Martin ThomassonThe nice woman working security at the Lowry approaches me with her metal-detecting device.“Do you have a pacemaker,” she asks. “I don’t think so.” This is not to be found on anyone’s list of Sensible Answers. What was I thinking? That some rogue...
I posted a photograph on social media last night, showing the musicians starting to take their seats on stage at the Lowry’s Lyric theatre. You can also make out how thinly populated the auditorium is. “Sparse,” a friend of mine commented. Indeed...
Even without the masks (which most of us are wearing) and the deliberate, careful spacing of the audience, the metallic click and breathy “gasp” of cans of cider being opened around the auditorium (there’s no bar tonight), would tell you this is not...
Martin Thomasson describes how lockdown encouraged him to rediscover his family’s past and write a collection of memoirs ‘Random Notes from Life’ When my Auntie Madge (my great aunt Madeleine) died, I was very sad; sadder than I’d...
A Scottish film with an opening scene featuring our hero (a working class lad called Davie) running down the street, hotly pursued by an irate adversary, might put you in mind of Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Irving Welsh’s Trainspotting. Trailer The...
When I was young, if someone exhibited a peculiar phobia or obsession, people used to say his mother must have been frightened by something associated with that obsession during pregnancy. I can only conclude that Christopher Nolan’s mum was...
“I was never any good at football.” So says 15-year-old Nico (Francesco Di Napoli), when ageing Camorra boss, Don Vittorio (Renato Carpentieri) asks him why he doesn’t try to get rich through the ‘beautiful game,’ rather than the very ugly game of...
I confess that, as a man well on the road to decrepitude, the thought that a charming, beautiful and much younger woman – say, Katie Holmes – might fall for me is an appealing fantasy. If ever I reach Sir Patrick Stewart’s age, even the...
Sometime in the mid-1970s I, and about 90% of a fair-sized crowd, got to our feet to applaud and then cheer, not a football match or a ‘live’ show, but a film. What’s more, this wasn’t Hollywood or a West End premiere. This was a matinee at the...
For every small child, the world is like a pile of jigsaw pieces without a picture showing you how the finished job is meant to look. Worse, than that, whenever you think you’re starting to fit a bit of it together, make sense of it, some adult...