Hosts of the UK’s award-winning podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish, are bringing their newest fact-filled comedy show, Nerd Immunity to The Dome on Friday, Nov 12. Audiences will have the unique opportunity to watch a live recording of the smash-hit podcast, brought to you by the behind-the-scenes researchers from BBC panel show QI.
Formed by a charming foursome of self-proclaimed ‘QI elves’, who research factoids for the eponymous quiz show featuring Sandi Toksvig and Alan Davies, NSTAAF imparts nuggets of wisdom, humour and absurdity to its listeners. Since the podcast’s creation in 2014, it has rocketed in popularity, with hundreds of thousands of fans tuning in each week to hear Dan Schreiber, James Harkin, Anna Ptaszynski and Andrew Hunter Murray’s favourite facts, from the bamboozling to the bewildering, to the ‘that can’t possibly be true!’.
Come and be a part of the two-hour live recording, and you will without doubt have a fun fact or two up your sleeve for your next social gathering.
Do you need a guide to help you through the aisles and shelves? Never fear, Andrew Polmear’s here
So there you are. You’ve gone to the supermarket to buy some wine and before3 nyou know where you are, you’re staring at hundreds of wines on the shelves, wondering which to buy.
How do you choose? Some time ago I wrote about an app called wot-wine, designed to give you information so fast you need not decide till you reach the store. You can scan the bar code on a bottle or enter the wine’s details manually. I thought I’d put it to the test, using two bottles from Tesco that I especially like. You don’t have to buy from a supermarket of course. There are independent wine merchants, like our own Seven Cellars at the Seven Dials, or online merchants like the superb Wine Society. But for now let’s imagine we are in Tesco’s.
My first test is a Merlot from the Valle de Colchagua in Chile (pictured), made by Luis Felipe Edwards, 2019. It’s a rich smooth mouthful of lush fruit tasting of dark cherry and plum. It’s extraordinary value at £8. Wotwine doesn’t have it. My second test is Wairau Cove Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand 2021. It’s a typical NZ Sauvignon, tasting of cat’s pee and gooseberry, marvellous value at £7.50, or £6.50 with a Tesco Clubcard. Wotwine doesn’t have this either. I think I’ll delete Wotwine from my phone.
There’s another app that started with the same intention as wotwine, to be “the sommelier in your pocket”, but it does better.It’s called Vivino (and can be found at vivino.com or in your phone’s app store. Started by two Danes in 2010 it now has a “vivino com-munity” of 50 million users worldwide and a database of 12.5 million wines. It works as the largest wine market place in the world – you can buy wines through it – but you can also use it as a source of information.
How did it do in Tesco? Yes, the Wairau Cove Sauvignon 2021 comes up in seconds. It scores 3.9 out of 5, having been rated by over 10,000 drinkers, costs £6.75 on average and is judged to be “best value NZ Sauvignon”. If you like you can read 1600 user reviews! The Merlot isn’t there (I guess because it’s in the Tesco Finest range so not available anywhere else) but they do review a Gran Reserva Merlot from the same vineyard. It scores 3.5, costs £5.73 on average and reviewers say it has a “splendid nose filled strawberry and plummy notes… Good structure.” It sounds close to the Tesco version.
But my favourite way of approaching a supermarket wine department is by looking in Decanter magazine first. Obviously you have to subscribe to get this, and you pay extra for Decanter Premium, an online extra which updates the supermarket entries monthly. And, yes, they have both the test wines, scoring the Sauvignon at 91 (out of 100) and the Merlot 92. Their reviews capture the essence of both wines: “a classic Malborough Sauvignon with the tell-tale ‘cat pee’ and gooseberry nose on a back-ground of mango, passion-fruit and elderflower”. And “a gorgeous Chilean Merlot offers incredible value for money…fragrant and fleshy…richness of plummy fruit…”
I find Decanter so reliable, so informative and so up-to-date with wines available in the UK that it saves me money every month despite the subscription fee.
Somewhere The Whistler has never been, but has always wanted to go is Colombia. The bigger South American countries – Brazil, Argentina – usually get the column inches, but really, Colombia sounds extraordinary. Colourful, vibrant and full of “up” and if it wasn’t for our carbon footprint…
As chance would have it, we don’t have to go. A slice of Colombia is coming to us in the shape of Circolombia, one of the world’s leading circus companies. Their new show Acéléré is a mix of mad acrobatics and vibrant Latin music, singing and dancing and all that gravity-defying circus stuff that makes you feel exhausted watching and makes you ask “How do they do that?”
It’s as near to the streets of Bogotá as we’re going to get this Christmas.
Felicity Simpson, Director & Creative Producer of Circolombia said: “Acéléré means accelerate in Spanish and this perfectly explains the theme behind our show – it is all about taking risks and having the courage to move forward and most importantly it is the women who lead the way. After the darkness of the last year, we can’t wait to bring our Latin passion and energy – the DNA of Circolombia – to Brighton.”
You’re looking for a night out. You’ve seen Bond and you don’t fancy Dune. What to do? Funny you should ask…
There’s a suitably eclectic line-up at beachfront venue Electric Arcade where, odds on, you’ll find something to suit your soul.
