‘It’s not only about what you tell . . . it’s how you tell the story.’

FROM THE PRODUCERS OF

A CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

W O R L D ’S B I G G E S T PA N T O A R E N A T O U R

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86 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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In this Q&A, we throw some questions about ‘firsts’ at debut authors. For the final back and forth of 2023, we feature Tobi Lakmaker, author of The History Of My Sexuality, an irreverent tale of one girl’s chaotic journey through her 20s

PICTURE: WILLEMIEKE KARS

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What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? I remember

reading The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren during a vacation in France. I didn’t make eye contact with any of my family members for two days.

What was the first book you read that made you decide to be a writer? Turgenev’s First Love made a big impression on me. I re-read it a few years

ago and found it quite misogynous, but when I first read it, around 17, I was impressed

by Turgenev’s ability to capture this feeling of first love and infinite beginning.

What’s your favourite first line in a book? It’s from Willem Elsschot’s novel

Cheese. ‘Waar zwangerschap bestaat, volgt het baren vanzelf, ten gepaste tijden.’

Loosely translated, it says that where pregnancy exists, bearing will follow at the appropriate time. It doesn’t refer to childbirth of course but to so-called creative outbursts, and I find it quite consoling.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you? Blue Mondays by Arnon Grunberg. It’s about a very lonely young man in Amsterdam who tries to find intimacy in the clumsiest ways.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day? I

make up my bed so that my possible failures later that day can be answered with at least one achievement.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? I mostly try to empty my mind, which in practice means that I watch all possible

highlights from the English Premier League and the Eredivisie, the Dutch first league.

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? I would burn all Harry

Potter books, keep the billions and give them to transgender-rights organisations, just to show JK Rowling where the real magic happens. Oh, I’ve misread the question: this is what I would do in a utopian civilisation.

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist?

Treat your mind like Cristiano Ronaldo treats his body: with love and utmost care.

The History Of My Sexuality is published by Granta on Thursday 18 January.

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In 1992, Alone In The Dark heralded one of gaming’s most popular and enduring genres: survival horror. With its limited inventory, underpowered protagonists and reliance on simple puzzles for progression, it heavily influenced the vastly more successful likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Because it never gained the traction of those franchises, it has been rebooted twice already (on top of numerous sequels). And now comes a third attempt to break through.

This new game ‘reimagines’ the original, this time with David Harbour (Stranger Things) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) as the playable leads. It’s set in the same gothic mansion located in the US south, again infested with eldritch horrors inspired by the works of HP Lovecraft. The monster design has been overseen by Guy Davis, a key collaborator of Guillermo del Toro, and it’s written by Mikael Hedberg who penned one of gaming’s greatest narratives in the superbly creepy and existentially profound Soma.

With the huge successes of recent Resident Evil games, and numerous Silent Hill entries on the horizon, survival horror is in rude health. The impressive talent behind this new entry gives it a fighting chance. (Murray Robertson)  Released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Tuesday 16 January.

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TRUE DETECTIVE

Which podcast educates you? Sodajerker On Songwriting by Simon Barber and Brian O’Connor. There are over 250 episodes featuring interviews with world-class songwriters and it’s amazing to hear them unpack the complexities of the songwriting process. As a songwriter, it is fascinating to hear the stories behind some of history’s biggest songs.

PREVIEWS

Which podcast makes you laugh? I really enjoy Rob Beckett and Josh

Widdicombe’s Parenting Hell. There’s very little parental chat in it to be honest but Rob and Josh’s contrasting yet completely complementary personalities make for some hilarious storytelling.

Which podcast makes you sad or angry? Bible John: Creation Of A Serial Killer is an eye-opening listen. Created by Audrey Gillan and the BBC, it digs deep into three unsolved murders in Glasgow in the 1960s and concludes with some shocking revelations which should have made national news.

Which podcast is your guilty pleasure? I wouldn’t say I’m a believer in mythological creatures, but after listening to Yeti from the BBC, presenters Andrew Benfield and Richard Horsey have definitely got me thinking! I’ve yet to convince anyone else that the yeti exists though . . .

Tell us someone who currently doesn’t have a podcast but totally should, and why do you think their one would be amazing? I could listen

to Limmy tell his crazy, improvised stories for ages, so it’d have to be him.

