Anton Ego from Ratatouille (© Pixar/Disney)

Everyone’s a critic – info on my Guardian Masterclass

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 Of course, everyone’s a critic these days. It used to be that only professionally snide, hoity-toity snobs got to do criticism – like Anton Ego, the restaurant critic in the animated movie Ratatouille. Look at him, with his arched eyebrow and nose made to look down, his skull-like typewriter and sharp-angled accoutrements, all set to […]

What Makes You Anxious?

The Anxiety Box speaks!

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 Last night was the first edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m putting on for Chelsea Theatre. I was really chuffed at how it all went: there was an incredible pop-up exhibition of David Hoyle’s paintings, with guided tour; cheeky vegetable sculptures by Rachel Porter; typically brilliant lip-synchery […]

This machine kills anxiety: cabaret vs late capitalism

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   As you’ll have noticed, there’s a good bit of anxiety around these days. I’ve got loads. You probably have too. I’m anxious about global things, like geopolitical instability and climate change; societal things, like employment prospects and dodgy urban planning; and personal things, like having a substandard body and shortchanging important relationships. Most people, […]

Myra as Maggie on a merry-go-round

A bit of a whirl

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 Dear me, it’s been way too long since I was on here. I know it’s a cliché about blogs that you start enthusiastically and then let them tail off, and in that respect I seem to have become a cliché pretty quickly. My excuse for such negligence is that I’ve been doing lots of other […]

 
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