Cultured. On Sunday
Our weekend edition for longer reads and cultural pointers
This week’s Cultured. On Sunday travels from Live Theatre’s stage to the vaults of Tyne Tees Television, with a few unexpected detours along the way.
We’ve got a preview of new play Shuggy Boats, via an interview with BAFTA-winning producer (and debut playwright) Jacquie Lawrence, who charts its journey from two fleeting characters in a novel to a full stage production - with pit stops including a sitcom, a feature film script and a couple of residencies in “development hell”.
Inspired by new documentary Man on the Run, this week’s From The Vaults dives into the Tyne Tees TV archives to explore the Wonfor/McCartney Venn diagram.
There’s a joyful dispatch from the Hatton Gallery’s HAPPY! exhibition (which, we’re told, can send gloom packing), and Tony Henderson previews a powerful exhibition about the women who lived part of their lives behind the walls of Newcastle Prison.
Elsewhere, North East author Matt Wesolowski reviews Catriona Ward’s Nowhere Burning ahead of a Whitley Bay in-conversation event; Boxing Clever revisits an 11-season sitcom classic from across the pond; photographer Joanne Coates opens up her archive in My Life Through a Lens; and Sunday’s recipe comes from multi-award-winning My Delhi executive chef, Gaurav Dayal.
Hope you enjoy it all. Happy Sunday!
In a series of recollections, Sam Wonfor is sharing her rather special back catalogue of memories of and personal connection to the iconic 1980s music show, The Tube and other telly treasures.*
*First published during Cultured. North East’s time as the arts and culture section for the region’s subscription platform, The QT
Close encounters of a McCartney kind
I can’t remember my dad not having a beard.
But I know he didn’t have one for the first eight-or-so years of my life
And I can also tell you the day he decided to grow one (well, not the actual date, but the happenings thereof).
It was in 1983-ish and in his role as locations director for The Tube, he’d just finished filming a rare interview with Linda McCartney who had a touring photography exhibition on the go.
She’d had a standing chat to a very pregnant Paula (Yates) about photographs, playing the keyboards in Wings, family, the merits of black and white vs colour, getting relaxed photos of Jim Morrison, being married to a Beatle, sheep, meeting the Queen and a tripping Tube cameraman.
The film, which lasted about 15 minutes, was one of probably hundreds Dad made for The Tube, but it was to start a chain of events which would shape the rest of his working life… to say nothing of his face.
After the interview was finished, Dad had one of the very few photos he ever got taken with the people he was filming.
As the story he told goes, Linda asked him why he didn’t like getting his photo taken and he replied that it was because he didn’t like the double chin he’d amassed - in large part due to my Nana’s legendary fried egg sandwiches and spam fritters.*
*I’m not sure whether he said the last bit to Linda
Cue the lovely Linda offering a duo of solutions - the first one being her hiding his chin with her hand while the photographer took the picture. The second being a simple suggestion: why not just grow a beard?
By the time he rocked up to Regents Park during series two to film a chat between Linda’s husband and Paula’s maternity leave stand-in, Leslie Ash, the Wonfor beard was nicely bedded in, as you can see from another rare Geoff + celebrity photo.
Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle who currently works as a tutor for Faber Academy. Matt’s debut thriller, Six Stories (2016), was an Amazon international bestseller. Other books in his catalogue include Hydra, Changeling, Beast, Deity and Demon.
(Dont) Call Mum, a novella for the Northern Weird Project was published by Wild Hunt in 2025.
Nowhere Burning
There’s always pressure on authors for their next book. I can’t imagine the degree of pressure on Catriona Ward to follow up a consistently incredible back catalogue, one which contains The Last House on Needless Street.
Publishing likes to throw ‘the next Stephen King’ around willy-nilly but to be rightly admired (and name-checked in a book) by the man himself has got to bump Ward up that line of succession.
In fact no, it has nothing to do with King and everything to do with the writing.
Ward was the first woman to win the August Derleth award for best horror novel twice in a row for her debut and it’s follow up. Nowhere Burning might be her best yet.