Pitch us a new podcast idea in exactly 25 words This is lazy of me but I will ask celebrities to tell me their new podcast idea then that episode is said idea.

Too meta?

Keeping Edinburgh is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

88 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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In this column, we ask a pod person about the ’casts that mean a lot to them. This issue, it’s singersongwriter Gus Harrower, host of the Keeping Edinburgh podcast. A wellbeing ‘what’s on guide’ with a difference, it explores places and spaces across the capital, helping folk have more good days

There are many positions to be taken on most slices of culture, but a general consensus rules when it comes to weighing up the various seasons of True Detective. Having arrived with a whole heap of anticipation in 2014, the first set of episodes delivered the goods (and some) as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson pulled off performances of a lifetime. Their mismatched pair of crime-fighters struggled against a slew of corruption and depravity while attempting to uncover the brutal truth behind occultist slayings. We had reached peak Southern Gothic.

Could the second season even come close to matching that opener’s brilliance? Nope. No, it couldn’t. Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaughn did their best but a tale which revolved around the death of a crooked politician never quite took flight. On the back of that disappointment, many viewers might not even have bothered to switch on part three which was helmed by the excellent Mahershala Ali. But excitement is way back up at fever pitch with Jodie Foster on the trail of a possible serial killer (her CV has renowned form in this area) who may be responsible for the disappearance of some research scientists in a frozen Alaskan outpost. Foster teams up here with Kali Reis and yes, their characters have different ideas on how to go about carrying out investigative duties. Whether this pair can resurrect a once-majestic anthology series is another mystery that awaits to be unravelled. (Brian Donaldson)  Starts on Sky Atlantic and NOW, Monday 15 January.

” t e e r t s e h t f “of

Disco, Soul, motown 70s glittery fancy dress + prizes for best dressed DJ s , Glitter stall, Photobooth, food and drink!

Tickets at summerhall.co.uk 0131 560 1580 1, Summerhall, EH9 1PL @summerhallery

@summerhalledinburgh

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 89

18+ only. The management reserves the right to refuse entry. Line-up subject to change.

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REVIEWS

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Jyoti Patel’s debut novel explores grief and family tensions in multicultural London. But in this rave review, Isy Santini also hails The Things That We Lost as a tale bursting with love

hat begins as a mystery involving a key quickly becomes a search for identity and connection in Jyoti Patel’s debut novel The Things That We Lost. For 18-year-old Nikhil, a recent loss in the family dredges up questions about the father he never knew; questions that his mother, Avani, refuses to answer.

The story is told from the dual perspectives of Nikhil and Avani, jumping between the present, where Nikhil struggles to deal with his grief and adjust to life at university, and Avani’s own young adulthood in the 80s and 90s. As their parallel stories unfold, the similarities between mother and son subtly present themselves, making the breakdown in their relationship all the more heartrending. Correlations appear also in their experiences. Decades apart, they receive the same dirty looks and comments, and we see how they are caught between Gujarati and English culture, both being ‘Indian in the only way [they] know’.

The Things That We Lost is a beautiful novel; it feels real and honest, with characters that seem to lift off the page and come alive. Nikhil’s life and student experience are so familiar that he seems like a mate, while Avani could be a friend’s mother, both kind and distant. At times she comes across as selfish and cold, at others she appears small, vulnerable and afraid. When the true reason for her grief is revealed, it is done quietly and artfully, without unnecessary melodrama. The vibrant characters Patel creates gives this moment the impact it needs; there is even a sense of tenderness as though we are there to comfort Avani as she revisits a difficult memory.

Themes of grief, family and identity dance and mingle across the pages like a melody, inextricable from one another. They are there in Nikhil’s idolisation of his absent American stepfather, in his adolescent dramas, and in his hostile relationship with his uncle Chand, whose own struggle with family and identity is hinted at throughout. Despite its heavy subject matter, The Things That We Lost is a book bursting with love. As a reader, you can’t help but fall in for London’s multiculturalism, with the sounds of Gujarati, and, most of all, with Avani and Nikhil themselves.

The Things That We Lost is published by Merky Books on Friday 12 January.

