London 2012 Festival will be largest cultural celebration in our lifetime

The full programme for the London 2012 Festival was launched today (26 April). It contains some 12,000 events and performances from over 25,000 artists from all 205 participating Olympic nations.

Kicking off across the UK on 21 June and running until 9 September, there will be 137 world firsts and 85 UK premiers, featuring well-known names from the arts, music, comedy, dance and culture. 

Billed as the ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Festival and taking place at 900 venues, the London 2012 Festival  begins with four opening day events. 

Lake Windermere in the Lake District will stage a free outdoor event featuring French pyrotechnic wizards Les Commandos Percu to celebrate the Olympic Flame’s arrival to the region, whilst in the heart of Derry/Londonderry’s new cultural quarter, a Peace One Day Global Truce Countdown Concert will take place. 

Also, on 21 June, the children of Raploch in Stirling will perform in The Big Concert, conducted by world renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and Edward Gardner and Simon Halsey will raise their batons together for the UK premier of Weltethos at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham. 

London highlights during the Festival will include the floating children’s opera The Owl and the Pussycat written by Monty Python star Terry Jones and Oscar winning composer Anne Dudley, which will travel through London’s canal network, plus pop-up Shakespeare performances around the city, with a cast led by actor and director Mark Rylance. 

A barge manned by a group of well-known British comedians will set sail from London and attempt to reach Edinburgh’s celebrated Fringe venue, The Pleasance, staging pop-up comedy gigs along the way. Whilst, The BT River of Music will showcase performances from five continents across six stages located in iconic locations around the capital. The six stages will represent the continents - Asia in Battersea Park, Africa in Jubilee Gardens, Europe in Trafalgar Square and Somerset House, the Americas at the Tower of London, and Oceania in the Greenwich Old Royal Naval College. 

Some 160,000 free tickets are available for confirmed acts including the Noisettes and the Scissor Sisters. 

Major London events which form part of the Festival include BBC Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend (23-24 June), the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the World Shakespeare Festival and Urban Classic - a mash-up between the BBC Symphony Orchestra and urban acts including Ms Dynamite planned for Waltham Forest Town Hall on 5 July. 

Other much anticipated activity from across the country includes the world premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht, which features a string quartet streamed live from helicopters flying over Birmingham, plus an ‘Unlimited’ programme of events involving deaf and disabled artists. 

Ruth MacKenzie, Director of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival said: “It will be the largest cultural celebration in our lifetime. With new work from the best musicians, comics, artists, film makers and more, there will be arts events taking place in unusual places all over the UK that will showcase the best in international culture when the eyes of the world are on us this summer.”

Principal funders of the London 2012 Festival are Arts Council England, Legacy Trust UK and the Olympic Lottery Distributor. BP and BT are Premier Partners. 

Comedians stand-up for Great Ormond Street Hospital

On 30 March, the biggest comedy line-up in history is coming to the O2 to raise money for a truly amazing cause, the work of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Channel 4’s Comedy Gala has seen an all-star cast of comedians volunteer their services for free. Monies raised will help to pay for two new anaesthetic rooms allowing parents to stay with their child right up until they enter the operating theatres.

If you’ve not been able to get a ticket to this one-off gig, it will be televised on Channel 4 over the Easter weekend. In the meantime here’s an exclusive interview with Michael McIntyre to whet the comedy whistle.

What do you do to stay fit?
Just standing up I’m out of breath, which is really unfortunate as when I’m on stage I have one of those mic things on my head where it is right in front of my mouth so you can hear how out of breath I am. It’s no secret.
I have actually got myself a personal trainer now, his name is Matt. I don’t know why I pay him. I do all the work and all he does is count. 1, 2, 3, 4… that’s all he does!
It seems all you need to be able to do to be a personal trainer is count. I could have got my accountant to do it – it would have been cheaper.

What are your top tips for looking and feeling good?
I like to look at the day as two days. You wake up, have three meals and then go back to bed. Then wake up in the afternoon, have three meals and then go back to bed. And that’s how you do it, that is how you become happy and fat.

Have you ever had to stay in hospital? How was it?
I was there when my wife was giving birth but I just sat there in stunned silence.
I was also in hospital myself when I dislocated my shoulder but I don’t remember it. I have been told about it, and apparently I was really arrogant. I was out of it on morphine and all I would talk about was my tour. I don’t remember a thing about it.

What is your advice to children and young people who have health problems?
Oh, no. I can’t give out advice. Not someone like me.

Would you have liked a health website written specifically for teenagers when you were younger?
It would have been lovely. All we had was the little red book under my mother’s bed. It can be dangerous to Google injuries so it’s good to have something like this to trust. You go on some sites and it’s terrifying.

Do you have any other health advice you’d like to share?
I’m not the one to be giving out health advice. I was told that if I exercised I would have loads of energy and look good but that’s not the case. I only still go because I paid in bulk. I exercise and now I look terrible AND feel terrible.