Five times bigger than Glastonbury

That's the boast of the organisers of new comedy festival, which has been established on the Edinburgh fringe. It should make £1.8m in sponsorship for its promoters. But not everyone's smiling.

Read more at the Times online: Few laughs in comedy festival

Making sense of a colourful condition

The Times, Wednesday March 19, 2008

It inspired the vivid paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, and filled the thoughts of Olivier Messiaen, the composer, who experienced colours whenever he heard sounds. Now a study has found that synaesthesia, a little-known sensory condition, effects 500,000 children in Britain – equivalent to two in every primary school classroom in the country.

Derived from the Greek words for "sensation" (aisthesis) and "together" (syn), people with synaesthesia experience two or more of the five senses at the same time, “seeing” sounds, or “tasting” words.

The condition can both help or hinder academic performance, but despite its prevalence the research carried out at Edinburgh University demonstrated that that only five per cent of head teachers have heard of it, and fewer than 15 per cent of learning support teachers could provide an accurate definition.

Reactions to the condition vary, said Dr Julia Simner, the cognitive neuro-psychologist who led the research. “Some people with synaesthesia are completely euphoric about it, someone else might be really suffering,” she added.

Ann Wight, whose children James, 13 and Jenny, 9, have synaesthesia said her children had experienced some difficulties at school because of their condition, before teachers were made aware of their condition.

“When my daughter hears music and sound, the colours are projected in front of her, and are opaque, like a kaleidoscope. A boy sitting behind her absent-mindedly tapping a ruler creates purple streaks; someone humming creates yellow and green. Once the teachers are aware of it, it’s fine. They know now that if they have to test her at school, they have to test her in complete silence," Mrs Wight, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said.

The Edinburgh study showed clear but complex patterns among synaesthetes. From a group of 70, results demonstrated that most were likely to experience the letter A as red, S as yellow, X as black and O as black or white. Researchers also found that those with synaesthesia often had superior memory recall, provided that the conditions were right.

“If you showed them a large array of numbers, took the numbers away, and then asked what was there before, synaesthetes could do much better than the average person. But if you changed the colour of the numbers their memory performance collapsed, they really did flounder. That can be a problem in the classroom and it can give a sense of malaise and discomfort,” said Dr Simner.

In the 1990s, brain imaging showed how synaesthetes reacted to certain letters, words and sounds. Since then researchers have estimated that there are around 50 variants and have found the condition more prevalent among women than men.

Synaesthetes are wary of being described as “sufferers” and many show a marked predisposition to the arts – David Hockney has the condition, so did Duke Ellington and Vladimir Nabokov, the writer. However some undoubtedly experience discomfort.

One member of Dr Simner’s sample constantly experienced tastes whenever someone spoke to him. “If you put him in a brain imager you can see the taste areas of his brain light up. Taste happens every minute of his life. Some of them are unpleasant, like ear wax and vomit. He can’t pay attention. He has trouble reading road signs when he is driving,” said Dr Simner.

In another case investigated by researchers, a man loved ice cream, and the sound of his local ice-cream van – but the voice of the saleswoman made him feel sick.

Synaesthetes are born with the condition, and research to be presented at a conference in Edinburgh next week will suggest it is inherited through the X-chromosome.

Mrs Wight, who along with her mother and sisters has the condition and long regarded it as normal, only discovered her own synaesthesia in her mid thirties. She said: “I was reading New Scientist. I said to my husband, ‘This magazine says that not everyone has this colour-number thing. That’s nonsense. You know how my fives are orange, and yours are blue …’ He looked at me and said: ‘What on earth do you mean? My five doesn’t have any colour at all.’ I said: ‘We had better get you to a doctor.’”

Sundance comes to Edinburgh

The Times, Tuesday March 19, 2008

A huge increase in the budget of the Edinburgh International Film Festival has been announced which could turn the event into the British equivalent of Sundance the influential independent festival in the United States, and bring a sprinkling of Hollywood celebrity to Scotland.