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ALBUMS

SLEATERKINNEY

Little Rope (Loma Vista)  Opening an album with a track called ‘Hell’ is something of a gauntletslapping giveaway of things to come on Sleater-Kinney’s 11th outing, their fourth studio album since Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and drummer Janet Weiss reunited in 2014. With Weiss departing in 2019, Brownstein and Tucker may no longer be the punky upstarts of yore, but their confessional meditations on loss, grief, confusion and crisis are born from hard-lived experience.

This is certainly true on Little Rope, recorded in the shadow of the deaths of Brownstein’s parents in a car crash. While much of the album was written before the accident, it nevertheless gives this record its emotional heart. As Tucker sings on ‘Hunt You Down’, ‘the thing you fear the most will hunt you down’.

Despite this, Little Rope isn’t the unfettered howl you might expect.

Rather, the pain has been channelled into a well-crafted and eminently grown-up collection tinged with depth and nuance. That’s not to say any edges have been blunted. Producer John Congleton wraps things in a dense and crunchy sheen, but the rawness and vulnerability remain across the record’s ten tracks.

Second single, ‘Say it Like You Mean it’, is a last-gasp challenge to a departing lover that is both defiant and redemptive: it’s also a great pop song. As too is the stadium-sized bounce of ‘Crusader’. Most affecting moment of all comes on ‘Dress Yourself’, a spiky nouveau power ballad and cracked anthem-in-waiting for disaffected middle youth trying to keep it together. The artistry that pervades beyond this collection’s troubled pulse is itself a form of redemption, as Brownstein and Tucker try to make sense of the world on a record full of scars that sounds like a purging.

(Neil Cooper)  Released on Friday 19 January.

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KATE BRODY

Rabbit Hole (Bloomsbury)  REVIEWS

Teddy Angstrom’s world is in freefall. Her father has just killed himself by driving off a bridge on the tenth anniversary of her sister Angie’s disappearance. To make matters worse, she discovers he’s been embroiled for years in online chat communities where wild conspiracies abound about what happened to Angie on the night she vanished. This swamp of fake news and trolling brings amateur sleuth Mickey into Teddy’s orbit; it also prompts increasingly destructive behaviour in Teddy’s work life as a teacher and in her personal life too, where she embarks on a turbulent on/ off relationship with the older Bill, her family’s former gardener.

Kate Brody keeps the mystery elements fizzing along nicely throughout, without sacrificing characterisation. Teddy is a superb creation, independent yet vulnerable, her unravelling entirely believable. The author’s gritty, unsparing prose is propulsive, with her depictions of sex particularly visceral and unsentimental.

It all adds up to a dark, absorbing evocation of grief, loss and strained familial ties, painfully capturing how damaging the search for answers can be on the survivors of tragedy. A page-turner in the best sense, the most startling aspect of this brilliantly accomplished novel is that it’s Brody’s debut outing. (Paul McLean)  Published on Thursday 18 January.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 91

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i/o (Real World) 

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As Jack The Ripper roamed East London, a macabre fascination gripped the Victorians. A hunger for heinous acts and grisly tales sat in opposition to the era’s stiff morality that choked polite society. Writer Charley Miles explores this battle between purity and corruption in her adaptation of Elizabeth Macneal’s best-selling novel The Doll Factory.

Two sisters in 1850s London spend their days working in a doll shop painting the faces of dead children onto porcelain heads. But at night, deep-seated desires erupt from the rebellious Iris (Esmé Creed-Miles) as she dreams of becoming an artist. When she meets Silas (Éanna Hardwicke), a solitary taxidermist, and Louis (George Webster), a celebrated young painter, Iris will soon learn the difference between fiery passion and sickly obsession.

Director Sacha Polak uses her camera to investigate these tricky relationships. Panting close-ups of clawing fingers and curled toes show how easy it is to mistake pleasure for pain. Likewise, first-person camera shots remove any illusion of subjectivity. We instantly become the masked villain sneaking up on a damsel or the victim helplessly struggling with restraints. Polak creates two very distinct tones and while it achieves an uneasy atmosphere by switching back and forth, it unfortunately leads to a disconnect in the narrative.

