Matthew Stadlen

‘It’s a bad week. I gather we’ve lost one.’ Sir Neville Marriner, himself a huge name, is talking about the death of one of the world’s top conductors. Lorin Maazel, who died at home in Virginia at the age of 84, had led orchestras including the New York Philharmonic. He was still conducting this year. Last month, the Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos died in Pamplona at the age of 80. Only a week earlier he had announced he had cancer and would have to retire. Conductors, it is no secret, enjoy long working lives — some have even passed away mid-performance. But what’s their secret? This summer’s BBC Proms are celebrating four ‘birthday batonists’.

John Bishop doesn’t just tell funny stories. He also tells the sort of life story that makes you sit up and listen. He grew up on a council estate outside Liverpool and, at the age of six, visited his father in prison. By the time he was in his mid-thirties he was working in middle management at a pharmaceutical company, had three children and was going through a divorce. Today he sells out 15,000-seat arenas, is still married to his wife and no longer works in middle management. It was a Monday night and Bishop was looking for something to do. His friends were tired of him ‘crying into his beer’ about his divorce. So, aged 34, he decided to visit a comedy club for only the third time in his life.

On  18 September, the Scots will decide whether they want to become independent. But it is only a coincidence that Scotland’s most celebrated violinist is launching an album that brings together Scottish folk music, the tunes of Robert Burns and Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. Nonetheless, I want to know where Nicola Benedetti stands on the most fundamental question the Scots have asked of themselves since the Act of Union in 1707. I’m  sitting opposite her in the west London flat she shares with her German cellist boyfriend Leonard Elschenbroich. The late morning light from the window is catching her rich brown hair and turning it blonde. Is she, I ask, excited about the Referendum? ‘No. Terrified. I’m terrified either way.

Paloma Faith is an unusual pop star. Her flamboyant, retro appearance is upholstered by a deep-thinking mind and she articulates herself in an uncut East London accent. She hangs out with the author Hanif Kureishi and you can expect to find her at an art opening. When we meet in London’s Soho House, she is a cocktail of reds and oranges. Her hair, held back by a neon scrunchie, is white gold after the ‘gingerness’ washed out in the sea and she’s wearing a red-and-white checked gingham skirt with Chelsea boots. Although she admits that by keeping slim she makes a concession to conformity, she otherwise seems to do things her own way.