The £1.88 million investment spread over three years was revealed yesterday by John Woodward, the chief executive of the UK Film Council, who said the award recognised Edinburgh’s consistent record in nurturing new talent, and showcasing movies which were “fresh and interesting” for audiences and for film industry insiders alike.

He said: “It’s not a perfect match – but [Edinburgh] is probably closest to Sundance. If you think about where Sundance is, that is not a bad aspiration.”

Such is the Film Council's enthusiasm for Edinburgh that it announced that its first tranche of £600,000 is to be invested in time for the 2008 festival, a commitment which will take total funding of this year's event to £1.8 million and help to expand the range of films on show, according to the festival's director, Hannah McGill. She said that the Film Council's decision was a “ringing endorsement” of Edinburgh’s “ethos of discovery, celebration of talent, and of spreading film knowledge and film education”.

Although it has long been overshadowed by the big European festivals at Cannes, Venice and Berlin, ironically it was the strength of Edinburgh’s reputation as the champion of independent filmmakers in the 1970s which led some commentators to label Sundance “the American Edinburgh” when it was established in Park City, Utah under the chairmanship of Robert Redford.

Since then, Sundance has been transformed from an event for low-budget movies made by little-known directors into an extravaganza, which lures A-list actors and representatives from all the best-known Hollywood studios.

This January’s festival bill featured typically eclectic fare, including Marina Zenovich’s expose, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? and the new Steve Coogan comedy, Hamlet 2.

But it added a celebrity cachet which has usually eluded Edinburgh. Redford himself was in town; Colin Farrell attended the premiere of In Bruges, and Mary Kate Olsen arrived for her latest film The Wackness. Jack Black, Woody Harrelson, Jessica Alba, Ben Kingsley, Quentin Tarantino and Colin Firth were among a host of celebrities lured into snowy Park City to be snapped by the paparazzi.

Ginnie Atkinson, managing director of the festival, said Sundance “was a good analogy” for the Scottish event. “Sundance was always connected with training and the development of filmmakers of vision, all of them with an independent spirit. The industry wants Edinburgh to succeed.- they want Edinburgh to deliver for them, they can see the value of the festival. If they can see that happening, more people can have a good experience,” she said.

For the first time in its history, this year’s festival will be held in June. As well as improved programming, Ms McGill said the new funds would enable services to the film industry to be expanded “enhancing the ability to network and talent spot in Edinburgh” and would enable more new talent showcases to be staged.

She added that a festival in early summer was a more attractive proposition for the industry, because it no longer competed with the London film festival, usually held in October. The new dates also ensure that the event is not swamped in the media frenzy which surrounds the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe, she said.

“In terms of press attention, it’s a lot more attractive to say to distributors to say ‘the film festival will be the only show in town’ than to say ‘you are going to be up against every arts thing in the entire world and you might get bumped off the front page if a Korean chef juggles some knives on the Royal Mile’,” she said.

Other film festivals, notably London and Cambridge are expected to benefit from further announcements from the UKFC, and one will be established as a “red carpet” event - London was “a serious contender” said Mr Woodward.

Edinburgh was the only film festival singled out in the 2005 Labour Party manifesto as a high priority for extra investment. However the Scottish government were quick to point out that the level of its funding through the publicly funded film agency Scottish Screen had also been increased to £250,000 a year.

A Scottish Government spokesman said s that the UK Film Council award would “allow the festival to play a leading role in the development of film in the UK.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Established in 1947, the Edinburgh International Film Festival enjoys the longest continuous run of any comparable event in the world.

The first festival was dedicated to the documentary, which was where Scotland’s great strengths in film-making lay. John Grierson opened the eight-day event which screened 75 titles, including Roberto Rossellini’s Paisa, one of the most moving films about war ever made.

During the 1960s, Edinburgh introduced the the idea of the retrospective, re-evaluating the diverse talents of filmmakers including John Huston, Sam Fuller, Douglas Sirk and even the young Martin Scorsese. Over the following decades the festival consolidated its reputation as a pioneering force for UK audiences, screening European, Japanese and independent American films, alongside works by new talents found closer to home, such as Bill Forsyth.

