Festival Diary: Plucky factory workers get starring role on the red carpet

Chuck Chuck Baby stars Louise Brealey and Annabel Scholey, and director Janis Pugh, were joined by real-life chicken factory workers Amanda Waite-Jones, Vanessa Roberts, Zoe May and Babs Waite at the film's world premiere in Edinburgh. Picture: Pako Mera

World premiere for chicken factory rom-com musical drama

There have been some terrific photocalls staged across Edinburgh this month.

But none have caught my eye as much as the one for the world premiere of Chuck Chuck Baby at the film festival.

A rom-com musical drama revolving around a Welsh chicken factory went down a storm at the Everyman cinema.

Shooglenifty have been performing at the Rose Theatre during the Fringe. Picture: Douglas Robertson

As well as the acclaim for first time director Janis Pugh and the lead actors in her film – Louise Brealey and Annabel Scholey – there was a huge cheer for four of the film’s other stars.

Amanda Waite-Jones, Vanessa Roberts, Zoe May and Babs Waite, who are all real-life chicken factory workers featured on screen, took to the red carpet in their blue overalls and white boots.

The award for the sweatiest experience of the festival so far has to go to the Rose Theatre on Rose Street.

It was taken on at short notice by local music promoters Soundhouse. Douglas Robertson, who started out promoting concerts in his own home, somehow found himself programming a whole festival’s worth of shows in July after being offered the use of the venue by its owner Peter Schaufuss.

Robertson was in chipper form when I called in to see local heroes Shooglenifty - the “acid croft” dancefloor fillers who have played almost every venue in the city since forming more than 30 years ago - as the pop-up venue had just been hailed in a newspaper column for the “intensity" of Scottish musical talent on offer all monoth.

The intensity of running a Fringe venue was certainly on display with Robertson called into action to get the stage lights on, round up the audience back into the venue after the interval and even try to resolve banjo player Gary Finlayson’s technical difficulties.

Finlayson eventually had to admit defeat and was about to retreat into the shadows beside the stage when he was urged to join the merry throng on the dancefloor, which included Fringe Society chief executive Shona McCarthy, who had been in the venue to see her daughter perform on its pop-up music stage before being swept upstairs to join the revelry.

One of the big success stories of the Fringe has been Highland writer Jack MacGregor.

His Mali-set play about a UN peacekeeping operation – Everything Under The Sun – was honoured in the second round of The Scotsman's Fringe First Award winners last week.

Further congratulations are in order as the play has just been named the best Scottish theatre production at the Fringe in the Scottish Theatre Awards, which also recognised the cast of The Grandfathers at Hill Street Theatre as the best emerging Scottish talent at the festival.

MacGregor headed off the beaten festival track to check out another rising Scottish theatre star.

Mark Hannah’s solo show Athens of the North, his “episodic love letter to Edinburgh and her people,” was at the Hibernian Supporters Club, off Easter Road, which did not deter an audience from across the city’s footballing divide.

Hannah said: “Want to say a unique Edinburgh thank you to all the Jambos and the old school Hertz in my life who made the journey onto enemy turf at the Hibs Club for a theatre show. It doesn’t go unnoticed.”