William Cook

Saturday

William Cook

Brutal beauty

William Cook takes us on a tour of 2010’s unlikely European Capital of Culture ‘And the European Capital of Culture in 2010 will be ...the Ruhr.’ When I first heard the announcement, it sounded like a particularly unfunny German joke. The Ruhr, after all, is Europe’s biggest rust belt — a vast swathe of mines and factories, many now derelict or redundant, which stretches across north-west Germany like a huge unsightly rash. It’s hard to imagine a less likely cultural capital, and normally I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it had it not been for a fond memory of one of the nicest afternoons I’ve ever spent. A few years ago I was in this part of Germany on business and ended up in Essen, one of the biggest cities in the Ruhr.

Saturday

William Cook

Chaotic centre of culture

It’s 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. William Cook on the city’s changing face On the west bank of the River Spree, beside the old route of the Berlin Wall, there is a building which sums up the strange renaissance of this wonderful, awful city. The Hamburger Bahnhof used to be a train station. During the Cold War it was a ruin. Now it’s an art gallery, Berlin’s answer to Tate Modern. It’s a sign of how Berlin has changed, from the cockpit of the Cold War to Europe’s unofficial cultural capital. When the Wall came down in 1989, in an avalanche of cheap Sekt and naff graffiti, a lot of people were worried that Berlin would become the centre of a European superstate. Instead it’s become a chaotic centre of the arts.

Wednesday

William Cook

A pair of aces

William Cook talks to the creators of some of TV’s funniest and best-loved comedy programmes As our economy disappears down the plughole, along with the reputations of most of our bankers and politicians, the one consolation is that entertainers like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross suddenly seem terribly passé. When you’re broke, there’s nothing entertaining about other people’s affluence — or decadence — and, even if you can make ends meet, failure is always far funnier than success. The two men who understand this better than anyone are sitting side by side on the same sofa, in the august but comfy drawing room of a grand old house near Hampton Court.