AROUND TOWN

Rocking up in Glasgow’s Rouken Glen Park this weekend is Foodies Festival (Friday 9 – Sunday 11 August), a funky, mouthwatering blend of tasty food and live tunes featuring Great British Bake Off stars alongside Symphonic Ibiza, Scouting For Girls and Blue.

Taking place in North Berwick over ten days, Fringe By The Sea (until Sunday 11 August) offers an alternative multi-arts festival with community at its heart. Expect yoga, bingo, comedy from Ralph Brown, music from Ash, Idlewild and Honeyblood, and much more.

An annual international gathering of sci-fi and fantasy fans now in its 82nd year, Worldcon (Thursday 8 – Monday 12 August) takes place in Glasgow this year at the SEC. It brings together talks, workshops, autograph opportunities, performances, a masquerade, and the Hugo Awards ceremony.

MUSIC

As part of Summer Nights At The Bandstand in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park, Liverpudlian rock legends Echo & the Bunnymen (Thursday 8 & Friday 9 August) will perform classics like ‘The Killing Moon’ and ‘The Cutter’ over two very special nights.

Irish cabaret icon dubbed ‘Queen of the Fringe’ Camille O’Sullivan (until Saturday 17 August) will celebrate Shane McGowan, Sinead O’Connor, David Bowie and Radiohead in her 20th Edinburgh Festival Fringe performance, Loveletter.

Bringing you the best of bagpiping, the Glasgow International Piping Festival, Piping Live! (Saturday 10 – Sunday 18 August), is back at locations across the city with gigs, workshops, social events, and competitions.

STAGE

Following her acclaimed breakthrough last year, stand-up Marjolein Robertson (until Sunday 25 August) returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with close-to-the-bone comedy show O, in which she relays her health travails with humour and distinction. Check it out at The Hive.

Another Fringe highlight from writer-actor Ned Blackburn, An Adequate Abridgement Of Boarding School Life As A Homo (until Sunday 11 August) gives us life through the lens of a young queer man falling for a rugby lad and battling an institution rife with shame. Now playing at Just The Tonic At The Caves.

Meanwhile, the Traverse Theatre have a wildly theatrical, funny and intimate story of female madness in one-woman Fringe show BATSHIT (until Sunday 25 August). It’s been created by Leah Shelton as a requiem for her grandmother, who was incarcerated for seeking independence in 1960s Australia.

SCREEN

Death comes a-calling to a terminally ill teen but it’s not as bleak as it sounds in the quirky and blackly comic Tuesday, which stars Lola Petticrew and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a mother and daughter facing down the inevitable.

The great Pamela Adlon (of Better Things fame) directs Broad City’s Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau in raucous pregnancy comedy Babes. Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhard and John Carroll Lynch co-star.

Created by and starring Zoe Lister-Jones, new comedy series Slip has just dropped on ITVX. Lister-Jones stars as a woman who has to travel through parallel universes trying to find her way back to her life.

PODCASTS

In Perfect Day With Jessica Knappett, the actor and comedian noses into her famous friends’ routines and habits, exploring how they spend their precious time. The ubiquitous Romesh Ranganathan and Dolly Alderton kick things off.

New weekly podcast Late To The Party sees host Grace Campbell joined by celebrities she would like to party with to find out their best and worst party experiences. Katherine Ryan, Joanne McNally and Jameela Jamil tell all.

Presented by Jamz and Spoony, Music Uncovered: The UK Garage Story takes us through the history of a truly banging musical genre, showing how it took the UK by storm during the 90s and 00s.

VISUAL ART

Still going strong, Beyond Van Gogh (until Monday 26 August) has been delighting Glasgow attendees with an immersive artistic experience that brings to life more than 300 of the Dutch artist’s spectacular paintings. Head to the SEC Centre to check it out.

Celebrating its 20th birthday, Edinburgh Art Festival (Friday 9 – Sunday 25 August) is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art, featuring international and UK artists and both established and emerging talent.

Offering a more intimate approach is the Pittenweem Arts Festival (until Saturday 10 August), a community celebration of visual arts, taking place in the picturesque East Neuk of Fife village. It’s an event in which art comes alive in the most unexpected places: cosy front rooms, garages, sheds, and more.

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