Viva Brighton April 2015 Issue #26

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vivabrighton
Issue 26. Apr 2015
editorial
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It’s long been a cliché to refer to Brighton as ‘London-on-Sea’, suggesting
all the sophisticated benefits of an urban area, with the extra
benefit of the beach and ocean. But have you ever heard it called
‘London-on-the-Downs’. Thought not.Yet Brighton is as connected
with the rural land behind it as it is with the sea in front, and while the
town originated as a fishing village, it’s got plenty of agricultural heritage
too. Check out the James Gray collection of old photos, and you’ll
see turn-of-the-twentieth-century farmers, at work in Hangleton, who look like they belong
in a Thomas Hardy novel; one of the city’s best-loved gig venues is still known as ‘the Corn
Exchange’. In fact, the Downs that provide the backdrop to the city are by-and-large a big area
of wild-in-nature farmland, mainly used for grazing sheep and cattle, criss-crossed with ancient
footpaths. The Brighton and Lewes Downs, between the Adur and the Ouse, has recently been
recognised by UNESCO as a ‘biosphere reserve’; the South Downs National Park nestles up
to the eastern city limits. Beyond the Downs, viewable from Devil’s Dyke, lies the vast Weald.
So in this month’s issue, to celebrate the onset of spring, we’ve turned our backs on the sea, and
explored what’s going on north of the city: our April theme is ‘Land’. And our message? It’s easy
in a city like Brighton to move in small urban circles, ignoring the fresh-aired splendours a short
hop away. The hills are alive, in effect: go explore them. Enjoy the issue…
The Team
.....................
EDITOR: Alex Leith alex@vivabrighton.com
DEPUTY EDITOR: Steve Ramsey steveramsey@vivabrighton.com
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivabrighton.com
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Rebecca Cunningham
ADVERTISING: Anya Zervudachi anya@vivabrighton.com, Nick Metcalf nickmetcalf@vivabrighton.com,
CONTRIBUTORS: Black Mustard, Joe Decie, Nione Meakin, Chloë King, John Helmer,
Ben Bailey, Lizzie Enfield, Rebecca Hattersley, Lucy Williams, Jim Stephenson and Yoram Allon
PUBLISHERS: Nick Williams nick@vivabrighton.com, Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com
DIRECTORS: Alex Leith, Nick Williams, Lizzie Lower, Becky Ramsden
Viva is based at 52 Ship Street, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1AF
For advertising enquiries call 07596 337 828
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our content. We cannot be held responsible for any omissions, errors or alterations.

contents
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Bits and bobs.
7-23. This month’s cover, Mr Benn,
Viva Pecha Kucha, Flow Magazine,
The Robin Hood, Secrets of the
Pavilion, Bob Copper on the buses,
and much more.
15
Photography.
25-29. Murray Ballard explores
Brighton’s rural hinterland.
Columns.
30-33. Chloë King’s early-onset midlife
crisis, Lizzie Enfield’s children’s
frozen pastries, and John Helmer’s
amazing technicolour dreamcoat.
My Brighton.
34-35. Huw Morgan, from the Sussex
Wildlife Society, on park life and his
Zap Club past.
28
Brighton in history.
36-37. Racketeering and bribes: the
Police Corruption case of 1957.
In town this month.
39-53. Ben Bailey’s Brighton roundup,
the Yamato Drummers of Japan,
Polar Bear, Lordi, Mariana Sadovska,
Noisy Neighbours, comedians Charmaine
Davies and Jane Postlethwaite,
and Yoram Allon’s new cinema
round-up.
Art and Literature.
54-69. Brighton Festival guest director
Ali Smith, Flash Fact short story,
Sally O’Reilly’s Dark Aemelia, Marcus
Coates’ Dawn Chorus, Katty McMurray
by the sea and Dan Bowden on
gig posters. Plus designer Fiona
Howard, the William Morris of the
South Downs (and LA), philosophical
designs by Fina Boutique and the
....4 ....

contents
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41
two’s company creations of Sarah
Squared.
The Way we Work.
70-75. Adam Bronkhorst gets his
desert boots dirty photographing
Brighton land-workers in situ.
76
Food.
76-87. Authentic Chinese at the
Sichuan Garden, brill brill at the Salt
Room, restaurant updates, Foodies
Festival, Foodshed and Fin and Farm
(that’s a lot of ‘f’s).
Features.
88-98. A cuppa with Tim Richardson
from Taboo, Elderflower Fields
Festival wildlife walk, Planet Feed, the
lowdown on hydroponics, a bluffer’s
guide to the Albion, Brighton Marathon,
Preston Park Velodrome, and a
breeze up the Downs, Victorian style.
78
97
....5 ....

this month’s cover art
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This month we approached
Mike Wolff (aka Mr Doodle)
and asked him to come up with a
vibrant, spring-themed cover for
our ‘Land’ issue. “When I was
given the theme ‘Land’ I immediately
thought of writing ‘Viva’
in leaves. I’m not sure why...”
he explains. If you’ve already
paid a visit to his shop Wolff
and Badger in the new Brighton
Laines Market, you might recognise
some of the little monsters hiding all over
the front cover. And the giant fuzzy octopus doing
the gardening? “I can’t remember why I decided
to draw the octopus,” says Mike, “I think I must
have had a conversation with someone about octopuses
while I was working on it. My doodles
are mostly a stream of consciousness; once I start
drawing, things just appear.” We
loved all of the little details and
the elements of Brighton – some
obvious, some less obvious – which
appear, the longer you look at the
cover. “The design captures what
Brighton is to me: vibrant, interesting,
full of life.” It’s quite difficult to
think of Brighton without thinking
of the Royal Pavilion, and so it has
become a frequenter of the Viva
Brighton front cover. “I couldn’t
not include the Pavilion,” he says. “Lots of cities
have landmarks which are iconic and you’d recognise
them, but ours is just such a joy to draw.”
You’ll be hearing plenty more about Wolff and
Badger (including the reason behind the name)
in next month’s issue, but until then you can find
more of Mike’s work at mrdoodle.com.
....7 ....

NOT LONDON

Detail © Matthew Smith (Australia) Sailing By
BRIGHTON MUSEUM & ART GALLERY
2 MAY TO 6 SEPT 2015
100 awe-inspiring images, from fascinating animal
behaviour to breath-taking wild landscapes.
Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton BN1 1EE • Admission fee payable
www.brightonmuseums.org.uk • 03000 290902
See this fantastic exhibition for FREE by becoming a member,
join today and we’ll invite you to the exclusive opening night
Memberships ( from £20) last all year and include some great benefits.
Join in Brighton Museum, by telephone or online at pavilionfoundation.org
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is co-owned by
the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide.

its and bogs
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magazine of thE month
In late February, someone said to me in the
shop ‘What is it about Flow? I don’t get it’.
By the end of the same day we had sold seven
copies of the magazine and nine copies
of the Flow annual (which had arrived just
a day earlier).
Started in the Netherlands by two women,
Flow is described on the cover as ‘a magazine
for paper lovers’. You’ll also find the sort-of
tagline ‘Simplify Your Life, Feel Connected,
Live Mindfully and Spoil Yourself.’ On its
website, Flow is described as ‘a magazine for
women who live busy but happy lives and
who want to make different kinds of choices.’
Well, Flow is all of these things.
I must admit that I don’t totally get the ‘for
women’ bit. I love the articles in the current
edition about how to argue well in a
relationship, how women stand up to domestic
violence in Pakistan, mindfulness,
the American pre-selfie photographer Vivian
Maier, the singer-songwriter Gregory
Page, portrait artists, the small losses in life
and more.
What Flow does brilliantly is wrap all of this
interesting, important stuff in a beautifully
accessible format that is a delight to have
around. Most issues contain little surprise
gifts. The current one has a small book taking
us through the early stages of hand lettering
and a grown-up paper doll clothing kit.
It’s no surprise to me that people rush to
buy Flow and no surprise that some people
buy two – one to look at and one to break
apart and use. Issue after issue, the founders
manage to make Flow serious, whimsical,
interesting and delightful. It’s a heck of
a package.
Martin Skelton, magazinebrighton owner
toilet graffito #3
Name that toilet! With thanks to our toilet-graffiti
correspondents Fan Fan and Thomas.
Last month’s answer: Northern Lights
....11....

pub: the robin hood
It takes me approximately
four seconds
to cross the road
between my house
and the Robin
Hood, so it’s accurate
to call it my ‘local’.
The first time
I had a pint there
was the first day I
moved into my flat,
and landlord Chris
Dodd informed me
in quick succession
that it was Britain’s
only charity pub,
and that sadly this
didn’t make my
beer tax deductible.
This hasn’t stopped
me from returning there on an extremely regular
basis: it’s one of the friendliest boozers I’ve ever
come across, a public house in the real meaning of
the term: in effect, an extension of my living room.
The place is owned by entrepreneur Martin Webb.
Webb (with now-Tory-MP Simon Kirby) was, until
2002, part owner of the C-Side chain of Brighton
pubs. The pair sold the chain for £15m, and split
the profits. Shortly afterwards Webb bought the
‘Hood’. As a thank you to the city that had helped
him make his fortune, he made it Britain’s only charity
pub: all the yearly profit, after running costs are
paid, goes to local causes. The name ‘Robin Hood’
is, by the way, a fortuitous coincidence: in fact it has
been called that since it was built in 1852.
Another very-regular there is pub restorer Neil
Hayward, who refurbished
the interior
when it was bought
by Webb, and lives
above it. He’s studied
the history of the
place, and tells me
we’re lucky it’s still
there. On the 9th
April 1941, a Nazi
bomb destroyed
the two next-door
buildings on Norfolk
Place, accounting
for the incongruous
redbrick building at
no. 4, and the pub’s
higgledy-piggledy
shape. This left a gap
in the terrace and
what is now the eastern half of the pub was in the
post-war years a courtyard, where the clientele
would drink beer sitting on beer barrels. Before its
subsequent extension in the eighties, Neil tells me,
the interior was tiny. After that extension, particularly
in the long tenancy of Brian Hayes, the Hood
became known as a ‘rugby pub’, and the Robin
Hood XV was one of the best teams in Brighton.
It’s still a great place to watch the Six Nations,
and other international games, if you like a bit of
atmosphere. But there are many more reasons to
go: fine beer, pleasant bar staff, £5.95 pizza, board
games, a popular Monday Night quiz… and the
warm feeling that however much cash you spend in
there, a portion of it will go to a good cause.
Alex Leith, painting by Jay Collins

Joe decie
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its and bobs
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Pecha Kucha ‘Talent Pool’
Visual mini-talks from Brighton creatives
In February we
were delighted
to be invited by
the artist and
illustrator Zara
Wood, ‘Woody’, to
co-curate a Pecha
Kucha night with
her, which will be
taking place at the
Velo Café on the
evening of May 7th.
Woody is no stranger to the format, having first
given a PK talk at the ICA in London, back
in 2003, and then having been invited by its
originators, architect partners Astrid Klein and
Mark Dytham, to do a presentation at one of
their monthly events at Superdeluxe in Tokyo,
in 2007.
“Pecha Kucha was started up by Astrid and
Mark to give a platform to designers and other
creative people to offer a short presentation
of their work,” she explains. “Participants are
asked to prepare a slideshow of twenty carefully
chosen images, which are each shown for
twenty seconds, during which they are expected
to explain what the audience is seeing. There
is no pause between slides, so it’s engaging and
full of energy: each presenter’s slot lasts a total
of just six minutes and forty seconds.”
Pecha Kucha means ‘chit chat’ in Japanese, and
Astrid and Mark have kept arm’s-length control
of the format since starting it up in 2003. In the
twelve years since the first presentation, there
have been events in over 800 cities worldwide,
including a number in Brighton. Alongside
the regular talk nights,
there are the one-off
events like this one,
which is ‘powered by
Pecha Kucha’.
There is often a theme
to the evenings: we
have called this event
‘Talent Pool’, and its
purpose is to showcase
the range of the creative
talent that makes Brighton Brighton. The
line-up includes Open Market sign designer
Lucy Williams, bonfire sculptor Keith Pettit,
creative competition ‘comper’ Di Coke, Royal
Pavilion historian Alexandra Loske, synesthetic
Instagram star Philippa Stanton, ‘Collector’s
Edition’ author and art director Stuart Tolley,
glass-artist Su Wilson, Kid-ethic art director
and book-cover designer Mark Swan, and
the MakerClub founders on Brighton’s new
MakerLab. There will also be a yet-to-beconfirmed
locally based photographer.
“An exciting line-up in an exciting regenerated
area of Brighton at the Velo café bar,”
says Woody, “and the audience will get the
chance to mingle with the participants after the
presentations. I expect they’ll have a lot to talk
about.”
Alex Leith
Talent Pool, powered by Pecha Kucha, at the
Velo Café on May 7th, will be hosted by Woody
and Viva’s Alex Leith. Doors open 6.30pm with
the talks running, with a break, between 7pm-
9pm. Early-bird tickets £5 from zarawood.com
or vivabrighton.com.
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its and bobs
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miniclicks
Three photographers who deal with abstraction have been
invited to The Old Market (27th April, 7pm start) by Viva’s Jim
Stephenson, in his long-running Miniclicks series, to give illustrated
talks explaining their philosophy. London-based Dafna
Talmor deals with ‘Constructed Landscapes’, creating C-type
prints made of collages and montages of colour negatives. Different
natural scenes are juxtaposed; sometimes there’s a gap of
blackness, as if the earth has cracked. Man-made constructions
are notable by their absence: there’s an ancient, almost primeval
look to things. Brighton University-educated Esme Horne,
meanwhile, is interested in the process of photography: ‘Working
in the darkroom,’ explains Jim, ‘she encourages the chance
aspect of engaging with the simple elements of light, a lens
and photographic paper’. The results are colourful, and rather
delicately beautiful. Finally Lucia Pizzani has been experimenting
with ferrotypes – a Victorian method of exposing collodion
emulsified plates to light (see above); she’ll explain her methodology and the philosophy behind it.
FOUR-LINE POEM: ‘Land’ by Leon Freeman
what ties the sky, sea to sand
who bore our fruits, on whom we stand
impoverished now with tin cans and rubber wrist bands.
Where were you when they branded our land?
....16....

its and bobs
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jj waller’s brighton
“Knowing it was a very low tide, I inveigled an invite to take a twilight reflection picture
from the Wheel,” says JJ. “The shot I envisaged didn’t emerge, probably to do with
some scientific refraction principle, ‘angle v height’ or something. Fortunately, although
I had missed the twilight I would have preferred, I encountered this scene walking on
the sands, actually achieving the opposite reflection to which I had first imagined. Once
again though the human presence won the day. Schmultzy but nice.”
....17....

its and bobs
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Secrets of the pavilion:
No crouching tigers, but many hidden dragons
In the January issue I wrote about the largest object
in the Royal Pavilion, the magnificent Dragon
Chandelier in the Banqueting Room, designed by
the mysterious and elusive artist Robert Jones, one
of the principal interior decorators of the Pavilion,
responsible for many of the final designs after 1815.
This month I would like to draw attention to other,
rarely seen or noticed dragons designed by Jones.
Dragons are one of the most popular motifs in the
decorative schemes of the Pavilion interiors and
can be found in two - or three - dimensional form
in almost every room in the building. Most of these
dragons are the creations of European designers
and bear little resemblance to this most powerful
and positive of Chinese mythological creatures.
However, they are charming and playful designs
that give us an insight into the creative minds of
George IV’s designers, who were trying to conjure
up a vision of the Far East for their patron in the
early 19th century.
In the Red Drawing Room, the first room to the
right off the Green Entrance Hall, Jones included
dragons in the pattern of the so-called Dragon
Wallpaper, which was inspired by Chinese Imperial
robes and painted by hand in white on a rich
vermilion red ground with a glaze of transparent
carmine. These wallpaper dragons are stylised
and easily visible, and George IV liked the pattern
so much that he asked for it to be repeated as a
block-printed version in different colours (green
and yellow) in other rooms of the Pavilion. But in
the Red Drawing Room Jones also sneaked in other,
more subtle, dragons, that would reveal themselves
to visitors only on close inspection, or perhaps by
chance. Once you have spotted them you see them
everywhere and you look around the room in search
....18....

its and bobs
...............................
of more delightful discoveries. These dragons are
painted into the woodgrain effect of all doors and
wood-panelled surfaces, such as window casements,
shutters and skirting boards. Small dragons or
snake-like, phantastical creatures emerge from paint
surfaces that imitate satinwood. They are full of
movement, fluid even, and give a vivid impression
of how they were created, with the artist’s brush
wandering, painting a first tentative little creature,
then more and more.
Woodgraining, marbling and trompe l’oeil effects
were popular features in eighteenth and nineteenth
century interior decorating. By means of painting
artists imitated other, usually more precious, materials
and surfaces, such as marble or exotic woods.
In the Pavilion, a building that plays with your
senses by incorporating optical illusions, imitations
and oriental phantasy worlds, we find many of these
pretend surfaces, skilfully executed by the Craces,
Robert Jones and their assistants. Pink marbled
surfaces, for example, are found in the niches of the
Long Gallery, while imitation bamboo is dotted
around the entire building. Nowhere though is the
technique of woodgraining executed so playfully
and effectively as in the Red Drawing Room.
We cannot say for certain whether Jones himself
painted the dozens of squirming dragons into the
woodgrain of this room, but it is likely that his
brush indeed ‘wandered’ and painted a first dragon,
possibly with no intention to make this a design
feature. An apocryphal story claims that George IV
saw Jones doing this and
was so delighted by the
creatures that he ordered
him to include them everywhere
in the room. It
is a lovely story, but there
is no evidence that this
happened. Very little is
known about the important
figure Robert Jones, but some of his Pavilion
accounts survive. These confirm that he worked
extensively on the Red Drawing Room decorations
between 1820 and 1822, but no mention is made
of the hidden dragons in the woodgraining, only
generic references to the richness of the design
scheme, the quality of the pigments used, and the
highly decorated and varnished surfaces. Unlike
the Dragon Wallpaper, which is a 20th-century
reproduction, the wooden surfaces in this room are
largely original. In the mid-19th century many of
them were covered in a brown copal varnish, but
these dark layers were beginning to be removed
in the 1920s, revealing Robert Jones’ delightful
dragons once again.
The Red Drawing Room is not on the normal
visitor route through the building, but is used for
special events and occasions, including wedding
ceremonies.
Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator
....19....