High in the mountains sits the ruins of Nowhere House, once a remote sanctuary for movie star Leaf Winham. After the place was gutted by fire and the graves discovered, the place became a refuge for lost kids and runaways who have created their own family in a place where adults are no longer allowed. The story follows a pair of such runaways, Riley and her younger brother as they follow the pull of the elusive Nowhere Children.
Of course, the comparisons with Michael Jackson are there, but Ward elevates such simple metaphor and weaves her mythology into the very dust of the landscape. As Ward so evocatively reflects ‘Urban legends tell us who we are, and what we fear.’
Yes, it’s scary but it’s more than that; a true emotional investment yet Nowhere Burning also reads like a narrative documentary that you cannot peel your eyes away from. What is so prominently brilliant about this one is the tenderness that sits just behind the horror, the human frailty that slips its hand into the horror and squeezes tight.
Matt will be in conversation with Catriona Ward at The Bound, Whitley Bay on Tuesday (February 24) at 7pm. Tickets here.
We’ve been asking North East photographers to open up their archives and select a double handful of images which encapsulate life as they’ve captured it
Joanne Coates, an award-winning visual artist spent a lot of time with her grandparents when she was growing up.
“My grandad would get me to use disposables over months and think about what I was making. I was about eight,” says the artist who spent her childhood in North Yorkshire and now lives between County Durham and the “tip” of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Her teenage years, when she was “part of an alternative culture of ‘grebos and goths’”, gave Joanne more opportunities to develop her passion for capturing life.
“I would go on nights out and borrow friends’ cameras to document our life,” she says.
“I don’t know where those images ended up but they were a document of our times and escapism.”
Joanne studied Fine Art before photography became “the only thing for me throughout a chaotic life, the only constant. It was never really a hobby for me. I didn’t really have the luxury of photography as a hobby, it was a necessity,” she adds.
Now an award-winning visual artist - and a farm worker - Joanne uses her photography to explore issues around class, and the countryside.
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice is a cast iron family favourite in his house.
Over the course of our children’s lives a number of ‘go to’ options have developed in our family; staple items that are guaranteed to deliver without the need for a referee, a committee or even much thought.
Need to knock up a quick tea? Defrost a pot of Mum’s homemade pasta sauce. Looking for an activity everyone will be up for? Off to the bowling alley.
Stuck for something to watch on the telly? Whack a Modern Family on.
I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve worked our way through the 11 seasons of this brilliant sitcom. We’re certainly well past the stage when there is a requirement to watch them in any sort of order, we can drop in and out at random and hit the ground running like a telly addict version of the SAS.
Gaurav Dayal is the executive chef at award-winning Indian street food delight, My Delhi, which serves up authentic favourites inspired by the roadside stalls of Delhi from its restaurants in Newcastle, Sunderland and Leicester.
We asked Gaurav to share a recipe and he couldn’t have been quicker to send over the step by step guide to My Delhi’s Dhaba Chicken Curry.
In North India, a ‘dhaba’ is a roadside eatery serving bold, home-style food to travellers along busy highways. This Dhaba Chicken Curry captures that rustic spirit - tender chicken simmered with caramelised onions and warming spices in a rich, comforting gravy.
Serves: 4
Cooking time: 40–45 minutes
Ingredients
2½ tablespoons vegetable oil
500g chicken (boneless thigh preferred), cut into bite-sized pieces
1½ tablespoons ginger-garlic paste
3 medium onions, finely sliced
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon red chilli powder (adjust to taste)
Salt, to taste
3-4 sprigs fresh coriander, finely chopped
200-250ml warm water
Method
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Add the sliced onions and cook slowly until deeply golden brown, stirring regularly.
Add the ginger-garlic paste and sauté for 3-4 minutes until fragrant and the raw aroma disappears.
Stir in the chicken pieces and cook for around 5 minutes, allowing them to lightly colour.
Add the turmeric, coriander powder, red chilli powder and salt. Cook for 1 minute to allow the spices to bloom in the oil.
Add the chopped tomatoes and cook until softened and broken down. Pour in enough warm water to create a rich gravy consistency and bring to a gentle boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is fully cooked and tender, and the curry has thickened.
Turn off the heat and allow the curry to rest for 4–5 minutes before serving. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander.
Serve with fluffy basmati rice or warm naan for a true dhaba-style experience.