Natalie Vincent

This weekend was a miserable milestone for British politics. We saw a desperately defiant Prime Minister and his cabinet work harder in three days to save the job of one special adviser, Dominic 'No Regrets' Cummings , than helping the country fighting a deadly disease in more than three months.  So I thought I would cheer myself up with a Disney-Pixar movie. What could go wrong? SPOILERS BELOW

Hello again, it has been eight years since my last confession post. The reasons are myriad; buying my first home, working and managing to lock myself out for a few years. The blog. Not the flat. Add to the mix, pesky appendicitis (2016) and a catastrophic knee injury (2018) resulting in some not-very-happy-thoughts, (2016-) , I have been less than willing to put myself out there for scrutiny. (Possibly my favourite video this year so far - best sums up 2020 and earphones recommended) I outright refused to share my mental health troubles online, which in hindsight colossally backfired; I instead buried them in food, drink and comfort sleeping. And sinking myself into so much on-demand content, my brain resembles The Oasis from  Ready Player One.  So instead, I focused on work writing content for theatre websites, led projects in website journalism and property news and most worked as a digital sub-editor recently at a national newspaper, right up until COVID-19 came in a...

Emotive and manipulative film-making masquerades as factual documentary  Last night I decided to watch BBC3 for a change instead of Panorama. It was about tax havens. Too heavy for a Monday, I thought, so scrolled through and caught the end of Junior Doctors.   Apparently BBC3 is running a season of Body Beautiful programmes, targeted for its 13-25 demographic, in light of the pressure on young people to look perfect.     The show on this evening was “ Dying for Clear Skin ”; having suffered from horrendous acne as a teen and early twenties (with the occasional monthly breakout now), I suspected that it would be touching upon the drug Roaccutane, which I had been treated with twice -   at 17 and 20.  Boy, did I underestimate that. What followed was an hour-long, scaremongering propaganda film about the dangers of Roaccutane, interwoven with highly emotive stories about young people who had apparently taken their own lives during or follow...

If you look at the poster, they have added a caveat! In the past year, I have found that communicating directly with directors of huge companies more helpful than going through switchboards and customer services. Why? Because if you use enough initiative and guesswork, you can sidestep the gatekeepers and get direct responses and solutions, from someone who is often full of commonsense, rather than the pencil pushers lower down. This worked with a telecomms company I was having trouble with, and my problem was solved within one week. This time, I was annoyed to find out that the uncut version of The Hunger Games was only being released in the UK on Blu-Ray format. Not a problem, a lot of you may say, but when you are not in possession of a Blu-ray player but  a perfectly functioning DVD player, the decision seems rather cynical. I mean, it's ony seven seconds of extra footage, but I just wanted to see what they decided to cut  to get a 12a rating. So I decided to write...

Depressed that the Olympics are over? Don't be - it doesn't end for our athletes, nor does it have to for you There's about 61 million people suffering from acute sports withdrawal symptoms - but sporting events happen all year round. The last fortnight has shown how truly Great our British athletes are. A plethora of gold, silver and bronze-winning antics has seen 65 medals, 29 of which are gold, across sports as diverse as dressage, heptathlon, rowing, sailing, boxing and long-distance running. So much so in fact, that once our collective jaw stopped dropping each time Team GB achieved a  gold, the whole country was bathed in a happy, exuberant pride, and we started walking around with smiles on our faces and dancing with policeman. Now that the Olympics are over, we are looking forward to the Paralympics , where the GB medal haul is expected to be at least double of what they accumulated in the past two weeks. But after that, what is in store for the country, save ...

Photo courtesy of Eastern Daily Press 2011 Last weekend, a 90-year old man was rushed by helicopter to an NHS hospital in Cambridgeshire, after suffering chest pains. He had a blocked coronary artery, but was otherwise healthy. He was immediately admitted, operated on and discharged after four nights of exemplary care. Two weeks ago, an 89-year old man with severe kidney problems and breathing difficulties was rushed by ambulance to another NHS hospital, this time in South London. It took him hours to be seen, a male nurse told him to go home as "they needed the bed" and that "there was a bug". He was there for four days where the afore-mentioned infection made him sicker. He was finally discharged, none the better for his care. The differences between these two men? One was the Duke of Edinburgh, whilst the other was the father of a close family friend. Let's call him Michael*. I think you can guess which of them was cared for in NHS Papworth, Cambridgeshi...

