:00:24. > :00:28.Welcome to The Culture Show at the Edinburgh Festival, where we aim to
:00:28. > :00:35.separate our arts from our elbow. This is distracting. Coming up, we
:00:35. > :00:41.have the fringe debut of an 0s -- 80s icon. We have a giant, that is
:00:41. > :00:51.illegal in several countrys what he's doing now. He have tributes to
:00:51. > :00:57.
:00:57. > :01:03.Mr Pinter. Edinburgh has it. Guys, On tonight's show, two Marks, Ten
:01:03. > :01:07.Plagues. Marc Almond and Mark Ravenhill tell us about working
:01:08. > :01:16.together on musical theatre. Robert Rauschenberg. We check out the
:01:16. > :01:21.first major exhibition of his in 30 years. Homage to Harold. John and
:01:21. > :01:29.Julian tell Simon about their passion for poetry. Ruby Wax talks
:01:29. > :01:38.to me about Losing It. Her show on mental illness. We may be up north,
:01:38. > :01:44.but at the theatre, we are heading east. We have theatre from China,
:01:44. > :01:52.Taiwan and Korea. AS Byatt tell us about her latest
:01:52. > :01:59.book and festival virgin, Michael Smith, takes the 24-hour endurance
:01:59. > :02:03.test. First up, a tale of two marks, Marc Almond and Mark Ravenhill. One
:02:03. > :02:08.is a 1980s new wave pop star, another a prominent playwright.
:02:08. > :02:13.They have teamed up together to create a show called Ten Plagues,
:02:13. > :02:17.which had its world premier in Edinburgh earlier this week. They
:02:17. > :02:27.spoke to Miranda Sawyer and told spoke to Miranda Sawyer and told
:02:27. > :02:32.
:02:32. > :02:37.Humanity is obsessed with its own demise. We see the apocalyse in
:02:37. > :02:41.every epidemic, AIDS, swine flu, E- Coli from bean sprout. Which will
:02:42. > :02:46.be the plague to wipe us out? It is this and more that Marc Almond and
:02:46. > :02:52.Mark Ravenhill explore in their new piece, Ten Plagues.
:02:52. > :02:59.Almond plays a man who bears witness to the carnage brought by
:02:59. > :03:04.the plague in London, in the graveyard the city became.
:03:04. > :03:14.# As it fell # One face turned
:03:14. > :03:15.
:03:15. > :03:20.# And I saw that it was you # You are talking about the plague in
:03:20. > :03:27.1665, but it has modern resonances. You can take it at different levels.
:03:27. > :03:33.You can take it one man's journey through the great plague. There was
:03:33. > :03:38.lots of other levels to it as well. Every year, we seem to have new
:03:38. > :03:44.pandemic that we are threatened with. Outcomes of fear things and
:03:44. > :03:52.the tabloid things and the crazy behaviour. Going back to AIDS and
:03:52. > :03:57.HIV when it first started in the early 80s.
:03:57. > :04:07.# To die # To sleep
:04:07. > :04:07.
:04:07. > :04:13.# A chance to dream # I would not have written this
:04:13. > :04:21.unless with my own experiences with HIV. I had a trauma when I was in a
:04:21. > :04:25.coma after a big epileptic fit due to AIDS and my parents were told
:04:25. > :04:31.there was no chance he would recover.
:04:31. > :04:35.For me, it is about other things as well. It is about loneliness as
:04:35. > :04:38.well. As well as solitude. About surviving through something. Then
:04:38. > :04:44.you feel you are a different person and you cannot relate to people in
:04:44. > :04:51.the same way. # Sometimes I feel I've got to
:04:51. > :04:57.# Runaway # It was 30 years ago that Soft Cell took a northern soul
:04:57. > :05:01.classic and transformed it into a sleaze pop anthem.
:05:01. > :05:05.In 2004, he was involved in a motorcycle accident which nearly
:05:05. > :05:09.killed him. This left him in a coma for two weeks and initially
:05:09. > :05:14.destroyed his singing voice. I felt I was in fragments and had to put
:05:14. > :05:19.things back together again. That took maybe a few years to do that,
:05:19. > :05:23.just dogged determination really. I lost my short-term memory, which
:05:23. > :05:29.made things like memorising lyrics to songs really well I could not
:05:29. > :05:32.remember. I had to use cue and lyric sheets on stage for quite a
:05:32. > :05:36.while. I could never have done something like this two years ago.
:05:36. > :05:40.It is an achievement for me, for my recovery, that I have come this far
:05:40. > :05:47.to do something that is probably the most difficult piece that I've
:05:47. > :05:57.ever done. # I've come to say goodbye
:05:57. > :05:59.
:05:59. > :06:09.# Still I almost kissed you # I almost kissed you
:06:09. > :06:10.
:06:10. > :06:18.# But you stopped me # Said I found a tumour
:06:18. > :06:25.# And pulling up your shirt showed me the tobg en hard -- token hard
:06:25. > :06:30.and round # A contagion # We have both shared
:06:30. > :06:34.this feeling of having a near-death experience, or possible death
:06:34. > :06:39.experience and surviving through it. I think that when you come through
:06:39. > :06:43.something like that and you do survive, you get a thing like a
:06:43. > :06:48.survivor's guilt. There is the flip-side, which is the survivor's
:06:48. > :06:51.arrogance, which this character has. You have cheated death. So it is a
:06:51. > :06:56.total two sides of the two coin. There is the guilt and the
:06:56. > :07:01.arrogance as well. That That leads to the question, do you feel like
:07:01. > :07:05.it has improved your life to have discovered you are HIV-positive or
:07:05. > :07:10.to have had a motorcycle accident? It has fired you into other areas
:07:10. > :07:13.that you might not have reached? always say it has been a good
:07:13. > :07:17.experience for me which sound creepy. I did discover so much
:07:17. > :07:21.about myself and the loyalty of my friends and about the world around
:07:21. > :07:25.me through that experience that I can't imagine not having had that
:07:25. > :07:35.experience. Most of the stuff I found out through a lot of
:07:35. > :07:47.
