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The Green, Green Grass of Home: Mr Jones An Aberfan Story - Finborough Theatre

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A life of hope and promise, interrupted, lies at the heart of Mr Jones: an Aberfan Story. The play follows two young people in Aberfan before and after the disaster that killed 144 people, including 116 children. It’s an emotional coming-of-age tale of intersecting lives, family, love, and the shock of tragedy. With two vivid performances and strong characterisations, you feel immersed in 1960s Welsh small-town life. It’s now running at the Finborough Theatre , after performances at the Edinburgh Festival and across Wales.  The Aberfan disaster is well known in the UK but perhaps less so elsewhere. The facts of the tragedy are confined to the programme notes rather than in the piece. On 21 October 1966, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on a mountain above Aberfan engulfed a local school, killing many. The play avoids the causes and negligence, instead focusing on those working and building lives in the town.  Writer-performer Liam Holmes plays Stephen Jones, a...

Television: Celebrity Big Brother

I have started to pay a little more interest in Celebrity Big Brother as tonight I caught some highlights showing transsexual Pete – famous in the eighties for that song "You Spin Me Round (Like a record)" doing a repeat performance of his one hit wonder. It was an amazing act of desperation. Pity he has so much plastic surgery his face looks like a mask.

The rest of the "celebrities" includes ex-basketball player Dennis Rodman and Michael Barrymore. Barrymore lives in New Zealand after some guy turned up dead in his swimming pool in the UK but he is fondly enough remembered in the UK for most of the papers to warn the other contestants to skip the swimming lessons with him…

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