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its and bobs
...............................
five minutes with: RAY BROOKS, The voice behind Mr Benn
In 1968 I got a phone call out of the blue by the children’s illustrator Donald
McKee. He said ‘would you like to do the voiceover for a TV show they are
making of one of my books? It’s called Mr Benn’. I’d never heard of it. I said ‘yes’.
The Mr Benn series is genius. There were only thirteen episodes, but kids of a
certain generation remember them all their lives. He dresses up in a fancy dress
shop, and has ‘adventures’ connected to the style of the costume he puts on, if
you’re not familiar with it.
I often give talks about my career – I’ve been appearing in films and on TV for
years. In an early talk I mentioned Mr Benn, and said ‘as if by magic’ (which
was the introduction line to the shopkeeper character, and something of a
catchphrase) and everybody stood up and started applauding. I knew I was onto
something. So now I base my talks on ‘the enduring magic’ of Mr Benn.
Sometimes I meet someone for the first time, and they say ‘you’re Mr Benn, aren’t you?’ It’s not my face, and
they don’t know my name: it’s my voice. I was brought up in Brighton. My mother was a bus conductor. She
said ‘Ray, I’m going to send you to elocution lessons’. My teacher was called Pat Donovan, and I adored her.
She’s responsible for my voice. As If by Magic - The Genius of Mr Benn, Brighton Little Theatre, April 12

its and bobs
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spread the word
The Specky Wren
viva offer
While on holiday in UAE, Carly Moorman and Darren Arthur
created this sculpture like ‘installation’: it’s last month’s
Viva stuck in the sand of Beach Fujairah. Please send in your
photos of Viva in exotic locations to alex@vivabrighton.com
The Specky Wren would like to offer all
Viva Brighton’s readers £10 eye tests
and 10% discount off glasses.
The Open Market, 01273 911191
www.thespeckywren.co.uk
charleston festival competition
Charleston Festival returns next month,
from 15-25 May, with a cultural cornucopia
of literature, art and ideas. With speakers
from Stoppard (pictured) to Hambling,
themes from Magna Carta to phone hacking,
and their first original musical commission
the festival promises to be more thoughtprovoking
than ever. Win a pair of tickets
to a performance of your choice (subject to
availability), by answering this question: Family
Romances is the theme of David Nicholls
and Polly Samson’s event at the festival on
May 15. Which of Thomas Hardy’s novels
has Nicholls recently adapted for the screen?
Email hello@vivamagazines.com with ‘Charleston Festival Comp’ in the subject line, stating your answer,
plus your top three preferences for performances you’d like to see, or write to Viva at 151B High St, Lewes,
BN7 1XU. The winner’s name will be drawn from all correct submissions on April 24. charleston.org.uk
Photo by Matt Humphrey 2015
....23....

photography
..........................................
Murray Ballard
One-planet photographer
This month in Viva’s regular
photo feature, Miniclick
takes a look at the work
of Brighton photographer
Murray Ballard, and the
project he completed with
FotoDocument looking at the
protection and restoration
of biodiversity and natural
habitats in Brighton.
How did you come to work on this project?
I applied to an open call by FotoDocument. In
2013 Brighton and Hove became the world’s first
One Planet City and they were commissioning ten
photographers to produce an essay for each of the
One Planet Living principles.
One of the main reasons I applied is because I
wanted to work on a project closer to home. More
often than not my photography has involved
travelling far afield. It might sound odd, but I actually
find it quite difficult to take photographs in
Brighton. Having lived here for nearly ten years,
it’s become almost too familiar, which makes it
harder to see pictures. I thought if I got a commission
it would give me some structure and force me
to produce a finished piece of work.
Were you surprised at the amount of activity
in Brighton and Hove? Definitely. I had no idea
there was so much going on. Before I started
photographing I met up with Rich Howath, the
Biosphere’s Project Officer, who suggested a long
list of relevant subjects. I narrowed them down
according to their environmental importance and
how visually interesting I thought they would be.
What drove the choice to focus mainly on the
people, rather than the landscape/flora/fauna?
Nearly every time I was out photographing with
an ecologist or ranger they’d show
me lots of phone pictures of interesting
plants and wildlife they’d
found. Quite early on I realised I
couldn’t compete with this sort of
wildlife photography. I don’t have
their specialist knowledge, not to
mention the chances of being in
the right place, at the right time, to
get these sorts of pictures.
Fortunately this coincided with me understanding
how highly managed our landscape is, and that
it’s been continually changed and adapted by us
humans for thousands of years according to our
needs and values. I decided to take a broader view
and photograph the work being carried out by
farmers, conservationists and volunteers. As well as
people using the landscape for leisure, rather than
photographing specific flora and fauna.
Has the project had any affect on how you live
now? Any plans to start keeping bees? Without
wanting to sound too corny, this project has definitely
given me a much greater appreciation for
where I live. I had no idea how special the downland
around Brighton is. A ranger told me David
Bellamy once described chalk grassland as being
‘Britain’s tropical rainforest’ because potentially
you can find up to forty different species of plant
in a single square metre, which is quite incredible.
It’s funny you mention bees. Yesterday I exchanged
a jar of honey for a print with one of the beekeepers
I photographed. I’ve got no plans to keep bees,
but my Dad has been building up to it for years
- going on courses, buying equipment… When he
retires he’s planning on getting a hive. Maybe one
day I’ll follow in his footsteps. Jim Stephenson
murrayballard.com
....25....

photography
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Wildflower planting, Craven Wood, Whitehawk Hill
Stuart (with his cows), Bevendean Farm
....26....

photography
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Fencing, National Trust Working Holiday, Devil’s Dyke
Charcoal Burning, Saddlescombe Farm
....27....

photography
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Whitehawk Camp Community Archaeology Project
Moth Trapping, Race Hill, Whitehawk Hill
....28....

photography
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Devil’s Dyke
Elderflower Picking, Stanmer Organics
....29....

column
...........................................
John Helmer
High school musical
Assailed by lateral rain, we struggle up the steps to
Poppy’s school. Inside the door is an improvised
bar run by our friendly neighbours Clara and
Andy (who plays his bagpipes in the back garden).
I buy a couple of Merlots in plastic cups and order
two more for the interval: the school is performing
Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
tonight, and I can’t sit through an Andrew Lloyd
Webber musical without medication.
Poppy and her friends won’t actually occupy seats
adjacent to grown-ups, of course, so I settle myself
four rows ahead along with another friend, Marit,
who is mother of one of Poppy’s besties (Kate
somehow got out of this one).
The chorus bounces on. I’ll give this to the Lord,
he does crisp exposition. Within minutes Joseph
has donned the multi-coloured dressing gown –
having decided, like a retiring 70s football manager,
that his sheepskin days are over.
‘I can’t understand what’s happening,’
whispers Marit. I explain that it’s not
because she’s Norwegian: ‘the acoustics
in here are rubbish’ (I don’t want to say
anything about clear diction being a
thing of the past because that would
come across like I’m one of those parents
who goes round on open evenings
correcting spellings with a red pen).
‘But why is there no talking between
the songs to let you know what’s going
on?’
‘It’s called a “sung-through” musical.’
Yes, I have all the terminology. This is
because Kate used to work for a company
that produced musicals just like this when we
were first together. Full disclosure: she worked for
the Lord.
Interval. Clara and Andy’s pop-up bar has repopped-up
on the first floor. ‘Did you hear Steve
Strange died?’ says Andy. Andy usually has at least
one earbud plugged into his beloved iPod, and as
we speak he is listening to Visage.
‘Always thought he was a bit of a cock,’ I say,
ungenerously.
Even I can’t fault the production downstairs,
though. Pharaoh-as-Elvis is a real laugh, as are the
inexplicable Apache dancers and the Ishmaelites
dressed as Madness. Inappropriate titters come
from four rows back when Joseph gets jiggy with
Mrs Potiphar under a sheet. And when the kids
start building a pyramid out of Fed-ex boxes I
remember exactly why I love school productions.
By the time the lights come on at the end, Marit is
completely won over.
‘I thought that was absolutely brilliant,’ she says,
eyes shining; ‘how about you?’
For me, Joseph evokes all the worst parts of the
Seventies. Flared jeans with neatly ironed creases.
Hand-knitted waistcoats in rainbow colours … And
then there’s the music itself: jazz, rock, and blues so
thinly watered down that if it were a urine sample
your urologist would say you were dead.
But as the children caper home down the road
ahead of us, dancing and singing, the feeling comes
over me – just as it does on Red Nose Day and
at Christmas – that perhaps sometimes critical
scruples are a bit beside the point.
‘I think the kids did a great job.’
....30....

column
...........................................
Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
‘I can’t babysit tonight because I have to do
Zumba’ and ‘I’m going to be late because the
muscles of the sailor are taking ages to dry’ are
very ‘North Village’ excuses for failing to meet
the terms and conditions of babysitting contracts.
Some are so strict that I know of a 17 year old
who missed the final of a rock competition,
because he was already committed. He’s the bass
player. I doubt Bill Wyman ever missed a Stones
gig because of childcare. But commitment’s
clearly a good thing and the Zumba and bicep
excuses are examples of commitment to a greater
cause - the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.
I know. It took me a while to make the connections
between ‘sailor’s muscles taking ages to dry’
and fostering self-development and community
spirit. But, the sailor is a giant papier-mache
model which will be carried aloft, with pride, as
part of Pride.
Who knows what the Duke would make of it?
(Note to editor, do you send copies of Viva to
the Palace?) (Note to readers, I want the editor
to keep this note in the copy. It’s not a mistake. I
mean to invite you into the conversation, make
you feel part of the team, as if you’re in the pub
with Alex Leith, which, if you’ve ever been to a
pub in Brighton you probably have been – he
likes a pub).
Anyway, back to the D of E.
I’m sure, when I was a teenager, it was all about
pain, hardship, orienteering in the dark, getting
lost and freezing to death - not making models
for Pride, doing keep-fit and navigating your way
home from school using Google Maps on your
iPhone.
“It is hard,” Zumba child says. “The class is full of
middle-aged women, like you, with no coordination.
It’s painful to watch”.
She is skating on the sort of ice she ought to be
doing an expedition over.
“Anyway, we have to do expeditions sometime.”
I’m made aware of when, via a string of requests.
“Can you wash my onesie?” “Can you give me
a lift to school? I’m late ‘cos I’ve been making
bunting for the tent.”
“Can you buy ingredients for a stir-fry? And get
tofu too because Cole Thompson is veggie?”
“Shall I get caviar, in case anyone is pescatarian?”
“No, just tofu.”
The irony is lost on her.
But, tofu stir-fry? I’m sure, we had to fry whatever
we managed to forage from the land in lard.
(Note to editor, I have completed the theme
challenge).
(Note to readers, the theme of this month’s issue
is land. I thought ‘Ed’ said “lard.” I’ve got both in.
I get two points).
Anyway… The camping
trip takes place. They
walk for miles. They
get blisters. The popup
tent leaks and it’s
“really, really cold…”
“So cold… that our
pain au chocolat
froze…”
And while I’m scoring
points, I think mine has
been proven.
....31....

column
......................................
Chloë King
An early midlife crisis?
Being a fan of Guardian
live-blogger Stuart
Heritage, you can
appreciate how much
I enjoyed finding out
we have something
in common. On
Friday, my counsellor
offered her diagnosis
of my occasionally
all-enveloping sense of
ennui. At 32, she says
I’m going through a
midlife crisis. “At last,”
I thought, “a proper
Illustration by Chloë King
search term to plug into Google!” This, of course, is
exactly what I did next; only to discover that Stuart
wrote about having a ‘midlife crisis’ last March, aged
33. The find resulted in a feeling of connection, which
due to my frame of mind was quickly repressed. Not
only is Stuart merely speculating about his condition,
he is writing in a national newspaper, a year ago, and
has over 28 thousand more Twitter followers than me.
Pah. I could teach Stuart something about inadequacy.
Much of what I’m reading about midlife crises just
reinforces the illustration I have in my head: a kind
of male-centred Beryl Cook painting in which my
dad appears in full biking leathers and his friend Mike
is cataloguing his chattels on iPhoto. My dad’s crisis
stopped short of an extramarital affair, but he did join
a Wine Club and purchase a Suzuki Bandit 600. By
comparison, I’m newly married and the owner of a
too-new red Skoda Fabia, nicknamed ‘Labia’. With a
meagre 1.4 litre engine, my midlife crisis seems not
only premature, but lacking thrills.
NHS Choices covers the topic under ‘Male Menopause’
and ‘Male Midlife Crisis’:
two headings I’m a little
alienated by. It says they happen
to around 20% of people,
mostly men, between the ages
of 35 and 50. The Telegraph
says signs include listening to
BBC 6 Music (check), excessively
reminiscing about one’s
childhood (check), and looking
up medical symptoms on
the internet (check). Speaking
from the privileged position
of experience, I can add to
this list: total bafflement at
which direction to take your life next.
At this point, happily, Facebook algorithms put my
attention in the direction of a TED Talk by the
Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl.
In ‘Our unhealthy obsession with choice,’ Renata
explains how choice, personal freedom, and the idea
of self-making has been elevated to an ideal. She says
our fixation on individual choice prevents us from
thinking about social changes and leads to feelings of
anxiety (check), guilt (check) and inadequacy (check).
“Instead of making social critiques,” she says, “we are
more and more engaging in self-critique, sometimes
to the point of self-destruction.”
I’m now wondering whether my early midlife crisis
might be better described as having too many options?
If this is the case, Renata says I can overcome
anxiety by accepting that my choices are irrational and
heavily influenced by those around me. I need to stop
taking choice so seriously. In other words: I’m spending
too much time fondling fruit at the supermarket,
when what I really need is a box scheme.
....33....

Photo by Adam Bronkhorst
....34....

interview
..........................................
mybrighton: Huw Morgan
Sussex Wildlife Trust officer
Are you local? Yes. I’ve been living here for the
best part of 40 years. I was brought up in Patcham,
which was a great place to grow up, because it was
so near the countryside, and because there were so
many kids of a similar age around. We used to go off
for the whole day unattended, making camps in the
woods or crashing about on our BMXs.
Have you been here ever since? Apart from a year
in Australia and a year in New Zealand. It was after
that trip, when I was about 25, that I decided to pack
in working as an ad salesperson – which I hated –
and do something that suited me more. I saw an ad
saying the East Sussex County Council were running
trainee volunteer Ranger courses, so I got on
one. I haven’t looked back. First I worked at Buchan
Country Park, near Crawley, then eight years ago I
started at the Sussex Wildlife Trust.
What do you do? I’m the People and Wildlife Officer
for Brighton and Hove. My job is to encourage
people to visit the countryside, to increase their
awareness of wildlife, and to teach them about
conservation. I work with all sorts of groups - from
adult offenders on probation to kids from deprived
areas of Brighton - on a variety of sites, teaching
them bush craft, conservation techniques, tree planting
and all sorts of other skills.
What do you do outside work? In the eighties and
nineties it used to be all about going into the clubs
in town. The Zap, and the Escape. Now I have two
teenage stepchildren and a five-year-old daughter,
so that’s all in the past. I like surfing, though. That
scene has grown immensely in the last twenty years.
I usually go from a place east of the Marina. It’s not
exactly Hawaii, but it’s good enough for me.
Is that how you’d spend an ideal Sunday afternoon?
If not surfing, mountain biking on the South
Downs Way. Then a good Sunday roast with the
family. I like the Jolly Poacher on Ditchling Road. I
used to eat a lot in the Jolly Sportsman in East Chiltington,
and was delighted when the owner’s son
opened a similar place 15 minutes from where I live.
I’ll wash the roast beef down with a pint of Guinness
or a pale ale. My days of 5% lager are long gone.
Where do you do your shopping? On pay-day
weekends I’ll go to Waitrose, otherwise to Asda.
And it’s Asda for clothes, nowadays, from that
up-and-coming designer called George. In the old
days, when I was living with my parents and had
more disposable income, I’d get designer stuff from
boutiques in North Laine. Mind you, even now I’d
never skimp on a pair of trainers – I get them from
Size in North Street.
Where should readers go to enjoy a bit of accessible
countryside in April? Stanmer Park is a good
bet, where our offices are. It’s a good bet all year
round, actually, but particularly in the spring, when
the whole place bursts into life, with the trees blossoming
and the birds nesting. As well as the formal
park gardens and amenities – there’s a café and a bar
and a restaurant – there’s so much wilderness and
woodland to explore. And to make it all easier, from
the beginning of the month the Council are running
buses right into the heart of the park.
In a nutshell, what do you like about Brighton?
The accessibility of the sea and the Downs. The
variety of things to do. The tolerance of the people.
Where would you live if you didn’t live here?
Biarritz. I love the Basque Country coast. AL
....35....