:07:47. > :07:52.suffering and lo at of -- a lot of I like to think that I'm better
:07:52. > :07:58.than I was before. I'm put together in a different way. I'm a kind of
:07:58. > :08:03.better than I was before. A new improved Mark? Improved, not in
:08:03. > :08:07.physical ways sometimes. I think certainly as a more rounded sort of
:08:07. > :08:11.centred person. I feel I'm not afraid of death any more. I feel
:08:11. > :08:15.I'm not afraid of things like that any more. I'm not afraid of things
:08:15. > :08:21.happening to me. When something awful happens to you, you think,
:08:21. > :08:24.throw it at me and I'll take it. And Ten Plagues is on at the
:08:24. > :08:29.theatre until 28th August. If you would like to find out what the
:08:29. > :08:35.panel made of the play, then tune in tomorrow night, BBC 2 at 11pm.
:08:35. > :08:40.The late Robert Rauschenberg was one of the most influential artists
:08:40. > :08:43.of the 20th century. He has been celebrated this summer at
:08:44. > :08:47.Inverleith House, where they have hosted an exhibition of his work,
:08:47. > :08:53.the first major one in three decades.
:08:54. > :08:58.Alastair Sooke went along to take a look. Look how the light falls on
:08:58. > :09:08.that fifth chin. You've really got me. Magnificent!
:09:08. > :09:13.Cardboard boxes. Household junk, mundane objects -
:09:13. > :09:18.nowadays we are used to art being made out of rubbish. It was much
:09:18. > :09:28.more unusual in 1950s America. Robert Rauschenberg believed that
:09:28. > :09:28.
:09:29. > :09:33.art can be made out of anything, light bulbs, empty bottles. Even a
:09:33. > :09:36.stuffed goat. He said he thought a picture was like the real world if
:09:36. > :09:40.it is made out of the real world. Which if you think about it makes
:09:40. > :09:45.sense. Rauschenberg shot to fame in New
:09:45. > :09:50.York 60 years ago. He is often mentioned in the same breath as
:09:50. > :09:57.Picasso. His work is not seen all that often in the UK.
:09:57. > :10:00.Now, three years after his death, Inverleith House is hosting his
:10:00. > :10:08.first major British exhibition since 1981, with more than 30 of
:10:08. > :10:16.his late works on display. For more than half a century,
:10:16. > :10:22.fuelled by inorder napbt amounts of bur born, he challenged our
:10:22. > :10:24.preconceptions about what paintings and sculptures could be. His
:10:24. > :10:31.fearless experimentation proved influential. Today, he is
:10:31. > :10:38.recognised as the godfather of a whole host of avant-garde movements
:10:38. > :10:46.from the 60s and 70s. He studied at the liberal Black Mountain College,
:10:46. > :10:49.in North Carolina. Where his teachers encouraged experimentation.
:10:49. > :10:54.After settling in New York, Rauschenberg developed his unusual
:10:54. > :11:03.combine style. He merged paintings, news print, photographs and found
:11:03. > :11:07.objects into striking collages which were a combination.
:11:07. > :11:15.Just over here is one of the first works you will encounter in the
:11:15. > :11:21.exhibition. It is from a series called "Gluts." He made them in the
:11:21. > :11:27.1980s. There was a glut in the oil market. He would drive around,
:11:27. > :11:30.trawling the streets savaging for odds and ends. Car parts, broken
:11:30. > :11:37.petrol pumps, street signs, that sort of thing. He would take them
:11:37. > :11:46.back to the studio and transform them into these elegant and refined
:11:46. > :11:51.metal collages. Like most of the gluts, it is not
:11:51. > :11:56.just a dead exercise, if you like, ins a thethics. That is the thing
:11:56. > :12:00.about Rauschenberg. He was always commenting on American society. The
:12:00. > :12:05.gluts are all about greed. Greed is rampant, he said at the time, I am
:12:05. > :12:12.trying to expose it, trying to wake people up. I simply want to present
:12:12. > :12:17.people with their ruins. There's one detail of the work that
:12:17. > :12:22.really intrigues me. You can see here at the bottom of this big
:12:22. > :12:29.green free way sign, what would have spelt out "county" now it
:12:29. > :12:34.looks like it spells out an inflammatory word. This detail is
:12:34. > :12:39.what drew him to use the sign and incorporate it into the work in the
:12:39. > :12:42.first place. This is his way of deliberately referring to the
:12:42. > :12:49.blighted racial history of America's south, the land where he
:12:49. > :12:53.himself was brought up. Throughout his career, Rauschenberg
:12:53. > :13:00.experimented with silk screening images on to a variety of different
:13:00. > :13:05.surfaces. Like Warhol, he started to use silk
:13:05. > :13:11.screens in the early 60s. Where as Warhol would show the same thing
:13:11. > :13:17.again and again and again, Rauschenberg offers these random
:13:17. > :13:21.visual imagery. In this case, mostly his own photographs,
:13:21. > :13:28.including that highly suggestive elephant's tail, over there in the
:13:28. > :13:34.right-hand corner. He was so drawn to collage he found it the right
:13:34. > :13:38.medium of living amid the chaos and overload of the 20th century.
:13:38. > :13:43.Rauschenberg attributed his style in part to his mother, who used to
:13:43. > :13:53.make his clothes for him out of scraps of old fabric. Similarly his
:13:53. > :13:55.
:13:55. > :14:00.images have a distinctive patch- Rauschenberg was forever
:14:00. > :14:04.experimenting with materials, with performance, with technology. The
:14:04. > :14:11.results were often playful and ingenious, like this completely
:14:11. > :14:16.borchingers creation, part painting, part sculpture, part windmill. His
:14:16. > :14:19.watch words were multiplicity, inclusion and variety. If this
:14:19. > :14:22.doesn't exemplify that, I don't know what does. Usually the motor
:14:22. > :14:32.is activated by sound. For this exhibition, you can also trigger it
:14:32. > :14:35.
:14:35. > :14:41.It used to be fashionable to say Rauschenberg lost his edge towards
:14:41. > :14:46.the end of the 60s. It's true that some of his later work lacks that
:14:46. > :14:53.deliberately crude, rough hewn energy of his celebrated combines,
:14:53. > :14:58.which made his name. As he got older, Rauschenberg's art became
:14:58. > :15:02.progressively sleeker and glossier, shinier, literally, as he
:15:02. > :15:06.experimented with silkscreening images onto metal. You could argue
:15:06. > :15:11.he was reflecting the way the world had changed. You can't help but
:15:11. > :15:21.warm to the genial, impish, free spirit that animates all his art,
:15:21. > :15:33.
