Send us a text Before I go any further, I want to tell you that A Kick Up The Arts is coming to a venue near you, very soon! I've got some really lovely events to announce in Glasgow, and Edinburgh - and elsewhere across the country - but, for now, I'm delighted to be coming to Aberdeen's fab book festival, Granite Noir, on the 23rd of February, wh…

Send us a text This week, I’m revisiting the very first place I ever worked, with one of my very favourite writers… Malachy Tallack was raised in Shetland, so you might think that we’d meet up there - and I’ll hopefully get there soon enough - but we actually caught up in Cupar Library, what with Malachy living in Fife these days. I had a Saturday …

Send us a text Come in, take your coat off, ruffle your hair, and thanks for bringing that bottle of wine. The fire's on, get your feet up... It's time for an A Kick Up The Arts: 'All Back To Mine' special with one of our best-loved actors, and pop stars, thanks to her starring role in Gregory’s Girl, and her brilliant songs with Altered Images, an…

Send us a text This week, I'm at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery with artist Fionna Carlisle and the legend of stage, screen - and music - that is Barbara Dickson… Fionna’s glorious painting, Eleven Red Roses, was shown in the gallery in the 1980s, and - as such - she features in Holly Davey’s exhibition, The Unforgetting, which is a role-call of t…

Send us a text This week, I'm at Glasgow’s Oran Mor, with gilded stars of stage, and screen - and Taggart - Blythe Duff and Colin McCredie... We chatted about Blythe’s musical adventures with Lacunas, and Colin’s forthcoming telly and theatre work, and then we bumped into former podcast guest Bobby Bluebell, of The Bluebells - who wrote and recorde…

Send us a text It's the second of our monthly 'A Kick Up The Arts: All Back To Mine' specials, with fab guests giving us a virtual night in round at theirs: choosing a Scottish album to play us, a Scottish film to show us, and a Scottish book for some bed time reading, and they'll chat about all of that - and their own work - with Nicola Meighan. T…

Send us a text This week, we're at Dundee’s Cooper Gallery, celebrating the city’s She-Town history with two local legends… Gayle Anderson’s a writer, broadcaster and the producer of the stunning Looking For Esther podcast, which is absolutely vital listening, and back in the day she worked at Dundee’s DC Thomson as the pop editor, and agony aunt, …

Send us a text This week, Nicola Meighan is joined by stage and TV legend Gavin Mitchell, aka Still Game's Boabby the Barman for a date at Glasgow's Theatre Royal, thanks to Scottish Opera's revival of Donizetti's comic masterpiece, Don Pasquale... Gavin's starred in John Byrne landmarks Tutti Frutti and The Slab Boys, worked with Robin Williams an…

Send us a text This week, Nicola Meighan is joined by Scottish punk / pop legends Grahame Skinner (Hipsway, Jazzateers, The Cowboy Mouth) and Bobby Bluebell - of the Bluebells, among other wonders, for a chat about their collaborative project, The Golden Tree, and much besides, recorded at Glasgow's Street Level Photoworks. Bobby's the man behind h…

Send us a text The third in our weekly round-table discussions with fab guests in arts spaces around the country is here, right now! And it's thanks to two of our best-loved writers and musicians... James Robertson is the Booker Prize nominated author of Scottish landmarks like The Testament of Gideon Mack - which is being adapted for theatre as we…

Send us a text The second of our weekly round-table discussions with fab guests in arts spaces around the country is here right now! It's thanks to singer, songwriter and - let's face it, total legend - Horse McDonald, and the brilliant actor and musician Hannah Jarrett-Scott. Following trailblazing hits like Careful, and The Speed of the Beat of M…

Send us a text It's the first of our monthly 'A Kick Up The Arts: All Back To Mine' specials, with fab guests giving us a virtual night in, round at theirs: they'll choose a Scottish album to play us, a Scottish film to show us, and a Scottish book for some bed-time reading, and they'll chat about all of that with Nicola Meighan. They might even ch…

Send us a text It’s the first in a weekly series of round-table conversations with Nicola Meighan and guests, in some of our best-loved arts spaces, with some of our most exciting and enlightening voices. And who better to kick things off than the glorious double-header of writers Chitra Ramaswamy and Hannah Lavery – recorded at the Scottish Poetry…