Throughout, we are teased with faces in windows, whispered accusations and grainy memories. But the story’s truly twisted elements do not immediately invade the pretty frame that has been built around Iris and her quest for freedom. When they finally do, it is too late. Ultimately, The Doll Factory presents two interesting stories.

One is about scandal and intrigue in society’s upper echelon; the other belongs in the pages of a penny dreadful. They just haven’t had a chance to bond. (Rebecca Crockett)  All episodes available on Friday 1 December.

92 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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(Paramount+) 

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From the befuddled student-rock pomp of his Genesis period to later blueeyed soul and world-music shamanism, Peter Gabriel is surely one of our most singular cultural treasures. This long-gestated 12-track LP is finally released after a year of heavy international touring for Gabriel in which he released a new song on the occasion of every full moon. Like a Buddhist werewolf, he always brings spiritual connection to his drooling afflictions.

Things don’t get off to a great start: ‘Panopticom’ is pure cod King Crimson mired in countryside mud but without the prog muscle to pull itself out. Things begin to come alive with the urgent pop of ‘The Court’, a mild satire of modern mores. ‘Playing For Time’ perfectly showcases his more Randy Newman-ish tendencies towards a heartbreaking vignette. Early easy Cat Stevens gets strangled by synth on title track ‘i/o’ while ‘Four Kinds Of Horses’ and ‘Road To Joy’ are classic Gabriel, all kinetic soul and pop. ‘So Much’ is an odd but pleasing folk lament while ‘And Still’, ‘Olive Tree’ and ‘Love Can Heal’ play like off-cuts from his remarkable 1989 offering Passion. The less said about ‘This Is Home’ the better, while closer ‘Live And Let Live’ is a trite affair that only a performer with a previous messiah complex would even attempt.

Despite its failings, i/o is beautifully produced with a stunning cast of contributors, including Soweto Gospel Choir, Swedish all-male choir Oprhei Drängar, New Blood Orchestra, and Ríoghnach Connolly of The Breath. It also comes in an impressive variety of formats and in two stereo mixes marshalled by on-point mixers and ‘re-shapers’ Mark ‘Spike’ Stent and Tchad Blake.

Gabriel also commissioned wider artistic contributions to sit alongside this music from, among others, Ai Weiwei, Nick Cave and Olafur Eliasson. This is a hefty release for fans and completists alike. (Paul Dale)  Released on Friday 1 December.

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Keeping Edinburgh is Edinburgh’s new ‘what’s on’ guide with a difference Discover a new podcast with care and wellbeing at its heart As Scotland’s capital, and home to the biggest arts festival in the world, Edinburgh is well established as a thriving city with hundreds of arts, culture, and special interest activities and events happening all year round.

Yet Edinburgh, like many other areas across Scotland, the UK and wider world, is working to tackle social isolation and loneliness.

In 2022, research by the UK’s campaign to end loneliness, found that nearly 50% of adults (around 26 million people) in the UK, reported feeling some degree of loneliness. In fact, loneliness and social isolation are now recognised as one of the biggest Public Health issues in the world, and long-term, can lead to poor physical and mental health outcomes.

It’s this context that has led to the birth of brand-new podcast Keeping Edinburgh, a ‘what’s on guide with a difference’, now launched exclusively for citizens across the capital. The podcast aims to turn the spotlight on just some of the hundreds of community activities and organisations across the city that are helping people have more good days.

Each 30 minute exploratory audio journey goes behind the scenes of some of the wellbeing boosting initiatives on the doorsteps of Edinburgh’s communities and hears from the people benefitting.

The Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, who are behind the initial series, believe the podcast offers something for everyone. Dr Linda Irvine Fitzpatrick from the Partnership says: ‘It’s for the curious. There’s so much out there on our doorsteps to discover. It’s also an audio journey of stories – real stories, real life, and real heart. There’s a lot of good happening out there, despite what we hear and see in the news every day. The power of community is really amazing, and those who listen to this, will hear just that. If it also helps grow knowledge about what is out there, and if that knowledge inspires folks to reach out and connect and also tell others, then that can only be a good thing.’