:15:33. > :15:37.Robert Rauschenberg's botanical vowedville is on at Inverleith
:15:37. > :15:41.House until September 2. This weekend sees the start of Edinburgh
:15:41. > :15:46.Book Festival with nearly 800 authors taking part in 17 days of
:15:46. > :15:53.reading and events. Amongst them is the esteemed AS Byatt who's here to
:15:54. > :16:00.discuss her new work Ragnarok, which sounds like a fantasy play,
:16:00. > :16:06.which will be turned into a film starring Sean Bean. But it is in
:16:06. > :16:10.fact, she tells, Mullan, a reworking of an ancient Norse myth,
:16:10. > :16:14.which is very close to her heart. AS Byatt is one of the most
:16:14. > :16:20.important writers in Britain. Successful as an academic, critic
:16:20. > :16:24.and cultural commentator, she's most famous for her novels, in
:16:24. > :16:29.particularly Possession, which won the Booker Prize in 1990.
:16:29. > :16:37.AS Byatt is a wonderfully, fearlessly intellectual writer. All
:16:37. > :16:41.her novels are packed with passages of botany or art history or complex
:16:41. > :16:45.literary paradi. What's extraordinary about her is
:16:45. > :16:49.something child like, a delight in the primtive pleasures of story
:16:49. > :16:56.telling. All her books are about the rediscovery, retelling of old
:16:56. > :17:01.stories. Her latest book Ragnarok, which means the Twilight of the
:17:01. > :17:05.Gods, retells an ancient Norse myth about the end of the world, but
:17:05. > :17:09.combines the story with Byatt's personal account of reading the
:17:09. > :17:16.myth for the first time as a child in wartime Britain.
:17:16. > :17:22.She was a thin, sickly, boney child, like an eft, with fine help. Her
:17:22. > :17:28.elders told her not to do this, to avoid that, because there was a war
:17:28. > :17:33.on. Life was a state in which a war was on. Nevertheless, by a paradox
:17:33. > :17:37.caliphate, the child may only have lived because her people level the
:17:37. > :17:43.sulphurous air of the steel city, full of smoking chimneys for a
:17:43. > :17:47.country town of no interest to enemy bombers. This book is not
:17:47. > :17:52.exactly a novel really. It's a retelling of Norse myths, but it's
:17:52. > :17:55.also a book about your childhood, evacuated to the English
:17:56. > :17:59.countryside during the Second World War. Why did you want to do those
:17:59. > :18:07.two things together, the story of yourself and the story of Norse
:18:07. > :18:12.methology? -- mythology snfrplts I accepted the publisher's invitation
:18:12. > :18:16.to do the myth because I was interested in retelling myths.
:18:16. > :18:21.had no hesitation about which myth I wanted to write. Then I made
:18:21. > :18:27.several attempts to write the end of the gods in Norse mythology and
:18:27. > :18:31.I couldn't get the right tone of voice. So I thought, "What is
:18:31. > :18:35.happen sning" I went back to my pretty well lifelong relationship
:18:35. > :18:39.with this particular myth. I thought if I can distance myself by
:18:39. > :18:44.putting myself as a child into the story, so in fact, the child is
:18:44. > :18:47.only there as a kind of instrument. I'm not trying to write
:18:47. > :18:51.autobiography. I'm not very interested in autobiography as a
:18:51. > :18:56.form. The child is there to make the myth both more distant and
:18:56. > :19:00.closer. You say you didn't hesitate about which myth you were
:19:00. > :19:07.interested in. Why didn't you hesitate? Why is Norse mythology so
:19:07. > :19:14.gripping to you? When I was a child, my mother gave or I suspect Lent me
:19:14. > :19:24.her book. I thought it was a real story about the nature of things.
:19:24. > :19:28.This is terrifying and powerful. Asgard and the gods relates the
:19:28. > :19:34.stories of Norse mythology including the tale of Ragnarok the
:19:34. > :19:38.destruction of the gods themselves. In her retelling of the myth Byatt
:19:38. > :19:43.draws paralegals between this apocalyptic story, the dem nation
:19:43. > :19:47.of the war, and the destruction of the natural world taking place
:19:47. > :19:51.today. Do you remember this Eden- like experience of nature and the
:19:51. > :19:56.uncertainty and violence of war being alongside each other somehow?
:19:56. > :20:02.I do. I thought of the natural world and the trees and the corn
:20:02. > :20:06.fields and the hedges and the birds in the sky as being a kind of
:20:06. > :20:10.permanent natural form that would outlast me. It had been there long
:20:10. > :20:15.before me. And it would be there long after me. I thought of the war
:20:15. > :20:21.as a human thing. The war had taken my father away. He was fighting in
:20:21. > :20:26.the Air Force in Algeria. What was happening to him and where he was
:20:26. > :20:29.weren't visible, weren't imaginable. I had no images of them. I was
:20:29. > :20:32.wondering if the Norse myths were especially vivid to you because
:20:32. > :20:37.they took you into the zones of fear and apprehension and violence
:20:37. > :20:41.too, that were only at the edge of your actual vision or imagination.
:20:41. > :20:45.I think they did satisfy me. They satisfied my knowledge that things
:20:45. > :20:49.were not good. Yes. Despite the fact that I was constantly being
:20:49. > :20:53.told that things were all right. I knew the world was not a good place.
:20:53. > :20:57.I had great trouble with gentle Jesus meek and mild. That didn't
:20:57. > :21:06.say anything to me about the nature of things, the Christian religion,
:21:06. > :21:10.at all. Whereas, this sort of story that drops you in real disaster.
:21:10. > :21:15."Hungry creatures, hungry men will eat anything. The battle winners
:21:15. > :21:19.feasted among the dead bodies, which were being torn at by
:21:19. > :21:25.creeping, crouching beasts. They gripped each other and fell about
:21:25. > :21:29.the fire, fornicating with whoever was to hand. They bit and kissed
:21:29. > :21:35.and chewed and swallowed and fought and struggled and waited for the
:21:35. > :21:43.world to end, which it did not, not yet. They ate each other, of course,
:21:43. > :21:50.in the end. "Why do these Norse myths seem so resonant to you now?
