Brown books place among the goblins

Published on Saturday 16 August 2008 19:52

AS IF it were an elaborate experiment designed to prove, once and for all, PG Wodehouse's dictum that it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine, the Edinburgh International Book Festival opened last weekend with torrential rain and Gordon Brown doing his unconvincing "relaxed" smile.

As the hacks retreated to write about the ominous downpour when the Prime Minister defended Britishness, I went to see the fantastic Eoin Colfer doing his dizzying, delirious best with a bunch of hyperactive kids. But there was no escape: pressed again and again about who the "original" for Artemis Fowl, Julius Root and his other characters were, Colfer confessed that he always stole people he met to create characters. In fact, he mused, he'd just met Gordon Brown and Ian Rankin, who may well turn up as "a couple of goblin generals" in his next book.

Howl of protest now a Chinese whisper

Scottish PEN's guest lecturer this year was the Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li (below). I was looking forward to the event, since she gave an astonishing interview to my colleague David Robinson at the Scotsman a few years back (it's collected in his lovely book In Cold Ink) about her grief, fear and frustration about exile, Tiananmen Square and censorship. But things have changed. Instead of lecturing, she read from her forthcoming novel, and blithely told us that Chinese writers can now "write about anything" – with the exception of the Party and as long as it's in Chinese. It was a bit like saying you were still a virgin, with a few exceptions. In a great session about the "new China" with Rana Mitter and Mark Leonard, we learned about "deliberative dictatorship", year-on-year growth and China's brave record in the Second World War – with human rights abuses mentioned with all the embarrassment of having to tell a supermodel she had spinach in her teeth.

'Tulloch' really fits the Bill

Bill Paterson initially submitted his radio stories under a pseudonym – Tulloch Cameron. When the commission was accepted the BBC wrote to "Tulloch" and suggested they could be read by… Bill Paterson. He refrained, he says, from saying "Get Peter Capaldi – he's cheaper".

Tartan Bottom's not Bard at all

Liz Lochhead, speaking with Joyce McMillan about poetry and theatre, read her "translation" of Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream into Scottish. It's a virtuoso piece, and deserves to be published as soon as possible. Anyone that can rhyme "heedrum-hodrum-humdrum" with "Am Dram" and "numpty lyricals" with "rude mechanicals" is a genius. The best line: "Ye'll get hee-haw oot ae me".

Hard to swallow

Talking about his gastronomic enthusiasms, Steven Berkoff (below) was tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top, insisting that Jewish cuisine so venerated the chicken that Jews tended to be nervy, clucking and "with that proboscis", that the French were like pigs and Americans lowed like buffaloes. No one asked him about his appearance as a gourmand arms dealer in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, where he smacked his lips over "Palamarian sea urchin, lightly sauteed in garlic and moon grass and stuffed Wentlian condor snake". Just as well, really.