Wednesday 24 April 2019

FORMER GLASGOW GLOW REALITY STARS MAKE SEX SHOW



Beverley Lyons 
GLOW’S Brian Matthews and Victoria Obahor have made a new TV programme which will show them having raunchy sex. 
The Scottish reality couple who were last seen on Couples Come Dine With Me after giving one another ‘terrible tattoos’ on Just Tattoo Of Us have been trying to keep hush about the sexy new show for Channel 4.
We can now reveal that the show called Sex Tape will see the often fighting couple cosying up in the bedroom in adult scenes while their love life is filmed for the viewing public. 
The show starts Friday 26th April at 10pm on Channel 4 and the couple told friends that they will see a different side to them. 
A close friend of the couple said: “Brian and Victoria have been boasting about their antics. From the sounds of it there are no holds barred for their sex tape.”
Brian admitted he and Victoria’s love life has gone from wild to woeful. He said: “At first we went through the Kama Sutra, but now there’s no spontaneity when it comes to our relationship anymore, especially when it comes to the sex. We need help because we used to have an amazing sex life and it’s flipped the opposite way now.”

According to a spokesperson for the show arguing couples will have their home rigged with cameras to capture everything from the heated rows and the reconciliation – to the sex.In each episode, the couples hoping to fix their relationships meet each other, along with a sex therapist, for a “new therapy”. Executive producer Gary Chippington said the show was a “ground-breaking series”. “Sex Tape promises to be a perceptive, revealing and surprising social experiment offering a fascinating insight into intimacy.”


Tuesday 16 April 2019

ROBERT CARLYLE’S MOST EMOTIONAL INTERVIEW YET...



