Coffee-Table Notes

When legendary radio DJ John Peel sadly passed away in 2004, one of his many legacies was the welter of more than 4,000 radio sessions recorded exclusively for his late night radio show. Many more were recorded for Peel’s fellow BBC Radio 1 DJs, including Janice Long. While some of the artists behind the sessions went on to mainstream success, often the most interesting ones showcased were those who never crossed over, but whose work makes up what are arguably far more valuable artistic statements of their time.   One of the conduits for that was Alan McGee’s Creation label, about to be immortalised in Creation Stories, the McGee-based biopic that premiered at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. As with Peel, Creation similarly left behind a significant catalogue that went way beyond the hits.    While Creation wasn’t based in Scotland, many of its acts were from here, with Glasgow born McGee arguably copping his moves from Postcard, Fast Product and other indie labels that seized the m

William Link – TV and film writer and producer Born December 15, 1933; died December 27, 2020     William Link, who has died aged 87, was the co-creator of one of the most iconic characters to ever shuffle on to a television screen. With Columbo, Link and long-term collaborator Richard Levinson found that the shabby Los Angeles police lieutenant famously brought to life by actor Peter Falk had a mass appeal that made him a people’s hero.    Link and Levinson based their cigar-chomping blue-collar detective partly on Porfiry Petrovitch, the chief investigator in Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, partly on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. Dressed in a dirty raincoat and in a seemingly permanent befuddled state, Columbo was a deceptively shrewd figure.    Despite being patronised by the high-flying felons he brought to book in a show that subverted the murder mystery genre by revealing the killer at the top of the show, Columbo’s forensic tenacity paid off. With a casual “Just one

Charlotte Cornwell – Actress   Born April 26, 1949; died January 16, 2021      Charlotte Cornwell, who has died aged 71, was an actress of fearlessness and class, who combined tenures with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre with a TV career that tapped into a more contemporary grit. Beyond acting, as a political activist and champion of justice, she was, as fellow actor Ian McKellen described her in a tribute on Twitter, ‘indomitable’.   Cornwell found fame in Rock Follies (1976), Howard Schuman‘s Fringe theatre styled musical drama that charted the fortunes of girl group, The Little Ladies.  Cornwell played Anna, the most strident and driven of the group, which also featured Julie Covington as the punky Dee and Rula Lenska as the aristocratic Q.    With a soundtrack of songs scored by Andy Mackay of Roxy Music performed by the programme’s three lead actresses, the show broke TV’s largely naturalistic mode. This helped it win three BAFTAS, while its soundtrack album top

The snow fell deep recently on Scottish Sculpture Workshop, the Aberdeenshire based centre of ‘making and thinking’ that celebrated its fortieth anniversary just a few short months before the first lockdown brought on by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. While the latter has forced SSW to temporarily close to the public in line with social distancing regulations, neither Covid nor the elements have prevented SSW director Sam Trotman and her team from making plans for what might turn out to be a very different future.    This is clear from the just announced series of residencies that will see SSW collaborate with Glasgow based contemporary music festival, Counterflows. With artists Laura Bradshaw, Chris Dooks and Hang Linton taking part, the series focuses in different ways on notions of caregiving, what such concerns bring to the artistic process, and vice versa.    The caregivers residency programme has been a long held ambition for SSW, and chime with a recent survey by Scottish Contem

Alan Igbon – Actor Born May 29, 1952; died December 9, 2020     Alan Igbon, who has died of pneumonia aged 68, was an actor who made his mark on television with charismatic swagger. He did this latterly through a short tenure in ITV soap, Coronation Street (2003), as Tony Stewart, the estranged father of regular character Jason Grimshaw.   Arguably Igbon’s most significant appearance, however, came in Alan Bleasdale’s play, The Black Stuff (1980) and its seismic five-part sequel, Boys from the Black Stuff (1982). Charting the fortunes of a gang of Liverpool labourers on the dole, all but one of the plays was written prior to Margaret Thatcher’s election as UK Prime Minister. They nevertheless chimed with a rise in unemployment and a calculated ideological assault on working class communities.   Igbon played Loggo Logmond, the cocksure cynic of the group, who works the system, even as he mouthily squares up to the authorities. While Igbon appeared in all five episodes, Loggo’s personal

Christopher Plummer – Actor   Born December 13, 1929; died February 5, 2021      Christopher Plummer, who has died aged 91, was an Oscar winning actor whose embodiment of suave and urbane sophistication made him a captivating presence on both stage and screen. This was evident in what is probably still his best-known role, as Captain von Trapp in the big screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (1965). While the taciturn authority that eventually gave way to avuncular compassion partly defined him in one of the biggest box office smashes ever, Plummer’s range had infinitely much more to offer, as he knew only too well.   As a reluctant matinee idol and heart-throb, Plummer actively resisted the film’s worldwide acclaim, dismissing it as ‘S&M’ and ‘The Sound of Mucus’, and not taking part in the film’s fortieth anniversary celebrations. He eventually softened, however, recognising the film’s appeal enough to appear with the rest of the cast on The Oprah Winfrey

Hal Holbrook – Actor Born February 17, 1925; died January 23, 2021      Hal Holbrook, who has died aged 95, was a Tony and Emmy award winning actor, who carried a quiet authority in everything he appeared in. This came with added menaces for his iconic cameo in All the President’s Men, Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 film about the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s American presidency.    Holbrook played Deep Throat, the shadowy informant who meets investigative journalist Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, in an underground car park. With Holbrook’s face barely visible in the three brief but intense scenes shared by the pair, Deep Throat teases out his secrets in a cigarette charged rasp that changes the course of American history.    It was a role Holbrook initially turned down. Only when Redford suggested it would be the thing about Pakula’s film that would be remembered most did he accept. With the pair’s noirish exchanges breaking up the film’s newsroom whirl, Redford