Arts feature

Those BBC refuseniks will rue the day they passed up the chance to relocate to Salford, England’s new cultural capital, says William Cook Standing on the roof of Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North, staring at the shiny new buildings down below, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Hamburg or Berlin. There’s the same futuristic skyline, the same glint of glass and metal. There’s even a sleek modern tram, snaking between the shops and cafés along the quay. But this isn’t a continental conurbation — this is Salford. The improbable renaissance of this unloved city sums up England’s biggest schism, not between black and white or rich and poor, but between north and south.

Without Roy Harper’s baroque, mellifluous, melancholy folk there would have been no ‘Stairway to Heaven’. James Delingpole meets a neglected genius In 1970, shortly before the release of Led Zeppelin III, guitarist Jimmy Page invited his folk-singing chum Roy Harper up to his Oxford Street offices to have a look at the new album. ‘What do you think?’ asked Page. ‘It’s nice,’ replied Harper, toying with the amusing picture wheel built into the sleeve. ‘Look at it!’ said Page. ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ said Harper. ‘No. Look at it!’ said Page, growing exasperated. And then Harper noticed the title of track five, side two. ‘Oh. Oh! Thanks! I don’t know what to say.

There is a ban on comedy flyering in Leicester Square. Westminster Council has decided that flyers are litter and that the flyerers — usually anxious baby comedians – ‘harass’ the tourists. This is ridiculous. Most comedians would scream at their own reflection in a pint. Even so, if the council finds any flyers it will remove the venue’s licence. As if comedians did not have enough woes — manic depression, calm depression, depression that is not really depression but suppressed rage, poor rates of pay, joke theft, Frankie Boyle — their solitary reason for living, which is attention, is now at threat.

Lloyd Evans mingles with sozzled Scots, benumbed punters and performers with nothing to lose at this year’s Fringe It’s for losers, Edinburgh. The world’s down-and-outs come here in droves every August. This year I was one of them. Having failed to secure my usual lodging, a spartan cell on the university campus, I had to book a backpackers’ refuge on the Royal Mile. It was better than a park bench. Just about. The website promised ‘fitted sheets’ and ‘lounge with real fire (gas/coal effect)’ as tokens of its commitment to luxury. I rented a towel (20p, no deposit), which turned out to be fairly clean on one side. The accommodation was rammed. Six rooms, eight bunks each. Nearly 50 of us sharing four showers. No soap.

The Cambridge Footlights (King Dome) have a lot going for them. Poise, brains, clean-cut looks, nice accents and privileged status at the Edinburgh Fringe as keepers of a sacred flame. But in reality these advantages count against them. Audiences know that comedy comes from a paranormal neverland, from damaged grotesques, from halting, slobbering outsiders. Comedy is unpleasant. And these boys are anything but. So it takes them a while to convince us that they’re the real deal and not some artful muck-about from the college quad. Their comedic sources are obvious. Movie spoofs, workplace mix-ups. And much of their material defies current political orthodoxies. A joke about the Jamaicans not being able to muster an army feels distinctly weird.

We owe Giverny to the generosity of Americans Whoever coined the famous aphorism ‘When good Americans die, they go to Paris’ didn’t tell the full story. For American plein-air painters, Paris was never more than limbo. Heaven, they eventually discovered, was Giverny, presided over by the Impressionist deity Monet. It was 1887 when the first American scouts came to reconnoitre the small Normandy village 80 kilometres down the Seine. They reported back to Paris, and within a few summers Monet’s rural retreat was infested with artists’ studios and the fields around were sprouting clumps of painters’ white umbrellas.

Jane Feaver goes behind the scenes with Kneehigh, a theatre company with an international reach that remains resolutely close to its Cornish roots These days, when Mike Shepherd appears on stage in Cornwall he is greeted as a local hero, the boy in the playground everyone most wants to play with. Some 30 years ago he founded the theatre company Kneehigh, where he remains associate artistic director.

With the passing of Cy Twombly — who has died of cancer aged 83 — a beacon light of rare civilisation has gone out in the Western world. With the passing of Cy Twombly — who has died of cancer aged 83 — a beacon light of rare civilisation has gone out in the Western world. An elusive artist, with a highly developed faculty of challenge and response, he developed a pattern of investigation into the visual which was part philosophical inquiry and part sensual celebration. Despite close association with Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, recognition came late. He remained something of an outsider: an esoteric American artist who settled in Italy in 1957 and grew obsessed with Classical antiquity.

William Cook discovers that the clue to Nicholas Parsons’s enduring success lies in his ability to laugh at himself When I was a kid, watching Sale of the Century on my grandma’s colour telly, Nicholas Parsons used to seem like the smartest man in show business. Meeting him half a lifetime later, in a rooftop restaurant in Kensington, I’m pleased to find that he still looks just as dapper. His blue blazer is neatly pressed, his white shirt is crisply ironed and his bright eyes sparkle like a schoolboy’s. You’d never guess he was in his eighties, with more than 60 years in showbiz behind him. He’s worked with Tony Hancock, Kenneth Williams — all the greats, and he’s outlived the lot of them. He’s a living marvel.

Niru Ratnam tackles the thorny question of what constitutes British — or should that be English? — art In the past few months there have been two large-scale exhibitions showcasing British art. The first was the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery; the second Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy. On show at the former were an elegant suite of works by Wolfgang Tillmans (born in Germany), a tapestry by David Noonan (Australia), the much-lauded film ‘Clock’ by Christian Marclay (America) and the delicate paintings of Maaike Schoorel (Netherlands).