Nathan Cassidy’s Bumblebee. After selling out at the Edinburgh Fringe, multi-award-winning comedian Nathan Cassidy brings his true-crime stand-up show Bumblebee to town. The set-up… After seeing a burglar fleeing from his house, Cassidy gives chase, setting up a bold narrative tale packed with twists, turns, and dark humour.
Swapping LA beaches for Brighton Pier, Simon David dons on his swimsuit for another instalment of his kaleidoscopic cabaret, Gaywatch.
Looking for a dark and glamorous new take on the variety format, then turn to Laurie Black’s Bad Luck Cabaret, featuring gritty electronic music and alternative performers, on Sunday 28th November.
Mama G’s Story Time Party will give families a welcome chance to let their hair down. The Christmas-themed party on Sunday 28th November will kick off with a seasonal story reading, before dimming the lights for a festive family disco.
“It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas….. ” And nothing makes it feel more like Christmas than having a wreath hanging on your front door. Come along to this workshop and make a traditional moss-based wreath
One of the – very very few – good side effects of Covid has been to encourage events to go online, to make people realise that there are other ways of seeing shows besides going out and getting cold.
Fans of the Brighton Early Music Festival, don’t despair. The Festival has finished, but there’s now going to be an additional seven events you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.
Between Friday November 19 and Sunday November 28, you can enjoy A Midsummer Night’s Dream (November 20) or maybe The Madrigal Reimagined with the Monteverdi Strings (November 26) or Brahma – Vishnu – Shiva (November 27), a night of classical Indian music and poetry.
A few years ago, jazz drummer Dylan Howe “re-imagined” David Bowie’s “Low” and created a deft, inventive, respectful jazz take on Bowie’s extraordinary album. It was very good – as were the gigs – but it wasn’t “Low” and listening to it just made you want to listen to the real thing.
Taking on a classic album can take you into dangerous territory. Will it be that respectful re-imagination or will you just be the biggest covers band in the world? The applause at the end of The Nu Civilisation Orchestra’s 50th anniversary glorious celebration of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” left no one in any doubt that they’d fallen on the right side.
Was “What’s Going On” Gaye’s classic album / social document, the protest record to end all protest records, really released 50 years ago? What an indictment that, just as much as in 1971, if we ever needed a “What’s Going On” it’s now because what was going on is still going on.
The song “What’s Going On” was conceived by Obi Benson of The Four Tops after he’d witnessed police dealing with anti-war protesters in what became known as “Bloody Thursday”, Gaye took on the song after The Other Tops turned it down, and ran with it, turning it into not so much a song as a suite, a song cycle. A gentle yet forceful protest, about the Vietnam war, the environment, the state we’re in. About what’s going on.
For Gaye, this wasn’t out of the blue. ““In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say … I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realised that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world. With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?”
In 1969 he released “Abraham, Martin and John” about assassinated US icons Lincoln, King and Kennedy. Add to that a personal life in turmoil, cocaine, a failed marriage, the death (to cancer) of his singing partner Tammi Terrell…
Makes you wanna holler…
That was 50 years ago. Change the detail of where the war is and… the question remains. What’s going on?
On Saturday night what was going on was The Nu Civilisation Orchestra bringing this classic album to life in a tribute that was at once respectful and fitting and joyous.
Featuring Nathaniel Facey (alto sax), Romarna Campbell (drums), Sarah Tandy (piano), backing vocalists Kianja Harvey Elliot and Cara Crosby Irons, and conducted by Peter Edwards, the 23 piece orchestra were lush, rich and deep, hitting that fine line between imaginative and respectful.
It’s never going to be Marvin Gaye doing What’s Going On, so let’s do something different. A really cool idea was that each night of the tour featured a guest slot from a local artist, and here we got Aflo (pictured below), a young poet/activist, who received a rousing reception for her pointed political rap.
Taking on the role of Marvin might seem a thankless task, but British soul singer Noel McKoy did a fine job of it, sensibly not trying to ape Gaye’s rich, soulful jazzy voice, but being more show, more live.
He put everything into it. You could see he loved it and he meant it. “Every time I’ve heard it or sung it, I think to myself that mothers are actually still crying and young brothers are still dying. The tracks from this album were and still are the benchmark of soulful commentary, its spirit and honesty remain potent to this very day.”
Aflo is playing a charity fundraiser at Presuming Ed’s on Nov 13 in support of the Survivors Trust, an umbrella charity consisting of 120 specialist member agencies around the UK and Ireland providing direct services to survivors of sexual violence.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis at The Dome on the last night of the tour. Do we need to write anything else? Already you know it was one of those “I was there” nights.
Watching Cave in Brighton is a lovely mix of celebratory and melancholy. It’s a hometown gig, We’re with him. We know his story, we know his journey. It’s fine – this is his place now. The sadness and torment that undercuts so much of his work tempered by warmth band joy.
