For no good reason that I can think of, Perpignan hasn’t been on the list of people’s must-see destinations. True, it doesn’t readily spring to mind when you tick off places in France you might want to visit, yet after spending a few days here in early April (raining in Dublin; 20-degree plus in Perpignan), a conclusion is quickly reached:
What a guy; you ask Iggy Pop a question about the main turning points in his life and he takes pretty much the entire length of the interview time answering it. In normal circumstances, this would be – in the words of Beavis and Butthead, two badly drawn Iggy boys down with the Popman – a bummer. But we don’t
Dublin-based writer Roddy Doyle is having none of this celebrity lark; he keeps himself to himself, his business is his and his alone, and if you’re asking him for the name of his favourite restaurant you’d swear you can hear him chuckling at the absurdity of the question. Doyle seems the type of person (and he’s certainly the kind of
You know the many faces and the tri-part name, that he’s one of the most highly regarded American actors of his generation; that he used to be married to one of the most high profile American actresses of her generation; that he and his former wife, Angelina Jolie, were portrayed in gossip magazines as The Wild Couple or The Weird
So here we are: just after midnight, October 25th, 2011, in Katy Perry’s dressing room at Belfast’s Odyssey. She is still dressed in her sparkly pink stage costume, has just completed a shake’n’hug’n’meet’n’greet with several troops of her fans, and welcomes us in with a whoop and a holler of “It’s my birthday! Glass of wine?” Well, it’d be rude
“If you can’t ask yourself the tough questions as a priest – does God really exist? Are all the Christian ways to get to God blind paths, and so on – then you have no business being one. In a lot of ways, preachers, ministers, priests in any religion, are not allowed to say those things out loud. That began
We are twenty minutes into a right old natter, and Tottenham’s Aretha Franklin is wrinkling up her nose. “I’m so sorry, but the dog has farted.” Louis Armstrong, Adele Adkins’ petite, tubular dachshund (aka Sausage), is soiling the atmosphere of XL Records’ headquarters in London’s Ladbroke Grove, but the apology is shot through with a bit of a cackle-laugh and
It isn’t often you come face to face with one of the most recognisable faces in contemporary cinema – an Irish actor who claims not to know the meaning of the word “brooding” (we don’t believe him), and who has been described (by the New York Times) as a “rare contemporary actor who can turn an air of splendour into
Tony Clayton-Lea is an Irish-based freelance journalist/writer/editor who writes on music, arts, and pop culture (and travel/hospitality) for a variety of print and online outlets.
Email: tclaytonlea@gmail.com
This is the personal website for Tony Clayton-Lea.