ighton in history
..........................................
What a racket
The 1957 Brighton Police corruption case
A photo of the whistleblower and ex-convict Alan
Roy Bennett, walking from his Rolls Royce to
Brighton Magistrates Court in 1957, shows him with
a neat moustache, wearing a smart suit, a bowler hat
and leather gloves. He has a handkerchief in his top
pocket. He looks pensive.
Bennett was a key witness in the magistrates’ hearing,
and subsequent Old Bailey trial, of the Brighton
Police Corruption case, described by its judge as
‘one of the most serious tried in this or any other
criminal court for a long time’. The defendants
were Brighton’s Chief Constable Charles Ridge,
CID officers Trevor Heath and John Hammersley,
and two civilians accused of being accomplices in a
conspiracy to solicit and accept bribes between 1949
and 1957. All five denied the charges.
Bennett was an RAF deserter who’d been in prison
nine times; he’d been convicted of burglary, theft,
receiving stolen goods, and ‘stealing by trick’, among
other things. His aliases had included Alan Brown,
Austen Ferguson and Poyner. A defence solicitor
described him as a ‘snake’.
But his last conviction was in 1949. He was now a
businessman. Questioned in court about his record,
he shouted: ‘Don’t judge me on what I was years
ago… I have paid for my convictions.’
Since 1949 he had ‘completely changed his fortunes,’
local historian WH Johnson writes. ‘He and his wife
had worked hard and from their now considerable
bank balance bought the Astor Hotel,’ on Kings
Road. He opened a club in the basement in March
1955. ‘But business was slow,’ Johnson writes. ‘He
had to shut at 10.30pm, when the night was just
starting for real drinkers.’
Bennett claimed he’d been approached by another
bar manager, Anthony Lyons (one of the defendants),
who brokered a deal with the police: for £20 a
week (equivalent to £450 in today’s money) the Astor
Club would be left alone. Bennett testified that he
made ‘six or seven’ weekly payments to Ridge, and
to Heath ‘many times’. Bennett’s wife, Wenche, was
unhappy about the arrangement, and told him so.
The club started opening till 3-4am, and got a reputation
for violence, being nicknamed ‘The Bucket
of Blood’. It was seemingly left alone by the police.
Wenche claimed that Heath phoned her on two
occasions warning her to close the club for the night,
presumably when it was due to be raided.
Bennett shut the club down after about six months,
but claimed that Heath still pursued him for money.
For example, when police in Leeds apparently
wanted to speak to Bennett over a dodgy cheque, the
problem disappeared when he paid £15; and after
being told Bournemouth police were inquiring about
him over a jewellery theft, he paid £20, though he
had a solid alibi.
Bennett finally reported Brighton Police to Scotland
Yard in June 1957. They took his claims seriously,
and sent a team to Lewes; from there, they investigated
‘under conditions of greatest secrecy,’ the
Gazette later reported.
After moving to Brighton Town Hall, the investigators
drew up an extensive case, helped by a secretary
who, for security reasons, was ‘taken everywhere by
yard car, and never leaves the Town Hall without an
escort,’ the Herald reported.
According to David Rowland’s book Bent Cops, one
witness was threatened by four ‘tough guys’; they
pressed a razor against her face, and said that if she
gave the wrong sort of testimony, the Soho Don
....36....

Photo courtesy of David Rowland
Billy Howard would ‘cut ya tongue out and then
chop you into little bits’.
She still testified, as did many others. There was the
burlesque club owner who accused Hammersley of
saying that incriminating evidence could be ‘thrown
in the sea’ for £250; the illegal abortionist, and an
accomplice, who both said they paid bribes; a junior
policeman who claimed Heath had offered him
a £10-a-week protection-money deal with a local
club owner; James Swaby, a man with 13 convictions,
who said Heath solicited bribes from him; a
detective-constable who backed up part of Swaby’s
story; a man who claimed to have seen Bennett give
money in an envelope to Heath, and, on another
occasion, money hidden in a newspaper, to someone
who looked like Ridge.
Then there was Ernest Waite, described by the
Solicitor General as ‘a greengrocer, a fruiterer, an
undischarged bankrupt, a receiver of stolen goods,
and obviously a scoundrel’. He claimed that Hammersley
and Heath let him deal in stolen goods, as
long as they came from outside Brighton. Waite
said he had a ‘sort of freedom of the town’, adding
that ‘it was through Mr Hammersley’s contact that I
got the stolen goods’. In return, Waite said, he gave
money to both policemen, who also used to visit his
shop regularly, take ‘two or three pounds worth of
stuff, give me a ten-shilling note and wait for the
change.’
One defence solicitor described the prosecution
evidence as ‘rotten’. Another said that if a TV show
had this plot ‘you would switch the set off as you
would not believe it.’
The trial closed at the end of February 1958. Lyons
was acquitted, while the other civilian defendant got
three years in prison. Ridge heard his verdict ‘white
faced, with beads of sweat on his forehead,’ the
Gazette reported. Found not guilty, he left the court
‘looking dazed’.
Hammersley and Heath were sentenced to five
years’ imprisonment each. Months earlier, they
had been photographed smiling on the way to the
magistrates’ court (see above), perhaps confident
that, though they were guilty, they could not be
convicted on the evidence of such dubious characters
as Waite, Swaby and Alan Roy Bennett.
Steve Ramsey
Further reading: Bent Cops by David Rowland
....37....

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grasshopper
Smells like teen spirit
They’ve released two EPs, played almost 70 gigs and
opened for The Charlatans at Worthing Pavilion
last month – and they’re still in their mid teens. We
spoke to singer Javi Fedrick about being in a band
when you’re too young to legally enter many venues.
How was the gig with The Charlatans? We had
the best time. I’d probably say it’s the biggest gig
we’ve ever played, and we had the awesome Innerstrings
Psychedelic Lightshow doing visuals for us,
which made it really special.
How did it come about? Tim Burgess heard our
music last year and offered us a few festival slots
before he even knew our ages (he thought it was
hilarious once he found out). Then on Christmas
Eve we got a phone call from his manager who asked
us if we were interested in supporting them at their
only South Coast show… No brainer!
How old are you all? I’m 15, my brother Luis is
13, and the two girls (Em and Rachel) are both 17.
We’ve all been in Brighton for all of our (short) lives.
Do you feel lucky growing up here? It’s a really
brilliant place to live in, as there’s so much creative
stuff going on. I’m still too young to get into a lot of
gigs, but I think the young/DIY scene in Brighton is
really strong, so I’d say if you can’t get into a gig, put
on your own one with your friends.
Do you think you’ve inspired any other young
bands to start playing? I‘m sure we haven’t been
responsible for the formation of any other bands,
but when we first started, there was an amazing DIY
youth scene headed by AMI Brighton, which had a
monthly residency at the (sadly now lost) Blind Tiger
Club. There was a really supportive atmosphere
at those gigs, and I know lots of young bands had
their first few gigs there, and are now getting some
really brilliant support slots/festivals.
What sort of music do you make? Someone once
described our music as “a blend of post-punk-surfshoegaze
gorgeousness”. I think that sums up our
sound as well as anything else.
Do you find your age works against you or is it
an advantage? We’re not particularly interested in
aping our musical heroes, and as a result there’ve
been a few times when people have tried to ‘direct’
what we’re doing, and we have to be quite assertive
about saying that we’d rather do our own thing.
Our SoundCloud is there so that people can decide
if they like us or not without knowing how old we
are, which is how we like it. We’re always upfront
about our ages when we’re offered gigs (because of
licensing laws), but usually promoters treat us as they
would any other band (minus the alcohol on the
rider!). Interview by Ben Bailey
grasshopper are headlining an autism charity gig at
The Joker on Thur 2 and supporting Sonic Jesus at
The Hope & Ruin on Tues 14.
....39....

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local musicians
..........................................
Ben Bailey rounds up the Brighton music scene
ELECTROWORX
Fri 3, Hope & Ruin, 7.30pm, Free
This showcase of homegrown
electronica makes
a point of promising
much more than blokes
staring at laptops. From
the improvised ambient
synths of Champion
Fever to the reworked
trip-hop of Adolescent and Pollen’s looped
mash-ups, the night’s emphasis is a fusion of live
instrumentation and experimental electronic
sounds. Curated by Brighton’s bitbin, a composer
and performer who emerged from a decade of engineering
work with his own synthesis of twitchy
ambient beats and epic Boards Of Canada chord
changes, the line-up is interspersed by modular
synth sets by VCOADSR and topped off with live
audio-reactive visuals.
ALMIGHTY PLANETS
Fri 3, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 11pm
Things seemed to be going well for Almighty
Planets when they supported Young Fathers at
The Haunt for Wire’s DRILL festival back in
December. Now, without warning, they’ve decided
to call it a day. The eight-piece funk and soul band
haven’t given a reason for the split, issuing only a
‘thank you’ missive declaring a blow-out farewell
show at Sticky Mike’s. After eight years stoking up
a party wherever they went (including a previous
stint as BOY COM), the band’s demise will be a
shame for fans of fun-loving funk and hip hop,
especially after the departure of similarly spirited
Mean Poppa Lean the year before last. Let’s hope
they go out with a big bang.
BLACK SUNDAY VIII
Sun 5, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 2.30pm, £6.50
“A band drenched in metal, brutality and malevolence.”
That’s how Brighton thrash band King
Leviathan describe themselves in the run up to
this all-day mini metalfest. Now in its eighth year,
Black Sunday has become a calling of the banners
for South Coast headbangers – offering a mix of
death metal, industrial thrash and the fifty shades
of black in between. The full bill includes XVLTR,
They Live, Bleed Again, Last Days Of Rome,
Hawka Hurricane, Enslavement, Aperitas and
Tellurium. The headline slot goes to Eastbourne’s
Vehement whose two-part metal epic entitled
Carrion Rule and Oceans Of Rot could possibly be
inspired by their hometown.
MOK
Wed 15, Green Door Store, 7pm, £3
In the not-toodistant
future your
grandchildren will
need to be sat down
and taught about
these things we used
to call albums. Four
years in and hip hop new-wavers MOK still show
no inclination to put out a record – instead releasing
a string of video-assisted standalone singles,
each more polished and ambitious than the last.
The newest, Cutloose, sees the band return to their
house-party roots, only this time with a decidedly
dark twist on their pop sensibilities. An euphoric
coming-up chorus alternates with a manic break
suggesting anxiety attacks, random nosebleeds
and the kind of chemical disorientation that your
grandchildren will probably know only too well.
....41....

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music
...........................
Yamato Drummers
Beat poets
“Basically, we are always
together, except the
time when you’re in the
toilet,” says Gen Hidaka,
one of the Yamato
Drummers of Japan.
The group was started
by Masa Ogawa in
1993, after his mother
found a big Taiko drum
in a shrine and suggested
he do something
with it; they’ve since
performed to more
than six million people
in fifty-odd countries.
In mid-March, Hidaka spoke to me from the Netherlands,
where he and another member of the group
have been teaching. Their latest tour hadn’t yet
started, so the rest of them were probably in a village
called Asuka, where they all live in the same house.
“We sometimes argue, but it’s really important
for us to understand each other more, and more
deeply. We believe that to make one sound on stage,
you must understand each other. That’s why we’re
always together.”
Though, of course, they do practice a lot, “we consider
it’s more important for us to live together, and
talk together, than practicing Taiko… When I joined
Yamato I had no Taiko experience or knowledge at
all. They said as long as you can live together with
us, you can join. There was no drumming exam, or
physical test; they only asked me if I could cooperate
and live together with them.”
Hidaka had been a business-management student
when, as a birthday present, a friend took him to see
the Drummers. “The next day, or something, I was
calling the head office
of Yamato and asking if
I could join.”
So he went to live in
Asuka, adopting the
group’s exhaustingsounding
routine. “In
the morning we get up
together at like 6.30 or
7am, then we go running
for about 10 kilometres,
then we clean
the house, also we cook
and eat together. After
that, we usually go to
the mountains and do
some weight training. Then, in the afternoon, we
start rehearsing Taiko drumming, until like midnight,
[or] until the neighbours complain.
“I don’t feel like we have no free time. Sometimes
we go together to the sea and go fishing, or go to do
the shopping. We enjoy that. When we are on tour,
every city we go to, we go running in the morning,
then we can see the city; it’s like sightseeing for us.
“Because we are always together, we don’t really
have time to spend with [our families]. We write letters
to them, especially when we are on tour. That’s
how we communicate with our families, basically.”
‘I have never seen personal discipline or work discipline
like it,’ an assistant on their European tour told
the Times in 2001. ‘It’s frightening.’
Hidaka says “sometimes I might feel like, ‘Oh, I cannot
continue drumming anymore’, or ‘I’m too tired
today’, or ‘I’m not good enough’, but we support
each other and encourage each other - ‘Hey, don’t
give up now’. Then we do more.” Steve Ramsey
Sun 26 Apr, Theatre Royal, 7.45pm
....43....

music
..............................
Polar Bear
Hard-to-classify jazzers
Photo Kristy Campbell
Noted for his drumming talents and his Sideshow
Bob hairdo, Seb Rochford was a key member of
the Hendrix-covering jazz/punk band Acoustic
Ladyland. They’re no longer active, but he’s coming
to Brighton this month with Polar Bear, which has
three of the same members, two Mercury nominations,
and a jazz-like sound that no-one seems quite
sure how to describe.
You’ve said you wanted to play drums ‘ever since
I was four years old or so’. Was that a typical
four-year-old’s enthusiasm for anything you can
hit and make a noise with, or were you really
into music at that point? Yeah, I’ve been very, very,
very into music for as long as I can remember.
In your teens, according to Time Out, you
‘played with indie, metal and hardcore outfits’.
How did you start moving from that towards
jazz? My mum played me jazz from when I was a
baby, so I was always hearing it, although I couldn’t
connect to it for a long time. Seeing it live really
changed things for me; she took me to see [saxophonist]
Andy Sheppard, which I really enjoyed a
lot. That started me listening to it at home. For any
style of music, for me it’s just about finding the door
in. Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington were also
very important doors for me into jazz.
What were your early years in London like,
when you were carrying your whole drumkit on
the Tube to gigs, and trying to get established?
I was really broke when I first came to London and
did anything I could to play and get inspiration,
finding out where the free gigs were and walking to
them if I didn’t have any money. I carried my drums
on the Tube, stands in a rucksack, drums packed
inside each other in my arms and cymbals on my
shoulder. I did this for three or four years.
Did you do any non-musical jobs to get by? Or
any unrewarding jobs as a drummer-for-hire?
When I first came, once a week I would sing nursery
rhymes with children in Ealing, and also play piano
with a man who had Down’s Syndrome. After the
positive effect the music was having on him, they
increased it to twice a week. I learnt a lot from
spending time with him. These two things enabled
me to survive very basically, but still gave me plenty
of time to practise. When I saw the standard in
London I thought I really had to practise a huge
amount if people were going to want to play with
me. Because I didn’t study in London, I felt like it
took me a bit longer to meet people, but was lucky
that, at the first jam session I went to, I met an amazing
musician called Rachel Musson, who took my
number and asked me to have a jam with her. This is
who I started Polar Bear with. Steve Ramsey
Polar Bear + Leafcutter John, Wed 15 April, Komedia,
7.30pm, £15
....44....

music
.........................................
Lordi
Eurovision’s scariest winners
“It’s not easy to find a person who would say ‘eh,
Lordi, I think they’re quite ok’,” says Mr Lordi,
frontman of the 2006 Eurovision winners. “It’s usually
either ‘oh, that band fucking sucks, those idiots,
those rubber-masked clowns’, or they just love us.”
While fans of Lordi are “super loyal and fanatic,”
the costumes mean that many people “will not
give a fair chance to our music… The image is our
blessing and our curse.
“It’s a more extreme version of my own idols - Kiss,
Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister - with quite a lot of
the horror genre/monster image in the mix.”
Mr Lordi, whose childhood dream was to be Gene
Simmons, started his band in 1992, and even then
was singing in English. “For me, English has always
been the only language in rock and roll.”
The next ten years were a “really frustrating”
period, in which Lordi were unable to get a record
deal, as they refused to change either their sound or
their look. “Like any teen, you think you’re the king
of the world and know everything about everything.
When the labels were telling me that I should do
this or change that, I got really mad… Whenever I
had some negative response, I would not ever send
them anything again.
“The main problem for the labels was that the music
and the image didn’t match, they thought. Two
of the labels said the music is alright but you have
to lose the image, the image is so stupid, it doesn’t
fit the music at all.
“Or they said the image is cool but you’ve got to
start playing death metal, because the image is
way too hard for your poppy music. We refused to
change either of those things, and they were invited
to take it or leave it, and usually they left it.
“It took ten years for the first people to actually see
that this poppy 80s-oriented hard rock, with this
kind of extreme image, actually could work.”
Did they at least spend those ten years building up
a good live fan base? “No, actually not. I thought,
from an early stage, this was the kind of band that
should not be watered down by performing in small
pubs and clubs. My plan was that when we started
performing, it had to be in decent venues, and the
people who came, they had to be willing to pay for
the ticket because they wanted to see us, and hear
us, and they had to know the songs already.
“Against the wishes of the record label, we put out
the single first, then the video, and waited for, I
don’t know, four months before the album came
out. Only when the album had gone gold, that’s
when we played our first show. It was sold out.
People there wanted to see the band, and they
already knew what we looked like and how we
sounded. That was my plan, and it worked.” SR
Lordi, Mon 6th April, Concorde 2, 7pm, £18.50
....45....