:21:50. > :21:54.I, when I started working on it, I realised that as well as fitting my
:21:54. > :22:02.childhood sense of being threatened, they fit more and more closely to
:22:02. > :22:09.my sense of what the world is like now. All these gods did was eat and
:22:09. > :22:14.trick people and go to battle. And they weren't, in a way, capable of
:22:14. > :22:19.saving themselves from disaster. I feel that we live, we do live on a
:22:19. > :22:28.planet which is threatened and in a society that is threatened by
:22:28. > :22:33.ourselves. We are those stupid gods. "She blew at the sand and hooked up
:22:33. > :22:38.the creatures with her spiked tongue. She loved and sucked and
:22:38. > :22:44.swallowed and spat out the debris. She was always hungry and always
:22:45. > :22:54.killed more than she needed, out of curiosity, out of love, out of
:22:54. > :22:57.insatiable businessiness." There seems to be a pleasure, a
:22:57. > :23:00.fascination in stories of what an absolute catastrophe would be like
:23:00. > :23:06.that people keep returning to. Fplgts this is very true. I suppose
:23:06. > :23:11.that this is because you have an image, a story, with which to
:23:11. > :23:15.think out the unthinkable. It's easier to think it out with a story
:23:15. > :23:20.than try and imagine yourself in a catastrophe, which just fills you
:23:20. > :23:25.with panic. The strange thing is this very, very old story, which
:23:25. > :23:31.ends in this black winter should be very unconsoling, but it's also
:23:31. > :23:35.just still as captivating I think. Lots of new readers will discover
:23:35. > :23:40.how captivating these Norse stories are. Thanks very much for having me,
:23:40. > :23:44.inviting me into your home. Thank you.
:23:44. > :23:49.AS Byatt will be speaking at the Book Festival on Sunday, August 28.
:23:49. > :23:54.If anyone can get away with writing and performing in a comedy show
:23:54. > :23:59.about mental illness, it's our very own Ruby Wax. She found prominence
:24:00. > :24:05.as an aSerbic comic before a break down stopped her career dead in its
:24:05. > :24:10.track. She's back. But is this part of her rehabilitation? I asked her
:24:10. > :24:17.to my own venue called Room with a Sue - forgive me - to find out.
:24:17. > :24:21.That's a taste of Edinburgh! After studying at the Royal
:24:21. > :24:26.Shakespeare Company Ruby Wax became part of the comedy elite, writing
:24:26. > :24:30.Not the Nine O'Clock News and starring alongside Jennifer Saund
:24:30. > :24:37.ers and Dawn French. She's interviewed Madonna and Pamela
:24:37. > :24:46.Anderson. Now she's in a new show alongside her friend Judith Owen.
:24:46. > :24:50.Because we have a lot in common. A, we both like smoked mackerel. I
:24:50. > :24:52.used to go out with her husband. That's really the truth. I swear to
:24:52. > :24:57.God that's true. She's still laughing about that one.
:24:58. > :25:04.LAUGHTER The show in itself has a clever
:25:04. > :25:09.meknoix it, two voices as one. That's you and Judith. I've rarely
:25:09. > :25:13.seen a synergy like that on stage. Do you enjoy sharing the stage?
:25:13. > :25:17.have her there it's like mummy's home. That's how we can do this
:25:17. > :25:27.show. If you were doing this alone, I couldn't. It would be too much me,
:25:27. > :25:31.
:25:31. > :25:36.In the show you talk about four years and four months of a lapse
:25:36. > :25:40.since you had a depressive episode. Did it come on suddenly? Or was it
:25:40. > :25:49.a slow puncture? You know, we don't know whether it's nature or nurture,
:25:49. > :25:53.when I was a little kid, I always ended up kind of in this awake -- a
:25:53. > :25:55.waking coma. Then eventually somebody said you've got clinical
:25:55. > :26:00.depression. Not that I'm embarrassed. So many
:26:00. > :26:05.people are coming down with this and with mental thing. One in four.
:26:05. > :26:11.It's more than the flu now. One in four, so one, two, three, four,
:26:11. > :26:15.it's you. I got it, yeah and you too a little bit. Actually that
:26:15. > :26:19.whole row is not well. I knew it was going to be funny. I had heard
:26:19. > :26:24.it was moving. I thought those are going to be the bits where the
:26:24. > :26:29.reserves, low middle class Susan is a bit squeamish, doesn't want to
:26:29. > :26:34.hear about other people's pain. I was totally take an long by all of
:26:34. > :26:39.it. We toured mental institutions for two years. I said if you can
:26:39. > :26:43.make a schizophrenic laugh, you're in. It took a long time to figure
:26:43. > :26:48.out how do you take people on a roller coaster ride. It is about us
:26:48. > :26:51.all. Everyone would know this, that we all have no man you'll. We
:26:51. > :26:55.always think the next guy knows what they're doing and they're
:26:55. > :27:00.pretending to be an adult. Then we get the appropriate clothes and go
:27:00. > :27:03.yeah, yeah. We never know. You say it's not a show about mental
:27:03. > :27:08.illness, it's about trying to make sense of the world in a general
:27:08. > :27:12.sense. Yeah and understanding in a funny way really what's on the
:27:12. > :27:18.bottom line of what marriage is about - it's cash. What love is
:27:18. > :27:22.about - a couple of hormones and then it's cold turkey. Some people
:27:22. > :27:27.would say I'm cynical. If your husband is making �250,000
:27:27. > :27:32.a year plus bonuses, you, as a wife, have no rights. You must take care
:27:32. > :27:41.of the house, take care of the kids, have sex with him wherever and
:27:41. > :27:46.whenever he wants. You must stay young and pert to death do you part.
