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Revision as of 13:42, 3 March 2018
, 13:42, 3 March 2018no edit summary
I managed to get to three events this year and you'll find a brief review of each below. They were all surprisingly good value for money and very enjoyable. You've got to accept that the big names are only likely to appear when they have a book to promote – and that their presentation will be geared to this end – but unlike other festivals there was no point at which I felt I was being exploited.
'''Review Workshop for Adults with tips for reviewers new and experienced from former Glasgow Evening Times journalist Andrea Hardaker'''
Blushing furiously (well, it was a very hot day…) I beat a hasty retreat, muttering something about the event being very good value for money and doing exactly what it said on the tin. In the circumstances a couple of clichés couldn't make matters any worse.
'''Chris Mullin: [[A Walk-on Part: Diaries 1994 - 1999 by Chris Mullin|A Walk-On Part]]'''
''I've become a light entertainer''.
Thursday the 13th of October saw a packed house at Ilkley's Kings Hall to hear Chris Mullin talk about the last (but, confusingly, the first, chronologically speaking) of the three volume of his diaries to be published. ''A Walk-On Part'' covers the period from May 1994 – the day after the death of Labour leader John Smith - to 1999 when Mullin became a minister in the Labour government. It's the time of the birth and growth of New Labour.
Was it going to be a dry evening of political anecdotes? Mullin soon put out minds at rest on that score. He'd wondered about what he would do when he left Parliament after twenty three years as an MP, but the matter seemed to have been settled – he's become a light entertainer. He spoke briefly too about his stint as a Booker Prize judge and the fact that it was generally thought that [[Man Booker Prize 2011|this year's short-list ]] was rather controversial. He and his fellow judges had an advantage over most people though – they'd actually read the books.
Mullin spoke for forty minutes – with no one to share the burden or feed him questions and no props but our imaginations. If you've read the diaries a lot of the occasions about which he spoke would not be new, but he has the timing of a brilliant comedian and the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Lord Mandelson, Tony Banks and a host of the great and the good were there on stage. There was a delightful mix of his political and his personal life. The time flew by with murmurs of agreement and rounds of applause from the audience.
It was just an hour in total, but there was never a dull moment and great value for money.
'''Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: [[River Cottage Veg Every Day!by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall|Veg Every Day!]]'''
Gone are the flowing locks and rather chubby, youthful face. In their place are a sharp haircut and a slimmed-down version of the campaigner we know and love. It was one of the final events of the Festival and Ilkley's Kings Hall was packed with a surprisingly youthful audience to hear Hugh talk about his latest book, his campaigns, past, present and future – and to give us a few recipe hints to whet our appetite.
I'll confess that I'd been spoiled by Chris Mullin a few nights earlier. He carried the show entirely on his own. Hugh had Ruth Pitt with him to ask the pre-scripted questions – and she forgot her bag of props. Cue loud requests to a stage hand to go and get it for her for without it I fear that quite a lot of Hugh's presentation would have fallen flat. Rarely have we been so glad to see a swede, an aubergine and a mushroom. Hugh was so glad to see the bunch of (organic) carrots that he started eating them.
It was a partisan audience prepared to cheer Hugh for drinking a bottle of Yorkshire beer and who didn't even object when he confessed to having no suggestions for the lady who wondered what she could do with the giant marrow she'd acquired – or when he read a page and a half from his new book. If you've absorbed much any of the publicity for the book and the television series then you won't have found much that was new in the event but in much the same way that there's a world of difference between going to a football match and watching it on TV there's a great deal to be said for the charisma of the man himself and it was this that made the event a success.
There was no doubting the depth of feeling about animal welfare or the squandering of fish stocks and I was relieved to hear that he has no intention of becoming a vegetarian. His loss of weight (or ''getting in shape'') was a conscious decision prior to the filming of the television series and not a result of the fact that he ate no flesh in the course of the filming. He's reverted to being carnivorous since the end of filming – tempted first of all by mackerel.
It was an hour well-spent but unlike Chris Mullin, whom I'd happily listen to all over again I don't think that I would be in a hurry to repeat this one.
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