“I’ve lived an extraordinary life! I really have. I’ve done some amazing things and I’ve been very lucky,” says Cheryl.

Cheryl has so many stories to tell, and after trialling this format of event on cruise ships she is excited to bring it to Manchester and share her memories with audiences in an intimate setting. “Fans can expect honesty. I’m unfortunately to my detriment a very honest person!

“I’m giving it a try, opening at The Lowry, which is very nerve-racking, but I’m really looking forward to it!” However, Cheryl admits that she may struggle to include everything, “I can’t pack it all in!

“I’ll talk about Bucks Fizz, and I’ll talk about my TV days, but there will probably be things from an audience point of view I won’t talk about, so the QnA will be their opportunity to ask me questions that might not be on my list of things to talk about”.

Bucks Fizz won The Eurovision song context in 1981 with the feelgood hit ‘Making Your Mind Up’, which Cheryl says was ‘absolutely the highlight’ of her career. The group then went on to have three number one hits and oppportunities to play all around the world.

“It was wonderful, and we did everything first class! We flew first class, went to the best hotels, we were travelling in limousines, but what they didn’t tell us is that they would recoup that money out of royalties. I’m glad we didn’t know or we never would have done it.”

Although Cheryl has accomplished some incredible things, on this occasion she intends to take audiences through both the ups and the downs of her life. “There will be a lot of laughter. There will be a lot of laughter but also be prepared for tears.”

One of those sad incidents, she recalls, is when members of Bucks Fizz were injured in a coach crash in 1984, an experience that has stuck with her all these years later. “It’s like it happened to somebody else, but it was me that woke up in hospital. It’s really weird when something like that happens to you”.

After a successful career in the music industry, Cheryl ventured into the world of television presenting. “I left Bucks Fizz in the nineties because I was pregnant, and I thought I can’t have my kids and take them on tour and go around the country gigging, whereas TV was like a proper job,” she explains.

Cheryl then spent a lot of time in Manchester as television presenter, “I’ve got a lot of personal ties with Manchester, a lot. The Funny Side, My Secret Desire. A lot of BBC shows I did were filmed in Manchester.”

Cheryl is optimistic about this tour and willing to ‘take it nationwide’ if it goes well, she insists that the group is still where her heart is.

“I’d like to go all around the country. It would be nice to think I can expand on these three dates and do a proper tour. But I will still be fizzing, there’s no way this is gonna take priority, because Fizz is my happy place.

“Making Your Mind Up and Bucks Fizz opened so many doors to me and gave me so many opportunities that I am so grateful for. In the show at the Lowry, I can talk about them and relieve them. That’s the joy of it, that’s the joy of my career, that’s why I love it so much and I don’t want it to stop.”

Wearing Cheryl Baker is at Lowry, Salford on 25 March 2026.

The post Cheryl Baker on her 50 years fizzing from Eurovision success appeared first on Quays Life.

How has the launch of Collaborator left you feeling so far?

Charlotte: “Good, thanks. A bit knackered, but we’re okay. We just opened the show, so we did our first three performances on Thursday, Friday, Saturday in London, ahead of coming up to the Lowry. So yeah, it’s been full on, but it’s been good.

“We had three sold-out shows, lovely audiences, we’ve had some really nice reviews, so we’re feeling pretty happy”.

What can people expect from your performances?

Charlotte: “Me and my partner, Alex, we’ve been making circus theatre work for 24 years, touring around, using the movement of circus to tell stories, and this is kind of our last hurrah, so it’s the last show that we’re making together.

“It’s a combination of chatting to the audience, storytelling, and doubles trapeze, which is the movement that we do in the air. My partner is also my life partner, we have a child together, and the show is about what it’s like living and working with someone for 24 years, and all the dynamics that exist – the fights and the tensions, the ups and downs, and the trust.

“It should be very relatable and it’s quite funny in places. I think it’s quite moving, and we tell that story in different ways. Sometimes we tell it in movement – you might see a doubles trapeze routine that will hold within it some of the tenderness and some of the tensions, so it’s different ways of telling that story visually”.

What’s it been like doing this together for over 20 years!

Charlotte: “It’s quite stressful! Circus is slightly different from theatre – we will drive the van with all the equipment; we go into theatre and we build a structure and then perform on it, and then take it down, and load the van, before driving to the next place. The circus world is very hands-on. You pitch in and you work in a community, and you have to learn to negotiate, and take care of each other, and deal with quite stressful, difficult situations. So I think the fact that we’ve done that together for 24 years, has made us a much stronger partnership. The trust you have to have in circus, where you’re holding, like we do trapeze, so you’re literally holding the other person in your arms, and if you fall they’re going to drop and die, you have to have an extreme level of communication and trust, which I think is quite useful for life”.