HAVING starred in a string of blockbuster films and smash-hit TV shows, his status as one of Scotland’s most talented and celebrated actors is now established beyond all doubt.
But Robert Carlyle has revealed that, in the earliest days of his career, success seemed far from certain.
In fact, his dad was so worried about the young actor’s prospects, he started a savings account to buy him a set of ladders and brushes so he could set up as a painter and decorator in case it all went wrong.
In an emotional Q and A at Belfast Film Festival  Carlyle - whose screen credits include the Bond film The World Is Not EnoughThe Full MontyTrainspotting and the Netflix drama Once Upon A Time - has spoken for the first time about the contingency fund his labourer father set aside.
The 58-year-old, from Glasgow’s Maryhill, has described the hardships of his childhood,
explained that he and his father went to the cinema as much for warmth as for entertainment - and joked that he only went to acting classes as a way to meet girls.
Carlyle was brought up solely by his father Joseph after his mother Elizabeth, a bus company employee walked out when he was only three.
Speaking recently at a film festival event in Belfast Carlyle fought back tears as he revealed how his father had supported his surprising decision to try and make a living as an actor.
He said: “My dad was great. He was shocked because I was a painter and decorator. That’s what my father had done, and my grandfather, and everybody did, so when I broke this to my father he said ‘OK, alright son, I’ll back you up to do what you want to do.’ 
“I don’t think he was entirely sure. Cut to years and years and years later and I’d done Bond and everything at this point and my dad said to me ‘You’re doing alright son eh?’ I said ‘Aye.’ He said ‘So things are fine?’ There was something on his mind. And he said ‘Look’ - and he went into this drawer and he pulled out a bank book. He said: ‘When you told me you were going to become an actor I wasn’t sure how that was going to go, so I put a wee bit money away for you just in case it wasn’t going to work out.’ He said: ‘I thought it would get you a wee set of ladders and brushes.’
And he showed me this bank book and there was three hundred quid. Now for my dad that’s a lot of money and he showed me this £300 and I said ‘Dad you’re going to spend that tomorrow.’ So my dad had a wee contingency for me.”
In the moving interview, former Hamish Macbeth star Carlyle revealed that he first showed an interest in film because he was so poor it was warmer to sit inside the cinema than it was at home.
He explained: “My mother left when I was a wee boy. I was only three and my father brought me up on his own and that period from three years old to ten we would go to the cinema three, four, five times a week. Back then you’d go into watch the movie and you could actually watch it all over again. They wouldn’t even throw you out.”
“Our living conditions were dirt poor so it was always cosy and warmer in the cinema. I grew up in places like this. I grew to love it. I had no notion of being an actor, maybe a notion of being a cowboy. Acting came an awful lot later.”
In fact it was Robert’s interest in girls that eventually prompted him to seek out theatre groups where the number of female performers outweighed the boys.
He laughed: “A friend of mine was getting involved in drama when I was probably round about 18 or 19 and he was going to this place called Glasgow Arts Centre. I know it’s not a very PC thing to say but he said ‘There are a lot of good looking women here and you should go’ - and he was right, so I went. It was filled with girls who wanted to be actresses and very few guys so there was little competition which was great. I sat there for three or four months in this place.”
Robert who attended twice a week was happy to ogle, but reluctant to join in with the workshops, and was so adamant that he wasn’t going to actually act he threatened to walk out during an ultimatum with his drama teacher Maggie Kinloch to whom he owes his career. 
He said: “Maggie came up to me one of those nights and said to me ‘What are you doing? Why don’t you join in?’They were doing improvisation and I said ‘No, I’m not interested and she said ‘Well you have to leave then.’ It was kind of harsh but probably true and I was chippy back then and said ‘Ok f*** it’ and walked towards the door and she said ‘Hey, are you just going to walk out?’
‘You can either take that one way or the other. You can either use it as a challenge or you can walk out the door’ and I thought ‘I fancy a challenge’...so I did and I went back after that and I got up and improvised something, and it was funny, and I spoke and people laughed, and it was like a drug. I liked it, and I thought ‘This is good’ and there was some kind of acceptance for me.”
 Carlyle’s passion for acting took him to the RSAMD or Royal Conservatoire as it is now known. After graduating in 1991, he and some friends set up Raindog Theatre Company and shortly after he starred in his first film Riff Raff by Ken Loach, who later directed him in Carla’s Song. 
 Robert revealed that the entire success of the film about a Glaswegian bus driver who woos a Nicaraguan refugee for which he won two best acting awards - relied on his ability to drive a bus. 
He said: “I found out if I hadn’t passed the test, the film was no more because Glasgow council had said ‘There is no way we are letting an actor jump on a bus unless he knows he knows what he’s doing’. So all the stuff of me driving about the streets is real.”
Following a high profile role as a murderer in Cracker with Robbie Coltrane, Carlyle was offered his starring BBC TV role in Hamish Macbeth as a Highland Policeman from 1995-97.  
Lifechanging movie roles in Trainspotting in 1996 and the Full Monty which earned Carlyle a BAFTA in ‘97 soon followed. And the proverbial icing on the cake came when he was asked to play the arch villain Renard in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough
Carlyle said he had to pinch himself when he got the villainous role. He said: “007 was a privilege to be involved in the franchise. There are things that happened that would take your breath away. My very first day was filming in Pinewood on the 007 stage which is like Hampden Park.It was a big deal for me because Sean Connery was huge and the only guy that spoke a little bit like me in films in the sixties.”
Carlyle also revealed that  Danny Boyle had to persuade him to play the psychopathic Francis Begbie in Begbie in Trainspotting with Ewan McGregor, a role he was initially unwilling to take because of his size. 
The slim built five foot nine actor explained: “Danny said ‘What about Begbie and I said ‘Forget it, no way’ and he said ‘Why not? and I said ‘Because he’s a monster, a big monsterous beast of a guy’ and - I wish I could claim this line - Danny said ‘Nah, small psychos are the best.’”
 During Full Monty, a movie about amateur strippers which saw him stripping off in the final scenes , Robert made a new penpal in the form of English born Emma Thompson who would later co-star in his Scots film The Legend of Barney Thomson in 2015.
He said: “At the time that Full Monty was around I got a postcard through my agent from Emma Thompson. I’d never met her but she sent this beautiful card saying ‘I’ve never met you but I’m so proud of you’. It was unsolicited. I’ve still got it.”
When Robert was looking to cast a Scots mother in Barney Thomson, a film he directed many years later, he recalled the postcard and decided to contact her. He smiled: “I scoured around and remembered Emma doing Tutti Frutti year’s ago and thinking she was Scottish. It was the first time I’d seen her.
‘ I thought ‘This is maybe the ‘In’ here.’ I sent her a script and said I’d never forgotten her kindness and asked her to have a look at this bizarre thing - to play my eighty year old mother - and two days later she accepted.”
The Scots talent has been inundated with roles over the years and says he has turned down a few that he later regretted.
One such part was for time travelling seventies TV cop show Life On Mars in 2006. Robert lamented: “I wish I’d done it. That was a decision that went back and forward and they said I could play either of these parts so I got in touch with my pal Ray Winstone and he was looking at it, and we were both going to do it. I can’t remember what happened to make us knock it on the head but I turned it down and regretted it. I think it would have been really good.”
Robert, who currently lives in Vancouver, Canada with his family after moving there to make globally loved Once Upon A Time where he played Rumplestiltskin aka Mr Gold admits that he is very lucky.
He said: “It’s difficult to know what to do now. The show finished this time last year and we were packed up and ready to go and the kids said ‘We want to stay.’ We are there for a bit and will let them finish their school there. Who knows what will happen next?”

Thursday 11 April 2019

DISNEY ON ICE FACTS AS TOUR COMES TO GLASGOW SSE HYDRO



Disney on Ice is taking over the SSE Hydro for four days and Scots fans of the great Walt himself can’t wait to welcome the spectacular. 
The show runs from Thursday April 11 to Sunday April 14 and we’ve compiled some Disney data for you to make the occasion. 