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music
...........................
Mariana Sadovska
Björk meets Pete Seeger
Mariana Sadovska, now known as the ‘Ukrainian
Björk’, was on holiday, hiking in the Carpathian
Mountains. She wasn’t a musician back then, and
hadn’t planned to become one. But in the mountains,
by chance, she heard a woman singing.
“It was this traditional, authentic voice; raw, not
polished, not trained in a school, just like how
women sing in the Carpathian Mountains. I fell so
much in love. From that moment, I didn’t understand
why, but I really wanted to get in touch with
such music.
“I was already travelling a lot in the villages, and
I never could give a clear answer for why I was
doing it; I just felt that I wanted to get to know this
culture.”
Growing up in western Ukraine in the 70s and 80s,
Sadovska had spoken Ukrainian, “but I knew that
in the east, it was different. To speak Ukrainian
was not cool; it was like a village language. If you
wanted a prestigious job, you’d better speak Russian.
All this authentic culture was exchanged for
a very strange creation, Soviet folklore. They were
trying to replace it, and in some places they managed
to do it. I grew up with the feeling that they
managed to do it everywhere.”
Also, “young people were moving to the cities…
this traditional passage [of songs], from grandmother
to mother, from mother to daughter,
was broken. It was very much seen as something
uncool.”
After discovering that her own mother hadn’t
really learned the songs of the previous generation,
Sadovska recorded her grandmother and
grandmother’s sister singing them, just for her own
interest, with no thought of becoming a singer or
folk-song collector.
She’d studied classical piano, but decided against
it as a career, and went to work for a theatre group
which had a philosophical interest in “the theatrical
element in life, and especially in rituals, and traditional
life… Anywhere where we were going to
perform, we were trying to get in touch with their
traditional culture.”
So it seemed like a natural progression when, after
her encounter in the Carpathians, Sadovska spent
15 years travelling around rural areas of Ukraine,
collecting traditional songs. Her subjects were keen
to pass them on, as if they “couldn’t die before they
gave their songs to somebody”.
She found love songs, and sad songs, but also ritual
songs: to bring the spring, to prevent rain during
harvest time, or to bless a newly married couple.
“To discover that this culture did survive the Soviet
era and has nothing to do with the Soviet era -
this culture reaches to a very ancient time, before
Christianity - it’s like suddenly finding gold in the
earth. That’s how I felt. And I felt it was my task to
share it with the world outside Ukraine. I always
wanted to be a kind of messenger of my culture.”
Steve Ramsey
Sadovska will perform traditional Ukrainian songs in
a modern style, dueting with a ‘German percussionist
and electronica specialist’, Wed 22nd April,
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, 7.30pm, £12/£10
....47....

style through life
wear the
world.
fina-boutique.co.uk

theatre
...........................
Annoying the Neighbours
‘Some people really push the boundaries’
“I started hearing this buzzing sound late at night,
which kind of got worse as the night went on,” says
Louise Wallinger. She thought it was some kind of
electrical or mechanical fault in the building. But
this was a block of flats with “quite a few anti-social
behaviour problems”, and when people from the
local council came round, they thought someone
might have been making the noise on purpose.
“They offered to send a professional witness, who
would sit in my flat at night and try and work out
what it was.” This gave Wallinger an idea.
She works in the field of verbatim theatre, in which
plays are constructed from the edited text of interviews.
So she decided to talk to people whose job it
was to deal with neighbour issues; and to interview
normal people about their neighbours.
“I don’t think I’ve had a performance yet where
someone hasn’t been telling me about their neighbours
afterwards. It is something that people can
really relate to. Because, partly, it’s about diplomacy,
and the things we have to do in order to live next
door to people.
“I found that some people will really push the
boundaries, and it’s quite amazing what other
people put up with in order to still kind of rub
along with their neighbours.
One story involves a woman who had been unexpectedly
at home, naked: it was a bad time to find
out that her neighbour had been using their spare
key to let themselves in. “But she never actually
asked for the key back, because she says it would
have been so embarrassing.
“There’s another woman whose neighbour just
comes round and sits in her garden, just outside her
living room window, to smoke a fag. At first, she
tried to get her to stop, then just started to live with
it, in the hope that she went away. So it seems that
there are people who haven’t quite learnt the rules
of how to get along.”
Other neighbours are intentionally obnoxious: she
was told about a guy “who sellotaped about 20 different
alarm clocks to his ceiling, to go off at different
times during the day, to annoy the neighbours,
and left Westlife playing on repeat all day.”
“I think problems with neighbours can really blight
people’s lives,” Wallinger says. And yet, lots of the
stories in Annoying the Neighbours are funny. “Or
even if they weren’t funny to start with, with the
passage of time, people are seeing the humour in
them. So some of it is quite serious, but a lot of it
does come across in quite a humorous way.”
As for her own problem, Wallinger never actually
had to call in a professional witness. She discovered
the noise was caused by a faulty light on the outside
of the building. She no longer lives there, by the
way – and, in answer to the inevitable question, she
says her current neighbours are “all very nice”. SR
Annoying the Neighbours, in a double bill with Martin
Stewart’s play Pyramids of Margate, Sat 11 April,
Otherplace at the Basement, 8pm
....49....

comedy
.........................................
Jane Postlethwaite
Hove comedian, made in Cumbria
I arrange to meet Jane Postlethwaite – for the first
time – in the Hove Place pub, and she sends me a
text beforehand to leave me in no doubt as to which
person to approach when I arrive. ‘I’m the tall lady,’
she writes, ‘black coat and BOOTHS black bag in
hand!’
There’s no need, actually, because I’ve seen a You-
Tube video of her performing on stage, in the guise
of ‘Kirsty Bird’, a falcon expert. Jane’s a comedian,
based in Hove, preparing a show for the Fringe.
The ‘BOOTHS’ bag is relevant; Booths is a food
store chain, much loved in the North West of
England, but virtually unknown down here. Jane is
from the Lake District – Kirkby-in-Furness to be
exact – and her show, called Made in Cumbria, is an
attempt to challenge any stereotypical preconceptions
the audience might have about Northerners.
The clip has made me smile, and so I fondly wave
when I walk in, forgetting for a second she hasn’t a
clue what I look like. She is tall, and very striking,
and drinking tea. She buys me a pint and we find a
table. I tell her I was born in Newcastle, of Geordie
parents, and we talk all things North.
“I’ve seen a lot of acts that put on Northern accents,”
she says. “They make their character a bit
stupid, to get a laugh. I find it a bit patronising,
to tell you the truth. So I’m developing a number
of characters that have a real Northern sense of
humour, which I find has a lot of depth, and intelligence,
and something of a dark side.”
The characters include Karroll Kavannagh, a
‘female Bear Grylls-type survival expert’, the ‘first
Northern female astronaut’, and a children’s author,
much influenced by Beatrix Potter. Jane talks about
the dark side of Beatrix Potter’s work, which her
character will explore: “I mean, she makes the animals
wear clothes. And they’re punished for losing
them. And Squirrel Nutkin gets his tail bitten off.
And Peter Rabbit’s dad is eaten by Mr McGregor.”
The more we talk, the more I realise that Jane is
serious about her comedy. She tells me about her
musical ear, which allows her to mimic any accent
she hears. About how she’s studied books on the
nature of humour. About how she ‘lives’ her characters,
one at a time, to work out what makes them
tick. And about her ambitions for the future. “I’m
developing the show for the Fringe this year,” she
tells me (she’s been signed up by Laughing Horse,
and has four shows) “and I’m hoping this will lead
to some Edinburgh shows next year.”
Which leads, indirectly, to a pertinent question. If
her shows are aimed, in part, at educating Southerners
about the depths of Northern humour, how
would they go down up North? She pauses, for the
first time, to think about this. “I’d love to find out,”
she says. And you can bet that she will. Alex Leith
Jane performs at Funny Women, 8pm Saturday 25
April at Komedia. Check Fringe programme for
Laughing Horse gigs in May
....50....

the lowdown on...
................................
Compering
Tonight’s host is Charmaine Davies
As a stand-up comedian
you can usually do your
acts and bugger off. As a
compere you’re there all
night. The whole thing is
your responsibility.
The compere’s role is to
hold the whole thing together,
and to introduce
the acts. One thing is getting
out the house rules:
no phones, don’t talk over
the acts, that sort of thing.
A bit like an air hostess
before the flight. That’s what I did in the five
minutes I had a proper job. I used to do the
safety announcements in a porn voice.
When you start out you have a ‘cold’ room.
Your job is to warm it up, so the crowd are
receptive to the first act. If that act dies, you
have to warm the room up again.
If an act goes badly, the compere can
always pick things up again. If the compere
is shit, the acts hardly stand a chance.
Interaction with the crowd is a useful prop.
Where are you from? What do you do? Why are
you sitting in the front row? HAVE YOU NEVER
BEEN TO A COMEDY NIGHT BEFORE?
You can take the piss a bit but you can never
be horrible to a crowd member. If you do
that, you will lose the rest of the audience.
You have to get the audience to relate to
you, and think that you’re their mate. You
have to be a little humble, too. If you’re an
arrogant shit, they’ll hate you, too.
Every crowd has a different vibe. It’s your
job to feel that vibe, and to set the tone accordingly.
Only experience
can help you with that skill.
The problem with compering
a regular show is
that you see a lot of the
same faces back every time,
and you have to make sure
you have new material every
time. I try to keep it topical,
by referring to the news, or
Big Brother. Impressions
come in handy. Joan Rivers,
Cher, Cheryl Cole.
I’m constantly preparing
material: like every comedian I have scraps of
paper all round my house. An idea can come
to you anywhere, a little lightbulb suddenly
flashes. They always seem funny when you
think them up. As you step onto the stage you
start to doubt it. But it’s too late then…
Organising comedians is a little like herding
cats; there’s a hell of a lot of preparation
that goes into a comedy night. And it’s more
than just getting them there and warming
up for them. Sometimes you have to be a
counsellor to the performers, too: a shoulder
to cry on.
Before the gig I’ll have a glass of wine,
but no more. You have to be on your toes.
You want the crowd to be a little drunk, but
not too drunk, or it all becomes an exercise in
crowd control. After the gig, anything goes.
As told to Alex Leith
Charmaine will be compering at Victory
Comedy, Duke St, 15 April; Comedy Next Door
at The Dorset, 29th April; Funny Fursdays at
Hotel Pelirocco, 30th April
....51....

CINEMA
..........................................
Savage Beauty
Revenge: a dish best served hot
It is rare indeed for a portmanteau film, made up
of different stories whose connections are not immediately
obvious and whose styles vary dramatically,
to succeed in generating the kind of sustained
resonance of an effective feature-length film. But
with Wild Tales, Argentine writer/director Damián
Szifrón has created a dark and often surreal set of
blackly comic films that certainly come together
to be more than the sum of their parts. Their
common denominator, happened upon from wildly
different sources and sets of circumstances, is the
glory of revenge, the need to retaliate with violence
to the many slights and aggravations of daily life.
Wild Tales – whose original Spanish title is closer to
‘Savage Tales’ – plays at the Duke of York’s during
April, and consists of six episodes, each with a different
cast but all about revenge for offenses real
or imagined: passengers on a jet realise too late
that they are vicariously connected to one vengeful
person from their past; on a stormy night, a waitress
at a diner recognises a customer as the sleazy
developer who foreclosed on her family’s home,
and finds herself in a position to avenge; two men
on a deserted highway, one in an Audi, the other
in a jalopy, are gripped by extreme road rage; a
demolitions engineer finds his car towed from
an unmarked parking spot in front of the bakery
where he has just bought a cake for his daughter’s
birthday party and takes on those responsible in
the only way he knows how; a rich family tries to
cover up a fatal hit-and-run accident with the help
of their lawyer and corrupt authorities, bringing
wrath upon their heads; a bride realizes at her
wedding that her new husband has been cheating
on her, with devastating consequences for all.
All the episodes, except for the first, that describes
a situation crafted with a great amount of planning
and deliberation, describe hot-headed vengeful
acts. As Szifrón has said, “what separates civilization
from barbarism is a complex battery of social
inhibitors; what differentiates us from animals is
our capacity to restrain ourselves. Most of us live
with the frustration of having to repress ourselves,
but some people explode. This is a movie about
those who explode, and we can all understand why
they do.”
The last episode in particular, itself a tour de force
of filmmaking, seems to manifest the core impulse
of the film, which Szifrón has described as “the
desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom,
and the rage and the anguish it produces, can cause
us to run completely off the rails.”
Deservedly nominated for the Academy Award for
Best Foreign Language Film, it will be interesting
to see if this successful and innovative film spurs
other filmmakers to explore certain themes in a
similar fashion, by refracting their light through
the prism of a multi-faceted work. Catch it while
you can on the big screen, before it attains welldeserved
cult status. Yoram Allon
....52....

cinema
..........................................
Yoram Allon takes a look at other film highlights
April sees lots of fantastic stuff happening at the
wonderful Emporium, most prominently their
‘Seaside Celluloid’ mini film festival celebrating
our city on screen, running 10th–12th April.
This includes a rare screening of Jigsaw (1962),
starring Jack Warner as a detective trying to
solve a murder, piecing together fragments of
her life from scenes across Brighton & Hove.
Also presented are Mona Lisa (1986), Neil
Jordan’s classic BAFTA-winning crime drama
starring Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine; Me
Without You (2001), a refreshingly different buddy
movie starring Michelle Williams and Anna
Friel; and, of course, Quadrophenia (1979), the
most famous of all ‘Mods and Rockers’ movies,
part-shot in Brighton and starring Phil Daniels,
Lesley Ash and Sting, based on The Who’s rock
opera. Most glorious of all is another chance
to see 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), a fictive
24-hours in the life of musician, songwriter,
author, screenwriter, composer, actor and Hove
resident Nick Cave; directed by experimental
filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, this
fascinating and innovative film won the Directing
Award in World Cinema Documentary at
Sundance, as well as many other plaudits including
a BAFTA nomination, and simply has to be
seen and heard.
Elsewhere, the Sundance-winning documentary
Dark Horse: The Incredible True Story of Dream
Alliance comes to the Duke’s at Komedia cinema
from 17th April. This tells the extraordinary story
of Dream Alliance, a horse born and bred by a
syndicate in a depressed South Wales mining village
who, against all the odds, conquered the world
of horse racing. The film, which director Louise
Osmond describes as “Rocky … with a horse”,
follows the determination of Jan Vokes and her
husband Brian who, with the help of £10 a week
from 23 of their friends in the town of Cefn Fforest
to cover the horse’s food and training, ready our
equine hero for the Grand National at Aintree in
2010. Strange but true.
Lastly, Noah Baumbach (writer/director of The
Squid and the Whale (2005) and Frances Ha (2012),
amongst other indie successes) is back with a new
comedy drama, While We’re Young, starring Ben
Stiller, Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried. This
sharply-crafted and engaging movie focuses on a
middle-aged couple befriending a disarming young
couple, and discovering their inner twentysomethings,
to the consternation and condescension of
their supposed friends. In a time of ubiquitous 30-
year band reunions (The Wonder Stuff? Inspiral
Carpets?!), this film seems strangely attuned to the
current zeitgeist of needing to rewind in order to
move forward.
....53....

ighton festival
..........................................
Ali Smith
The world seen through art-tinted glasses
“Art makes us better, happier human beings,”
says Ali Smith, a smile crossing her face, a glint
in her eye.
I’m sitting under the artificial lighting of the
Brighton Dome Studios, after the press launch
of this year’s Brighton Festival, with a pen
in my hand, struggling to keep up with the
rapid-talking Scottish author. She’s the Guest
Director of this year’s Festival, and she’s been
very hands on. Words are pouring out of her.
Nobody writes this fast.
“Art is exciting, it catches you out and it can
change your life. It gives you space from whatever
is happening around you and allows you to
see where you are going, and where you could
be, and where you have been. And that is just
the starting point.”
Then, without pause: “When we start an art
discussion, it allows us to let things happen
which are bigger than ourselves. All the books
we ever read and all the places we ever visited
enter and pass through us when we come in
contact with other works.”
The author of six novels, four collections of
short stories, as well as two audacious works
of non-fiction, and plays, Ali Smith has proved
that the only predictable element about her
work is the certainty of reinvention. In 2007,
she partnered with the Scottish band Trashcan
Sinatras and wrote the lyrics to Half An Apple,
a love song about keeping half an apple spare
for a lost loved one. In 2013 she became patron
for Visual Verse, an online anthology of art and
words that challenges writers to produce a
short piece in response to an image within an
hour – “an intense, good way to get primeval
feelings out on paper.” Last year, two versions
of her dual-narrative novel How To Be Both
were published simultaneously, winning her the
Goldsmith Prize for original fiction.
Smith’s belief in the power of merging artistic
expressions is evident throughout the festival’s
programme; the event crosses between art
forms, invites us to take another look and
rediscover our surroundings, including nature.
“Cambridge, where I live, is very close to the
countryside, so within five minutes I can be
out of the traffic. That is very important to me
and it should be to everyone. It’s important to
recognise the constraints that are on us, and
the openness of what life really is. We all live
close to pavements, buildings, and other people,
and it’s imperative to negotiate a little bit of a
breather for ourselves. Nature gives us that.”
Looking at her informal khaki jacket and her
wide-legged jeans, it’s easy to imagine Smith
in her wellies, happily trudging through mud.
“I love all the landscapes,” she says. “I think
it comes from being Scottish and living in a
place where the landscape changes very fast.
You can travel half an hour and you are in lush
green Scotland; travel half an hour past that
and you are in a place where there are no trees
and nothing but stags and moss and heather,
and you can travel again until you are on a
cliff edge. We live on a versatile island. And it’s
....54....

