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Rachel Pegg meets Trinny and Susannah as they take to the road to alter Britain’s perception of body image

So here I am, stripping off for Trinny and Susannah. Having pledged to myself not to take off my clothes when covering the Brighton leg of their body image roadshow, it didn’t take long for me to crack.

Within minutes of meeting them I am wearing a lovely shiny-purple full-body leotard and parading in front of a TV camera, two photographers and a roomful of people. It’s not how I usually spend my Sunday mornings, but Trinny, Susannah and their team are very persuasive.

Their latest ITV programme is all about Britain’s body image. The Great British Body roadshow travelled around the country auditing the vital statistics of thousands of people and asking them personal questions about how they feel about their figures. The point is to get an accurate picture of how we Brits see ourselves and what the average shape is really like.

“If you have a squidgy-widgy nose, 3,000 other people have it. If you have massive breasts, you’re not the only one”

Hundreds of people turned up to the Dome to have themselves measured, weighed and photographed. Most, like me, were not exactly supermodels. But all were happy to let strangers scrutinise their lumps and bumps in the name of scientific research – or was it the lure of getting on television?

Some had sad stories to tell. Helen Taylor, 31, from Burgess Hill, attended because she is a huge fan of Trinny and Susannah and wanted their advice on her body problems. Read the rest of this article »

What makes a good story? Rachel Pegg spoke to award-winning crime author Val McDermid

How do you feel about A Place of Execution being chosen for Brighton City Reads?
It’s very exciting for me I have to say, the notion of the whole city reading my book.

Where did the idea for the book come from?
I had always wanted to write a book set in the White Peak. I moved to live in Buxton in 1979. I suppose I fell in love with the White Peak at first sight and spent a lot of time walking in the limestone countryside. I really wanted to write about it but I couldn’t figure out how because it couldn’t be one of my regular detectives coming in, because that wouldn’t allow me to write about it in that emotional, felt way. It took me a long time to figure out that if I wanted to write about it properly, I had to write about it in a way that was somehow almost organic, a story that could only happen here, so I was casting about trying to find something that might fit. I was doing an event with Douglas Wynn, who writes true crime, and he was talking about murder cases that involved no body. I found that really exciting, a lightbulb came on in my head. The event was in Hull and I was driving back down the M62 thinking: “No body but you can still have a trial… no body but you can still have a murder… the body’s so well hidden you can never find it…“ That was the starting point for a story that was quite different from what he was talking about but nevertheless has its roots in that idea that disposing of a body doesn’t mean you get away with murder.

What kind of research did you do?
I started reading about cases where there had been no body because the body had been disposed of thoroughly. I wanted there to be high stakes involved so I wanted it to be set at a time when there was still the possibility of hanging. The latest I could leave it was 1963, 64. I wanted it to be close enough to the time I was writing so there could still be living witnesses so I had to find my space and time quite precisely. It dawned upon me as I was doing my research that was when the first victims of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had gone missing. That tied in with the subject of my book so I had to find a way to negotiate that without being in any way exploitative.

Did you do lots of historical research, perhaps about police methods at the time?
My preferred method is always to find somebody who knows what they’re talking about because that way you don’t only get the answers to your questions, you get the background knowledge that makes your information real and alive and not some dry, dusty fact. One of my neighbours had been a policeman in the Lancashire force from the 1960s onwards so I was able to sit down with him with a bottle of whiskey and hear about what it was like doing the job, as opposed to: “These were the ranks, this is what we had authority to do,” in a dry, factual way. I got information from my neighbour, Bill, that you wouldn’t necessarily get from a historical account. Things like the wives of the police officers only socialised with each other. Newspapers are useful because they give you a sense of what people thought was important. Also from the ads in the newspapers you get a sense of what people had in their homes, how much it cost, say, to buy a washing machine or a pint of beer, so that was all good stuff. Music often captures an era, so listening to the music of the time is good for having a sense of the feel of the time. I was only eight years old in 1963 so what I remember from 1963 is not terribly useful for writing a crime novel: “What were my favourite stories in Bunty and my favourite sweets?”

Read the rest of this article »

Latest 7 talks to Ryan Gosling about being a martyr for his art and working opposite a sex doll in his new film Lars and the Real Girl

How was it working with your co-star Bianca, a rubber doll?
It was amazing. She showed up at the read through and I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. I found her endlessly fascinating. You think that she’s looking at you sometimes, or that you just caught her blinking. If you could spend ten minutes with her you could see what I mean; you’d fall in love with her too. I saw her effect on myself and on everybody in crew and on the cast. She’s interesting. She asks you to look at yourself and forces you to be creative and develop a relationship with yourself.

But wasn’t it difficult on set?
Actually I would look forward to our scenes together. When they called ‘action’ it was just me and her, and that bonded me to Bianca. I was relaxed when she was on set, she had a calming presence. We just kind of developed this bond where I felt safe in the scenes with her, to the point where I could try anything and do anything.

Did she become real to you?
Yes. It’s a totally different experience reading it to watching the film. She does become real to you because you’re reading it and when you watch it as a film you realise that it’s a doll, and she’s never going to get real. But Craig [director, Craig Gillespie] said: “I’m going to treat her as if she’s got a nudity clause in her contract.” He required that everyone treat her like an actress. She got magazines between takes, she had her own trailer (which she changed in), and when she came on set she was treated like any other actor.

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Burlesque theatre has got a bit of a fuzzy definition in most people’s minds, mixed in as a legitimate name for something a little bit sordid. This is so not the case with Boutique Theatre. The largest burlesque troupe in the country, this is a mix of sassy and sexy, with a sense of humour, which gives you a sly wink and then makes you laugh.

With the beauty of the dance en pointe of Coco Smooth, the torch song chaunteuses, the humour of the striptease – which showed no more flesh than you’d see outside of Gemini’s of a hot summer’s day – and even a trapeze artist, this was fabulous, sumptuous entertainment. Topped with an old style cancan that sent shivers through us, as well as various other flavours of extravagance throughout the night, this was a feast for the senses.

Concorde 2, April 12 2008
Victoria Nangle