Mark Steel's in Town

Steel, Mark

ISBN 10: 0007443722 ISBN 13: 9780007443727

Verlag: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2011

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Reviews of Mark Steel’s In Town:

‘This programme is stand-up comedy at its very best...stand-up on radio is immensely challenging – and often unsuccessful but this programme is intelligent and rich in content, well paced and, moreover, funny...although it is clear that a lot of preparation went into making this programme, the result is fluent, natural and exciting...it was also generous to its audience and to its location – and very much in tune with the sound and appeal of the network.’ The Sony Radio Academy Awards

‘A tough gig...more like shooting fish in a barrel, to judge from the reception he received from the honest burghers of Skipton, North Yorkshire...from the moment he remarked on the fact that the hall in which he was performing was used as a cattle market during the day and was hosed out before the show – and got a roar of approving laughter – Steel must have known that he could do no wrong.’ Times (review of Skipton show)

‘Going to a place and insulting it takes guts and careful strategies...Steel made use of the fact that he is from nearby Swanley both to signal that he knows the area but also that – whatever he was about to say about Dartford – it was better than his hometown.’Guardian

‘A simple idea, kindly and wittily executed by another unfashionably humane Englishman...thank Gaia they still exist.’ Observer

Reseña del editor:

On the way to a show in Skipton, in North Yorkshire, I noticed a road sign to a town called Keighley. So later, during the show, I mentioned this, asking the audience, 'Is that your rival town?' And the room went chillingly quiet, until one woman called out with understated menace, 'Keighley is a sink of evil.'

Based on his award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, Mark Steel's ‘In Town’, is a celebration of the quirks of small town life in a country of increasingly homogenized high streets. Steel's bespoke observations on the small, sometimes forgotten, towns of Britain goes right to the heart of British culture today, championing the very people who shape the places we live in now.

‘As everywhere hurtles along a route towards being identical to everywhere else, it seems any expression of local interest or eccentricity is becoming a yell of defiance. Scrape away the veneer of Wetherspoons and Pizza Hut-inspired uniformity, and the march of Tesco's towards being reclassified as a continent, and Britain is as magnificently diverse as ever, and ready to celebrate each distinct community. The elements of a town that make it unique are what make it worth visiting; they change a journey from being functional to being an experience. For example, one drizzly dark February afternoon as I came out of the station at Scunthorpe, I got in a minicab, and the driver didn't even look at me, but kept staring straight ahead as he said, 'I don't know what you've come here for, it's a fucking shit-hole.'’

Unearthing some of Britain's most unusual tourist attractions, and noting local quirks and habits, Steel's journey takes him through the backwaters of England, up to Scotland and across to Ireland, where he encounters a country united by a peculiar ingrained sense of pride, no matter which village, town or city, to give a refreshing take on Britain, its people and its places.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Fourth Estate Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007443722
• ISBN 13: 9780007443727
• Einband: Casete de audio