interesting to see that so many of the arts in
the UK today are turning towards nature. Why
are we questioning the integrity of building
over green land, and why are we talking about
things like fracking and the ways in which we
use our environment? The arts are looking at it
all and asking ‘wait a minute, what about this?’
It’s going to be very interesting to see where it
all leads us.”
Contributing to the organisation of the largest
multi-art spectacular in Europe means that
Smith has been spending a great deal of time
in Brighton. “There’s something about edges
which is very fertile for us as human beings and
I love Brighton precisely because it reminds
you about the edge of land… land crossing
into another. We congregate at those edges.
Which is why a town like Brighton is ancient
and modern at the same time. Everything about
Brighton pulls you towards light and the great
open possibility of the sea. It’s a melting pot of
different energies.”
As a guest director, Smith was also able to pull
in many of her favourite artists, like fellow
authors Jeannette Winterson and Margaret
Atwood, the Mercury-nominated folk singer
Sam Lee and the French film director Agnès
Varda. “In Inverness, where I grew up, there
was basically no theatre – there was a tiny
theatre at the back of the bus station which
occasionally put on a play. And then when I was
about 14, somebody opened a theatre in the
middle of town. I would go every week, and one
Photo by Vis Frankowski
Sunday I saw an Agnès Varda film. It was then
I realised that Paris was possible in Inverness,
that France was possible in Inverness, and that
the rest of the world was possible. Art does that.
It builds bridges.”
I furtively look down at my watch: I have time
for one last question. “Tell me something about
yourself not many people know,” I ask. “I’m
very secretive,” she replies, and immediately
starts laughing (possibly at my disappointment).
“Not really. I’m actually not secretive at all. I
have no secrets. Let me think… I can play the
mouth organ! I learnt to play She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon as a child. The film had just been on TV
so I taught myself that tune, then Oh Susanna.”
Is she any good? “I play when I know the
neighbours are out.” Barbara Doherty/BM
....55....

flash fact competition
...................................
Busted
by Cathy Herbert
My sister’s wiping away dust that isn’t there. There
isn’t any because she has a cleaner (a cleaner! for a
one-bedroom flat!).
If there were any dust, though, I’d write this in it:
Treachery - Beware.
Her face in the mirror is a brave shade of pale.
Like she’s had a hard time.
This evening it will be my sister’s birthday party
and I’m helping out. Not a particularly special
birthday – 27 – but she always marks the occasion.
She always makes a fuss of other people’s birthdays,
too.
Outside the French windows, her boyfriend Sam is
pushing and pulling a pair of shears.
‘I asked Sam to cut back the ivy,’ my sister says.
She must sense that I’d prefer it just us two. ‘It’s
unstoppable otherwise.’
‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ I ask. ‘Would Darwin
approve, do you think?’
She does boss-eyes.
I’ve brought fairy lights to hang round. Only, I
must have put them away in a hurry. They drop
out the box in a wodge and neither of us can find
an end in the tangle. We have to sit down.
After a few minutes, she stops. She nods towards
the window. ‘Two years we’ve been together.’
‘That long?’
‘Nearly. But he’s been weird, lately, distant.’ She
gasps, then laughs on the outbreath. ‘Do you think
he’s building up to something?’
Illustration by Lucy Williams
I pick at a hard knot of flex. It won’t give.
‘No need to look so stricken, Kit-Kat,’ she says. ‘I
can always pop out and buy a new set.’
‘Take them onto the patio,’ she tells me, at last.
Pleased. She flicks the kettle. ‘I’ll make us all a nice
cup of tea.’
The fresh air hits and my blood rushes to meet it.
I march over to Sam and slide in the gap between
him and the wall. He puts down the shears. I don’t
say a single word. We’ve been talking for weeks,
and where’s it got us?
Except, here’s the thing. When I let myself look at
him – like we’re alone – I am either too weak, or
too strong. I may have stopped breathing. He takes
my hand, I feel the ivy at my back, and I close my
eyes.
A smash lights up the dark – three cups on steaming
concrete, teaspoons, the clatter of an upturning
tray. The other breakage makes no noise at all.
Next month’s prompt is ‘The First Time’. True life
stories of no more than 400 words, in by 16 April
please. The winning entry gets published here and
receives a £25 book token from Kemptown Bookshop.
Please send entries to barbara@blackmustard.co.uk
....56....

literature
..........................................
DARK AEMILIA by Sally O’Reilly
Shakespeare’s muse?
‘Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’
Shakespeare’s three witches
shadow the narrative of Dark
Aemilia, Brighton-based author
Sally O’Reilly’s first historical novel.
“I had wanted to write a version of
Macbeth from Lady Macbeth’s point
of view but I struggled with the 11th
century,” says O’Reilly, who has
published two contemporary novels,
and teaches creative writing for the OU. “Then I
thought about setting my novel when the play was
written.” Looking into primary sources from the
turn of the 17th century - Macbeth was first staged
in London in 1606 - O’Reilly stumbled upon Aemilia
Bassano, a courtier’s mistress, England’s first
female professional poet and, possibly (according to
some scholars), muse for Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’
sonnets. O’Reilly had her heroine. “If you can read
someone’s writing, you can get inside their head,”
the author says of Bassano, whose single volume of
poems was published in 1611. “I felt such a strong
connection with her.”
O’Reilly was able to trace the real life Bassano
through her appearances in the diaries of the
16th-century physician and astrologer
Simon Forman, who kept annotated
records of the comings and goings
of his clients. “Historical fiction is
a compromise,” says the author. “A
negotiation between fact and fiction. Of
course one is anachronistically projecting
a modern viewpoint, but if the story
and characters feel authentic, then the
reader will make the leap.” O’Reilly has
Aemilia ‘lie with’ Shakespeare, and the
ensuing erotically charged tug o’ love between the
bard and the dark-eyed female poet is laced with
sorcery and the occult. ‘I am a witch for the modern
age,’ begins the novel in Bassano’s beguiling voice.
Does O’Reilly believe in witches? “Not in the
tall-hat-plus-cat sense, no. But I had my Tarot cards
read in the North Laine recently by a woman who
had an amazing atmosphere about her - she was
no-nonsense, no frills, no customer service. But she
had an incredible way of reading people - reading
me, anyway. Maybe that is the fascination for me - a
good witch will take female intuition to the max. In
that sense, there is a bit of witchcraft in all women.”
Dark Aemilia by Sally O’Reilly (Myriad Editions) is
published in paperback on 23rd April.
bookends
Mary Portas, the instantly recognizable, orange-haired champion of High Street retailers, is coming to
Brighton in April. Shop Girl, her keenly awaited memoir, tells of the young Mary Newton growing up
in a Watford semi, constantly in trouble – eating Chappie for a bet, setting fire to the school – whilst
dreaming of being an actress. The ever-entertaining Queen of Shops will be reading from her book and
explaining how, due to a family tragedy, her thespian dreams were diverted into the window displays of
Harvey Nicholls. Amongst the mannequins, handbags and frocks, she found her true calling.
Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, 7pm, 1st April, £8.00, ropetacklecentre.co.uk, 01273 464440
....57....

Panoramic
An exhibition by Richard Billingham
25 April - 28 June 2015
townereastbourne.org.uk
In association with the Anthony Reynolds Gallery
Towner is registered charity no. 1156762
FREE
NARRATIVE WORKSHOPS
at the Brighton Health and Wellbeing Centre
The BHWC on Western Road is one of the first NHS GP surgeries in the country to
integrate alternative therapists within the practice, as well as offering a Healing
Arts programme.
Narrative Workshops involve writing exercises, reading and group discussions,
encouraging self-reflection and personal development. Describing events, thoughts
and feelings can have a surprising effect on your wellbeing. The physical act of
writing acts on the mind like meditation. Your breathing slows down and words flow
freely from your head. Writing can relieve stress and boost your immune system,
helping you cope with illness, trauma, addiction, depression or anxiety.
NEW TERM STARTS 7th MAY 2015 • Thursdays 10am-12pm
DROP IN SESSION SATURDAY 11th APRIL 2015 10am-1pm
Led by authors Imogen Lycett Green and Barbara Doherty at BHWC
Brighton Health and Wellbeing Centre
An integrated NHS GP Practice and Healing Arts Centre
Winner ‘Innovators of the Year’ General Practice Awards 2014
www.brightonhealthandwellbeingcentre.co.uk
www.blackmustard.co.uk

art
..........................................
Dawn Chorus
Marcus Coates’ zoomorphic project
Marcus Coates is an artist who likes pretending to
be an animal. He often wears headgear made from
stuffed animal heads, and performs in a trance. One
project saw him tied up at the top of a Scotch Pine,
to try and gauge a hawk’s-eye view of the world; in
another he was buried under the earth in a remote
field. The Guardian have called him an ‘urban shaman’;
the Sunday Times a ‘rural geek’.
“About 15 years ago I started getting interested
in the culture of birdsong,” he tells me, down the
phone. “I found out that it is part aggressive – birds
singing to defend their territory; and part romantic
– birds serenading potential mates.” He started
recording birdsong, then slowing it down on his
computer. “I realised that when the birdsong was
slowed down 16 times, the human voice was capable
of reproducing the sounds.” He filmed people
recreating the slowed-down sounds, then sped the
film up 16 times. The results sounded just like real
birdsong.
Next up he spent a week in woodland in Northumberland
with ‘world-renowned wildlife sound
recordist’ Jeff Sample, recording the dawn chorus,
between 3am and 9am, using 14 different microphones.
They picked the most interesting morning’s
chorus they’d recorded, featuring 19 different
species of birds, and Marcus set to work moving the
project into its next stage.
“I went to Bristol doing auditions with singers.
“Some birds, like the robin, require quite a tonal
range, and some improvisation, while others, like
the chiff chaff, are much simpler.” He chose a
number of adept singers, who practiced reproducing
the sounds until they were proficient, then picked
locations ‘in their natural habitat’ for filming. These
included the office, the bedroom, and the bath.
We are well used to seeing ‘anthropomorphic’
representations in culture: the resulting footage
represents the opposite. “The official term is
‘zoomorphic’” he explains. “Not only did the singers
sound exactly like birds, but they started to look like
them, too, with their sped-up fidgeting and breathing
patterns.”
The installation he has made of the recordings, with
19 screens featuring 19 different sped-up singers,
exactly replicating a section of that morning’s chorus,
has been touring art galleries since 2007, and
is being housed throughout the spring by Fabrica,
Brighton’s home for such large-scale experimental
art. To conclude our interview, I ask Marcus if he’s
ever played the human birdsong back to real birds,
to see their reaction. No, is the answer: that might
disturb their well-being. But perhaps one internet
pundit’s remark, in the comments section of a
YouTube clip of Dawn Chorus, is indicative of the
veracity of the sound: ‘My cat went mental.”
Alex Leith
Fabrica Gallery, 3rd April-24th May
....59....

ART
............................
FOCUS ON:
‘Lunch by the Sea’
by Katty McMurray
28x28cm, oil on canvas
Is this a picture of an actual lunch? It is, actually.
All my paintings start with sketches. I’d been commissioned
to do some sketches for a large painting
of a lunch in Riddle and Finns to send to America,
and this is a study from one of those. I sketch all the
time, and as we’re based on the seafront, that tends
to be the subject.
Your sketches have an interesting line… I’ve
always sketched the same way, even as a child. I
don’t take the pencil off the page, and I look at
what I’m sketching rather than the paper (though I
do look down occasionally, to see that it’s all in the
right place!)
So all these elements were actually in your line
of vision? They were. The fish were my client’s
whitebait! You could see the West Pier, and there
was a sailing boat – though it wasn’t red. The tablecloth
wasn’t that colour, either. That I’ve added in
order to bring to mind deckchairs.
How do you turn the sketch into a painting? I
have a studio adjoining my house, where I do all
my painting. First I sketch out the details in a wash,
then I start to add the colour building it up layer by
layer, I use Michael Harding oil paints, which are
the best. The colours, all hand-made, are so rich. I
work on a number of paintings at the same time. So
the same colours appear in a collection – I like to
limit my palette, mixing all the colours from five or
six different tubes - I think this gives the paintings a
sense of calm - I’ve had the same apron for 25 years,
and you can see which colours I’m into from what’s
splashed over it.
Which artists have influenced you? As a child
I was taken to a gallery in St Ives, and saw some
sketches by Ben Nicholson and Peter Lanyon.
These inspired me and since then I’ve been sketching
almost constantly. I get through three or four
sketchbooks a week. My loft is full of them.
Why is your gallery called ‘Two Kats and a
Cow’? I set it up with Kathryn Matthews - another
Kat - and John Marshall, who paints cows. We came
up with the name after a few too many one night in
Fortune of War. We moved into the space 15 years
ago, and it’s gradually turned from a studio for the
three of us with a little gallery space at the front, to
a dedicated gallery.
Which painting would you hang from your
desert island palm tree? One of the simple St Ives
School sketches. I’d be able to imagine it as a different
painting every day. Alex Leith
Two Kats and a Cow Gallery, 167 Kings Road Arches.
01273 776746 / twokatsandacowgallery.co.uk
....61....

....62....

ART
.....................................
FOCUS ON: The Jim Jones Revue gig poster
by Dan Bowden/Needs More Snakes
A2 Screen print
How did you get into screen printing gig
posters? I was in a couple of Brighton-based
punk bands that nobody will remember, and
I started doing t-shirt design and zines for
other, bigger, punk bands. This led to the
poster designs.
They are one-offs, to sell at individual
gigs? That’s right. They are official, in that
the bands endorse them and often have some
creative input into them. Then they are sold
at the gig, and afterwards on my website and
sometimes by the bands’ merch departments.
Sometimes I’m the guy at the table at the
back of Concorde 2, or the Haunt; for bigger
gigs like at the Brixton Academy the merch
guys sell them and I can enjoy the gig.
What sort of bands?
The vast majority of my posters are for bands
that I like, of varying degrees of fame. I’ve
done posters for Mudhoney, The Hives,
Rocket from the Crypt, Mclusky, Swans, The
Polyphonic Spree…
Do you contact the bands, or do they
contact you? At first it was all me contacting
them, but after a while it goes both ways, and
it’s about half and half now.
Tell us about the process of making this
one… It was the Jim Jones Revue’s last ever
tour, so I decided to represent that with a
‘Day of the Dead’ look. I pencil-sketched the
figures, then filled them out with pen and ink.
I did the same with the flowers around the
figures, though some of these were replicated
on Photoshop to create the border. I usually
hand-draw my fonts – I’m a bit of a font nut
– but I downloaded this one, as it looked just
right. It’s called Carnival Freakshow. There
are two colours – black and metallic gold - so
I prepared two different layers, ready for
printing.
Do you print them yourself? I used to go to
a place in Portslade, but now I have a son my
free time is too precious so I got it printed up
by Broadside Printers in Exeter. They do a
much better job than I could.
Do you listen to music while you’re working?
I like to listen to the band who I’m designing
for, as it helps to get me in the right mood.
Who have you been inspired by?
I like to draw inspiration from classic
psychedelic poster art, tattoo art, and old
skate graphics as well as other contemporary
artists. Spencer from Petting Zoo is brilliant;
I love WeThreeClub’s lettering and colours;
Vince Ray’s rock ‘n’ roll clichés; Tom J Newells
minimal colour palette, amongst others....
Take us to a gallery… The Black Heart bar
in Camden has got loads of great gig posters
on the wall by UK Poster Association artists.
Interview by Alex Leith
A selection of Dan’s gig posters are on display
at Hotel Pelirocco, Regency Square, throughout
April
....63....

....64....

design
..........................................
Fiona Howard
‘You can smell my work’
“Venice Beach is absolutely bonkers,” says textile
designer Fiona Howard, who is almost as at home
in Los Angeles as Hove. “…It’s a bit like Brighton,
but in America.”
Fiona, who grew up in Sussex, now divides her
time between the two cities. Over 27 years she has
worked for many of the biggest names in interiors.
Her US clients include Crate & Barrel, while in the
UK her best-known pattern is Sanderson’s ‘Dandelion
Clocks’. The design is sold so prolifically
they reprint it in batches of 5,000 metres at a time,
licensed for everything from rugs and lampshades
to stationery and ceramics.
“I think it kept [Sanderson] going through the
recession,” says Fiona jovially. “They’ve made so
much money out of that design - it’s taken on a life
of its own. The design was chosen from Fiona’s
portfolio in 2006 for a flat fee. “It hit the mid-century
theme just at the beginning,” she says. “I don’t
think I saw it coming.”
Sanderson, the company that brought William Morris
to so many front rooms, seems to have cropped
up again and again in Fiona’s life. She grew up
surrounded by Morris fabrics and wallpapers – “it
was the seventies” – and she recalls visiting their print
rooms as a student, admiring original Morris wood
blocks she later learnt had been thrown in a skip.
Ironically, Fiona passed up a student work placement
with Sanderson. It’s still a huge regret. “I
thought, ‘it’s my summer holidays, why would I
want to give up two weeks and not be paid?’ how
stupid could I have been?”
I can’t help but think Fiona probably got the best
deal. She continues to work with Sanderson, her
name displayed proudly on the selvedge of ‘Maple’,
a design that mimics the clean lines and colourful
blocks of fifties home furnishings. As well, she has
the freedom to pursue her own brand, which she
says will soon be launched Stateside.
Much of Fiona’s work is informed by organic shapes
that catch her eye in gardens, books, or objects
found in flea markets: “I’m always drawing,” she
says. “William Morris’s designs flow together so
beautifully. The structure is amazing: he gets all the
elements worked out. That’s something I try to do:
work out a structure before I fill it in with leaves,
flowers or birds. I pick things up wherever I go, lay
them out and try to make some sense of them… I
colour all of my papers by hand and leave them to
dry all over the kitchen floor.”
Fiona’s designs are finished using techniques including
monoprint, lino and paper cutting. She feels fortunate
to have learnt these skills before the digital
takeover, which for her seems “a little bit soulless.”
“You can smell my work - it’s the oil paint and
handmade papers. My clients ask, ‘how did you do
that?’ because they don’t often see the lovely handcrafted
traditional way of designing anymore. I’m so
pleased I stuck with it; I get so much pleasure out of
it.” Chloë King www.fionahoward.com
....65....

