Irvine Welsh has been much out and about, promoting his book The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs and indulging a fascination with the dwarfs who played the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz through his play Babylon Heights. Now, with a project called Wedding Belles, he's also turning to film. It begins shooting soon, is scheduled for Channel 4 next year and promises to be as hilarious as it is filthy.
The film boasts an impressive quartet of Scots lasses, too, with Shirley Henderson (pictured right), Michelle Gomez, Kathleen McDermott and Shauna Macdonald. After that Welsh has plans for another: Long Time Dead, a "Glaswegian Sopranos", about three generations of hoodlums involved in Glasgow's ice-cream gang wars. "It will show London's gangsters as choirboys," an insider tells me.
Here's one for the psychogeographers among you. Will Self's researcher Nick Papadimitriou has lost the notebook he was compiling for the writer, containing detailed descriptions of river systems, plants and structures - all gathered during months of walking London streets. Papadimitriou left it in a Camden phone box after a Stop Smoking meeting. He is, he says, rather nervous about breaking the news to Will. If you happen upon it (A4 hardback, packaging tape on the spine) call Nick: 07772 547 707.
Those of you who enjoyed Rock School, the Channel 4 series in which the Kiss frontman Gene Simmons (pictured left) turned a group of schoolkids into a rock band, will be sad to hear that the show is not returning. "We did a public school and a comprehensive, so I can't see where we could go with it," Channel 4's head of entertainment and comedy tells me. "Gene wanted to do a third one set in a Catholic girls' school and we thought it probably wasn't a good idea."
Better book early for Brian Wilson's gig at the London Adelphi on 12 November. Wilson says the event, which will mark the 40th anniversary of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, will be the last time he performs songs from this album in the UK.
The director Mike Leigh shunned the glitz and glamour of the gala opening at the London Film Festival and went to see the brilliant Township Stories instead at the Theatre Royal Stratford East (see our review on page 44). The creator of such hard-hitting cinema masterpieces as Naked and Life Is Sweet felt that, faced with three weeks of LFF screenings, he could do with a dose of live drama. Notoriously cagey about his projects, he also let slip that his attendance at the festival will be sporadic, as he starts shooting his next film this coming week.
Rob Grant, one of the writers behind the Red Dwarf science-fiction series, is once again looking to the future with a novel about a government clampdown on obesity. The book, called Fat, is set in a totalitarian regime where tubbies are forced on to fat farms and ostracised for draining the public coffers. Something of a fattypuff myself, I think it sounds like pretty convincing fortune-telling.
bendowell@btinternet.com
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