:27:46. > :27:50.Those are the rules. I didn't make them up. You did make them up
:27:51. > :27:55.right, I did, but they're right. The show ends, I don't want to
:27:55. > :28:00.scare people off. We finish the show and we say, if you have
:28:00. > :28:03.anything you would like to say. I don't know what happens in the room,
:28:03. > :28:08.they feel like I've never said this before. They feel contained and
:28:08. > :28:12.safe. They don't feel self- indulgent. I love that people go
:28:12. > :28:14."My husband hasn't left the house in 20 years." You think that's a
:28:14. > :28:18.bad thing. Wouldn't it be something if it was
:28:18. > :28:23.four in four and we could tell each other what we were thinking. Can
:28:23. > :28:26.you imagine what a wonderful tribe we would be? Do you think your
:28:26. > :28:31.success sometimes is a prison, you've created this personality,
:28:31. > :28:37.who is a bit like you, the real Ruby. Bits are dissimilar, but it
:28:37. > :28:41.was so successful that model that it traps you. Is it hard to break
:28:41. > :28:47.out and being a bit more serious? stupidly or smartly, made the
:28:47. > :28:52.American an idiot. But I was only loud because I was so nervous. You
:28:52. > :28:58.know it was like ter receipts. I was saying lines. I was really
:28:58. > :29:05.nervous. People think I'm that person. They come up to me and go
:29:05. > :29:08."You're obnoxious!" And I think, well if you paid, I'll be whatever
:29:08. > :29:12.you want to be. Now we want to be famous for the
:29:12. > :29:17.sake of being famous. We don't even want the skill. We just want to be
:29:17. > :29:20.on TV and we'll do anything on it. You want me to eat my mother-in-law,
:29:20. > :29:24.toss her on the barbeque. Five years ago, I was going to be
:29:24. > :29:28.kicked out of TV, I thought I'm leaving the party first. Then I
:29:28. > :29:34.thought I'd go to school and get my brain back. She's going to Oxford.
:29:34. > :29:38.I'm not saying I'm doing well, but I'm in there. You're doing
:29:38. > :29:41.neuroPalace tisity. This is serious stuff. Yeah, I have to write a
:29:41. > :29:45.masters. Instead of writing like everybody else, they're letting me
:29:45. > :29:49.write another one-woman show about how your brain does work. You're
:29:49. > :29:54.doing a performance for your MA? Yeah. If you could have one thing
:29:54. > :29:58.out of these two what would it be, funny or happy? To be happy. That's
:29:58. > :30:03.great. Because I don't think you would have said that five years
:30:03. > :30:07.ago? No, I would think nobody would like me if I wasn't funny. Now I
:30:08. > :30:11.don't give a, whatever that word is. Now when I go to a dinner party and
:30:11. > :30:21.somebody asks me what I'm doing. I say I'm doing the same thing you're
:30:21. > :30:30.
:30:30. > :30:33.doing, I'm dealing with heart ache Ruby Wax is at the UnderBelly until
:30:33. > :30:41.29th August. If you have never been to the Edinburgh Festival, you are
:30:42. > :30:46.missing out, you are missing out on crowded streets, inflated
:30:46. > :30:50.accommodation prizes. You are also missing out on the most exciting
:30:50. > :30:55.and vibrant arts festival in the world. Michael Smith confessed he
:30:55. > :31:01.had never been to the festival. We sent him on his own endurance test.
:31:01. > :31:11.Could he survive the pace? Could he cope with 24 hours of this city?
:31:11. > :31:13.
:31:13. > :31:17.Stay tuned to find out. I've never been to the Edinburgh
:31:17. > :31:24.Festival bfrplt people go on about it like it is a magical reality in
:31:24. > :31:30.its own bubble. It sound more like a state of mind than a place. I'll
:31:30. > :31:36.go and see what the fuss is about. The first port of call is Royal
:31:36. > :31:46.Mile. It is like a feeding frenzy. Hundreds of facting trying to snap
:31:46. > :31:54.
:31:54. > :31:59.up punters for their shows. It is What can I say? It was bedlam out
:31:59. > :32:06.there. I thought I'd better go and check into a hotel and dump my
:32:06. > :32:12.stuff off before I got stuck in. Have you got a room for Mr Smith?
:32:12. > :32:22.Here we go. You're in 27. If you could just
:32:22. > :32:27.sign here. You've got a lot of balls coming in
:32:27. > :32:30.here! I'd only just arrived. It seems
:32:30. > :32:40.like everywhere you turn in this town there's something weird going
:32:40. > :32:45.The thing about Edinburgh is it's not just one festival, it's loads
:32:45. > :32:51.all bundled together. Now f you've never been here before it is
:32:51. > :32:58.difficult to get your head around the scale of it. It is like 45,000
:32:58. > :33:02.performances and averages out at 2,500 shows a day. You can do it
:33:02. > :33:06.from dusk till dawn if you like. They asked me to check out some of
:33:06. > :33:14.the more physically demanding shows here. It is clear I need a lot of
:33:14. > :33:20.energy to get through all of this. It wears you out just watching some
:33:20. > :33:28.of these acts! There's plenty of other ones which
:33:28. > :33:32.demand a lot more from their audience.
:33:32. > :33:41.They've told me to bring some shorts along for this show which is
:33:41. > :33:46.set in a gym in for a penny, in for a pound.
:33:46. > :33:54.This is sink or swim. It is the first ever comedy show performed on
:33:54. > :34:02.exercise bikes. You've come to watch me. Good!
:34:02. > :34:10.It's a funny show that really. It's about a sort of fitness instructer
:34:10. > :34:14.in his mid-life crisis or breakdown. We were the sort of fitness group.
:34:14. > :34:19.I got really involved because you were physically involved with the
:34:19. > :34:29.cycling. You felt more part of it. I can't believe this act.
:34:29. > :34:35.
:34:35. > :34:40.It was good fun, that! It's a crazy thing this festival,
:34:40. > :34:43.you know. We're only halfway through the first day. I amount
:34:43. > :34:51.nabgered already. Apparently we have -- knackers already.
:34:51. > :34:56.Apparently we have a dance Martha thon next. I'm not much of a dancer
:34:56. > :35:01.-- a dance marathon next. I'm not much of a dancer. I don't know what
:35:01. > :35:08.is going on. I have been given this number. I have walked into this
:35:08. > :35:18.hall and my number corresponds to my feet. I'm dancing with this
:35:18. > :35:19.
:35:19. > :35:23.lovely young lady tonight. You have to move your feet at all
:35:23. > :35:27.times or you'll get eliminated. Basically you are paired up with a
:35:27. > :35:30.complete stranger and you have to dance for four hours. It is
:35:30. > :35:37.terrifying. I think the most important thing
:35:37. > :35:43.for people to know is it is not a dance contest. It's more like an
:35:43. > :35:50.endurance test. You are not necessarily going to be judged with
:35:50. > :36:00.the way that you are dancing. Not - I'm not trying to
:36:00. > :36:02.