Create Unique Gifts
Hand and Footprints
The Painting
Pottery Cafe
Gift Vouchers
Throwing Lessons
31 North Road, Brighton, BN1 1YB www.paintingpotterycafe.co.uk
hello@paintingpotterycafe.co.uk 01273 628952

Photos by Matt Grover
trade secrets
..........................................
Fina Boutique
Stockbroker-turned-designer
Why did you launch Fina Boutique? I used to
work as a stockbroker, with people who made
the Wolf of Wall Street look like Paddington
Bear. One day I walked out thinking, this world
is soulless. I knew I needed to do something
creative. I would spend a lot of time engrossed
in philosophical discussions with a good friend
of mine, an Indian doctor who came into my life
unexpectedly. Eventually I came to this idea that
the meditative experience could be incorporated
into everyday life. A few years ago I suffered
from some heart problems. I found myself lying
in a hospital bed staring up at the ceiling and
thinking, if I do get out of here, I’m going to
create something out of all these ideas.
What is the concept behind your brand?
‘Fina’ comes from the abbreviation of ‘first nature’,
which is a central theme in two fables I’ve
written. The ideas and messages which inspire
my collections are rooted in these fables. I want
to get away from the idea of being a brand,
but rather a conceptualisation of our mission
statement: to live in a boutique world, which is
creative and original, but also sincere and serene.
How does this message translate into the
graphic design? I’m not a graphic designer, so
from the base concept of each collection, I commission
illustrators and artists to come up with
an image which depicts that message. I’m always
looking to work with more emerging designers
and illustrators and to expand my network of
contacts for future collections.
What message inspires your ‘No Glory’
collection? Fashion can only be reflective of
culture, and modern culture has become very
retrospective, so I came to this concept that
there is no glory in old orthodoxies. The collection
is made up of three ideas: no glory in the
dollar, no glory in suicide and no glory in God.
The messages behind them are strong and will
probably cause some disruption along the way,
but it’s never my intention to cause consternation
for the sake of it. The designs have to
convey something - that’s the real motivation
behind Fina Boutique.
Rebecca Cunningham
....67....

ighton maker
................................
Sarah Squared
Off-beat jewellery
How did Sarah Squared begin? Sarah Meredith:
We were both based at Super+Super, working on
our own individual projects - I make jewellery
under the name Rock Cakes (rockcakes.com) and
Sarah is an illustrator (sarahedmondsillustration.
com). I suggested that maybe one day we should do
a collaborative project and she said, ‘ok, meeting in
half an hour?’ We instantly got on better than I’ve
instantly got on with anyone before; we both have a
kind of wholesome, non-digital approach, we both
grew up in the countryside and we both subscribe
to Oh Comely magazine.
What was the inspiration for your first collection?
Sarah Edmonds: We started by writing down
lots of ideas and brainstorming animals we liked,
autumnal things, nerdy packed-lunches, pork pies...
We wanted to do jewellery, prints, cushions and
packaging all in the space of about three months!
Lots of ideas were dropped because they didn’t
quite fit, and we came up with a range of vegetables,
bread and jam (food you’d eat at your gran’s) and
the library van - that’s been a favourite. Then to
choose the colours, B&Q have this wall of colour
wonder, with hundreds of swatches of different
paints. We each went separately and picked colours,
then brought our palette collections together. There
were a few we didn’t agree on (Sarah chose a lot of
pinks) but we came to a colour scheme which was
retro, with a modern twist.
Describe the making process. Sarah M: We
started by sketching the objects by hand – we have
similar styles of strong colours and lines – and scanning
these to import them into Illustrator so that
they could be laser-cut. This was the only digital
bit (Sarah E: We’re embracing digital to bring back
the analogue!) and next we had to sand everything
down. We had about one day before we were selling
at a craft fair in London, so we just kept sanding
until our hands were bleeding! We wanted each one
to have as much care and attention as possible, so it
didn’t just look like one out of a huge batch. Sarah is
really good at mixing colours, so she would mix up
the paints and then we’d paint all of the reds, and
then all of the greens, it was a bit like colour-bynumbers.
What do you have in mind for your next collection?
Sarah E: Our current products are very
autumnal, so we’re planning to come up with a
capsule collection every six months to add to our
range. We’re starting work on a little additional
collection for Artists’ Open Houses in May, which
will be themed on summer and adventure. We’re
thinking of a campervan, a tent, a log fire, a forest of
little trees...
Rebecca Cunningham.
See more from Sarah Squared at Artists’ Open
Houses in May (21a Brunswick Square) or visit etsy.
com/shop/wearesarahsquared.
....69....

the way we work
This month Adam Bronkhorst visitied a number of urban growers in
the community gardens and allotments around Brighton and Hove.
You’d be surprised at how many of these little havens are dotted around
our city. We’ve asked each of them for their top tip on spring gardening.
www.adambronkhorst.com
Deborah Kalinke at The Garden House.
Deborah’s top tip: “The right plant in the right place!”
gardenhousebrighton.co.uk
....70....

the way we work
Mei Wah Tang at Hanover VEG.
Mei Wah’s top tip: “Be prepared. Know what you’re going to sow and when.”
Hanover Community Centre, 33 Southover Street, hasl.org.uk
....71....

the way we work
Joe Garcia at Brighthelm Community Garden.
Joe’s top tip: “Composting. Make sure you compost your food waste and put it down early.”
Brighthelm Church and Community Centre, North Road, brighthelm.org.uk
....72....

the way we work
Sara Padhi at the Carers Centre Garden Group.
Sara’s top tip: “Feed the birds. They will still have your seeds, but they
eat the little insects which live on your plants.”
Cravenvale Allotments, Beresford Road, thecarerscentre.org

the way we work
Joi Jones at The Secret Garden.
Joi’s top tip: “Get on top of the weeding early, before it takes hold. They’ll just be
starting to pop up now so get weeding and mulching before the weather warms up.”
Situated behind St Leonard’s Church, New Church Road.

the way we work
Emma Houldsworth at Plot 22.
Emma’s top tip: “Start sowing your seeds, don’t leave it too late!”
Weald allotments, Hove, plot22.org
....75....

Food & Drink
As we keep mentioning, Brighton was voted, by Conde Naste
Traveller readers, no less, ‘Best UK city for restaurants and bars’.
To celebrate, we’ve created this space, a directory for bars, restaurants
and other food-and-drink-related establishments who wish to
appear in our ever-expanding food section, alongside our incognito
reviews, and our head-chef recipes. This month we’re joined by
some of our favourite eateries, in the city and beyond. To appear
in this space in future issues please contact anya@vivabrighton.com.
Directory
29 Tidy Street, 01273 673744m, rockolacoffeebar.com
Rockola
Named by customers
as Brighton’s best kept
secret, Rockola is tucked
away just off Trafalgar
Street. With its 50s/60sstyle
decor, and owner’s
private collection of
memorobilia, Rockola
is the perfect place to send you back to a bygone
era. With food ranging from home-made burgers
& breakfasts to pancakes, waffles, wraps and thick
shakes, Rockola has something for everyone, including
vegans and veggies. Also it has an original
1960s jukebox with a selection of 200 songs, and
it is FREE to play. Open 10.30-4.30 Mon-Fri,
and 9.30-4.30 Sat. Friday nights are Burger
Nights and include the massive Elvis Burger (6-
9pm). And you can BYO.
71 East Street, 01273 729051 terreaterre.co.uk
Terre à Terre
Make Easter mighty! Visit Terre à Terre, the
local go-to for the most creative vegetarian
food in Brighton and always delivered with
a cheeky little pun! Open seven days a week
offering lunch and dinner options from small
plates, sharing tapas to three-course set meals
and not forgetting their magnificent afternoon
tea menu, multi-tiered savoury, sweet
and traditional delights available from 3 till
5pm daily and lots of chocolate goodies!
No.32
No.32 has it all and more in this all-in-one venue. A restaurant, bar and
club in the heart of Brighton, serving freshly made food and drink seven
days a week. From traditional grills to fashionable burgers to freshly
made cocktails. With the sound of great music from local DJs you can
eat, drink and dance at this all-encompassing modern setting, so come
and visit us for an evening to remember!
Burgers, grills, bites, platters, sandwiches, salads. Modern & classic
cocktails. Craft & draught beers. Happy hour Sundays - Fridays 5-7pm.
No.32 is a restaurant, bar and exclusive late night venue in Brighton with
regular live music and special events.
32 Duke Street, 01273 773388, no32dukestreet.com

advertorial
Boho Gelato
6 Pool Valley, 01273 727205
Ranging from Vanilla to Violet, Mango to Mojito and Apple
to Avocado, Boho’s flavours are made daily on the premises
using locally produced milk and cream, and fresh ingredients.
24 flavours are available at any time (taken from their
list of now over 400) and for vegans, Boho Gelato always
stock at least five non-dairy flavours. Gelato and sorbet
is served in cups or cones or take away boxes.They were
recently included in the Telegraph’s top ten ice creams in the
UK and last summer were featured in Waitrose magazine.
bohogelato.co.uk
Saint Andrew’s Lane, Lewes, 01273 488600
209 High Street, Lewes, 01273 472769
Pelham House, Lewes
A beautiful 16th-century four-star town house
hotel that has been exquisitely restored to create
an elegant venue. With beautiful gardens, a
stylish restaurant and plenty of private dining
and meeting rooms, it is the perfect venue for
both small and larger parties.
www.pelhamhouse.com
Facebook: Pelham.house
Twitter: @pelhamlewes
Flint Owl Bakery, Lewes
Our breads contain organic stone-ground flours,
spring water, sea salt and that’s it. No improvers of
any kind. Long fermentations bring characteristic
flavours and a natural shelf life. We wholesale
our craft breads and viennoiserie in Brighton &
Hove and deliver six days a week. Contact: info@
flintowlbakery.com. Visit us at our shop/cafe on
Lewes High Street where you can buy our full
range of breads, croissants, cakes, salads and enjoy
Square Mile coffee in our courtyard garden.
Ten Green Bottles
Wine shop or bar? Both, actually... wine to take away
or drink in, nibbles and food available. Many wines
imported direct from artisan producers. We also offer
relaxed, fun, informal private wine-tasting sessions from
just two people up to 30 and for any level of wine knowledge - we encourage you
to ask questions and set the pace. We also offer tastings in your home or office,
and will come to you with everything you’ll need for a fun, informative and even
competitive evening. The best-value destination for great wine in Brighton!
9 Jubilee Street, 01273 567176, tengreenbottles.com

food review
...........................................
Sichuan Garden
Where spicy means spicy
On Sichuan Garden’s receipts, the names of your
dishes are printed in Chinese. The cutlery is
chopsticks and a spoon. And ‘Griddle Cooked Boar
Intestines’ hardly sounds like something invented to
suit western tastes. So I understand why my friend
Wu Fang recommended the place as authentic.
We went one Saturday evening last summer, and
were seated in a corner, on velvety pink rhinestone-studded
chairs, possibly the most kitsch
thing I saw that day (and it was Pride day).
Fang confidently ordered Salmon Fish Head and
Tofu Soup as a starter, which apparently tasted
much nicer in real life than it did in my imagination;
my safe option, Emerald Soup (tofu, egg, and
spinach), turned out to be excellent.
My soupy main course (#139), contained lean,
tasty noodles, and several big pieces of seafood,
some of which I couldn’t identify, but generally
Photo by Wu Fang
enjoyed. I wimped out of eating the huge shellfish;
Fang assured me they were nice.
She ordered Spicy Hand Tooled Noodles, which
she’d had before. Once I’d finished, she commandeered
the remainder of my soup, to dunk
her noodles in. They were, she said, much spicier
than last time. She was struggling, coughing,
and blowing her nose, while protesting that the
underlying taste was so good that it was worth the
spice-related suffering. I tried some. Fang took a
picture of me crying.
We went back recently and found it pretty much
as we remembered: kitsch chairs, lean food,
authentic feel. I’d certainly recommend the place.
Just pay attention while ordering. Steve Ramsey
Sichuan Garden, 58 Queens Road, 203505

food review
...........................................
The Salt Room
A brill meal, by the sea
I love ordering things
I’ve never eaten before,
especially when I
haven’t a clue what
they’ll look like. So,
on my first visit to the
Salt Room, on an inordinately
warm March
afternoon, I go for the
only main on the specials
board. It’s ‘brill’,
and I’m using the
inverted commas there to denote that that’s the
name of the fish species, rather than a description
of its quality, which will come later in this review.
It comes with clams, mussels and samphire, three
of my favourite edible things. And new potatoes.
The Salt Room opened in February, in the space
where the Metropole used to house their rather
lame ‘Bar 106’. It’s been given a big makeover, with
all the requisites for a slick two-thousand-andteens
eatery: exposed brickwork, wooden cladding
(with paint splashes), pendant LED lights. It’s the
sister restaurant to the Coal Shed, majoring on
fish, and offers a fine view of the sea, if you manage
to get a table on the upper mezzanine.
We don’t get a table on the upper mezzanine.
When we sit down, as a matter of fact, we’re the
only people down below, which is no hardship,
but which does cause a good deal of table-position
envy in the first five minutes of our visit.
As I’m doing a review (incognito as ever) I decide
not, like my two companions, to go for the lunchtime
deal, which offers two courses for £12.95. I
decide to ignore the à la carte menu, as well, opting
to go for everything on the blackboard: there’s
‘potted dressed handpicked
crab’ (I think
that’s the right adjective
order) as a starter, at £8.
The brill costs £18.
The crab ensemble is
significantly bigger than
the portions my two
companions get, and is
served on an asymmetrical
platter, in a jam
jar, smothered in clotted
egg yolk, inverse-speared by a stem of asparagus.
It’s accompanied by a thin-cut salad of some sort,
and two crisp breads. For once I don’t finish first,
and am able to pass round the jar. It’s good dressed
crab: everyone says ‘yum’.
The arrival of the brill is quite a moment. It turns
out to be a vast brown-skinned flatfish, which fills
a large oval plate, the circumference of which is
garnished with the extras. It’s not the most photogenic
of meals I’ve had – I have to be careful with
the angle of my camera – but it’s certainly one of
the more memorable. The fish is meatier than I’d
expect: its flesh slides happily off its bones; its roe
is stupendous. Flipping it over, halfway through,
with a fish knife, provides my friends with quite a
spectacle.
We’ve been drinking a fine £19 Sauvignon Blanc;
we sensibly opt out of a second bottle, but when
we see espresso Martinis on the ‘afters’ menu, we
can’t resist. These, too, are exquisite. Knowing that
a second would put paid to any notion of work in
the afternoon, we pay the bill, and head, happy,
into spring outside. Alex Leith
106 Kings Road, 01273 929488
....79....

....80....

ecipe
..........................................
Chocolate and sherry mousse
One of Brighton’s youngest head chefs, Danny Frape, talks us through
a chocolatey favourite on his menu at The Foragers this spring,
served with raspberry sorbet and a chocolate tuile.
I started working in kitchens straight out of school.
I didn’t go to college, so everything I know now,
I’ve learnt along the way. I got my first job cleaning
mussels, and progressed from there to work as a
sous chef at restaurants like the Chimney House
and Dean’s Place hotel in Alfriston. Now, at 23, I’m
the head chef of The Foragers.
Some of my recipes I’ve picked up from other chefs
that I’ve worked with, but a lot of them have come
from trying things out myself. I usually start by
choosing the main part of the dish, like the fish –
something which is locally and ethically sourced
– and then I look at what’s in season which might
go well with it. I create the rest of the dish around
that. When I’m at home I like just throwing loads
of ingredients into a pan and seeing what works. If
it tastes good, I’ll add it to my recipe book.
One of my first jobs was at the Preston Park
Tavern, which was given an award for sustainability
- that’s something we’re big on here, and we’re
always trying to improve. We only use fish which
is sustainable to eat, and our eggs and meat come
from free-roaming animals which can be traced
back to the farm they were reared on.
I wouldn’t say I have a philosophy of cooking; the
most important thing for me is good produce. If
you use bad ingredients, you’ll cook bad food - you
really do get what you pay for.
The dish I’m going to make today is from our
spring dessert menu and it’s a customer favourite.
This recipe makes about eight servings.
Heat 50ml of milk in a pan with one bay leaf, just
long enough to get the milk warm, then take it off
the heat and leave it to infuse while you make the
rest of the dessert. In a separate pan, gently warm
50ml of dark rum – I use Appleton Estate – mixed
with 50ml of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry.
Separate eight eggs and whisk the whites together
with 80g of caster sugar until they form stiff peaks.
Melt 400g of dark chocolate - it needs to have a
high cocoa content so it still tastes chocolatey when
you’ve added all of the sugar and whites, so I use
a 71%. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, whisking
each one in completely before you add the next so
the mixture doesn’t stiffen. Add one third of the egg
whites and whisk gently, then fold in the other two
thirds with a pinch of salt and pour into your ramekins.
It needs about four hours in the fridge to set.
The chocolate tuile is made by mixing together
75g of softened butter, 180g of caster sugar, 15g
of cocoa powder, 30g of plain flour and 90ml of
orange juice. Spread the mixture thinly on a sheet
of parchment paper and cook it at 170° until it’s dry
and dark brown in colour.
To make the sorbet, add a pint of raspberry purée
(or whichever flavour you want) to a litre and a half
of water. Add two tablespoons of liquid glucose,
500g of caster sugar and the juice of a lemon, and
bring the mixture to the boil. If you have an icecream
maker you can use that, but otherwise pour
the sorbet mixture into a container and place in the
freezer, then take it out and stir it every hour.
As told to Rebecca Cunningham. Photo by Lisa Devlin,
whose food-photography website is cakefordinner.co.uk.
....81....