What do you sort of hope people will gain from coming and watching your performances?

Charlotte: “The loveliest thing that happened was, we did the show on Friday night at The Palace in London, and in the bar afterwards, someone came up to me, and said:’I’m really moved by that, and it made me wish I’d been nicer to my wife. I’m going to go home now, I’m going to have a long conversation with her about all the years, and how I could have been nicer.’ I was like, what the heck, I’m happy with that, if people get that kind of revelation, and, joking aside, if people have said it has really moved them I’m really pleased.

“My concern when we made the show, was that it would feel a little bit too autobiographical, and would anyone care, and the thing that I’ve been really pleased about, as people have said, it’s really made them reflect on their own long-term relationships, and all the dynamics that are in there, and the stressful situations, how you deal with them, and they found it like a sort of space to think about that, and I think if people go away thinking more about their own long-term relationships, then I’m happy.

How did you get into the performing arts?

Charlotte: “Me and Alex got into it slightly differently. I was a ballet kid. I could do loads of dance as a kid, but then I stopped doing that as an adult and I went to university to study English literature. I wanted to be a poet, that was what I was really into. I saw a lot of physical theatre, I found it really exciting, especially storytelling with images. Then I heard about this school in Bristol called Circa Media. After my degree, everyone thought I was insane, because I was supposed to go and become a journalist, but I decide to go to circus school for a year instead. I was quite old for someone entering that profession. I went in and started training in circus and theatre, and just fell in love with it.

“My partner Alex did a fine art degree. He was an artist and he wanted to earn a bit of money to pursue his art, so what he thought he’d make a juggling street show, and busk. He thought, Oh there’s this school that trains you in circus, I’ll go there for a year, I’ll learn how to make the most killer street show in the world, then I’ll make a load of money, and it can support my artwork. And then we met at the circus school, we fell in love, and we vowed we’d never work together!”

What do you do to switch off?

Charlotte: “That’s a good question. I’ve got saunas and cold plunges, it’s like, everyone’s doing that, aren’t they? I’m also a bit of a nerd, I must confess, I really like bird watching. It’s a good time of year for bird watching. I don’t know if you noticed, but this is the week that all the birds start building their nests, like, spring starts for them super, super, super early, so if you go out, you’ll, you’ll start hearing them. They’ve all started singing this week and it’s like a little dart of hope that we all need some time. Even if February feels grey and grim, the birds are getting ready for spring”.

Collaborator is at Lowry, Salford from 5-7 February 2026 before continuning on tour.

The post Ockham’s Razor considers the ‘cost’ of working with another in new show Collaborator appeared first on Quays Life.

You may think that with only less than an hour the exhibit would struggle to fit all this in, but it has been meticulously curated and contains details of the most important periods of his life, such as the time he spent living in Los Angeles.  

Through his perspective it captures and explores Hockney’s creative process, in addition to exploring his relationships and interactions with the world around him. 

It was first held at the Lightroom gallery in London, and came to Aviva Studios last year. Following that success the exhibition returns to the venue as part of a trio of immersive experiences from Lightroom and Factory International being held at Aviva Studios this winter

Andrew Witherspoon, the marketing producer for the exhibition, is one of the many individuals who have been part of this long creative process and Hockney himself has been completely involved from the very beginning. 

Over a number of years, Hockney himself and his studio assistants worked together through the covid pandemic using scale models.

Hockney’s process is revealed in a cycle of six chapters featuring some of his most iconic images. An array of state-of-the-art projectors, which were picked out personally by Hockney as they were the only ones deemed adequately able to represent the brightness and vividness of his colours, loom overhead. 

Hockney has been a long-time advocate for embracing the use of art within technology, and this exhibit is a fantastic example of the way it can bring art to life in a way that transcends beyond the limitations of a traditional static canvas. 

After stepping inside the exhibit, you suddenly become transported; you’re no longer in Salford on a gloomy grey day – you’re simultaneously taken inside his mind and across the world, to the destinations which have inspired some of his most famous work.

The four walls, along with the floor, transform into many things throughout the course of the exhibition: a longboat, an opera theatre, and of course at one point, a gigantic swimming pool. 