Notable premieres of recent years include Control, The Full Monty, Mrs Brown, Billy Elliot, East is East, Ratcatcher, Stardust, Ratatouille, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, and Tsotsi.

Last year, a decision was made to the move the festival from August to June 18-29. A full programme will be announced on May 7.

Farrell urges critics to shape city's future

The Times, Friday, March 14

Sir Terry Farrell has hit back at critics of his role as Edinburgh’s design champion, and challenged his doubters to get involved in planning the future of the city rather than bellyaching on the sidelines.

Farrell was speaking after it was revealed that he had been re-appointed for a fifth year to his unpaid post by Edinburgh City Council. That move prompted complaints from some unnamed local architects who questioned his contribution to the city, including one who suggested that Farrell and his company had “gained much more from this relationship than the city of Edinburgh has.”

Farrell vehemently rejected those allegations, pointing out that since he took on his public role in 2003, he had “not sought” nor accepted any commissions for work in the city.

Last night he went a step further, announcing that Edinburgh would host an international conference on “urban design and city making”, which will focus on Edinburgh itself.

“I have been acutely aware of the need to engage local architects more in public affairs in Edinburgh as they have often self-marginalised themselves … Unfortunately there has been a minority (who have invariably expressed themselves anonymously) and who have it seems been somewhat negative about the benefits and imagined conflicts of my role," said Farrell.

“There is a long tradition in most other major cities of local architects being involved in public life. There are procedures set out and well monitored, for avoiding conflicts of interest. It is universally recognised that it is essential to engage active, well-informed people with knowledge of their city in voluntary work to help make it a better place."

His comments come at time of continuing public unease over a number of controversial development within Edinburgh’s historic city centre. These include the installation of a £400 million tram system and Caltongate, a £300 million mixed development in the Old Town that is bitterly opposed by conservationists and residents.

Some critics have suggested that Edinburgh could follow the unfortunate lead of Dresden, whose world heritage status is under review by UNESCO after the city revealed plans for a new and intrusive bridge.

This public dissatisfaction was reflected by Farrell himself last November when he told The Times that “Edinburgh is a town which has dire need of regeneration.” He complained of “the forces of lethargy” hampering his work and added: “There’s no-one beginning to think that they even need a vision. Not just at [council] officer level – it’s very apparent there – but also in the elected leaders. There is no belief that they need do anything other than sit back.”

Changes in council personnel have led to a significant thawing in relations. Mr Farrell said he had been “delighted” with an increased recognition for urban design.

This had culminated he said in a meeting with Jenny Dawe, the council leader, Tom Aitchison, the chief executive and senior elected colleagues. They invited the architect to remain in post for another year “and they did so in terms of enthusiasm and commitment that were at a new level for the city,” he said.

Mr Farrell added that new senior officers on the council, including Dave Anderson, the incoming director of city development, would put “pro-active city making high on their agenda”. The international conference – which will focus on the future of Edinburgh itself - he said reflected “this accelerated commitment.”

He added: “How well [the] changes to the City are planned and designed is critical to Edinburgh’s future. Will they match and build on the achievements of the past, or could they diminish these achievements? It is time to prepare and to plan ahead. This conference will be an exciting step forward.”

What the Doctor Said

I was talking with a friend about this poem which was written by Raymond Carver not long before his death 20 years ago. I can't think of a better piece of writing.

If you hit the Raymond Carver link in the 'Words' column on the right, you can hear Carver reading some of his poems in London in 1987.


What the Doctor Said

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

Raymond Carver

Crisis? What Crisis?

Scotland on Sunday, October 7, 2007

My new pal Dave is sitting in his conservatory smiling at me as if he's got a surprise in store. He has, too, but it's not something nice like a party invitation or a late birthday present. Dave's a therapist and he's ready to dispense some pretty tough advice, because I've come to talk to him about my man problem. Or rather my supposed man problem, which obviously doesn't really exist. A midlife crisis? Me?