:36:02. > :36:08.underestimate you. It is half painful and half a good
:36:08. > :36:13.laugh this. I looked around the room and saw an old man dancing. I
:36:13. > :36:19.realised he was a better dancer than me. I took a breather and
:36:19. > :36:22.forgot to keep my feet dancing and they disqualified me immediately!
:36:22. > :36:29.Me dance partner looked so disappointed. I thought I better
:36:29. > :36:33.not ask for her phone number! It's been a pretty full day. I've been
:36:33. > :36:39.on exercise bikes, on a dance marathon. Apparently I have no idea
:36:39. > :36:45.what it is, but the next thing I am going to I am going to get into
:36:45. > :36:52.some pyjamas, so I am looking forward to that. Last up was hotel
:36:52. > :36:57.Madire. Based on the myth of the mother who kills her children. The
:36:57. > :37:01.critics are going crazy for it. I found it hard work. It is a
:37:01. > :37:07.demanding piece for the audience. It goes on from midnight to dawn.
:37:07. > :37:12.It's so long you even get to bed at one point. I tell you what I don't
:37:12. > :37:17.like about this thing, it's totally patronising, man. They dress you up
:37:17. > :37:23.like a little kid. The show deliberately invades your personal
:37:24. > :37:28.space. It is designed to put you off guard. Everyone else seemed to
:37:29. > :37:33.be an eager victim. I had been at it all day and was getting frazzled
:37:33. > :37:38.at this point. Well, the dawn is up now. I've done
:37:38. > :37:42.my first full day at the Edinburgh Festival and you know, some of it I
:37:42. > :37:47.have really liked and some I have not been so keen on. I guess that's
:37:47. > :37:51.part of the festival experience, isn't it, really. I cannot believe
:37:51. > :37:56.how much you can fit into a day really. The thing is though there's
:37:56. > :38:00.three weeks over it left. I think now I'm going to get off to bed.
:38:00. > :38:05.I'm going to say good night. Good night.
:38:05. > :38:12.Mr Smith is currently lieing in a darkened room wishing we would all
:38:12. > :38:17.fobg-trot off. We will send him on -- foxtrot off. Harold Pinter was a
:38:17. > :38:27.noble laurri yet. It is his poetry which is the source of inspiration
:38:27. > :38:31.
:38:31. > :38:36.for this festival, with Julian Sands, directed by John Malcovich.
:38:36. > :38:41.Pinter's poems are often blunt, opinionated and unashamedly
:38:41. > :38:45.political. It's not so much the slow motion sword fighting of his
:38:45. > :38:54.dramatic dialogue, it is more like being hit over the head with a
:38:54. > :38:58.sledgehammer. I am curious to find out whether Julian Sands and John
:38:58. > :39:06.Malkovich can turn it into a drama and whether they can make this one
:39:06. > :39:16.of the biggest draws on the fringe. Now, look here, he said. This is a
:39:16. > :39:23.
:39:23. > :39:28.beak. This is a pause. And this... Is a silence.
:39:28. > :39:31.Harold Pinter started writing poetry at 11 years old. It is his
:39:31. > :39:36.powerful plays that brought him acclaim. All my life I took the
:39:36. > :39:41.same. Play up, play up or play the same. My mother and father, all
:39:41. > :39:45.along the line, follow the line we can and you won't go wrong. Never
:39:45. > :39:53.afraid to speak his mind his opinions have not always met with
:39:53. > :40:03.universal approval. Critics have not always appreciated his verse.
:40:03. > :40:06.
:40:06. > :40:16.Maybe sap skands and Malkovich's apparents will -- Sands throw new
:40:16. > :40:21.It is repeated as a memorial tribute after he died. John had a
:40:21. > :40:28.recording of this event in Los Angeles. You put it on your iPod.
:40:28. > :40:33.And John had the idea that this could be worked uch into something
:40:33. > :40:39.more than just a poetry reading. -- worked up into something more than
:40:39. > :40:45.just a poetry reading. How did you commit to reading poetry for Harold
:40:45. > :40:53.Pinter? His illness had impaired his reading voice. He asked me,
:40:53. > :40:58.spending time with him, working on each poem, very closely. It sound a
:40:58. > :41:07.bit quaint reading poetry, but there ain't nothing quaint about
:41:07. > :41:14.Harold Pinter. There are no more words to be said. All we have are
:41:14. > :41:20.the bongs which suck out our blood. And all we have are those which
:41:20. > :41:25.polish the skulls of the dead. theatre works are famous for
:41:25. > :41:29.agonised control of dialogue and conversation. Is that earful
:41:29. > :41:34.language evident in the poetry as well? The earful language very much
:41:34. > :41:42.so. It is not the same language. You could hardly believe it was the
:41:42. > :41:52.same person. Of course some of the poems have a
:41:52. > :41:54.
:41:54. > :41:58.great violence of verbal and great tenderness. This is sort of
:41:58. > :42:05.Harold pure. Harold Pinter unplugged.
:42:05. > :42:12.You hold my touch in you. Turning to fasten you the one shape of our
:42:12. > :42:16.look. I hold your face too. Always where you are. My touch, to love
:42:16. > :42:25.you, looks into your eyes. When you met him did you get a
:42:25. > :42:31.sense that he was mellowing at all in his old age? You know, no.
:42:31. > :42:37.Harold had within him a physical presence a Kennetic power. Like a
:42:37. > :42:45.wounded beast. That panther-like athleticism I think he had. No, he
:42:45. > :42:51.did not wilt into a sweet old geezer. Vehemently left wing he was
:42:51. > :42:59.defiantly anti-war. The United States, it is a country
:42:59. > :43:04.run by a bunch of lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired thug. You are
:43:04. > :43:13.a fan of his work. Are you a fan of his politics? I don't know if I am
:43:13. > :43:21.a fan of anybody's politics particularly. I work with mooist,
:43:21. > :43:26.Marxists, Communists, socialists, left-wingers, centralists, right-
:43:26. > :43:32.wingers. Really any group you could name. I never have a problem.
