'Celebrity Masterchef', Episode One
Playing fast and loose with the sobriquet "celebrity", twenty new faces lined up to be shouted at by Gregg Wallace and John Torode, a duo known primarily for sitting in separate rooms and pretending to...
View Article'Mr Holmes' - Review
If Christopher Nolan wrote and directed a Sherlock Holmes film, chances are it would look like Mr Holmes, the new movie from director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters). The story gives us a fresh take on...
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London's West End Live 2015
As great enthusiast for London's theatreland, West End Live is a treasure trove filled to the brim with amazing performances, exclusive theatre experiences and all-round good fun. I go every year to...
View ArticleNot a Single Clue Is Missing
This is a review of a BBC television series so good, so expertly plotted, so professionally edited, and performed by such talented actors and actresses - that it is literally impossible to review. By...
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Brothers, Forgotten Names and Stolen Chocolate: a Trip to Istanbul with Fink
Three things always happen when Fink go away on a trip of some sort. One is that someone asks if two of us are brothers. (At Los Angeles airport once, an old lady asked if all three of us were...
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15 Years of Attitude is Everything
Strange to think it now, but two decades ago it was actually quite unusual for disabled fans to watch live music. Even 15 years ago, when the UK's festival scene was in the midst of an amazing...
View ArticleWill Someone Tell the TV Industry That Not All Northerners Are Gruff, Golden...
If I was black I'd be pretty wary of television drama. Unlike white actors, who get cast as a range of people, you tend to get "the black guy" - not a character but a cipher, a stereotype: a gangsta, a...
View ArticleWhen Politics Becomes Blood Sport - Welcome to 'The Killing Season', Power...
One of my favourite foreign politicians when starting out with Tony Blair was then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. Clever, funny, tough, with a desire to batter the Tories that was closer to my...
View ArticleDownload Festival 2015: Sealed With a Kiss
Whether you were bothered about it being cashless, clashless, painless or pantsless, nothing is left from Download 2015 now but memories and bruises. Let's look at some of the highlights and exclusive...
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DIY, Not 'Me, Me, Me'
I was pleased to be among the few hundred people that gathered in the Camden Centre for Stand Up and Spit: The Big One, which saw stunning sets from poets including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Joolz, Attila...
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For Style, Classic One-Liners and Sheer Legend, 'Breakfast At Tiffany's'...
Whole industries and commercial ventures have been based on the 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's. From posters, to copycat film promos, to T shirt slogans and even a hit music record, (The...
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American Black Film Festival: A Conversation with Taraji P Henson
This year's American Black Film Festival was as much about contemporary classics as it was about glam galas. By far the hottest ticket of the event was Empire star Taraji P Henson in conversation with...
View ArticleWe Must Do More to Protect Our Cultural Heritage
For more than eighty years the British Council has recognised the value of cultural heritage across the globe, so the announcement that the British government will ratify the Hague Convention, as well...
View ArticleOpen City Documentary Festival: Observing the Grand Jury Winner
The Romanian documentary film Toto and His Sisters was this year's Grand Jury award winner of the Open City Documentary Festival. The British Council's Darya Bassel from the jury panel read out a...
View ArticleTheatre Review: The Seagull at Regent's Park. Monday June 22 2015
Bollocks. I always thought that was a good word to express frustration. In my own abortive attempt to adapt The Cherry Orchard, "Bollocks" is the opening line, said by Dunyasha when failing to light a...
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Review: Barbara Hepworth, Tate Britain - A Great Sculptor, But Not a Great...
When I wrote my list of Top 10 art exhibitions to see in London in 2015, I had this Barbara Hepworth exhibition at Tate Britain at the top of the list. And though the pieces on show are a testament to...
View ArticleJurassic World: Why We Have 12A and What It Means
I've been in the job of Director of the British Board of Film Classification for ten years now, and I still sometimes see some confusion about what the 12A certificate means...though less than there...
View Article'The Elephant Man' - Bravo, Brad
Bradley Cooper's powerful performance as Joseph Merrick, AKA 'The Elephant Man', transforms Bernard Pomerance's dry play into a romantically heartbreaking tale. Distorting his body and face, Cooper...
View ArticleLazy at Best, Harmful at Worst: Dapper Laughs and the Problems With Sexist...
Following the cancellation of ITV's "Dapper Laughs: On the Pull" in November 2014, comedian Daniel O'Reilly seemed to vanish from the mainstream media, leaving many of us to hope that he had finally...
View ArticleLondon Open City Documentary Festival: The Need for More Documentaries
Flanked by other summer documentary and ethnographic film festivals (Royal Anthropological Institute Ethnographic Festival, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, Edinburgh Documentary or the East End...
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