The first two episodes of Keeping Edinburgh Podcast are available to download now at podfollow.com/ keepingedinburgh.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 93

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Get Wrong EP (Alcopop! Records) 

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Get Wrong is a new project from Naomi Griffin of Martha fame and Adam Todd of The Spook School. The pair’s debut single ‘It’s So Easy’ leads this five-track EP, a bouncy love song which sets the pace on a high-tempo 20-minute affair, in which each tune sounds as though it was specially curated for the soundtrack of an 80s coming-of-age film.

On ‘Purple’, in particular, you can picture arms flailing above the lowered roof of a convertible speeding off into the sunset. The first and only break from this pursuit of synth-induced euphoria comes on the EP’s final and most melancholic offering; ‘Crying My Eyes Out’ sounds exactly like the melodramatic feeling of listening to a happy song from the backseat of a taxi after a night out gone wrong.

Named after a colloquial phrase typically reserved for badly behaved children in the north-east of England, the duo approach their sound with a youthful sense of enthusiasm. They’re clearly unperturbed by the idea of making music that isn’t perfect or chucking in the odd dodgy lyric (see ‘happiness is a warm sandwich in the back of a Toyota Corolla’, for example).

Understandably, their sound doesn’t yet feel overly pristine or polished, but Get Wrong do more than enough to demonstrate they’re worth watching to see what comes next. (Danny Munro)  Released on Friday 1 December.

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SMOTHERED

(Apple TV+) 

REVIEWS

In this very hip and rather good comedy drama, Tom and Sammy are two young professionals negotiating the London property market with differing degrees of success. Sensible, protein-bar eating Tom (Jon Pointing) has somehow bagged a gentrified terrace from his job in comms. Sammy (Danielle Vitalis), a designer’s assistant, is in a chaotic flat share. They have both sworn off dating but meet at a karaoke club and contrive to have some public sex. A no-strings-attached fling ensues with a strict time limit: of course, by the end of it, they’re head over heels.

The romcom version of mild peril emerges when it’s revealed that Tom has a young child from a previous marriage and there are some further nicely timed twists to negotiate. But on the evidence of three episodes, our heroes will emerge all the stronger from their ensuing problems; like Sammy throwing a surprise party in Tom’s house packed with her Gen-Z, kink-adjacent friends on a night he had to take his daughter at the last minute.

There’s some great passages of writing and a nice, casual, flirtatious energy between the two leads. Meanwhile, some edgier turns from the supporting cast (like the always-great Aisling Bea) provide respite from an overarching sense that every character in this show is impeccably right-on. For a series whose first scene is set in a sex party, there’s a weird absence of real grit or cathartic truth-telling here regarding the actual chaos of love and sex. Sometimes, something is almost gestured at regarding the grimness of London life for young people who aren’t rich, the heartache of failed relationships, the release to be found in drugs, sex and occasionally being a complete arsehole, or (gasp) a bad parent. But not that often. Maybe this reviewer is too jaded: everyone has their kinks. (Greg Thomas)  Starts on Thursday 7 December.

94 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 95

STAYING IN

GAMES

THE 7TH GUEST VR

(SteamVR, PS VR2 and Meta Quest)  On its release 30 years ago, The 7th Guest helped bring about a seismic change in the way that games were made. At its core, it was a relatively simple collection of puzzles but, thanks to its ground-breaking use of CD-ROM technology, it took place in a gorgeously pre-rendered Queen Anne-style US mansion, filled with revolutionary full-motion video performances and a wonderful CD quality soundtrack by George ‘The Fat Man’ Sanger.

Now, Vertigo Games has reinterpreted The 7th Guest for VR and the result is a wonderful homage and brilliant puzzler in its own right.

Whereas the original game featured a single conundrum in each of its many rooms, here every location contains a number of brain-teasers.

These new puzzles are much more varied and visually interesting, and they’re tactile in a way that really suits VR. A sprawling train set features numerous controls that must be used to rearrange carriages in a specific order. Elsewhere, a set of top hats become trans-dimensional portals.

It’s all a long way from the first game’s simple tricks.

New theatrical set-pieces have been captured using ‘volumetric video’ which means that it’s possible to walk around the ghostly actors as they perform; it’s not quite as spooky as it sounds but it’s technically impressive. While the performances are a big improvement on the original’s famously hammy sequences, they’re knowingly arch and fit right into the setting. And although the mansion design has been slightly tweaked, fans of the first game will feel right at home; the house starts off in a ruinous state but progression helps to bring it back to life by dusting cobwebs and fixing its disrepair. There remains much love for this franchise and it’s great to see new technology and artistry being used to bring it bang up to date for a modern audience. (Murray Robertson)  Out now.

