Latest news with #HugoRifkind
Times
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Jim Moir: I like talking about teabags
Jim Moir, the comedian also known as Vic Reeves, will be in conversation with Hugo Rifkind at this year's Fringe by the Sea festival. What will he talk about? Moir gives us a sneak peak into how life as a painter has let him live on his own terms. And what else you should catch at the festival on the east Scottish coast. On one of his childhood holidays to Scotland, Moir climbed up the Scott Monument in Edinburgh with his grandfather. At the top, the older man pointed across Princes Street to the Jenners department store in its Victorian glory: 'I was born there, you know.' There's a good chance Moir will talk about art, comedy, wildlife and his childhood camping trips in Scotland (mostly to Loch Lomond and Kirkcudbright) at Fringe by the Sea. It depends on where Rifkind, and the audience, will take the conversation. 'I'll talk about anything,' he says from his home in Kent, birds chirping loudly in his garden. 'I like talking about teabags and stuff like that. I'm quite a connoisseur about tea. I say put milk in last because it has to be the exact right colour for me — it should look almost like coffee — and it either has to be Tippy Assam loose leaf tea or Yorkshire teabags. Or you can ask me about birds all day long because I know what I'm talking about.' (Top tip: if you're going to the show, ask him to do an eider duck impression — he nails it.) • Jim Moir: 'I'll only do a TV show if it's about birds and art' A benign brain tumour left Moir deaf in one ear and, although he can still hear pretty well, he can't always locate the source of noises. 'I always ask Nancy [his wife] where that sound is coming from. Even in the house, if she's calling me I can't always tell if she's upstairs or downstairs,' he says. Now 66, Moir had had enough of the entertainment world. But he is happiest when painting in his studio at the foot of the garden or out birdwatching with his wife, so Sky Arts's offer of Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir was impossible to resist. 'I could be retired but I don't think I ever will,' he says. 'I'm just doing what I like doing and making a living out of it so everything's great.' He actually makes more money from his paintings than he ever did from television — which tells you a lot about the nature of broadcasting and the public appetite for his works. His puffin prints sell particularly well and he currently has an exhibition called Dawn to Dusk at the Lady Lever Art Gallery Liverpool. One of the rooms of his show is dedicated to crepuscular birds, which are active at dawn and dusk. But for all the paintings of blackbirds, crows and curlews in his portfolio, it's not all ornithological. A lot of Moir's work embodies his peculiarly funny way of looking at life — the lens that helped make The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Vic Reeves Big Night Out and Shooting Stars so special (and, to some, so baffling). • Jim Moir: 'I stopped wanting to play Vic Reeves' For £950 you can own the watercolour The Thirsty Walker (a tap coming out of the tip of a shoe) and a Pox Clinic poster fetches a similar price. One watercolour is of a dazed-looking Matt Damon, his mouth all smudged with lipstick after kissing someone, while Hot Dinghy Punch Up depicts a two-person scuffle in a boat. Of course it does. Moir's been quoted in the past as saying that his comedy career was something of a distraction from art but that's not entirely accurate. It was more a 'diversion from painting — I'd say I saw the kind of comedy I was doing as art anyway', he argues. 'I didn't really think of it like stand-up or being a comedian, more a new way of showing abstract art. I still do.' And will he take the opportunity to see some comedy at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe while he's back in Scotland — not all that far from the birthplace of his granddad? Unlikely. As he puts it: 'I'd rather see a bunch of gannets than a bunch of comedians.' Aug 10, noon, The Big Top, £22.50 How did we manage without Joe Wicks's YouTube PE sessions during lockdown? The Body Coach continues to inspire thousands to take care of their bodies through healthy heating (via his bestselling cookbooks) and, of course, his jovial way of encouraging people to move more. In this session he'll be chatting about his life and 1, 11.30am, The Big Top, £20 Fancy listening in on some top-level showbiz gossip? Christopher Biggins — the panto dame and past winner of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here — joins forces with the Bafta-winning actress Patricia Hodge for a chinwag in aid of Leuchie House, the East Lothian centre that provides respite care for people living with neurological conditions. A limited number of post-show meet-and-greet tickets are 5, 5pm, Lodge Stage, £20/£50 • Christopher Biggins: Joan Collins was mad at me for months Fringe by the Sea, Aug 1-10, North Berwick,
Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Rod Liddle on his radio comeback: Somehow I'm still on air
Everyone thought it was going to be trouble and would end in tears. Right at the start I rang Trevor Phillips and said: Times Radio has given me a show, on a Saturday, between 10am and 1pm, would you like to be my guest? Trevor is about as close to a friend as I have in this desperate trade of perpetual scribbling and jabbering. There was a hoot of laughter down the line. 'They've given you a show? Has anyone told Ofcom? Yes, I'll be your guest. Put me on an early one before it's taken off air.' I had not really imagined going back into radio at this stage of life. I endured a decade at the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, five of them as editor. There was always an agreement that radio would be absolutely brilliant if it wasn't for the presenters and the listeners. Both of these groups carped all the time and were impossible to deal with. Becoming a presenter, then, was a kind of betrayal. But the prospect held such allure. I had grown very tired of the BBC's monocultural output, its perpetual and predictable consensus, even if I still respected a lot of the people who worked there. Here was a chance to make a programme which would be, I thought, 'refreshingly different', which would 'break the mould'. And as I was a convert to Times Radio already, it was very hard to resist. I would be taking over the slot previously occupied by the brilliant Hugo Rifkind, and therefore a tricky act to follow. I was introduced to the producer, Danny Garlick. He appraised me with slightly narrowed eyes. How would you like to change the show, he asked. 'I'd like it to be refreshingly different, and to break the mould,' I replied. How exactly? 'I'd like it to be a little more, um … you know … fascisty.' I was joking, largely. But I did see it as an opportunity to approach the daily round of news stories from different angles, left and right. That old divide has become almost meaningless today. Politics does not know where it is; it has become lost. Reform urging nationalisation and the Labour prime minister conjuring echoes of Enoch Powell? This isn't just a shifting of the Overton window, it's a screen door being flung open. And yet too often the broadcasters follow the same old patterns which simply don't hold any more. The first couple of shows were terrifying, of course. Three hours to get through without losing the script, saying 'holy f***' or having a heart attack. I used to edit the Saturday edition of Today, a two-hour show which was put together by three or four producers the previous day plus an overnight team of three or four producers, not to mention input from a forward planning team. Here I had the services of the aforementioned Danny for one and a half days each week. But God, he's good. The most flawless producer I have encountered and generous of spirit, too. When, two weeks ago, I inadvertently deleted the entire three hours of script from the computer so that it could not be retrieved, 15 minutes before we were due to start the show, he performed a kind of technological miracle and we made it to air. Nor did he, when I told him what I had done, call me an abject little tit, which is what I would have done. And then some. What I really wanted from the programme was thought and depth from the political interviews, rather than the splenetic harrying of politicians you get elsewhere. We were the only broadcasters to secure an interview with the only British politician invited to Donald Trump's inauguration, the Labour peer Lord Glasman. We have had long-form political interviews with Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage and even longer interviews with the BBC chairman, Samir Shah, Richard Dawkins and the Labour recusant Rosie Duffield. But alongside this stuff there's also been a chance to share a joke with the audience and to hear what they are making of it all. One of the highlights, for me, has been the constant stream of WhatAapp messages coming in from listeners, which we read out. It is a privilege to know that people are so engaged. Mind you, it is also an act of kindness on Danny's part that he does not forward to me the messages which say: 'Get this interminable arse off air this minute.' When I ask him how many say that sort of thing, he usually mumbles: 'Oh, you know, only one or two …' The whole thing has rejuvenated my appetite for radio. And I hope, if you tune in, it may rejuvenate yours. It is a mix of highish culture, expert journalism from Times correspondents and humour — much like The Sunday Times itself. What's more, Trevor Phillips has been on the show loads more times. And I always remind him, as the second hand ticks round, that here we are, Trevor, still on air, still going strong. Listen to Times Radio for free on DAB radio, online or via the free Times Radio app. Rod Liddle presents every Saturday from 10am to 1pm
