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Friday, 16 May, 2008

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Do you have more than two brain cells? So do these people.

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Mary Anne Hobbs

Mary Anne Hobbs

So, you like my new bike then, huh? Brand new Kawasaki ER6-n, 650cc, top speed of about 140mph with the design influenced and inspired by Japanese war-masks. Sick motorcycles are my favourite toys in this life and if ever I get a minute free when the sun’s blazin', you'll find me up at my favourite petrolheads ghetto The Ace Cafe on the North Circular Road in London, hangin' with my boys Scatta and Lee, and watching Alex and the AWOL stunt kruz showin' off mad-skills in front of an audience of thousands. Badman MC JME says I should have starred in 'Kill Bill'. I told him, "I taught Uma everything she knows..." If you're into racing, I guess you should know that I'll be hosting the 2006 World Superbike Championship series on TV for British Eurosport, beginning April 23. http://www.crash.net/ is the best source to plunder all racing info you need. Noisia, (ace drum and bass three-piece from Gronegen) want me to teach 'em how to ride dirt bikes this summer so they can ride to all their gigs across the fields and scream up to the front of the guest-list queue, tyres smokin', covered in filth from head-to-toe. It's a strong look. Check these boyz, they’re seriously gifted: www.noisia.nl/ Professionally and emotionally, the greatest moment of 2006 has to be the Dubstep Wars show we threw down on my Radio One show the Breezeblock in January - no contest. We had such unique, incendiary, and deeply inspirational back-to-back sets from Digital Mystikz, Skream, Kode 9 and Space Ape, Vex'd, Hatcha and Crazy D, Loefah and Sgt Pokes and Distance... and word from playaz at the heart of the scene in the UK and around the globe talking about their passion for the sound. We've had a lot of love for Breezeblock Specials in the past, but I have never in the seven year history of the show seen a global response as far-reaching and big as this... not ever. Check out the Dubstep Forum, there are 12,000 hits about the show on this thread: /dubstep.forumsplace. com/message-683.html/ All the love is such a great testimony to the raw energy and bountiful talent inside dubstep and I feel blessed to have been able to capture a flava of it at the flash-point of this wildly inspirational scene. I'll carry this experience with me for all time, as I know all the artists who played for us will... You can see beautiful pictures documenting the night by Infinite at: www.drumzofthesouth.com/ Dubstep Warz was a statement of intent and it was just the beginning for the Breezeblock in '06, we'll be rolling out so much more through the year. Boxcutter has played already, Burial is in the frame for a mix in March and there's a major summer event on the drawing board too. Keep it locked 1am-3am Monday night -Tuesday morning. Breezeblock BBC Radio1. www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/breezeblock/ Meantime, Plastician has just launched a new Residency show on Radio1. He put me over his knee and smacked it so hard when he made his debut in February be sure to look him up at www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/residency/ Loefah and The Bug have asked me to play at their new club Bash which fills me with equal parts terror and delight when you look at the line-up. Residents are Andrew Weatherall, Adrian Sherwood, Coki and Mala from Digital Mystikz, Newflesh, DJ Rupture, Tayo, Kode 9 , The Deciples, Seamus and The Rootsman. Ras B, Ricky Ranking, Sgt Pokes and Warrior Queen host. Bash takes play every last Thursday at Plastic People in Shoreditch. You know that next to the DMZ dances and raves, Bash has all the makings of the heaviest night of the year... WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MARYANNEHOBBS

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Danny Robins

Life is excitingly busy at the moment. I'm doing my weekly Radio 1 show and I’ve got a "controversial" documentary film coming out for BBC 3. I like being busy but I find it harder and harder to relax these days. I think I might take up meditation. Or crack. Definitely one of the two. I was doing some interviews on the street the other day for my Radio 1 show and I was chatting to an old bloke. I asked him if he'd ever heard my show. "What time is it on?" he asked. "3am", I confessed, knowing it was unlikely he'd have heard my late night offerings. "Oh, I’m often up at that time," he said. Excited, I asked him if he was a bit of a raver. "No, I suffer from chronic pain," he replied. Crikey. Faux pas. I'm currently rehearsing for some shows I'm doing at the Soho Theatre in February. I'll be doing my character DJ Danny. He's an English teacher by day and a DJ by night. He just desperately wants to be a superstar DJ like Fatboy Slim, but he's actually deeply whack. I did him up at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer and got some really nice reviews. The Daily Telegraph really liked it. It's always good to know you've got the right wing press on your side. If there’s ever a military coup, I should be safe. The show was inspired by my own experiences DJing. I used to run a club night. I used to find it quite amusing how I could get away with playing my CD collection to a room full of people and calling it a talent. The Edinburgh Festival is great. It's kind of to comedians what Ibiza is for DJs. We all go up there, abuse our bodies and somehow remember to do a gig every night. And we lose loads of money. You have to fund your own show. Even if you sell out and get great write ups, you seem to come back owing thousands. Not quite sure how that works out. Someone’s making money somewhere. I think it might be the Edinburgh chip shops. I'm making a lot of music at the moment. I think I'm vicariously living out my dream of being a rock star. I do a slot on my radio show called Danny Robins' Music Therapy where listeners email me their problems and I try and help solve them through the sheer sweet power of music. I create an original song for each person. I see myself as a kind of hipper, music based version of Claire Rayner or maybe Dr Raj Persaud. I actually interviewed Raj Persaud recently. He was quite intense. Somehow the interview finished with him diagnosing me with OCD and telling me "there are people you can go and see you know." I think he was touting for business. I don’t think I do have OCD, but I do sometimes stop and think that my life can be pretty weird. The other day I spent the morning going up to strangers on the street asking them questions and then the afternoon doing impressions of Johnny Cash and the Beastie Boys for our latest Music Therapy. It's fun. I've got to go now as I’m making a drum and bass remix of James Blunt. It's sounding good. I'm not sure James Blunt would like it, but then he’s far too posh to be a pop star anyway. He's posher than the Queen. He's probably got a gift shop in his house. HEAR DANNY ON RADIO 1 FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING AT 3AM AND CHECK OUT HIS FIVE STAR RATED EDINBURGH FESTIVAL SHOW AT SOHO THEATRE, LONDON ON 9TH, 10TH, 11TH FEBRUARY... TICKETS AVAILABLE AT WWW.SOHOTHEATRE.COM/ OR 0870 429 6883. WWW.DANNYANDDAN.COM/

