The Gossip - Shame, Sequins and Showgirls

Tom Cain , his pseudonym, is keen to meet Las Vegas showgirls

Every fortnight, Ben Dowell gives us exclusive gossip and chit chat from the world of arts and media.

Blimey – the stats for the recently-finished Edinburgh Fringe are quite something. 
A grand total of 1,697,293 tickets sold - a 10.8% increase on 2006 figures – from a staggering 2,050 shows in 250 venues.
There were a total of 31,000 with an estimated 18,626 performers on stage.
And in case you were guessing what kind of performances we are talking about here, theatre made up 31% of the programme followed closely by Comedy with 30.5%. Music was next with 17%, Children’s 5.5% Musicals & Opera totals, 5%. Dance & Physical Theatre weighs in at 4.5% Exhibitions is 3.5% and finally Events at 3%.

Is it too big? Is quality being sacrificed for quantity? 
Well, Jon Morgan, Director of the Fringe, certainly suggests so. “Ultimately the Fringe is a self regulating festival,” he tells me via the Fringe press office. “If audiences and artists continue to come to Edinburgh the festival will continue to grow, with 2007 being a good example of that…..To suggest I should have control over the size of an open access festival is wrong, and against the principles of the Fringe.”
Mmmmm….
 

Sequins flew at a recent tribute for the late theatrical agent Renee Stepham  at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
A big professional gathering including Cameron Macintosh, Paul Codron, Paul Elliott, Michael Grade, Danny La Rue, Val Doonican, Bruce Forsyth and many more saw Macintosh pay tribute to Stepham….as well as make a joke at the expense of the colourful character of Charles Vance, editor of Amateur Stage.

It got a huge laugh from the pros but prompted Vance to take to the podium and, instead of giving a speech about Stepham, lay into Macintosh, leading to cries of “Shame! Shame!” from the audience and at least one “Get the fucker off!”.
Rarely has an obituary event for a man of the entertainment world been so entertaining.


John Major has said he will probably write a novel soon to follow up his book about cricket. Sadly he apparently has no plans to publish the poetry he wrote during his premiership which was, hilariously enough, about political events of the day.
 E.J Thribb eat your heart out.


Kevin Elyot, the writer of the hit play My Night With Reg and the recent Channel 4 film Clapham Junction (of which reviews were, how shall I put it?, mixed) is working on his next TV project: a biopic of the great Thirties intellectual and close friend of W.H Auden Christopher Isherwood, he of Goodbye to Berlin and Cabaret fame.


 The journalist going under the name Tom Cain whose novelistic account of the death of Diana, The Accident Man, is being developed into a film tells me that he is enjoying the benefits of his pseudonym.  “I have told my wife that whatever Tom Cain gets up to on book tours of America surrounded by show girls in Las Vegas…well I can’t be responsible for that.” Indeed.

Actor Tony Booth, Cherie Blair’s Dad and father- in- law to our ex PM, is spitting feathers about the fact that his estranged daughter, the journalist Lauren Booth, is writing a memoir.
She has employed the services of agent Jonathon Lloyd at Curtis Brown – who was Booth’s agent when the old scamp wrote his own memoir What’s Left?

What’s getting Booth’s goat is that Lloyd has now removed Tony from his client list. “I know Lauren has been trawling every relative and Liverpool connection she can think of - but with little success,” Booth tells me.
 “It seems ranks have closed against her. Who, in their right mind, would want to talk to that uber bitch?” Ouch.

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