Juice your way to better
health-
Workshops across
Sussex
www.juicingforhealth.org.uk

food news
...........................................
Edible Updates
Refurbished pubs and underground caves
Another pub makeover
to report in the Blatchington
Road area. Wave
goodbye to the Red
Lion, on Hove Place,
and say hello to the Better
Half, which plans to
open mid-to-late April.
Owner Simon Stern is
turning the space into a traditional pub with a
quirky Victorian feel about it – out go the fruit
machines and pool tables; in comes an old fire
place, saddle-leather seating in the banquette
and booth areas, and refurbed toilets, which
will feature vaulted ceilings and period-inspired
décor. The (brand-new, copper-topped) bar will
be well curated with popular and less familiar
brands of beer, ale and cider, accompanied with
quality house brand and specialist spirits, including
Brighton Gin.
Simon has drafted in chef Andy Keir (previously
of Koba, where his Sunday roasts were
declared second best in the whole of the UK
by the Observer), who will be creating seasonal
menus including ‘scallops with garlic prawns,
crispy ham and curried aioli’, ‘swordfish steak
and tropical fruit salsa’ and ‘spiced lamb cutlets
with pomegranate molasses’. There will also
be traditional pub fare, including a souped-up
Ploughman’s, burgers and plenty of vegetarian
options too. Coffee from Coffee@33 and
pastries will be available in the morning.
Further east, Hove Kitchen seemed to all but
vanish overnight from its large corner spot on
Western Road, but just as quickly brand-new
family-run restaurant
The Good Food Club
appeared. ‘The Club’ has
thoroughly refurbished
the site, and is now serving
predominately Britishstyle
local and seasonal
food. It’s divided into a bar
for day time, serving coffee
and cakes, a café for a relaxed lunch and finally
a more formal dining room. There’s a meeting
room for baby groups and yoga.
The between-the-piers seafront food and drink
scene, with a notable few exceptions, has generally
been the preserve of clubs and identikit bars
selling fish ‘n’ chips – but that is all starting to
change. The latest addition to the stretch is The
Tempest Inn, a Shakespeare-inspired pub that
features its very own underground cave system.
Downstairs there’ll be over a dozen different
caves (or snugs) that you can hole up in with
friends for the night, play smugglers and excise
men, and enjoy a selection of craft beers and
ales, along with some excellent spirits. Cocktails
will include the Seagrog - a glass tankard of
Kraken and ginger ale topped with ale foam.
Food-wise, local produce is the order of the day,
with bread from The Flourpot Bakery, local
cheese from the Cheeseman, plus a catch of the
day from local fishermen. For those who don’t
fancy cave-dwelling, the Ariel Bar on ground
level has a huge window looking out over the
sea, and there is a patio with furniture that is
positively flotsam like.
Antonia Phillips @PigeonPR
....83....

ook
2 tickets
from£11
brighton
hove lawns
MAY 2-4
0844 995 1111
FOODIESFESTIVAL.COM
shopping masterclasses tasting
Chefs
2 tickets from £11 by quoting VIVA241 at www.foodiesfestival.com

trade secrets
...............................
Sue Hitchen
Foodies Festival founder
It all started in Edinburgh ten years ago. The
whole city lights up throughout the festival in August
and I wanted to add a vibrant food and drink
event to the line up. We had such a great response
from participants and visitors that I knew it could
be a success in other festival cities.
Brighton was a natural next step. So we set
up on Hove Lawns. This will be our sixth year.
Brighton is such a fun festival; it’s the start of our
year and our biggest event in terms of capacity.
Then we’ll go to Birmingham, Richmond, Bristol,
Alexandra Palace, Clapham Common, Tatton Park,
Edinburgh, Harrogate and Oxford throughout the
summer, with three further festivals in the winter.
It’s a busy year and we’re a small core team, but we
rely on local experts to manage each venue.
The highlights of the Brighton Foodies Festival
this year will be the local chefs. They are what
make it really special. This year we’re delighted to
welcome Andrew Mckenzie from Drakes of Brighton
and Dave Mothersill from The Coal Shed.
We’ve also got John Whaite (winner of the GBBO)
and Ping Coombes (winner of Master Chef). We’re
adding a tasting theatre this year, which will offer
visitors the chance to try new flavours and the
expertise required to experience them. There’ll be
oyster shucking, mushroom foraging, herb cocktails
and raw food. Brighton won the national chilli
eating competition last year and was the only city
we visited to reach fourteen levels of chilli. We’re
also introducing a BBQ competition.
Food trends have changed over the years since
the festival began. There’s a much bigger focus on
street food now with more and more entrepreneurial
cooks offering authentic cuisine from all over
the world. Many of them have a really interesting
back-story, sharing recipes and traditions learned
from parents and grandparents. We’ve always
championed them, encouraging them to come with
us and share their flavours around the country,
making the Street Food Avenue one of the most
interesting parts of the festival. We’ve also noticed
a growing trend towards raw and vegan diets. People
are increasingly health conscious and careful
about what they eat and are willing to rethink their
eating habits entirely.
Brighton rightly deserved its recent billing
as the ‘best city for restaurants and bars’ in
the UK. It’s been impressive to watch how the
restaurant and food movements have advanced
over the six years since we’ve been visiting with
the festival. Another wonderful, if unexpected,
foodie destination is Birmingham. There are some
amazing things going on there with street food
and experimental chefs and so we’ll be running a
festival there for the first time this year.
My favourite place to eat in Brighton is the
Chilli Pickle. It has absolutely amazing food and a
really relaxed vibe. I’ve eaten some of the best fish
I’ve ever tasted there. Lizzie Lower
www.foodiesfestival.com
Hove Lawns 2-4 May
....85....

talking shop
................................
Foodshed
Micro-producer supporters
How did Foodshed begin? The idea behind Foodshed
came from visiting lots of events in Brighton
and meeting all these amazing micro-producers.
Some of them tried to get their products into shops,
but the shops wouldn’t pay them enough, and many
of them couldn’t afford to set up their own market
stalls, so I had the idea of setting up a shop where
small-scale producers could rent a shelf to sell their
products. It gives them a chance to try out new
products and get feedback from the public, and we
don’t take any commission from their sales. We also
offer support with their branding and packaging, we
do a lot of promotion via our website and they have
the opportunity to rent a pop-up stall in the Open
Market for free through us, so in some cases we are
seeing businesses grow from scratch.
What do you sell? About half of our shelves are
rented out, offering local honeys and jams, coffee
and tea. Our fresh fruit and veg comes from Ashurst
Farm in Plumpton. We sell dried foods, herbs and
spices by weight, so you only have to buy as much
as you need. In the supermarkets you’d have to buy
a whole bag, but doing it this way means you won’t
end up with left-over ingredients that you don’t
need, or if people are shopping on a budget, they
can just buy enough for the meal they’re making.
How does Foodshed benefit the local community?
We love to work with local projects, like
Emmaus, who currently use our garden space to sell
their plants and pots. Another great local group is
Synergy Creative Community, who work with people
living with mental health conditions, and produce
energy balls made from ingredients sourced
by the Food Waste Collective. One of our aims is
to become completely zero-waste. We’re almost
there – all of our own containers are bio-degradable
and only take about six months to decompose. We
encourage our customers to re-use their packaging,
and sell re-fills of soap and cleaning products. Any
left-over fruit and veg is collected by Ashurst and
composted, so nothing goes to waste.
What events do you have coming up? We run
regular craft and cookery workshops organised by
members of staff, and we hold film nights which
are normally followed by a Q&A with an expert on
the subject. We’ve applied for funding to run some
‘cook and crèche’ courses, because one area which
is really lacking is childcare. Lots of parents would
love to come and learn about cooking and nutrition,
but can’t afford the childcare costs. This way, the
children are taken care of, the parents can do the
cooking and we all sit down and enjoy the food
together at the end! Rebecca Cunningham
Unit 9, The Open Market, foodshedbrighton.com
....86....

food
................................
Fin & Farm
Muir Jankowski
What is Fin and Farm? It’s like a veggie box
service, but we also sell a lot more fresh, seasonal,
local produce, such as fruit juices, milk, charcuterie,
cheese, wrapped spices, and meat. All the seasonal
produce is sourced from Sussex, between Chichester
and Hastings.
Where’s your warehouse? We don’t have one! All
our produce is collected and delivered in the same
day in our refrigerated truck, which ensures freshness.
Customers can order online, and there are up
to two deliveries a week.
Where does the ‘fin’ come in? We used to deliver
fish, and we might do again, but we’ve decided to
concentrate on other products.
How many different products do you offer?
Over a thousand any given month; this will increase
in the summer, when there’s more diversity.
Is the vegetable produce really dull in the
winter? We try to avoid that ‘oh no, not another
turnip’ syndrome. We offer peppers all year round
(because one of the farms also has a farm in Spain)
and salad leaves all year round, too. Local producers
are very imaginative and there’s always a wide
variety of vegetables on offer.
Are you an ethical company? As ethical as we can
be. We feel that we are supporting the local economy,
and attempting to limit our carbon footprint
at the same time. We offer a very fair and personal
service to our producers, too, because we see them
twice a week and offer them customer feedback.
Who are your customers? A surprisingly diverse
range of people from young singles to families to
old couples. And a number of restaurants and pubs,
such as Iydea, The Foragers, The Chimney House,
Troll’s Pantry, Chilli Pepper, plus Limetree Kitchen
and The Snowdrop (in Lewes).
What’s your role in the company? My partner
Nick and the third member of the team Jim do all
the collecting, and delivering. They sometimes have
to be up at 4.30 in the morning. My job is the nice
one: administration and customer relations. I visit a
lot of farms, and keep track of what we’re offering
online. I spend most of my time on the internet
looking at pictures of food.
What problems do you encounter in the business?
Usually the weather: droughts, floods or
snow can cause havoc with crops and delivery.
Once, donkeys trampled a field of carrots. We’ve
never failed to make a delivery, though we’ve been
late once or twice when it’s been snowing. On an
early run, in January 2010, during that cold snap,
Nick had to heroically jump out of the van and stop
it sliding down Southover Street. It was a baptism
of fire… or ice maybe.
Give us a top cooking tip… Make a paste of
smoked paprika and smoked salt mixed with maple
syrup and spread this, with a little olive oil, on
grilled slices of aubergine. This makes great fake
bacon, for a creditable BLT. Alex Leith
www.finandfarm.co.uk
....87....

trade secrets
...............................
Planet Feed
Food waste to fertilizer
What is Planet Feed about?
We’re in the early stages of
developing genuinely sustainable
local solutions for making
top quality, natural fertilizers...
out of our community’s food
waste. For us, food waste is
our raw material.
Food waste is increasingly
spoken of as a ‘valuable
resource’, but too often it is
then just treated like waste.
Whether we bury it, burn it or
turn it into biogas, the main
focus still seems to be on ‘disposing’ of food waste.
To me, this offers us the least bad option. Food
waste often has to be transported long distances
to be treated and there’s a heavy dependency on
government subsidies for the renewable electricity
generated. Our solution doesn’t require subsidies,
will significantly reduce waste-miles, and will produce
valuable, eco-friendly products that can offer
local growers a viable alternative for the chemical
fertilizers they currently use.
We’re using innovative, small-scale technology
to turn food waste into organic fertilizer in just
2-3 days. Working closely with our technology
partners, we’ve already run in-house trials that
produced our first batches of liquid feed using an
innovative new technology they have developed.
And we then used it to cultivate some pretty impressive
turnips in our first growing trials.
We’re a social enterprise that will put the
local community’s interests first in business
areas that are typically dominated by large private
companies. Rather than be driven primarily by
delivering shareholder value, we plan to maximize
the value to the community of
the food we have to throw away,
and to use profits generated to
support local growing and waste
reduction initiatives.
Brighton is a good place to
start. I developed a strong
interest in environmental
sustainability and food waste
issues while living in Asia, so
when I moved back to Brighton
in 2012, I was really surprised
that food waste was not being
collected here - especially given
the city’s green credentials. There’s tremendous
passion, opinion and activism around both food
and waste issues here, and it seemed like a city ripe
for looking at food waste as a resource rather than
a problem!
We plan to develop small-scale, local organic
waste treatment capacity that can operate from
small spaces close to where the waste is generated.
On top of that, unlike large-scale, permanent waste
treatment facilities, our solution is highly scalable
and is easy to relocate. So, if a community actually
achieves the ultimate goal of eliminating all its
food waste, we can just pack it up and move to
solve waste problems elsewhere.
Ultimately, we’d love to be able to take all
the city’s food waste – whether commercial or
residential. That said, we’re going to focus on
developing solutions for commercial food waste
initially, and aim to run a full pilot project this year
here in Brighton. We’re hoping to have our first
fertilizers for sale in 2016. Lizzie Lower
Learn more about Planet Feed at the Eco Technology
Show 2015, Amex Stadium, 11-12th June
....88....

the lowdown on...
....................................
Hydroponics
Growing without soil
Plants don’t actually need soil
to grow. In fact, they grow
much faster without soil, in
the right conditions. Supplying
those conditions is the art
of hydroponics, an increasingly
popular way of growing
various plants, including,
allegedly, cannabis.
Dave, manager of the
Brighton branch of hydroponics
shop UK Groworks, says “there are three
basic methods of growing plants”: in soil, in
coconut fibre, or in a water-based system. “Soil is
the easiest, it’s the most forgiving, it’s the slowest.”
It’s also fairly self-regulating; you don’t need
to do much.
But if you switch to one of the other two, you
have to carefully monitor the pH and the amount
of food the plant’s getting, as well as the humidity,
light levels and temperature. Explaining
why in detail, Dave made it sound like a delicate
balancing act, in which a plant is basically looking
for any excuse to stop growing and turn a
funny colour.
He admits there’s “a lot more effort required”
with hydroponics, though actually it’s easy “if you
know what you’re doing. Some people struggle
with it, but it isn’t rocket science.”
Dave talks me through the hydroponic systems
the shop’s got on display. The first involves
a bucket part-filled with water, in which the
plant’s nutrients are dissolved, with an air pump
submerged in it. The plant is suspended above
the water line, but “as the bubbles come to the
surface, it splashes the roots. They get lots of
oxygen, and they’ll grow approximately five times
faster than in soil.”
Another method involves
planting the seed in clay
pellets in a bucket, which
floods on a timer, periodically
soaking the plant with a
nutrient-and-water mix. “This
will grow maybe three times
faster than in soil.”
It’s been said that the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon used
hydroponics; more recently, scientists had been
using it as a way to study the roots of plants while
they were growing. “Then some bright spark
went: ‘Oh, I know what you could use that for!’
What could you use it for? Dave pulls up pictures
on his computer of Thanet Earth, a huge hydroponic
vegetable factory that “provides, I think, a
fifth of all the salad crop in the UK”. Hobbyists
can grow veg indoors this way, though “artificial
lights are expensive to run for producing food.
“There are high-yielding crops like wasabi,
which you can’t get fresh in this country; it’s a
premium product. And there’s a massive thing for
chillies. A guy came in recently saying he was setting
up a shop in London that just sells chillies,
and bought all sorts of equipment to do it.”
And how about cannabis? Well, Dave points out,
there’s not much he can do. “My motorbike can
do 160mph. That would be breaking the law, on
a public highway. I have that piece of equipment;
how I use it is not the responsibility of the shop
that sold it to me. I have no control over what
people do with the equipment we sell. Who
knows what people use it for?” Steve Ramsey
UK Groworks, Unit 4, Belltower Industrial Estate,
Whitehawk, 01273 624327
....89....