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PODCASTS

NORMAL WOMEN

REVIEWS

(HarperCollins) 

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96 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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In her new podcast, historical novelist Philippa Gregory creates a social history of women, from the leaders of the Peasant’s Revolt to the factory workers of Victorian London. It’s a welcome departure from Gregory’s usual focus on royalty, and she manages to weave together stories of little-known women into a compelling tapestry, from the 12th century to the modern day.

Each episode focuses on a certain aspect of women’s history, starting out with a truly superb episode on riots. Gregory excels in not just relating individual instances of rioting throughout history, but in using those to explain how the position of women and their relationship with the law and government has changed over the centuries. This episode, in particular, challenges the listener in a way that pod history rarely does, and it’s a breath of fresh air.

The one area in which Normal Women occasionally falls down is the variable quality of its guests. The third episode suffers from the inclusion of two TikTok stars, who tend to just reword what Gregory has said rather than moving the discussion forward. But when genuine experts, such as feminist theorist and historian Sheila Rowbotham, are welcomed onto the podcast, Normal Women proves educational and thought-provoking. (Isy Santini)  New episodes available every Thursday.

STAYING IN PICTURE: TOM HAM

Idles (and bottom from left), We Are Lady Parts, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl

PREVIEW OF 2024 When you’re taking a break from all that live entertainment, hunker down with some of these indoor treats across the coming year. Among the highlights below are a comeback from a Scottish jazz chanteuse, an acclaimed poet moving into novel-writing, and the final series of a beloved twisty TV show ALBUMS

USHER

Very neatly coinciding with his upcoming Super Bowl half-time performance, Coming Home is Usher’s ninth studio album and his first in almost eight years.  Mega/Gamma, Sunday 11 February.

IDLES TANGK’s lead single ‘Dancer’ is already out so you might have some idea what to expect from the new collection by Joe Talbot and co.  Partisan Records, Friday 16 February.

LAETITIA SADIER

SIA The enigmatic Australian singer-songwriter unleashes Reasonable Woman, with anthemic single ‘Gimme Love’ already out there.  Atlantic, spring.

FEEDER

BRUCE DICKINSON

The Welsh indie-rockers are back with not one but two albums (it’s a double album). Frontman Grant Nicholas describes Black/Red as the end result of a ‘musical pilgrimage’.  Big Teeth Music, Friday 5 April.

The Mandrake Project is the Iron Maiden man’s first solo album since 2005, and has him reunited with long-time collaborator and producer Roy Z  BMG Records, Sunday 5 May.

GUN

ELBOW

Scottish veteran rock ruffians Gun release their first album since 2017 in the shape of Hombres, which was preceded by some big Christmas gigs and will no doubt be bolstered by appearances on the summer festival circuit.  Cooking Vinyl, Friday 12 April.

Guy Garvey and the gang are due to release an as-yet untitled tenth album to accompany an arena tour. They’re moving away from the theatre circuit of yore due to, as the man himself says, the band’s ‘very big songs’.  May.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 97

PREVIEW OF 2024

Rooting For Love finds the founding member of Stereolab reflecting on a turbulent world and collapsing institutions but looking to push past it all with melodies and hope.  Drag City, Friday 23 February.

NIKI KING The acclaimed Scottish jazz singer makes a longawaited return with The Everlasting Energy Of Love, a heartfelt take on love, loss, grief and renewal.  nikiking.com, February.

STAYING IN

BOOKS

GAMES

JOELLE TAYLOR

SKULL AND BONES

The TS Eliot Poetry Prize winner moves into the novel form with The Night Alphabet, set across various location and time zones, but all linked by violence, resilience and the stories of women.  Quercus, Thursday 15 February.

Piracy (of a naval kind) in the 17th century is at the heart of this game which has drawn inspiration from those seafaring battles of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.  Ubisoft, Saturday 9 March.

INSIDE NO 9 Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith bow out of their innovative anthology series with, fittingly, a ninth season. There’s talk of a stage show at some point, but for now just enjoy their final set of twist endings.  BBC Two, spring.

