The Cultural Crunch

It's Halloween so join me for a round-up of some of the spookiest theatrical experiences I've had this year. My quest for scares began in January at The Hampstead Theatre. In A Ghost in Your Ear Jamie Armitage uses binaural technology to create a terrifying soundscape, transporting the headphone-wearing audience to a studio for the audiobook recording of a particularly tale. As the evening...

In this episode, I have a real literary treat for you. First, we’re heading to a rather special location in West London: a lovely, sunny writer’s shed at the bottom of James Dunford Wood’s garden. It’s an intimate setting for a fascinating conversation with four experienced authors who have joined forces to meet the challenges of today’s increasingly competitive publishing world. They’ve formed a...

Matilda Ziegler and Agni Scott are old friends, both actresses whose stage and screen work spans decades. In the late eighties Mattie was known to millions as Donna in Eastender s and more recently she played Rowan Atkinson's love interest, Mr Bean's girlfriend Pearl. Agni starred alongside Harry Connick Jr. in the Netfilx hit romantic comedy Find Me Falling, set in Cyprus where where she...

This is the first of two special editions of The Cultural Crunch from Edinburgh Festival. There really is no better place to be in August, when the city become a vibrant beating hub of creativity. The Fringe has more than three thousand shows across hundreds of venues, including for the first time this year - a sauna. Before the madness commenced, I caught up with six writers, directors and perfor...

It has undeniably been the summer of The Odyssey . Homer's epic poem is almost 3000 years old and has finally been given the big screen treatment it deserves. Christopher Nolan's blockbusting film adaptation has been well worth the wait and is without doubt the cinematic highlight of the year. You will be familiar with the plot, Greek hero Odysseus uses his wits to survive a perilous journey home...

Robin Mahoney has spent a lifetime working in film and television and has an infectious enthusiasm for his craft. We first met in the summer of 1993 when he was gathering a crew of fresh young creatives to make a film about a music festival on a farm in the Somerset village of Pilton. Glastonbury The Movie went on to become the definitive document of the festival before it became the international...

In this special edition of The Cultural Crunch I took my roving microphone for a day out at one of the most glorious events of the English summer season - The Chelsea Flower Show. There I met designers and creative teams behind some of the gold medal-winning gardens. I discovered that ancient woodlands are making a much needed comeback and how a charity that aims to end food poverty has collaborat...

Carol Decker became internationally famous in the late eighties as the singer with the big hair and even bigger voice in T'Pau. Along with her song-writing partner and then boyfriend Ronnie Rogers, she was responsible for a string of hits including Heart and Soul and Valentine , but it was China In Your Hand that went on to define the band. It spent five weeks at the top of the charts in 1987 and...

Zeb Soanes has one of the most recognisable voices in the country. He trained as an actor, then went on to have a twenty five year career at the BBC as a continuity announcer and newsreader. He was one of the very few broadcasters trusted to deliver the shipping forecast, as much a part of the bedtime routine for millions of night-owls and insomniacs as it is a lifeline for seafarers and fishermen...

Nick Heyward found fame as the singer and songwriter with Haircut 100 - a band who shone brightly but all to briefly in the early eighties. They scored four hit singes; Favourite Shirts , Love Plus One , Nobody's Foo l and Fantastic Da y, from one brilliant album Pelican West which reached number two in the charts in 1982. Nick's solo hits included Whistle Down The Wind, Take That Situation and Bl...