Posers Podcast

I wrote this song while walking in the muddy countryside near where I live in Oxfordshire. It reminded me of William Smith and his geological maps that changed the world - these are the colours written on the earth in the lyrics.

Thank you to Simon Waldram for mixing this!

Hear a charming tale from Whitby Abbey’s earliest years, about Caedmon the cowhand. Unable to read or write, Caedmon nonetheless awoke one morning with a supernatural gift for putting scripture to music and singing it – becoming the first named English poet, and earning himself a place among the brotherhood of monks.

Whitby Abbey commissioned me to retell stories about their atmospheric site, and record them for the new museum on site. In this Dracula Diary, I imagine Bram Stoker's real-life family holiday in Whitby, and how it inspired his most famous book. It was great working with English Heritage on this project.

Two plays by Clean Break theatre company, telling serious stories about faith, hope, truth and justice. In 'House' a family reunion is going badly wrong, while in 'Amongst the Reeds', two young women struggle for survival on the streets.

Rebecca Mileham diagnoses some of the issues for The Sick of The Fringe on another busy day at the Edinburgh Festival.

Comedian Tez Ilyas explores what it means to be a British Muslim in a world of post-Brexit uncertainty.

Rebecca Mileham diagnoses the issues, between mouthfuls of dinner, in her first evening in Edinburgh for The Sick of The Fringe.

PS The actor was Michael Fenton Stevens.

Image by www.comedycv.co.uk/tezilyas/index.html

What does it really mean to be an introvert? Sofie Hagen demonstrates it can involve being warm and funny, as well as having a particular fondness for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, as Rebecca Mileham discovers in her diagnosis for The Sick of The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival.

Image by Karla Gowett

In this dual-language interview (made possible by a fantastic Mandarin translator) Rebecca speaks to the director of A Terrified Soul - a retelling of Macbeth using traditional Chinese opera techniques.

Two more days of frenetic show-going see Rebecca queuing for a psychological thiller with Oxford theatre group Not Quite Write - and then talking to the play's creator Kashyap Raja. All too soon it's Friday, and time for the final performance, Last Dream (on Earth), before it's time to go home.

It's Wednesday already in Edinburgh (and presumably in other places as well) and Rebecca sees an epic six shows. This means there is no time to speak to anyone else for the podcast but she gets a lot of steps in her mission to Become Fitter while doing The Sick of The Fringe.

It's day two of Rebecca's marathon of show-watching in Edinburgh for 'The Sick of the Fringe', a Wellcome Trust project looking at the medical, psychological and mental health themes behind some of the performances. In today's podcast, hear her talk introversion with fans of comedian Sofie Hagen, as well as reflecting on a shocking neurological sci-fi play called Grey Matter - plus obviously revealing how many steps she did. But who is tonight's mystery celebrity spot?