RU PAUL

STAR WARS OUTLAWS

RIVALS

From the international drag superstar comes a revealing and intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor and queer in a broken home before discovering a path towards acceptance and success.  4th Estate, Tuesday 5 March.

Taking place between the events captured in The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, this action-adventure affair revolves around a major heist which takes place across several planets.  Ubisoft, spring.

David Tennant, Danny Dyer and Aidan Turner are among the cast in an eight-part drama set in the high-flying world of 1980s independent television, adapted from Jilly Cooper’s saucy bonkbuster.  Disney+, summer.

MIRANDA JULY

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: HEART OF CHORNOBYL

WEDNESDAY

With All Fours, July’s first novel in a decade, she considers midlife female sexuality for the tale of a fortysomething LA mother with a multihyphenate creative career.  Canongate, Thursday 16 May.

This first-person shooter survival horror game published by Ukrainian developer GSC was held up due to the war and changed its location’s spelling away from the Russian form.  GSC Game World, spring.

Jenna Ortega aka the new queen of horror is back for more comedically creepy capers at Nevermore Academy.  Netflix, autumn.

ALAN CUMMING AND FORBES MASSON

TV

The second season of Nida Manzoor’s comedy about an all-female Muslim punk band returns for more japes with Anjana Vasan leading the way again after her fine recent performance in Black Mirror.  Channel 4, date tbc.

MR AND MRS SMITH

The actor pals have dug deep into their memory banks to tell the full unexpurgated story of Victor & Barry, their Kelvinside luvvies who parodied the hell out of modern Glasgow before being killed off in mysterious circumstances.  404 Ink, Thursday 25 July.

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine take the title roles in this reimagining of the 2005 Brangelina movie which itself was very (very) loosely based on Hitchcock’s 1941 film.  Prime Video, Friday 2 February.

HARRIET WALTER

FALLOUT

For She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Say, the acclaimed actress reads between the lines to consider what Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, Juliet’s nurse, Ophelia and many others were actually thinking.  Virago, Thursday 3 October.

Set in a post-apocalyptic America, this is the TV version of a popular video game, and yes, the comparisons to The Last Of Us will be strong.

Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell and Kyle MacLachlan are among the stars.  Prime Video, Friday 12 April.

PREVIEW OF 2024

PICTURE: BBC/RICHARD ANSETT

Inside No 9 (and clockwise from top), Boarders, Star Wars Outlaws

98 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

WE ARE LADY PARTS

BOARDERS Daniel Lawrence Taylor (who in a previous life was one half of comedy duo Ginger And Black) is the creator of this comic drama which follows the lives of five underprivileged Black students from inner-city London who win scholarships to an elite school.  BBC Three, date tbc.

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PICTURE: MATILDA HILL JENKINS

THE

QA &

WITH ALEXIS TAYLOR Synthpop legends Hot Chip bring in 2024 as part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay with a DJ set at Concert In The Gardens (before headliners Pulp take to the stage), plus a free set on New Year’s Day in the First Footin’ music programme. Here, the band’s Alexis Taylor talks Tasmanian tigers, haunting a Pogue and hot beverage revelations

Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? John Lurie.

Who do you think the casting people would choose? Charlie Brown.

What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? ‘Not unless round is funny.’

If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? A backfrom-extinction thylacine.

If you were playing in an escape room, name two other people (wellknown or otherwise) you’d recruit to help you get out? Our cat Squibbsies and George Whetnall.

What’s the best cover version ever?

‘Mandy’ by Barry Manilow, turning Scott English’s depressing but brilliant drinking song ‘Brandy’ into a love song.

Whose speaking voice soothes your ears? Yinrun from Big Brother.

Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life? The chords to ‘My Ideal’ by Chet Baker.

Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people? I have never had a cup of coffee.

What’s the most hi-tech item in your home? A TV from the 1990s.

What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to, whether in public or private? ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ by Flatt and Scruggs.

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt? I want to be haunted by the ghost of your precious love; so Shane MacGowan. I’d hope to do the haunting with Sinéad O’Connor.

In all seriousness, I hope Shane is in a fit state to be haunted by my precious love for as long as possible; I don’t think he is very well.

Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion? Holiday Sidewinder.

If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be? The day I went on a date with my wife Kerri for the first time.

What’s your earliest recollection of winning something? In the last year of primary school, we won a borough-wide school football tournament and I was very proud to have played on that winning team.

What’s a skill you’d love to learn but never got round to? How to cook well; or have more confidence to try at least.

If you were to start a tribute act to a band or singer, who would it be in tribute to and what would it be called? Hot Chip. Not Chip.

When were you most recently astonished by something? This morning.

I went to a morning concert/congregation in memory of all the (known) homeless people who have died in the last year in London, with very moving speeches about particular people and a fantastic performance of Gavin Bryars’ ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’.

It was very intense, and very inclusive of all the people attending, and very moving.

As an adult, what has a child said to you that made a powerful impact?

A child who had lost his father (who I had worked with on music) said a lot to me through his own musical abilities that was truly beyond words.

When did you last cry? It was this morning.

Did you have a nickname at school that you were ok with? And can you tell us a nickname you hated? Lek. Alexis Colby.

By decree of your local council, you’ve been ordered to destroy one room in your house and all of its contents.

Which room do you choose? That’s easy as we have so much stuff that probably could do with destroying! The spare bedroom/place of hoarding.

If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage?

Brent Cross Shopping Centre.

Hot Chip play DJ sets at Concert In The Gardens, Edinburgh, Sunday 31 December, and at First Footin’, Virgin Hotel, Greyfriars Hall, Edinburgh, Monday 1 January.

December 2023–January 2024 THE LIST 101

BACK

When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances? A homeless person shouted ‘Harry Potter’ at me in about 2002.

Describe your perfect Saturday evening? Eating a Turkish meal with my family and having friends back to our house afterwards to listen to records and talk.

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hot shots Roald Dahl may no longer be exactly flavour of the month but his writing still is. Wonka is the latest cinematic take on his scribblings, as Timothée Chalamet (a dictionary definition of ‘flavour of the month’) takes on this eccentric role previously played with both relish and glee by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp.

There’s a lot to happen before Celtic Connections kicks off, but as ever, this annual celebration of all things traditional, folk and roots will be well worth the wait.

Across 18 days and nights (from 18 January) are multiple treats such as Altan, Margo Price, DakhaBrakha (pictured), Su-a Lee and Hannah Peel.

A pre-Christmas delight for contemporary classical fans arrives on 14 & 15 December as The Night With . . . launches its first full festival. Programmed by Matthew Whiteside, the emphasis is on intriguing music performed in informal locations with Justyna Jablonska (pictured) and Rylan Gleave among the players.

102 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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Torchlight Procession

DECEMBER

Carry a torch for charity and help shine a light on homelessness with Social Bite and presenting partners EventScotland.

Sing-along pop classics are the name of the game with international ABBA sensations Björn Again and Greatest Hits Radio.

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Bairns New Year Revels

DECEMBER

Tickets £17.50 / £14.50 (inc. fees)

First Footin’ FREE live music and performance throughout the city centre on New Year’s Day, featuring spectacular artists and collaborators inc. LAU, Fergus McCreadie, Hot Chip (DJ set), Becky Sikasa and much more…

Pop icons Pulp and special guests Hot Chip (DJ set) will have you dancing into 2024 and countdown to the spectatcular Midnight Fireworks from Edinburgh Castle.

Garden Tickets - £72.50 (inc. fees)

New Year Revels New Year Revels returns to the famous Assembly Rooms and will have you birlin’ through the bells with live music, DJs and Massaoke!

Family fun at the Assembly Rooms, with sing-along Fringe favourites Massaoke and nonstop Ceilidh.

JANUARY

Concert in the Gardens

DECEMBER

Bring in the bells, with live music, dancing, and the spectacular Midnight Fireworks!

DECEMBER

Night Afore Disco Party

DECEMBER

Tickets £70.00 (inc. fees)

Sprogmanay JANUARY

AND

Family Ceilidh FREE and unticketed, Sprogmanay presents lively performances and vibrant musical activities for all the family, including the incredible Unicorn Dance Party, Sprog Rock, plus much more!

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104 THE LIST December 2023–January 2024

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