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves star Dopey was meant to be a chatterbox, but producers couldn’t find a voice to suit him so he went silent instead.

2.Jackie Chan played the Beast’s voice for the Chinese translation of Beauty and the Beast—including the singing. He even sings the title track in Mandarin with Sarah Chen.

3. It takes about two days to unload the props for Disney On Ice and the backstage crew is made up of about 14 people, all working together on lighting, the music, the backdrop, the sets and the props that bring the show to life.

4. To mark the show coming to Glasgow, TriBeCa US diner in Glasgow’s Bell Street has created three new Disney style treats- Pink Princess and Genie In A Glass milkshakes with lots of magic flavours and a colour-in Mickey Mouse pancake with edible colouring like sprinkles, strawberry and chocolate syrup. They are only available from 4pm-8:30pm while the show is here. 

5. The Beatles were originally asked to provide music for the Jungle Book but John Lennon refused. Other real life figures have inspired Disney including Tom Cruise Who was the inspiration for Aladdin's face and Alyssa Milano who helped to inspire Ariel’s features.

6. Dwarf names that were passed over in Snow White were: Jumpy, Deafy, Dizzy, Wheezy, Hickey, Baldy, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Swift, Lazy, Puffy, Stuffy, Tubby, Shorty, and Burpy.

7. On average forty five trailers arrive in each city for Disney On Ice with nearly 5000 LED lights per tour and 250,000 rhinestone Swarovski crystals on display per show.

Sunday 7 April 2019

SUSAN BOYLE IS ON FIRE FOR 58TH BIRTHDAY


Susan with PA and friend Geraldine


Exclusive 
Beverley Lyons  
SUSAN Boyle joked that she would have had to call the fire brigade if there had been enough candles on her birthday cake this week.
The West Lothian born BGT star,  who is celebrating ten years of being in the public eye since her now legendary shock  performance on the show, also joined friends to enjoy the festivities for her big birthday. 
Susan went for lunch near her home in Blackburn and said of her 58th birthday celebrations: “I had a lovely birthday and was thoroughly spoilt by my friends. I got some lovely gifts, including a hamper of spa products, which is perfect for my new bathroom. I went out for a lunch and had a surprise birthday cake!”
She laughed: “Thank goodness they didn’t put 58 candles on it or we’d have been joined by the fire brigade.”
“It was a great day and I felt very loved and happy by friends, family and of course my wonderful fans who sent me cards, messages and gifts wishing me a happy birthday.”
Following Simon Cowell’s revelation that he gave her a pep talk during the lead up week to the finals on BGT in 2009, Susan claims she is older and wiser now that she’s 58. And she said she wishes she hadn’t worried as much when she was younger. 
She said: “As for what I would tell my younger self, it would be not to worry and enjoy every moment and experience that comes my way.”
Susan who has previously credited Simon as being the best boss ever said: “I’m looking forward to the next week celebrating ten years since my first BGT audition and what a wonderful 10 years it has been.”
Simon revealed on Lorraine this week that he gave Susan a pep talk on how to deal with her fame, as the pressure of the competition piled up. 
The 59-year-old judge explained: ‘The lead up to the week of the final we sat down with her and her friends.We said, “Look, if it’s too stressful, because it’s all over the media”…she said it was fine, she was going to do it. And I’m thinking, “Fine, she’s going to win.”’And I'll never forget it [when they said] 'The winner is Diversity'. "I was on that stage under 20 seconds saying into her [ear], 'We've got an album deal. Literally from that moment." Simon said that from that moment on it was up to her when she wanted to make an album and insisted that she was "part of the family" now."











Friday 5 April 2019

BILLY CONNOLLY LOOKING FIT IN HONG KONG BEFORE JETSETTING TO NEW YORK TARTAN WEEK




Beverley Lyons 

Sir Billy Connolly met up with Scottish former rugby union player Doddie Weir in Hong Kong ahead of his appearance at New York’s tartan day celebrations this weekend.
And Sir Billy was looking dapper as he chatted with MND sufferer Doddie at the fundraising dinner in Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt hotel.
Players past and present joined the Big Yin and Humungous one as revellers endearingly referred to them.
Amongst those promoted to attend the bash were Scott Hastings, Andy Goode, Brian O Driscoll and Gregor Townsend.
In a photo posted on Twitter,  Sir Billy looked dapper in his black tux and chose to go tieless with his white shirt for the occasion while Doddie opted for his now famous tartan suit. 
One of the dinner guests commented: “Billy was in great spirits and very happy to be there. He and Doddie has a great chat and Billy entertained guests with his answers during the Q and A session.”
Scottish artist Gerard Burns had painted a portrait of Doddie in the suit which raised almost £100,000 at the event.

