Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
If Clare Balding wasn't already considered a national treasure, her
ubiquity anchoring this year's London Paralympics has confirmed it.
This may be why her autobiography, the tellingly named My Animals and
Other Family, has been number one best-seller for the last two weeks.
For a woman whose entire life has been spent in a horse-racing world
where competition and the thrill of the chase means everything, one
suspects these sorts of things matter to Balding.
By the time she ambles onstage for this sold out talk sporting sloppy
sweat shirt and jeans, Balding has already done a signing in St
Boswell's, with one in Milngavie to go as part of a suitably marathon
tour. Over an hour, Balding relates in impeccably jolly hockey-sticks
tones a life which sounds not unlike one great big Girl's Own
adventure, from posing for pictures astride legendary race-horse Mill
Reef aged eighteen months, to being suspended from the same boarding
school attended by Miranda Hart. Whenever she clocks an accidental
tomboyish pointer to her future as a sapphic icon, “Who knew?”, she
declares with self-deprecatory knowingness.
There's also a healthy attitude to the monarchy, as both an incident in
which a sausage becomes a missile inadvertently aimed at the Queen, and
a later on-track skirmish with Princess Anne on the race-track testify
to. But there's a more serious side to Balding. She expresses concerns
over the height of fences for the Grand National, and reveals she'll be
working on a BBC science programme, “something about the brain. I'm
fascinated by what makes us happy, what it is that makes us feel alive.”
Who knew indeed?
The Herald, September 28th 2012
ends
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