:43:32. > :43:37.And the idea that people will agree with your perceived or alleged or
:43:37. > :43:46.real politics, of which I don't have much, by the way, but the idea
:43:46. > :43:49.that they will is mental. I mean.... He thought that Bush was a mass
:43:49. > :43:57.murderer, you don't have to sign up to that idea to get involved with
:43:57. > :44:04.the work. No. When you're an actor or director you're always, your
:44:04. > :44:11.actual job deaf fin nations is to pre-- definition is to pretend you
:44:11. > :44:15.are someone you're not, doing something you don't, somewhere
:44:15. > :44:20.you're not. # You're lovely with your smile so warm
:44:20. > :44:25.. # I've got woman # Crazy for me
:44:25. > :44:29.# She's funny that way # You are the promised kiss of
:44:29. > :44:33.sunshine. The fringe throws up an image of
:44:33. > :44:42.people sort of roughing it sometimes, washing their underwear
:44:42. > :44:47.in the sink and handing out flyers down the Royal Mile. You are two
:44:47. > :44:51.established Hollywood stars. Is there a sense of going back to
:44:51. > :44:56.basics? I don't think we got away from basics, I have been washing
:44:56. > :45:06.socks for 30 years. Yes, that is a lot of hand-washing. This is part
:45:06. > :45:11.
:45:11. > :45:15.Breasts, bottoms thighs, the whole palava. I raise my hat to my
:45:15. > :45:20.uncensored sister, who shone the light of love of those around her
:45:20. > :45:22.who lusted longest on her black suspender. Harold was an only
:45:22. > :45:26.child! LAUGHTER
:45:26. > :45:31.This is a celebration, isn't it, it's called a celebration. It is a
:45:31. > :45:36.celebration. It began as a memorial tribute. But now it's absolutely a
:45:36. > :45:43.celebration of someone who called himself the luckiest man in the
:45:43. > :45:48.world. I might well be enigmatic, tas turn, terse, prickly, explosive
:45:48. > :45:57.and forbidding, but I have also enjoyed my writing life and indeed,
:45:57. > :46:02.my life to the hilt. It's a real no-frills performance. It's
:46:02. > :46:06.somebody on stage with a book. But you really get a sense of Pinter's
:46:06. > :46:10.character developing. What carries is is Julian Sands, who has a great
:46:10. > :46:17.respect and dedication to the text and the man. He really means it and
:46:17. > :46:26.he really feels it. So did I. And Julian Sands in a celebration
:46:26. > :46:31.of Harold Pinter is on until August 21. We're spoiling you this week,
:46:31. > :46:35.with two Hollywood legends. Margaret Cho is a household legend
:46:35. > :46:38.in the States. But she's a controversial figure with her
:46:39. > :46:44.material often risque and sexually and politically charged. Think of
:46:44. > :46:49.her as a Korean cranky. We asked her along to explain the world
:46:49. > :46:53.according to Margaret Cho. It is a very strange profession that I've
:46:53. > :46:57.gone into. It's hard on my family. They're freaked out. Or they were
:46:57. > :47:03.freaked out about it, when I decided I was going to be a
:47:03. > :47:13.comedian, I told my mother. I was 13. I said "I want to be a comic."
:47:13. > :47:21.
:47:21. > :47:25.She said, "Oohhh, maybe is better Some people are raised by woofls, I
:47:25. > :47:31.was raised by drag queens. She say certain smells bring you back to
:47:31. > :47:35.childhood. Like my friend says when she smells wood burning in the air,
:47:35. > :47:40.she's reminded of Christmas when she was five years old. The smell
:47:40. > :47:45.that takes me back is balls in pantyhose. That's tights to UK
:47:45. > :47:48.viewers. I'm sorry if you came to the show
:47:48. > :47:52.and you didn't know me or anything and you didn't know what you were
:47:52. > :47:58.coming to see. This is what it's going to be like, you saw my
:47:58. > :48:06.picture and oh, I love Chinese things. Oh, let's go. I love
:48:06. > :48:09.crouching tiger, hidden dragon. I'd love to go see Memoirs of a Geisha,
:48:09. > :48:19.it's fabulous, acrobatics. Let's go. It's not going to be that, so
:48:19. > :48:22.
:48:22. > :48:27.My poor father put me into the care of gay men because he knew they
:48:27. > :48:32.could teach me what he couldn't. He knew that gay men knew about art
:48:32. > :48:38.and literature and fashion and music and most importantly, he knew
:48:38. > :48:44.that gay men knew how to teach me about men. That's why I am the way
:48:44. > :48:49.that I am. If I could pick, I would rather be
:48:49. > :48:54.a gay man. Like, to me being a gay man, it's got to be the greatest
:48:54. > :49:00.existance possible for a human being. I think if you're a gay man,
:49:00. > :49:09.you're probably near the end of your reincarnation cycle. You've
:49:09. > :49:13.got a couple of life Times left to be fierce, just work! I work
:49:13. > :49:18.towards legalising gay marriage in America. We don't have it in every
:49:18. > :49:23.state and we should because it's important. To deny a gay man the
:49:24. > :49:31.right to bridal registry, that's inhumane. And people ask me, well,
:49:31. > :49:41.are you gay? I don't know. I just don't care who you are. I want you
:49:41. > :49:42.
:49:42. > :49:47.to want me. I'm not bi, I'm I. It's been tough, like, I've been
:49:47. > :49:53.living in the south. I've been shooting a TV show called Drop dead
:49:53. > :49:58.Diva. We are in a small town in Georgia. Peach Tree City, Georgia,
:49:58. > :50:06.where I am the blackest person there.
:50:06. > :50:11.I'm ice cube. That's weird when your apartment is the ghetto, the
:50:11. > :50:17.gay neighbourhood and Chinatown. I was being interviewed on a radio
:50:17. > :50:23.show and the DJ asked me, "What if you woke up tomorrow and you were
:50:23. > :50:27.beautiful?" I was like, "What?. He said "Yeah, what if you woke up
:50:27. > :50:33.tomorrow and you were blonde, you had blue eyes, you were 17 years
:50:33. > :50:38.old, you're thin, tall and beautiful?" I was shocked. I was
:50:38. > :50:44.like, erm, I'm already beautiful. If you can't see it, I feel sorry
:50:44. > :50:51.for you. I think it's so important to feel beautiful because I think
:50:51. > :50:59.beauty is power. For people like us, beauty is vital. In Edinburgh,
:50:59. > :51:05.beauty is absolutely essential. When I was a little girl people
:51:06. > :51:12.would tell me that I was ugly. My grandmother would say, "Your face
:51:12. > :51:21.is bloated beyond recognition." My grandfather would say, "You know
:51:21. > :51:27.they tell us that you and me are ugly, but they don't (BLEEP) ."
