Coffee-Table Notes

Going Underground   The Arches began and ended with civic failure. Neither was the fault of those in charge of the Glasgow city centre arts lab that existed between 1991 and 2015 in a cavernous interior beside Central Station that was both physically and metaphorically underground. The first failure was down to what had gone immediately before, and which accidentally birthed The Arches on a wing-and-a-prayer idea founded on punk-hippy idealism. The final act of civic vandalism that forced what by now had become one of the most important creative spaces in the world to close its doors was down to even worse external forces. Some might call it capitalism.   In the quarter of a century in-between, The Arches captured hearts, minds, souls and imaginations. It changed lives, perceptions and, in at least one theatre show, clothes. Its messy mash-up of ‘lets-put-on-the-show-right-here’ recklessness and hedonistic excess was the most exploratory of adventures for both artists and audiences, wh

Edinburgh - Eurovision ’72   On March 25th 1972, the Eurovision Song Contest was held at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The then sixteen-year-old international competition was hosted by Dunfermline born Moira Shearer, the dancing queen from Powell and Pressburger’s ballet based 1948 blockbuster, The Red Shoes.    The Eurovision Song Contest was founded in 1956 by the alliance of public service broadcasters that made up the European Broadcasting Union, and was based on the Sanremo Music festival, which had been running in Italy since 1951.   The first Eurovision saw fourteen countries showing off their wares in Lugano, Switzerland. There was no entry from the UK, who wouldn’t join in until the following year. The Edinburgh event was the fourth time the contest had been held in the UK since it was first hosted at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1960. The 1972 event was also the first in the UK to be programmed outside London, and, to date, the only Eurovision held in Scotland.   In Edinbur