Back in January, as my 47th year loomed, I gave up a handsome salary and a steady job to work for myself. I became more health-conscious, too, and started riding a bike. I began getting back into music again and after years of semi-dedicated child-rearing, I went to a couple of gigs in dark little clubs around Edinburgh, where the audiences were primarily students and spotty adolescents.

I'd never really bothered about any of this midlife stuff until my friends began analysing my behaviour. And when all this evidence was presented on a charge sheet... well, it's easy to see how it might be misconstrued.

Curious to find out more, I checked out the very limited literature on the male midlife crisis but could only find a list of symptoms (erectile dysfunction, loss of libido, baldness) and a telephone number for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. They recommended me to Dave, who lives just outside Bonnybridge.

"The thing is, Mike, you can find all kinds of ways to postpone this stuff," says Dave - aka Professor Mearns - drawing his palms together in an attitude of prayer. "But at some point, it is probably going to hit you. You say it hasn't affected you... well, that's probably true."

In the pause that follows, it would be easy to crowbar in the words "but quite possibly not", though Dave politely forbears. "What we're talking about here is a crisis all right, an existential crisis. It often happens when things are changing sexually - testosterone dropping and so on. For some people, it's okay, no big deal. But for others, seeing themselves change physically can be very frightening."

And so we begin my therapeutic journey. Over the next couple of hours, it becomes apparent that, for Dave, life roughly equates to a long trudge over a mountainous landscape. You'll enjoy plodding along its sunny valleys - the happy childhood at the beginning of the journey or, a while later, the pleasant route that leads into a long-term relationship. But like any sensible hiker, you should be well equipped for rocky ground, because inevitably you'll hit what Dave calls "an emotional outcrop". That's the moment when life's big questions start tripping you up.

"I wouldn't call it a midlife crisis," he says. "It's an awareness of our existence which is outcropping in our lives. From the adult perspective, we often call what teenagers go through 'teenage angst'. But it's probably very similar to an existential crisis later in life. It is about the same kind of fundamental question, 'What am I about in life?', except the person in midlife asks, 'What have I been about in life?'"

Trauma can pose these questions, he says, through bereavement, illness, a lost job or just the awareness of growing older. And the symptoms? Well, I already know that a lot of smart alecks can recognise those...

Dave is something of a pioneer. In the 1970s, when counselling theories were oozing out of the US towards Britain, he was tackling some of toughest terrain in the world. That was west central Scotland, in the days when rigid Presbyterians ruled the roost and the idea of a Scottish man sharing his emotional problems with a stranger was as likely as Ian Paisley officiating at Elton John's wedding.

But Dave stuck with it. He helped establish the University of Strathclyde as one of Britain's leading centres for psychotherapy, and played his part in introducing the discipline into a once-sceptical NHS. He has written books, edits journals and, even though he retired two years ago, still gets called to conferences all over the world.

Dave's maxim - which he applies equally to me as he does to the messed-up Glasgow gangsters who have occasionally come to him for help - is as follows: "The therapist should be so alongside the client that the client is not aware of him as a separate, independent existence." In other words, he wants to get inside my head so we can march out and face my issues together.

In Dave's world, it is possible to perceive two obvious ways in which middle-aged men deal with those big existential questions like, 'What am I doing here?' and 'Is this it?' They either turn inwards or they turn outwards.

Those who look in, he says, "will probably get drunk while they're doing it" and that's no good for their mental state. Others will flip right round and do things that can often seem out of character or just plain desperate. "That's where the thing about buying the motorbike or the sports car comes in," he says. "Or becoming a workaholic. It keeps you one step ahead of depression. Some people think it's crazy. But sometimes people are just expressing other parts of themselves; stuff that was around earlier in their lives. They think, 'I used to like the bike when I was younger...'"