:51:27. > :51:31.Cho dependent is on at the Assembly until August 29th.
:51:31. > :51:35.This year's international festival kicks off tomorrow. For that we
:51:35. > :51:39.need to look east, because it's all about Asia and Asian culture. I
:51:39. > :51:49.went to talk to the festival's director Jonathan Mills to find out
:51:49. > :51:59.
:51:59. > :52:04.Since its foundation in 1947, the aim of the Edinburgh international
:52:04. > :52:10.festival has always been to embrace global culture. Director Jonathan
:52:10. > :52:13.Mills has made it Asia's turn in the spotlight, turning it into a
:52:13. > :52:19.discovery where those from Asia share their talents with us in the
:52:19. > :52:23.far West. Last three years, you've tackled
:52:23. > :52:28.the blurring boundaries of Europe. You've looked at Scottish
:52:28. > :52:32.enlightenment and the new world. What does this year bring? A very
:52:32. > :52:35.different theme, a bridge between Asia and Europe. I want to make the
:52:35. > :52:41.point that there's a lot that's really familiar aboutation culture
:52:41. > :52:45.that we take for granted. The fact that anyone who's fascinated by
:52:45. > :52:52.martial arts, who's seen a Bruce Lee movie has had an experience
:52:52. > :52:55.rather like pee king op ra. There's a lot that I want to bring to
:52:55. > :53:01.people's consciousness and celebrate.
:53:01. > :53:03.We in the West have been guilty of casual orientalism, a shoddy
:53:04. > :53:08.stereotyping. Is this programme your way of redressing that
:53:08. > :53:13.balance? I'm not quite doing that. What I'm trying to do is suggest
:53:13. > :53:18.that artists have been mixing it up for centuries and artists have a
:53:18. > :53:24.much greater understanding of different cultures. What I'm really
:53:24. > :53:31.saying is that be led by them in their curiosity into Asia. Your
:53:31. > :53:36.starting point, I gather was the Peony Pavilion. The greatest
:53:36. > :53:41.Chinese poet of the late 16th century died exactly the same year
:53:41. > :53:48.as Shakespeare. They're identical contemporaries. In the peony
:53:48. > :53:52.Pavilion, if there's a contemporary to Shakespeare is the Chinese
:53:52. > :53:59.experience of Romeo to Juliet. The love interest is already debt and -
:53:59. > :54:04.- dead, it's actually a dream. It's a beautiful elegy.
:54:04. > :54:08.The focus seems to be on Shakespeare. You have a Korean,
:54:08. > :54:12.Taiwanese and Chinese take on three Shakespearean classics. It's fair
:54:13. > :54:20.to say that shake peer is an obsession with artists across
:54:20. > :54:24.aishya. One thinks of films like Thrown of Blood as his tribute to
:54:24. > :54:30.Shakespeare. We have three great tributes to Shakespeare and three
:54:31. > :54:36.different versions of that. The most standard, I guess, if you
:54:36. > :54:41.can call it that, it's magical nevertheless, is the version of The
:54:41. > :54:46.Tempest. And the magical aisles and their
:54:46. > :54:52.stormy brooding poet triare no longer in the Mediterranean, but
:54:52. > :54:55.the south China sea. And focusing on comedy as well. Whereas we in
:54:55. > :54:59.the West are preoccupied with notions of tragedy. They look at
:54:59. > :55:09.the more playful elements in the text. It's very compelling and
:55:09. > :55:09.
:55:09. > :55:15.beguiling and very funny. We've also got a one-man version of King
:55:15. > :55:20.Lear, imagine that, for all of its monumentality brought down to the
:55:20. > :55:25.single tragic figure of Leer. An extraordinary actor playing a range
:55:25. > :55:30.of roles and techniques. It suggests to us that actually our
:55:30. > :55:34.version of King Lear as the person at the centre of power, who
:55:34. > :55:42.abandons everything and abdicates power and everyone is treacherous
:55:42. > :55:47.to him actually, there's a different version of King Lear. It
:55:47. > :55:50.suggests that he was only -- always lonely and his decisions to on
:55:50. > :55:53.diKate only reinforce what was really there in the first place,
:55:53. > :55:58.which is that we're all alone, and especially if we're powerful. It's
:55:59. > :56:04.a very different take on one of our greatest tragedies. There is also a
:56:04. > :56:09.very different treatment of Shakespeare on offer from the
:56:09. > :56:13.Shanghai Peking opera this year. The thing Shakespearean adventure
:56:13. > :56:17.is a hamlet that you'll never ever seat like of again, in a company
:56:17. > :56:27.that you only see once in perhaps a decade, a company of this calibre
:56:27. > :56:29.
:56:29. > :56:34.in the UK, the shang eye opera company doing the resenk of Prince
:56:34. > :56:36.-- remake of Prince zedong. Some would say this is cynical because
:56:37. > :56:42.of the collapse of financial markets in America and Europe, we
:56:42. > :56:46.look perhaps to the east to provide the essential arts funding. How do
:56:46. > :56:50.you respond to criticism like that? I would love to be able to indulge
:56:50. > :56:55.in the sort of instant cynicism that you describe, because what I
:56:55. > :56:59.mean... This has taken years to generate, what do you mean instant?
:56:59. > :57:03.This is part of a five-year programme, where I thought in
:57:03. > :57:07.keeping to the original ethos of the Edinburgh Festival, which was
:57:07. > :57:13.always going to be about embracing the world, and one of the important
:57:13. > :57:17.parts of the world that we haven't embraced for a little while was
:57:18. > :57:21.Asia. It is a festival that looks at many facets of the different
:57:21. > :57:28.cultures, different stories, different attitudes that one can
:57:28. > :57:32.find across Asia. You share this beautiful city with the fringe
:57:32. > :57:35.festival. Do you ever weigh anchor in town and see show that's aren't
:57:36. > :57:42.connected with the festival. course, this is the week I can do
:57:42. > :57:52.that. It's almost impossible. I enjoy this moment in Edinburgh's
:57:52. > :57:57.
:57:57. > :58:00.calendar especially for that. expect to see you at 2am drinking.
:58:00. > :58:04.The international festival begins tomorrow. That's about it for this
:58:04. > :58:09.week. Join us next week for more Edinburgh fun and madness. I leave