The dinner, attended by around 500 guests, was organised by the Scottish business community based in Hong Kong as a precursor to the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens on April 5-7. More than £300,000 was raised in total by the event.
The new pictures will come as a surprise to many fans who thought that Billy’s health was ailing. 

The 76 year old was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2012 and has been pictured looking frailer and more subdued than the larger than life character we have come to expect. 

Billy who also had to have his prostate removed following a cancer diagnosis several years ago and has joked in the past about his shaky hand, over which he has little control, admitted in a BBC documentary in January that his diagnosis with the degenerative brain condition meant he was now "at the wrong end of the telescope of life". 

Billy said at the time: "My life is slipping away and I can feel it and I should. I'm 75 and I'm a damn sight nearer the end than I am the beginning. 

"But it doesn't frighten me - it's an adventure and it's quite interesting to see myself slipping away, as bits slip off and leave me, talents leave and attributes leave.

"It's as if I'm being prepared for something, some other adventure, which is over the hill. I've got all this stuff to lose first, and then I'll be at the shadowy side of the hill doing the next episode in the spirit world."

Sir Michael Parkinson also said in 2018 that Billy had trouble recognising him, a claim that Sir Billy has since dismissed. 

Sir Michael, 83,  said at the time: “His wonderful brain has dulled. I saw him recently – he's now living in America – and it was very sad, because I was presenting him with a prize at an award ceremony [...] We had an awkward dinner together, because I wasn't quite sure if he knew who I was or not."

It certainly seems that Billy is not ready to give into the debilitating illness - as he jetsets round the world for a busy year of public engagements.

From Scotland with Love Theshowbizlion.com

GLAGOW RESTAURANT TRIBECA FEATURES IN NEW TV SHOW




Beverley Lyons
GLASGOW restaurant business TriBeCa can’t wait to be featured in a new BBC Scotland drama set in the city’s Bell street and Albion Street.
The American diner and neighbouring buildings will be filmed as part of new BBC Scotland show Guilt which will be filming in the Merchant City on April 12, 15, and 16.
The contemporary drama is being filmed by Expectation Entertainment and Happy Tramp North and broadcast on the new digital channel.
Production bosses have told TriBeCa and other businesses that their street will form part of the aftermath of a fire scene.
As well as mock fire engines and a squad of fake firemen the street will be made to look like it has endured the spray of hoses.
TriBeCa manager Colin Drummond said: “It’s pretty exciting. We got notification about the filming today and we can’t wait to welcome BBC Scotland to the Merchant City. Our staff will all be making sure we look our best for the occasion. We recently relaunched our menu so this gives us an excellent opportunity to showcase the unique and vibrant atmosphere of Glasgow’s entertainment district to the world.  We hope that viewers enjoy the drama ‘Guilt’ and that, after seeing us on telly will visit the entertainment hotspot of Scotland.”
A spokesperson from the production company said: “We have sought and been granted permission by Glasgow City Council to implement a road closure for the duration of these scenes. This particular scene will look like the aftermath of a fire. There will be two fire engines parked on the road and extras dressed as firemen. There will also be a wetting down of the pavement and road.”
Any parked cars will be cleared from the area ahead of filming.
Road closures on Bell Street and Albion Street are expected between 2pm until 8pm on April 16.









From Scotland with Love Theshowbizlion.com

Wednesday 3 April 2019

KILMARNOCK GIRL RECEIVES MYSTERY MOTHERS DAY LETTER FROM LATE MUMMY



Beverley Lyons
A devoted father has told of his daughters delight at receiving a Mother’s Day letter from his late wife.
Dean Lennon, 30, from Kilmarnock couldn’t believe it when his daughter Ella, 4 received a reply to her Mother’s Day card from her mummy in heaven.
Little Ella has posted the letter addressed to Mummy In Heaven, with a drawing and heartbreaking message on the envelope saying Happy Mother’s Day, I Love You Ella.
Jennifer Lennon passed away on December 8 2018 and this was Ella’s first Mother’s Day without her.
Ella couldn't believe it when they received a handwritten reply from heaven - after a kind person in the Post Office saw the envelope.
The beautiful letter read: “My beautiful Ella. Thankyou so much for my very special Mother’s Day card. You’re one in a million to me and I love you very much. Millions and billions and trillions is how much I love you! You are growing up to be a very clever and special big girl and I am so proud of you, and even though I am in heaven I watch over you every day. Lots of love hugs and kisses, mummy xxx”
Dean said: “Ella was delighted. I would like to thank the kind hearted person at the Royal Mail who sent Ella back a letter from her mummy in heaven. Her wee face was light up.”



From Scotland with Love
















From Scotland with Love Theshowbizlion.com