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Ben Elton

Ben Elton has announced yet more dates tohis already extensive UK tour. These will be his first British gigs since he played to over 300,000 people on his record-breaking 1997 tour. With his trademark energy and signature delivery, Ben Elton is one of Britain's modern comedy icons. Althoughan incredibly successful best-selling novelist andwriter, as a trail-blazing story-telling comedian he is unmatched. It was as a stand-up comedian that Ben became best known, starting at the LondonComedy Store in 1981. His big break came in 1986 when he began to host Channel Four's cult hitSaturday Live. He has since become one of thebiggest live acts in Britain. Now, he is back on the road doing brand new stuff in front of an audience for the first time in eight years. He can still cut it live, but will you be able to keep up? Ben Elton established himself as the leading figure in the generation of British comedy with the ground breaking smash hit BBC comedy 'The Young Ones'. This show became a worldwide cult and the 1984 book of the series was the biggest seller in Britain that year. The icons Ben has written for reads like a who's who list of the cream of comedy, including Lenny Henry, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson and Harry Enfield. In 1985 Ben began his successful writing partnership with Richard Curtis. Together they wrote 'Blackadder 2', 'Blackadder the Third' and 'Blackadder Goes Forth' - a series that achieved vast audiences all over the world and was awarded four BAFTAs and an EMMY. In 1995, Ben wrote and produced 'The Thin Blue Line', which again starred Rowan Atkinson. It achieved record audience figures for a new sitcom and went onto win the British Comedy Award for the Best New Comedy Series, also picking up both the Public and Professional Jury Awards at Reims. Ben has also had serious success with his novel writing. His first novel 'Stark' was published in 1988 and became an instant number one best-seller and has gone on to sell over a million copies. His subsequent novels 'Gridlock' in 1991 and 'Eden' in 1993 matched it's success, and his next novel 'Popcorn' in 1996 went to number one in the best seller's list and remained there for six months. Two further novels by Ben - 'Blast from the Past' and 'Inconceivable' were released in September 1998 and October 1999 respectively, and were both best sellers. Interestingly enough, Ben’s ambitions were originally theatrical. After studying Drama at Manchester University he returned to the theatre with his first stage play, 'Gasping' which ran for nine and a half months in 1990 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End. This was followed immediately by Ben's second play, 'Silly Cow' which kept the Haymarket Theatre full for a further eight months. The stage play of 'Popcorn' opened to rave reviews at the Apollo Theatre, London in April 1997. 'Popcorn' was also staged in Paris successfully completing an 18-month run and has since won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. In 1992 Ben began his acting career, starring in his own adaptation of his novel, 'Stark' - directed by Nadia Tass and filmed entirely in Australia. That year Ben also appeared alongside Michael Keaton as 'Verges' in Kenneth Branagh's acclaimed feature film, 'Much Ado About Nothing'. 2000 saw Ben make his screenplay directorial debut with Maybe Baby, (which he adapted from his novel 'Inconceivable') starring Joely Richardson, Hugh Laurie, Dawn French, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson and Adrian Lester. Ben's first musical collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber 'The Beautiful Game' opened to critical acclaim at the Cambridge Theatre in September 2000. He is currently writing two screenplays for two feature films; Popcorn to be directed by Ridley Scott and Phantom of the Opera, which will be directed by Shekhar Kapur. His second musical project 'We Will Rock You', for which he wrote the story and script to accompany the music and lyrics of Queen, opened in London in May 2002. Now in its fourth successful year it has since opened in Madrid, Germany, Australia, Las Vegas and Russia. Since then Ben has written two books, Dead Famous and High Society, both top 10 bestsellers. It seems that there's nothing this man cannot do - involved in so many aspects of entertainment, Ben's success has been overwhelming with everything he touches turning to gold. Catch Ben on tour this year for a taste of his unique comedic style live and in the flesh.

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