Just last week there were harsh words for President Trump from an old foe in Scotland. “The Grand Canyon,” Alex Salmond said, “is a minor crevice compared to the vast chasm of ignorance of that man.”
Which begs the question, just how clever is Big Eck himself? The former MP is doing a turn on the Fringe this month but for years has been lumbering along to the book festival to perform for the public. We always thought that was because he’s so well read. Apparently not.
“In my first year as first minister, the director of the book festival rang me and asked if I was definitely coming,” he told The Student newspaper. “I said, ‘Yes’. The only problem was that I had never read a book! I appeared for eight years straight without reading a book, until the very end when I had.”
Firing up matron
Jim Haynes, founder of the Traverse theatre and an Edinburgh festivalgoer since the 1950s, is sadly not in town this year, too ill to travel from his home in Paris.
For those who have never had the pleasure, Jim has led a life of happy and determined unconventionality. It was Jim who founded Suck magazine in 1967 to promote sexual freedom; and Jim who published pictures of a naked Germaine Greer; it was Jim who founded the Wet Dream Film Festival in Amsterdam; and, in Edinburgh, it was Jim who opened the Paperback Bookshop.
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That was the bookshop where, in 1960, a prim elderly matron, said to be a retired missionary, came in to buy a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, only to take it outside and burn it. Clever Jim rang a photographer and pictures of the incident were published all around the world. As Jim said: “Sir Allen Lane, the managing editor of Penguin Books, who loved my bookshop, was extremely happy with the publicity.”
Sturgeon stands up
Who else isn’t here for this Fringe? One or two famous names are absent from the Stand bill, notably Bridget Christie and Stewart Lee. The comedy couple are “just taking a break”, says our woman in the know. On the other side of town Paul Merton, for so long a fixture at the Pleasance with his Impro Chums, isn’t here either. Merton, who abstains from social media, is apparently sick of “selfie” culture and, heaven knows, it’s a hard road for any celeb trying to make their way across the Pleasance courtyard in August without being assailed by punters with camera-phones.
Still for any readers looking to get a pic with a famous person, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s queen of the selfie, will be loitering at the book festival later this month.
Bored of treading boards
Steven Berkoff, in Edinburgh for the triumph of Greek, the opera, tells us that contrary to some reports he believes there are “some very good actors around”. The trouble is, the bar has been set so very high.
“I remember seeing Laurence Olivier many times, Alec McCowen, Albert Finney,” he tells us. “They set the stage on fire. I haven’t really seen that very often, though there are some very good actors still, who occasionally dip a toe on the stage.” But, raps Mr B: “I don’t go much to the theatre any more because I get too disappointed and it’s too banal. Apart from that, it is hideously expensive.”