The exhibit is narrated by Hockney himself, and the script is comprised of 60 years’ worth of interviews, edited together so seamlessly you would never even realise there may be decades between one word and the next. 

In one sentence you might be hearing some audio from an interview in 1980, and other audio from an interview we captured in 2021 stitched together.

His commentary is intertwined with an original score by American composer Nico Muhly which provides an orchestral ambience to the exhibit. 

One constant throughout Hockney’s career has been his lifelong fascination with nature and all its intricacies, and this message reiterates throughout the span of the exhibit. 

Hockney actively encourages the viewer to truly interrogate their surroundings -he completely engulfs the onlooker, and the enormous screens which and gigantic speakers leave no option for the viewer than to attentively digest his message. 

David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away) is at Aviva Studios from 16 December 2025 to 11 January 2026. It is one of three large-scale 360° immersive experiences from Lightroom running in repertory at Aviva Studios this winter with alongside new shows VOGUE: Inventing the Runway and The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks.

Dog-friendly slots are on specific dates/times. See factoryinternational.org for details.

The post David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away) – Review appeared first on Quays Life.

So, why did they decide to create their own festival? “We ask ourselves that on a daily basis!” Anthony admits. “After working together for over decade on various other projects, we wanted to scale up to something we could really get our teeth into”.

After previously putting on shows in small music venues, a festival felt like the next step that would allow them to expand as they please. The pair have clearly put a lot into this project, and it has quickly paid off with The Brit Fest winning the Leading Live Event award at This Is Manchester Awards 2025. 

“Winning this award was a huge achievement and gives acknowledgements for all the hard work and all the team – everything that’s gone on behind the scenes,” says Anthony. 

Anthony credits this success with the festival gaining ‘keys of entry’ into Manchester. “We’re seen as an event that’s far away, but we’re also super close to Manchester, and since then we’ve had a lot of interest from lots of businesses. It’s been a very big open door for us,” he says. 

“Now it’s like the circus comes to town, and when that arrives people wanna be part of it.” 

Previous acts include The Bluetones, Bonnie Tyler, Paul Young and T’Pau. And next year’s lineup features an equally impressive collection of British artists and bands who have sold more than 70 million albums worldwide. 

Acts on the Friday tend to be “typically more 90’s and indie-centric,” which Anthony is “more excited about” than the Saturday line-up, which caters more to the tastes of his brother Edward who is a “big 80’s fan” – “That’s sort of where the themes and guides came from,” he explains. 

With a big beaming grin, Anthony tells me: “My 17-year-old self would be so proud of being involved in something like this, it’s just massive”. It is immediately evident why after looking at the line-up. “It’s just heritage, these guys are absolute legends. It’s absolutely mega,” he adds.

Hosts Jenny Powell and Mike Toolan are returning for the third year running for a stellar line up: Happy Mondays headline the festival on Friday, Holly Johnson on Saturday and ABC on Sunday. Many other British music icons including Peter Hook & The Light, Altered Images and The Farm, to name but a few, are also performing with the full line-up listed on the festival’s website. 

Alongside household names performing, Anthony says this year the festival is welcoming smaller bands and performers. “We’re building a small indoor arena that will showcase the best of local upcoming and unsigned artists,” he says. “There will be a real platform for that”. 

In addition to the music there are a whole host of other activities planned for next year’s events, including firewalking, archery and axe throwing. And Anthony tells me that now you can even get married at the festival! 

“The great thing about a festival is that it’s so much more than just a gig,” he says. “You’re part of the village for four days. There’s so many things to do, so many people to meet.”

More than 70% of the festival’s traders and suppliers are based in the North West, ensuring the event’s economic benefits stay within the region. As well as an award-winning food and drink line-up including viral food truck brothers The Spud Bros, there are many options for accommodation at the festival. Choose from camping, glamping or a local bed and breakfast in the area with a free bus service available to and from the festival site. Accessibility is a priority for the brothers, with step-free access, dedicated viewing areas, and improved parking to make The Brit Fest open and enjoyable for everyone.

Although the summer seems a long way off Anthony says plans are already well under way and the brothers are working on it every day to make this year’s event “a fully inclusive festival where you can kick back, have a good laugh, and just dance.”

If that sounds like your thing, then the Brit Fest may just be the perfect festival for you. 

The Brit Fest is at Ashley Hall Showground from 2-5 July 2026.

All images courtesy of The Brit Fest

The post Happy Mondays join line-up as The Brit Fest turns three appeared first on Quays Life.