Some of his observations are funny. Like the notion that the middle-class, middle-aged foot soldiers of the Tartan Army are doing nothing more than fleeing their midlife crises as they yomp round Europe after the Scotland football team. "Think of all the different things you get out of it," Dave muses. "For a start, you're identifying yourself with a team - you have the whole range of emotions associated with that. There's the camaraderie, you get to go to different places and do different things and there's a proper justification. Guys don't get many opportunities to do that. In the course of it all, they are expressing all sorts of things about themselves that maybe don't get that much expression. Psychologically, it's pretty healthy."

Some of his other ideas I find harder to accept. All the men I've talked with who have been labelled 'MLC victim' by their mates feel they haven't changed that much from their younger selves. Earlier this year, the octogenarian author John Mortimer told me that, throughout his life, he felt just as he did when he was a teenage boy. Almost in the next breath, he asked: "Don't you think a woman holding a cigarette is very erotic?" Mortimer's midlife crisis is presumably due to start at 90.

It's not normal, apparently. "That kind of person is difficult for other people," says Dave. "In psychological terms, there might be a slight personality disorder. It makes it very difficult for them to step outside themselves and to see the world the way that other people see it. That kind of character is much more often a man than a woman."

But surely it's not just egocentrics who pose problems for other people, If Dave's 'existential crisis' is inevitable for all of us, there are going to be casualties. Couples will be torn apart. If I go home now and ask, "Is this it?" in a loud voice, there's a strong chance the walls of my domestic world will come tumbling down.

"It can be really threatening to the other person," agrees Dave. "If there has been a pattern to the relationship - and people who live with each other for years will develop a very sophisticated pattern - it can be very difficult.

"For much of their lives, someone has been giving vent to one part of themselves - but now they begin to hear other voices. One part maybe is saying, 'Get a good job, stay steady, be a provider' - the other voice is asking, 'Where is the fun?' Often in therapy, the person will give expression to the different voices and there is more chance of this voice coming through with 'Let's take on some challenges'.

"I'm not making people leave the relationship or go further from it. I'm giving them scope to hear themselves more fully. We could work the other way and have an approach that keeps people together - but wouldn't we be postponing a problem?"

The probability is that most couples avoid confronting the issues, he says, and some will stay in a relationship even when they find it unsatisfying, because the alternative is loneliness. But Dave (who has been married for 32 years) prefers to think of marriage as a series of contracts. "Your first contract is about being in love. It's not to have kids, it's to enjoy that time. Your second contract - which might be with the same person or not - is about settling down and having quite a long period of family life. The third phase is later - the empty nest - and that's different too. Making a contract with someone to live together in that period of life involves different things. It's a very interesting idea - couples thinking in this way and re-contracting. It can be very exciting."

After all that's gone before, it's a surprisingly positive position to take. And Dave has more good news. Alongside those inward-looking and outward-looking responses to the crisis, there seems to be a third way. "When those 'who are we?' questions hit, sometimes you can take it. People differ a lot. You can welcome this crisis and be okay about these fundamental questions."

And there's my therapist's message of hope. Baldness? Erectile dysfunction? Loss of libido? Bring 'em on. I'm off to embrace my crisis.

Pictures: Dave and me, in the conservatory of doubt; seven gentlemen from the Tartan Army stand firm against mlc.

Hamas and hatred

"To say you hate them is not to say they’re monsters. But their politics is the death of politics; the violence they use confiscates all other possibilities in Palestinian society. You can’t object to it because you might die; if you support them you just risk creating another martyr. It’s a total nightmare. It will take enormous courage for the Palestinians to get up and say ‘This is not the way’. But until they do, Hamas is leading them right over a cliff."

This is from an interview with Michael Ignatieff, now the deputy leader of the Canadian liberal party, which he gave during his stint in Edinburgh in 2003, where he was delivering the Gifford lectures at the university. Ranging over Hamas and the West Bank, Iraq, the war in terror, the importance of American foreign policy, and Christopher Hitchens' conversion to Liberal Democracy - "I'm glad he's on the train, but frankly he's a bit late" - it's an interesting read.

Click on the link to read the article from The Scotsman: Sense in liberal proportions