a coffee with...
................................
Tim Richardson
Pioneer of couple-friendly sex shops
“Normally it’s a great conversation stopper at a
dinner party, but then they realise in fact it’s really
juicy to have at a dinner party. The initial thing is:
‘What do you do for a living?’; ‘I own sex shops’;
‘Really! Oh my god…’ Then the questions start
to come.”
‘What are the customers like?’ is a common one.
He says women make up about 40% of customers,
and on the weekends it’s mostly couples. There’s a
wide range of ages. He can never tell by people’s
appearance or demeanour whether they’re into
really kinky or more mainstream stuff. He’s no
longer surprised by even the most bizarre customer
requests.
He’s become “desensitised” to the whole thing, he
says, sitting in the stockroom of the Hove branch
of Taboo. And anyway, apart from the fact Taboo
is licensed by the local council, it’s just like any
other business. “It’s like selling widgets or wing
nuts”.
Indeed, the stockroom looks just like an ordinary
office, except for the two rows of DVDs, and the
plastic storage units with eye-catching names on
the shelves. Catching me looking, he talks me
through their contents in a totally unaffected
tone. “That’s where we keep the fannies…”
***
Richardson started Taboo about 11 years ago,
with the shop near Brighton Station. He was
hoping to set up a business, and “I just thought,
‘people always need sex, they need food and they
need sex’. I didn’t want to open a grocery store;
that would be really boring.
“When I opened Taboo, it was quite groundbreaking.
I wanted to break that stereotypical
image, of a seedy, dark, unpleasant, unwelcoming
shop, and I wanted to make it female and couple
friendly, somewhere that people would like to
visit.”
He opened a Hove branch in 2010 – “Brighton
and Hove residents are all kinky, but the Hove
ones have got a little bit more money to spend” –
then, more recently, Lust, on Gardner Street. It’s
not a licensed sex shop, so only 30% of its stock
can be sex related.
“Lust was my next phase. After I’d done Taboo,
I wanted to open a shop which would be even
more accessible, where people wouldn’t necessarily
know they’re in a sex shop till they’re inside.
Then they’ve got past the part most people find
difficult, which is walking in the door.
“They’ll see a non-sex product in the window, like
a Banksy mug or something, come in to buy that,
and then leave with a butt plug. That’s the perfect
sale, as far as I’m concerned: ‘Actually, now we’re
here…’ It’s broadened their horizon a bit.”
However, Richardson says, he gets customers in
Taboo who wouldn’t have gone into a sex shop
10-15 years ago, and various things that were considered
fetishes back then are now mainstream:
people’s horizons are pretty broad nowadays.
Of course, the internet is a factor, and Fifty Shades
was a “game changer”. But Richardson also credits
an episode of Sex and the City, in which a major
character admits to owning a rabbit vibrator, with
igniting women’s interest in sex toys. “Suddenly
every woman wanted a rabbit vibrator. That was a
big turning point.”
Fifty Shades “brought fetish behaviour, if you want
to call it that, into the mainstream,” and even the
....90....

fetish-club scene is moving in that direction. What,
I must ask, happens at a fetish club?
“Sometimes they’re quite dance based, like a dance
club but wearing fetish clothing or latex or leather,
or crazy outfits. You get a little bit of spanking
going on, and various people roleplaying and doing
stuff. Sometimes there’s actual sex going on, not on
the dancefloor but in certain areas of the club. So
it’s just like a crazy adult playground.
“In some in Europe, there’s a lot of sex going on;
not so much in England. The English are still a
little bit reserved about having sex in a club environment.
But generally it’s a mixture of dance, sex
and fancy dress.”
While Brighton was a good place to set up Taboo
– “I wouldn’t want to have one of these shops in
a little village in Somerset” – the city’s fetish-club
scene “isn’t particularly huge. People think that
Brighton, being this hedonistic city, is going to
have fetish sex clubs going on every night, or every
weekend, and it’s actually not true.”
There is an annual Brighton Fetish Weekend,
though, and “this Dungeon Bar that’s opened up in
Regency Square. Have you heard about that? It’s
got BDSM equipment in it, you can go and have a
drink and spank someone…”
Like Richardson’s dinner-party acquaintances, I
was full of questions, though what I really wanted
to know was why people are drawn to sex toys,
dressing up, and fetish-like behaviour. “I think it’s in
us all, really, to some degree. We’ve all kind of got
it going on; it just depends whether you want to go
inside yourself and explore that.
“I’ve had customers over the years, they might start
by coming in and buying a little sex toy, and then
they’ll come back in a couple of weeks’ time and
buy something else, and you can see their journey
into their exploration of their sexual fantasies, or
fetishes.”
But why isn’t straightforward sex enough? “If you
go to a funfair, you can go on the bumper cars, but
you can go on the rollercoaster as well. So, what,
are you just going to go on the bumper cars?” SR
Taboo: 2 Surrey Street, Brighton, and 8 Blatchington
Road, Hove (tabooshop.com). Lust: 43 Gardner
Street (lust.co.uk). Brighton Fetish Weekend runs at
Rialto Theatre from April 10th-12th; see brightonfetishweekend.co.uk
and rialtotheatre.co.uk
....91....

WILDLIFE
......................
Elderflower Fields Nature Walk
Go wild in the country
“Go on, eat it,” says
Paul. He’s handed
me some small nettle
leaves, the first I’ve
seen this year. “Pick
the top four leaves,
scrunch them up in
your fingers to get
rid of the sting, then
eat them like a rabbit.
Front teeth first, not
just your molars, otherwise all you get is a bitter
taste. There’s actually a lot of sweetness in them.”
Paul is in charge of the environmental activities
at the Elderflower Fields Festival, and we’re just
finishing a tour of the site in Pippingford Park,
near Nutley in the Ashdown Forest. Elderflower
Fields is a family-friendly festival, about to clock
up its fourth edition. As usual there’ll be plenty
of music, food & drink and sporting activities,
but Paul’s main job is to take both adults and kids
round the site, showing them the abundant wildlife
that will share the four-day adventure with the
5,000 human visitors expected to attend, between
May 22nd and 25th.
He’s a brilliant teacher, it must be said. It’s March
4th, four days into (meteorological) spring, and, in
his words, ‘everything’s started to wake up.’ We’ve
been walking round for an hour and a half, and every
moment he’s enlightened me with a fascinatingly detailed
fact about the surroundings, drawing questions
from me, and giving out pithy, fact-full responses.
It’s a fairly rugged-looking environment, part
heath, part woodland, part open field, with native
trees – plenty of silver birch, plenty of Scotch pine
– to the fore. I learn that these two trees were ‘pioneer’
trees, the first
to take root in Britain
after the Ice Age. I
learn loads of things,
in fact: the flight
patterns of fieldfares,
murmurating like
starlings above us; the
hybrid nature of the
larch; how sap feeds
trees; how medieval
people made candles from rush stems; how to use
sphagnum moss to carry water; how the hazel tree
cross pollinates; why to be careful when you’re
picking edible bull rush roots out of pond (accidentally
eat their similar-looking neighbour, and
you’ll end up in hospital).
The second-best moment is finding a huge woodant
nest, that’s just been disturbed by a woodpecker.
He gets a worker ant to walk onto his finger,
and shows how it bites him, raising itself up onto
its back legs and spraying out formic acid onto his
skin. Then, happy the creature is so small, I ask for
it to be transferred onto my finger, and it has a go
at me, too.
The best moment? Eating the nettles, of course.
Masticating in Paul’s approved manner I do indeed
taste a pleasant sweetness, tempering the bitter
aftertaste that follows. On my springtime country
walks I’ll never be short of a snack again. Alex Leith
So Sussex brings you the Elderflower Fields Festival,
Pippingford Park, May 22-25, elderflowerfields.
co.uk. Paul will be conducting bug hunts and nature
walks throughout the Bank Holiday weekend, supported
by the Sussex Wildlife Trust and Circle of
Life Discovery
....92....

health
..........................................
Marathon running
A 26-mile cure-all tablet?
What are the main
health benefits of
running a marathon?
There are multiple
health benefits, physical
and mental. In the short
term, running obviously
can reduce weight, produce
mental wellbeing,
and make you physically
fitter, which helps
reduce your risk of getting infections, and reduces
your risk of suffering when you have got chronic
diseases. In the long term, running reduces the risk
of cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It’s one of the
healthiest things you can do.
What about the risks? Running short distances is
very safe. But marathon running can have medical
complications. Anybody who’s not fit and healthy
should speak to their GP before they start training.
Any form of extended endurance exercise, unless
you do it gradually, can be dangerous. You have to
be gradually building up. I wouldn’t recommend
doing a marathon if you haven’t been training.
What is ‘the wall’? The medical research about
‘the wall’ is very flaky. Basically, no-one’s sure
exactly what it is. There used to be a theory that
you ran out of glycogen, which the body breaks
down into glucose, so your body starts burning up
fat. But actually, when you test that evidence it’s
not great. I think there’s a massive psychological
element - that you’re just so blooming exhausted.
Why do some people have tin foil put over
them after the race? We get two problems which
seem paradoxical together – people can get too
hot, or too cold. The tin foil is if someone’s got
too cold, to keep the heat in. You’re keeping your
temperature up by
running, and if it’s very
cold and windy, and you
stop, now you’re facing
the wind and rain in just
shorts and a t-shirt.
What proportion of
people don’t finish the
Brighton Marathon
due to injury or
tiredness? I’d say the
majority who don’t complete it, it’s not because
they’re medically not well, just because they’re
exhausted. The main reason for medically pulling
out is because of heatstroke or injuries, which is a
serious condition - if someone feels confused they
have to stop for treatment. Probably about 1% of
people stop for medical reasons.
How have medical views on the health effects
of marathons changed over the years? I think
people have realised the benefits. It’s not just the
running – when you’re training for a marathon,
you eat healthier, you stop smoking… the
research says half of smokers who do a marathon
give up smoking afterwards, or whilst they’re
training; that’s better than any intervention. Diet
improves, binge drinking gets reduced, mental
health and wellbeing gets improved. So instead
of prescribing antidepressants a lot of GPs are
prescribing exercise. It’s not just about running a
marathon at all; exercise in general is a phenomenally
impressive thing to improve health. If you
could put exercise into a tablet, it would be the
most valuable drug in the world.
Steve Ramsey was talking to Rob Galloway
The Brighton Marathon is on Sun 12th April. See
brightonmarathon.co.uk
....93....

*Based on an adult ticket at £465 on our 12 month free direct debit scheme.
**On public transport within our extended travel zone.

football
......................................
Bluffer’s Guide to the Albion
Ten bits of advice if you’re going to your first game
Wear the colours.
This is the easiest
way to make you
feel you’re part of
things. What type?
You can’t go wrong
with a simple blueand-white
bar scarf.
They’re on sale in
the club shop. And,
especially now the
weather’s getting warmer, buy a club shirt: I favour
the orange third strip.
Carefully plan your journey. There are extra
vehicles and trains shuttling fans to and from Brighton
on match days, but services can get congested
in the hour or so before kick-off (you can download
an app for transport news). My advice is to set off a
couple of hours early to get to the match. There are
plenty of bars in the ground, and there’s always the
Falmer Swan. Or cycle or walk there!
Know when and what to chant. Most of the more
guttural vocals happen in the North and West
stands, but fans all around the ground are known to
chant from time to time. A good start is picking up
the words to club/county anthem Sussex by the Sea.
Get to know your history. Go to the club
museum. Look at old footage on YouTube. Read
books such as Build a Bonfire and We Want Falmer.
Understand that Peter Ward, even though he hasn’t
played for the club for 33 years, is still one of the
fans’ biggest heroes.
Get the name right. Refer to the team as ‘The Albion’
or ‘Brighton’. ‘Seagulls’ is used in newspapers,
but not in common parlance. Except for chanting
the word when we get a corner, and other opportune
moments, that is.
Develop a healthy
dislike for Crystal
Palace. Since the
mid-seventies, the
South Londoners have
been Brighton fans’
love-to-hate rivals. Our
‘Seagulls’ nickname was
originally a retort to
their nickname chant of
‘Eagles’.
Gen up on the big game. Download an app for
team (and travel) news, and other scores (there’s
wi-fi access in the stadium). The club’s 84-page
match-day magazine, Seagull, gives you plenty of
information about the current team – and opposition
– as well as delving back into the past. It’ll keep
you company long after the game.
Check out North Stand Chat fans’ forum on the
web. Get acquainted with the burning issues of the
day… and other stuff. Before long you’ll be hooked.
Feel welcome. There’s a lot of banter about JCLs
(Johnny come lately) but real Albion fans know that
the bigger the average attendance, the more money
the club have, and the more chance they have of
being successful. You can be part of that.
Learn to be irrational. If it’s in the opponents’
box, it’s always a penalty. If he’s wearing blue and
white, he’s never offside. It’s de rigueur to moan if
decisions go against the Albion. It’s good to let off
steam. Yoram Allon (pictured)
Tickets (printable at home) are available from
seagullstickets.com or from the club shop at the
Amex. Home Albion games in April: Fri 3rd: Norwich
(3pm); Fri 10th: Bournemouth (7.45pm); Tues 14th:
Huddersfield (7.45pm); Sat 25th: Watford (3pm)
....95....

Beautiful Provencal farmhouse cottage with pool and
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5 mins to village. Available for rental. Sleeps 4.
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GARDEN DESIGN
Call for a FREE consultation
info@saraekstrand.co.uk
01273 400695 / 0795 8102992
www.saraekstrand.co.uk

icks and mortar
..........................................
Preston Park Velodrome
England’s oldest track, under threat
If you don’t live or work in the
Preston Park area of Brighton, you
might not have even noticed that the
city has a velodrome.
It’s not a flash, shiny, indoor track,
like the ones recently built at great
expense in London, Manchester,
Derby or Newport. In fact, dug out
by the army back in 1877, it’s the
oldest in the country. And, ironically,
in an era when cycling is enjoying a
resurgence in popularity, it is under
threat.
Until this year there has been
an organised track event at the
Preston Park Velodrome, held every
Wednesday, from April to August.
The organisers were surprised when
they were not not asked to put on
the event this year round, by the
country’s governing body, British
Cycling. (Note: ‘not asked’, rather
than ‘asked not to’).
I meet cycling events organiser
Rupert Rivett by the side of the
track on a cold but sunny March
afternoon, and he takes up the story.
“We weren’t told directly that there
would be no racing this year, we simply
weren’t given the usual go-ahead.
When we investigated we found out
that British Cycling had deemed the
place unsafe for racing. They have
been dealing with the City Council,
who own the track, but between
them they have not been able to tell
us exactly why.”
Rivett, worried that the end of competitive racing might be the beginning
of the end for the track as a whole, started a Facebook page,
and a petition. He’s accumulated 4,000 likes on the former, and
3,500 signatures on the latter: a lot of people care about the place.
There’s good reason, on many levels. Preston Park Velodrome has a
rich history of hosting big cycling events. In the fifties up to 10,000
spectators would attend races, with the very best in the world competing:
the likes of Reg Harris, twice Sports Personality of the year,
and Dutch World Champion Arie van Vliet. You can only imagine
the excitement as these two men belted round the track – in fact
you can see it in the eyes of the crowd in photographs, if you dig
around on the internet.
“It’s also a great recreational facility,” continues Rupert. “Where
else can you cycle a racing bike around, apart from the road? But
nobody really looks after it, so it’s in a state of disrepair. The Council
needs to invest in it: it could be a great asset to the city. But I fear
the opposite is happening, and it is earmarked for destruction.”
Before talking to Rupert I’ve taken a few spins round the track on
my clunky town bike, enjoying rising up the ramps on the corners,
and imagining I was Graeme Obrie. While we’re talking, a man
teaches his child how to ride. As I leave, I see a much younger, fitter
guy than me belting round the track on a much leaner, faster racing
bike. And I think to myself that Rupert’s right: this marvellous
structure needs nurturing, not neglect.
Alex Leith
Facebook page/petition on facebook.com/saveprestonparkcycletrack
....97....

From the James Gray collection, the photographic archive of the Regency Society, regencysociety.org
inside left: victorian wagonette
...................................................................................
Here’s a picture, from the James Gray Collection, of the late-Victorian equivalent of the Breeze Up the
Downs bus rides the Council are currently running up to Devil’s Dyke. This is a ‘wagonette’, one of many
which took people up to the Dyke, picking up their passengers, largely holidaymakers, near the Aquarium,
and taking them up to the Devil’s Dyke Hotel. The journey took an hour and a half, and the ticket price
was subsidised by a Mr Thacker, who ran the hotel. The two horses you can see were joined by a third at
Old Shoreham Road, to help with the long pull up Dyke Road. You can imagine horses and passengers
alike were relieved to have a refreshment stop at the Dyke Road Hotel (now the Dyke Pub and Kitchen).
In 1887 the Devil’s Dyke Hotel was taken over by the ambitious JH Hubbard, who created a number
of attractions for the increasing numbers of visitors to the Dyke. These included a cable car (or ‘aerial
cableway’) across the valley, a funicular railway down the valley, a ‘gravity railway’, in effect an early form
of the rollercoaster, two bandstands, a camera obscura, a giant statue of Britannia, a wooden model of a
110-ton naval gun (!), and a whale skull. The hotel even produced its own magazine, The Devil’s Dyke Times.
The place was hugely popular: visitors included William IV and Queen Victoria. In 1888 a railway line was
built taking passengers from Aldrington to the top of the Dyke, which soon became more popular than the
wagonettes – the journey time was reduced to 30 minutes.
Perhaps, however, Mr Hubbard was too ambitious: by 1908 the funicular railway and the cable car were out
of service, the whale skull had fallen apart, and the Dyke dropped out of fashion as an attraction. During
WWI the site was taken over by the MOD: the camera obscura became a forward observation post; the
steep-grade railway tracks were used for bomb testing. In 1928 it was bought by Brighton Corporation; in
1995 it was acquired by the National Trust. You can, if you look closely, still see traces of the track of the
funicular railway, which, at its height, took over 250,000 passengers a year up and down the valley.
....98....

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH
MANDY WARD
ARTIST MANAGEMENT
PAUL MERTON
RICHARD VRANCH
LEE SIMPSON
SUKI WEBSTER
AND MIKE McSHANE
SATURDAY 30 MAY
BRIGHTON Dome Concert Hall
01273 709709 brightondome.org
paulmerton.com
comedystoreplayers.com
mickperrin.com
Photo: Caroline Webster