Tonight was very much a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis gig, not a Bad Seeds gig, largely focusing on their last two albums. Coming as it did so soon after the death of Cave’s son Arthur, 2016’s Skeleton Tree was seen to be the response, but that album was largely written before. The following album, Ghosteen, was more the response. A double album, you can’t escape the feeling that the clue is in the title. Ghost teen.
They’re more meditations than songs, mood pieces that create a feeling, an emotional landscape for Cave’s words. The album was never toured because of Covid and, locked down, Cave and Ellis recorded the visceral Carnage, an album Cave described on his website as “a brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe”.
Opening with three tracks from Ghosteen – Spinning Song, Bright Horses and Night Raid – the rapturous welcome is cut dead as Cave prowls the stage, his dark sonorous baritone somewhere between singing and talking these songs of faith and devotion. Ellis sits stage right, a small keyboard on his lap creating wave upon wave of rumbling drone, oppressive layers of swirling, angry harmonium.
Aside from a grand piano the size of a small country, the stage is simple, just Cave, Ellis, three backing singers and, at the back, French multi-instrumentalist Johnny Hostile who, despite sounding like he should be in a 1977 punk band, fills the gaps unobtrusively alternating between guitar, bass and drums.
The whole, particularly singers Wendy Rose, Janet Rasmus and T Jae Cole creates a mood redolent of the gospel churches he’s so in thrall to, taking him nearer to that spirit of gospel than he’s ever been. At one point, during the ecstatic rapture of Hand Of God, the extraordinary opening track from Carnage, Cave dropped to his knees, the song teetering on the edge of collapse as Ellis dropped his keyboard and threw his arms in the air.
Ellis is the perfect foil. Where Cave is all razor sharp elegance in trademark skinny black suit and white shirt, Ellis is wild, dishevelled. Cave is controlled, letting the emotion flow through the songs and the words. Ellis flails and bounces, waves, flows. Andrew Dominik, who worked on Ghosteen, said “Nick is more into structure and whether or not a piece of music sounds good. Warren doesn’t give a fuck about anything except how a piece of music feels” and that sounds about right.
On a night where the night was the highlight, it seems churlish to pick out particular moments, particular songs, but let’s be churlish… A cover of T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer, seen last year on his “In Conversation” tour, featured Ellis almost but not quite losing a battle with his violin, I Need You from Skeleton Tree, crowd-pleasing encores of Henry Lee and Hollywood, the momentous climax to Ghosteen, and inevitably but beautifully, Into My Arms and into the night.
Menopause. It’s not a dirty word or an embarrassing part of growing old. We often face it alone and with little understanding of what is happening to us. We need to change the way we deal with the menopause on so many levels.
On Thursday 21st October, key voices in the debate come together to discuss why menopause should matter. Joining us to discuss how we make this change are Carolyn Harris MP and leader of the all party group on menopause.
Carolyn says: “The menopause revolution will bring an end to women’s suffering” – an ambitious statement. Also on our panel are Diane Danzebrink, founder of Menopause Support and the national #MakeMenopauseMatter campaign, Kate Muir, journalist and producer of Channel 4’s Davina McCall documentary.
Joining them are Jo Ilott and Sarah Leroux, nurses working in primary care with a specialist interest in the menopause, Dr Jill Kirby, academic historian at University of Sussex currently engaged in research into the cultural history of menopause in 20th century Britain and Dr Heather Brown, consultant obstetrician & gynaecologist.
If you’ve never done it, it sounds like the most terrifying thing you can ever do. Get up, stand up, just you and a microphone. Go on, make people laugh. Go on. They’re sitting there waiting. Go on. It’s a bit different to cracking a few gags in front of your half-pissed mates in the pub. Just sounds terrifying. But it’s fun watching other people do it.
If you like your comedy, there’s a bit of a treat coming up with this year’s Brighton Grin Comedy Awards at The Electric Arcade down on the beachfront. A award for new comic on the block, the hopefuls have been whittled down to 40 – and now they’re going to stand up and do their thing.
The lambs to the slau… I mean contestants will compete in one of four heats throughout October (6th, 13th, 20th, 21st), before the Grand Final on the 27th.
Panel show regular & award-winning comedian Zoe Lyons (Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week) heads the judging panel for the first heat, alongside Brighton Gin and BBC Radio Sussex’s Kathy Caton. David James, a comedy coach and stand-up known for his dry, deadpan wit, will also judge, as well as Otherplace Artistic Director Nicola Haydn. Other judges include comedian Esther Manito, super-vet and national treasure Marc Abraham, comedian Masie Adam and Lulu Baker, Assistant to the Head of Comedy at the BBC.
“Over the last sixteen years, we’ve had countless up-and-coming comics come through our doors, with many going on to become panel show regulars, launch sell- out tours and become household names,” says Nicola Haydn of organisers Otherplace. “We thought a new act competition would be a good way to encourage and discover some more future stars. We’re thrilled that some of our top-tier comedians we met along the way will be joining us to judge various heats, as well as the final”.
All four heats and the final will be held at The Electric Arcade.
https://www.electric-arcade.co.uk/
News and views from West Hill and Seven Dials in Brighton
