The appeal of an exciting second life, made all the more realistic by increasingly powerful personal computers is unquestionable. The world of the massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG for short, offers players a tempting escape from reality. Online, normal people of all ages can become heroes, villians, leaders of extensive online groups known as "guilds" and even enjoy...
Auditing giant PricewaterhouseCoopers have issued a report that many financial commentators may find surprising. Where as other industries are feeling the pinch of the increasingly shaky economy, PwC predict that the entertainment sector will experience a rise in compound growth of nearly 7% over the next five years.
Incorporating a huge international survey, PwC claim that, despite...
Danger, debauchery, drinking and Dylan Thomas seem to all the world like natural bedfellows and, one might add, what a rather adroit menage they would make. Despite the fact that he is unilaterally hailed as Wales's artistic hero, he is less the literary father of the nation than its roguish, prodigal son. With Matthew Rhys, Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller all starring in The Edge of Love, a...
The Fringe Festival has been in existence for just as long as the Edinburgh Festival proper. Both inceptions are inextricably knitted together and began life bound up way back in 1947. Our story begins when what can only sufficiently be described as a mob of eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the newly formed Edinburgh International Festival. Taking advantage of the huge crowds...
A variety of explanations have been put forward including the traditional Glastonbury mud-bath caused by repeated bad weather, the festivals uncharacteristically lack lustre 2008 line-up, the sharp rise in British festivalgoers defecting to European festivals and the surge in smaller, more intimate festivals popping up across the UK.
It is certainly possible that repeated bad weather could...
Countless people enjoy these magazines and the reality TV shows that provide a steady stream of willing victims, preferring them to art, theatre or literature. The snobs would have you believe our society is crumbling around our ears, with the likes of David Beckham as our idols what hope could civilised society possibly have? In truth, although the modern celebrity is a staple of our media...
Author, director, comedian, physician and all round polymath Jonathan Miller has been all over The Times and the BBC this week running the West End into the proverbial square ditch. Miller insisted that because his version of Hamlet was cast by relative unknowns he couldn't get a gig in the West End. "Producers might have been swayed" he contends, "if I'd been prepared to put in for more...
The improved gadget was demonstrated to an audience of over 5000 elite techies and die hard Apple fanatics the ranks of which included Al Gore, forty-fifth vice president of the US.
The new model, named the iPhone 3G boasts browsing speeds up to 36% faster than the Nokia N95 and Treo 750, the brushed aluminium back has been replaced with glossy black plastic (no sign of the speculated...
The main point of the article was "the unadvertised extra costs... that add up, sending the price of the a day out spiralling." The cost of visiting attractions on their own is not, however, so crushing. If one looks hard enough, family breaks can be found for as little as 125 GBP for a family of four - which includes entry to a top theme park and a hotel stay for the night. Not a bad price to...
It is only when you get close enough do you realise that despite their deeply out of place appearance these ladies are more a part of Margate than any other resident, they are in fact a part of the town, they are made from it. Painstakingly crafted from shells, primarily those of the local scallops the glistening white shell ladies are the pearls of Margate.
The sculptures are the work of a...
