Clare's café highlights w/c 27 February
Post categories: Cafe Highlights
| 09:35 UK time, Friday, 2 March 2012
Another busy old week on the shows. Monday morning found me making my way to Edinburgh where I was to record a couple of interviews on site before and after the Book Café. I'd just got back from a visit to the (Fascinating Mummies exhibition - fabulous!) when I was pitched into the run-through for the Café. First on the bill, a man we've interviewed a few times before - apparently he likes our show - Jonathan Safran Foer. If I thought my life was chaotic at the moment, it pales by comparison with this American author. He's in London at the moment, attending the with a new version of an ancient religious text which he's edited. But while we talked about that and his great interest in the aesthetics of the books he produces, Hollywood had been considering the film version of his post 9/11 book EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE. The film missed out on the Best Picture prize at the Oscars but what an honour to be nominated anyway. I asked Jonathan about that and he was pretty self-effacing, claiming that the book and the film were two very different things. It's rare to hear a guest thinking on their feet as they speak - most authors just rattle away, at ease talking about their latest work. Goodness knows they have so much experience of attending readings and touring book festival but this interview was slower, more measured in pace and tone.
I could listen to JSF for hours, so dedicating ten or so minutes seemed like short-changing him. Sadly, that's the reality of doing a live show! We had to make room to speak to , who gave us a unique insight into the life and times of Oscar Wilde's missus, Constance. I confessed I had thought Mrs Wilde a bit - part in the dramatic life of the writer but by the time I had made my way through a third of Franny Moyle's biography, I had changed my mind. Constance Wilde was an interesting and inspirational woman in her own right - a proto feminist, a loyal wife (even after the catastrophe of the Bosie revelations) a style icon, warm mother and a liberal thinker. We tend to consign the partners of the great and the good to the shadows. Moyle's book shows us what we are missing.
Once the Book Café came off air I was back in a cab with trusty (and ravenously hungry) producer Serena. Destination - , Edinburgh. Yes, not quite what I was expecting for a book interview but we were hooking up with an amazing American poet who had based her latest poems on a cadaver "speaking" to her. More on that if a few weeks' time but I have to say the museum and the interviewee were totally absorbing. It's got to rank as one of the most bizarre venues for an interview I've ever had - sitting chatting amidst an array of organs and amputated limb specimens in jars... Surgeon's Hall is well worth a visit!
For Tuesday's Culture Café, we turned the spotlight on fashion, but not as we know it. We lined up a guest in Brussels who was designing clothes for the over sixties. She calls her collection of edgy, but classic shift dresses OLD LADIES REBELLION yet is only in her mid -twenties. She felt the older, bolder woman was missing out on dressing well with little on offer from the High Street. Fanny assured us that the women she was designing for were far from invisible - they WANTED to be noticed and they weren't going to slip into something comfortable any time soon. To road test the idea, I called in a friend, a woman who's in her mid-sixties but oozes charm and sex appeal. Larry Sullivan is not a size zero but she uses her curves and dramatic choice of clothing to great effect. The idea of donning a non-figure hugging shift dress didn't appeal and as for the OLD LADIES REBELLION label? She was pretty miffed about that too, citing friends of a certain age, who took exception to being called OLD LADIES. The encounter opened up the debate about women over a certain age and what they wore/looked like. I know I'd be happy to stick on a Fanny Karst design NOW and I've got a bit to go before I hit sixty but the item did make me think about the dearth of decent clobber available to the over fifties and more generously endowed women I know (i.e. anyone who's ever eaten a bun and waved bye bye to a size six/eight years ago!)
Our final conversation on Tuesday was a bit of a hobby horse of mine. With pupils choosing their subjects for standard grades and highers at the moment, we took time to consider the cultural appeal of learning a foreign language. Helping me out in the studio were Dan Tierney a lecturer in modern languages at Strathclyde, Ellen Rothnie, a Glasgow Uni student and the director of the Alliance Francaise in Glasgow, Nathalie Korkmaz. I was pushing at an open door as we tried to examine why copping out and speaking in English everywhere in the world wasn't such a great idea. We all agreed that making a basic human connection with someone in their own language makes such a difference to how you get on. Learning the grammar and vocab is never going to be easy and there's no shortcut but when you reach that moment when you realise that you are able to, even at the most basic level, make yourself understood in a foreign language, you feel like you've just won a medal at the Olympics.
I had my EUREKA moment in France recently. My mastery of the language is less than basic but I found myself having a stab at it and actually cracking a joke. Ten years ago I would have been hard pushed to open my mouth, for fear of making a faux pas and sounding less than perfect. Stuff that! Get talking...it's only by making mistakes and showing willing that we make progress and we also stand to gain so many new friends! Au revoir mes amis! Until next time.
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