Community Centre, Nairn, 7-8 June 2008

Andy Hamilton

THERE’S BEEN quite a gear change for the Nairn Book and Arts Festival this year-a smart makeover for the visual identity, a more ambitious programme, and a spanking new venue at the heart of the Festival, in the shape of the recently opened Nairn Community Centre.

The main auditorium in the new Centre seats up to 300, and every one of those seats was needed for Andy Hamilton’s late-evening set on the Saturday. But with the drapes in, some seats removed, and a few appropriately-branded backing screens, it also made a suitably more intimate venue for appearances by Christopher Brookmyre that Saturday afternoon, and William Dalrymple the following day.

I’ve enjoyed a number of Christopher Brookmyre’s sharp, outrageous and often very funny thrillers, but I hadn’t expected him to be such a seasoned performer. This was more like a highly polished stand-up act than a conventional ‘author’s appearance’. Not a minute or a line was wasted-a tight, punchy, clever, hour-long show that confirmed Brookmyre as a very talented individual indeed.

He concentrated on his most recently published book, ‘Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks’, which tackles the subject of psychic cons, fake miracles, and the whole sorry industry of the paranormal. He even played an effective double bluff, setting up a mind-reading stunt that was meant to fail-to prove how utterly unpsychic he is-only to stun us all by guessing right not once but twice in a row. Then, in a neat bit of marketing, he told us we’d have to read the book to find out how the trick was done! Not surprisingly the queue for the subsequent book-signing was lengthy indeed.

Andy Hamilton understandably has a substantial following from his Radio 4 and BBC 2 appearances, not only on the ‘News Quiz’ and ‘Have I Got News for You’, but also in his own comedy dramas, such as the long-running, and often hilarious, ‘Old Harry’s Game’. But I hadn’t appreciated how far back his comedy credentials stretch, including writing gags for Les Dawson, and appearing on ‘Start the Week’ as long ago as 1979-and having a bizarre encounter with Jeffrey Archer in the process!

Andy has family in Nairn, as he explained, and I wonder if that led him to relax a bit, and slightly tone down the edge of his humour. Although he was indeed very funny and thoroughly engaging, his performance had a rather soft-centred, unfocused feel and, as a show starting at 9.30, the gig would have been far better as a straight 80 minutes or so, rather than two halves of over 45 minutes each, split by an interval. Ironically, this was a fuzzier, less polished piece of stand-up than Brookmyre’s session earlier in the day.

Back again the following afternoon, for an absolute blinder of a lecture from William Dalrymple. I’ve read all his books, with immense pleasure, so I was very much looking forward to hearing him in the flesh. He’d already focused on his most recent book, ‘The Last Moghul’, at last year’s festival, so this year he returned to a much earlier book, ‘From the Holy Mountain’, which charted a journey he made in 1994 in the footsteps of a 6th century monk, and traced the survival of Christian communities in the Middle East.

But this riveting presentation was much more than a retread of a ten-year-old book, as Dalrymple brought us bang up to date with bulletins of frightening immediacy on how the plight of these communities has been made so much worse across the region, from Turkey to Egypt-often, ironically, directly because of Western actions. Illustrated with an amazing array of slides from his original journey, this was an 80-minute tour de force and, had the venue not been needed for the next event, the question time might have lasted as long again! This was a fascinating, and even important, event, and would have been a highlight of any festival.

The new Centre also has the facility to host exhibitions. Audience members waiting during the very tight turn arounds between events were able to enjoy a selection of fine paintings by Highland artists, and a retrospective of the late, great cartoonist and children’s writer, Harry Horse. These are wonderfully imagined, often scabrous, images of satirical fury, as ferocious as anything in Gerald Scarfe but with a style very much of their own. His early, tragic death is a great loss, and it’s a pity there was no accompanying material to explain who Harry Horse was, and where these images appeared.

The team behind the Nairn Festival work hard to make the mood friendly and welcoming for strangers like ourselves as well as for local, well-kent faces. But they clearly need a bit more time to familiarise themselves with the Centre’s technology, and so there was rather too much uncertain fumbling over the use of microphones, and the appropriate levels of lighting. But those are teething troubles that will be soon overcome. Just two days into the week-long Festival, and it’s looking like they have a success on their hands!

© Robert Livingston, 2008

Links

• Nairn Book and Arts Festival