Chris Park

The whole Brexit conundrum may be dividing the nation but that hasn’t stopped first-time playwright and stand-up comedian Stan Wallace from having his say and encouraging us to have ours. As one of the acts of The Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, he is bringing his show, Tales from Northern Britain, to our fair city.
The festival runs from July 1 to 31 and features an army of performances cropping up in all sorts of venues. Audiences can expect a slew of entertainment including Scottish Fa...

“I think young people genuinely understand that if you buy things from a small business, you are helping yourselves and your generation to do better than letting all the money go into the hands of the pension funds with dinosaur brands.” These are the words of Morecambe-born Wayne Hemingway, designer and creator of Red or Dead and now HemingwayDesign, as well as the driving force behind Blackburn’s National Festival of Making which is returning for a third year.
On June 15 and 16, the centre ...

“I think there has been some nervousness from some as to how it will be received,” says Councillor Bev Craig about the LGBT retirement community due to open in Manchester in 2020.
Manchester City Council’s executive member for adult health and wellbeing and lead member for LGBT issues adds: “In Manchester we have well-developed Extra Care schemes which are developments for older people. Essentially, we are building homes for people that they can age well in, that are already accessible when t...

So speaks Justin Moorhouse, one of the hugely successful stand-up comedian alumni from Manchester’s Frog and Bucket Comedy Club and fondly remembered as ‘Potter’s Tiger’ Young Kenny from the Northern Powerhouse that was Phoenix Nights.
Now at 48 and at a crossroads in his life, it is a reflective Moorhouse I encounter as we speak about his latest stage offering, Northern Joker.
“The show is essentially about the fact that my kids don’t need me the same as they used to,” explains Moorhouse. “M...

I’ll be honest. I was a little nervous setting off for South Africa. I’d booked onto an organised trip so I knew the chances of trouble were slim but there are horror stories on the internet about tourists being robbed at gunpoint. However, in the two weeks I spent in this wonderful country, I never once felt uneasy or unsafe.
For a nation which has endured so many turbulent times, I was greeted by a modern, vibrant country. From Cape Town up to Port Elizabeth and then from Johannesburg to Kr...

What with our obsession with Netflix’s GLOW and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson starring in just about every damn blockbuster to hit the silver screen in recent years, the topic of wrestling has seen somewhat of a resurgence in recent times. But while audiences can’t get enough of Zoya the Destroyer and the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, The Rock on the other hand has mostly left his persona back in the 80s where it belongs. No matter how much we relish the slamming costumes of Netflix’s hit show, w...

What have Justin Lee Collins, Alec Baldwin and Curly Watts got in common? Give up? Well, they have all made the character Dennis Dupree from Rock of Ages their own.
Kevin Kennedy, who many know as Curly, the infamous bin man from Coronation Street, is taking on this role for a brand new production which hits the road at the end of September. But who is Dennis?
“He is a guy who owns the Bourbon Rooms in LA in the 80s which is the mecca for rock music,” explains Kennedy on a break from rehearsa...

It’s hard to believe that Emmerdale, or Emmerdale Farm if you’re as old as me and can remember that far back, has been on our screens for 46 years. In that time we’ve had plane crashes, floods, storms, murders and more Dingles than you can shake a stick at.
But there are still so many unanswered questions in the nation’s favourite Yorkshire village. For instance, who wore the same hat for 15 years? Whose pinny is mounted on the wall in pride of place? Who hides her script in the kitchen drawe...

The Brontë Parsonage, nestled on the Yorkshire Moors in Haworth, is a magical place. I first went as a Brontë mad A-level student when they opened up the archives for me and, since that early formative experience, I’ve never left it too long between trips.
However, over the past two years it’s been even more special. In 2016 it was the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth and last year was the turn of the sisters’ brother, Branwell. This year the focus is on Emily.
Emily Brontë’s great wor...

…it is, it really is.
I’m a bit of a new kid on the Hebden Bridge block having lived here for just one year. For those who glance at this market town, it could be said that Hebden Bridge teeters on cliché having had the hippy revolution and then the LGBT revolution (we’re known as the lesbian capital of the UK, don’t you know?). This makes it a mishmash of people, thrown together into a small community, and yet something magical is undeniably here. The town is dissected by a beautiful stretch...

OK, so I haven’t found some sleepy, quaint fishing town totally unspoilt by tourism. But this is a lovely little resort resting quietly among some of the big hitters. Just down the road is Albufeira which welcomes the neon-bedecked permatans dancing to dodgy dance music and whooping at the lasers.
As I’m now the wrong side of 40 (or is it the right side? I change my mind daily), I wasn’t looking for a holiday spent dancing til dawn under flashing lights. Thankfully, Armacao de Pera caters mai...

Hollinghurst may have started his career back in 1988 with The Swimming Pool Library but he cemented himself as one of the UK’s leading writers in 2004 when he won the Booker Prize for the wonderful Line of Beauty, an exploration of gay life in the 80s written against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and Tory politics.
Now he is back with a new novel, The Sparsholt Affair. It is familiar territory for Hollinghurst, a work that spans through the ages from World War Two to present day, set again...

“I don’t think you should be snobby about reading,” says Punam Ramchurn, director of Rochdale Literature and Ideas Festival which is returning for the fifth time this month.“It’s good that people read.”
For a festival still in its infancy, Rochdale is attracting some big names including Michael Parkinson, Alan Johnson, Tony Walsh and Jenny Eclair. “Jenny came last year,” says Ramchurn. “And she said, ‘don’t forget to ask me back next year’.”
Ramchurn adds: “It’s hard because there are so many...

This was the main reaction whenever I mentioned I was seeing the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra open their 2017/18 season at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. I’ll admit that I’m probably better suited to critiquing Madonna over Mahler, but along I went with absolutely no preconceptions.
I’ve been lucky enough to attend a BBC Philharmonic concert before when I reviewed the Scary Fairy with Craig Charles. But this was my first ever foray into a full-on classical concert. To say I was entranced is an ...

It’s December 2015 and West Yorkshire’s beautiful Calder Valley is celebrating Christmas. Then the rain comes. By Boxing Day, whole communities are submerged in some of the worst flooding in years. More than 4,000 businesses and 2,500 homes become water-logged, causing millions of pounds worth of losses and decimating the local economy.
Fast forward 18 months and Alan Dix of Shipley-based 509 Arts is immersed in something quite different – a hugely ambitious arts response to those challenging...