Coffee-Table Notes

Doon Mackichan is an actress and writer who partly grew up in Fife. She has been a regular in iconic comedy shows on TV, including The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Brass Eye and Toast of London. co-created and starred with Fiona Allen and Sally Phillips in all-woman sketch show, Smack the Pony (1999-2003). On stage she has appeared at the Royal Court, the Royal National Theatre and on the West End, and brought her adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She starred in the first five series’ of Two Doors Down, and has just filmed the seventh. My Lady Parts is her first book.   Hi Doon, congratulations on My Lady Parts. You’ve just filmed the new series of Two Doors Down as well. How are you feeling about both?   I am extremely excited. I took a year off Two Doors Down last year, and it was wonderful to be back and to realise how much I've been missed. They say pride before a fall, but I'm very proud of this book, whic...

Hannah Lavery didn’t choose the title of ‘Scotland, You’re No Mine’, the Edinburgh International Book Festival event the capital’s recently appointed Makar takes part in at the end of the month. The title comes from the name of one of the key poems in   Blood Salt Spring (2022), Lavery’s debut full-length collection, and is one of the oldest poems in the book.    ‘Scotland, You’re No Mine’’s evocation of Lavery’s love/hate relationship with the country she lives in had already appeared in slightly different forms, both in Lavery’s pamphlet,  Finding Seaglass: Poems from The Drift (2019), and in her poetic drama,  The Drift (2018) itself. The poem has also become one of her most popular works, being named in 2019 as one of Scotland’s favourite poems.   “It's a poem that people often request of me,” says Lavery, “so it’s obviously had a resonance, but I suppose it’s quite a big poem, in that it's talking about colonialism, Scotland's history and it’s place wi...

Getting   an   audience   with   Norman   MacCaig   isn‘t   easy   these   days.   At   the   grand   old   age   of   85.   though,  you   can‘t   really   blame   this   most   down-to-earth of   Scotland‘s   literary   elder   statesmen   for   not   wanting   to   be   bothered.   For   years.   he   has   put   up   with   an   endless   round   of   newspaper   profiles   and   constant   questioning   about   his   poetry   when   he‘d   much   rather   be   left   alone   to   write   it.   Nevertheless.   his   output   has   been   vast.   Some   23   volumes   have   been   filled   with   works ...

The first time Attila the Stockbroker brought his in-your-face brand of ranting performance poetry to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was in 1982. That was at the Assembly Rooms on a bumper bill of fellow travellers who included Seething Wells, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joolz Denby and Little Brother. The quintet did a seventy per cent door split with the venue, and everyone made a few bob. As the artist formerly known as John Baine returns for an Edinburgh run for the first time in twenty years on the back of an appearance at Edinburgh International Book Festival to promote his autobiography, Arguments Yard, things seem to have come full circle. “I used to make money in the Fringe,” says Baine, “but it gradually became more and more corporate, and I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. Then after I was asked to do the Book Festival, my mate John Otway told me about Peter Buckley Hill's Free Fringe, which I thought sounded fantastic, and is getting back to what the Fringe use...