Well, it's November and the UK once again has its collective knickers in a twist over one of our most beloved symbols of remembrance; the poppy. This time furore has broken out over a decision by FIFA not to allow poppies to be stitched onto England shirts for wear in their friendly against Spain. Amidst allegations of Sepp Blatter and co being biased against England, corrupt, and having no respect, there some that are quite frankly ridiculous, jingoistic and downright off-topic. Well the reason FIFA have given is that they do not allow extra symbols that may have religious or political connotations to be included in a strip. We can argue until we are blue in the face that the poppy isn't either of those, but the point is that they said no. So deal with it gracefully and perhaps get the team to donate (quietly) their collective match fees to the British Legion.   Some of my favourites circulating on Twitter : T he poppy is a national symbol - no it's not. End of. The...

Where: Shaftesbury Theatre, London Previews: Until 27 September Opening Night: 28 September Great night out: for friends and couples, and those who don’t usually “do musicals”. Leave the kids at home for this one though - there’s quite a bit of sexual/drugs references and swearing throughout. Morning after effect: singing “I Can't Fight This Feeling” in the shower Recommend to friends: Hell yeah! (extend index and little finger in ‘rock out’ gesture) Best bit: Dennis and Lonny’s heartfelt duet over the Fogmaster 5000 machine. From first appearances, Rock of Ages, fresh from Broadway and now previewing at the Shaftesbury Theatre, may strike you as another run-of-the-mill jukebox musical. Basing an entire narrative around rock anthems from the Eighties could be a huge risk. But in this case, the risk has paid off extremely well. Rock of Ages has been adapted for the London stage by starring British favourites Justin Lee Collins (famous for reuniting the A-...

Like buses, inspiration hasn't come by for a wee while for me, then bang, two come along at once. The Daily Fail Strikes Again As many of you know, I am an avid Daily Mail critic, often not being able to comprehend the levels of poor journalism they allow to slip into their particular brand of schadenfreude. This morning offered a cracker of an example:   Career on thin ice: Former Hollyoaks star Jeremy Edwards is seen working as a builder's labourer to earn extra money Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2028639/Former-Hollyoaks-star-Jeremy-Edwards-working-builders-labourer-earn-extra-money.html#ixzz1VlE54qUI Lifted straight from the Sunday Mirror the previous day, Mail staff decided that spiteful comment was better than proof, whilst reporting that former Holby City star Jeremy Edwards has become a labourer whilst his career has seemingly hit the doldrums. The proof? The guy was wheeling a barrow and emptying it into a skip outside a house in No...

Well seeing as everybody in blogosphere is giving their two-pence worth on the News of The World, I thought I'd might join in too. This week we in Britain have been waking up to a kind of Groundhog Day news-wise, except that the allegations of voicemail interception get considerably worse every day. The wolves are pacing outside the doors at News International in Wapping. When the accusations of voicemail interception (I personally HATE the term 'phone-hacking', it is louche and lazy) arose, we sneered at the likes of Sienna Miller and other famous celebrities who it happened to. Hell, we even cracked a grin when we heard former editor Rebekah Brooks' may have been a victim of it. But that all changed faster than a Coalition U-turn when it emerged that the PI working for NOTW had allegedly been accessing the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, and DELETING messages left by frantic friends and relatives, who still believed her to be alive. Only then did the pr...

Hi chums, this is my initial draft before it appears on Theatreland, which may be edited.... Great night out: for romantic numbers and tearjerking moments Morning after effect: checking furtively over your shoulder, just in case that coffee mug really did move by itself Recommend to friends? For die-hard Ghost fans Best bit: Oda Mae Brown’s scenes with Sam Interesting factoid: Poignantly, it was at this very same theatre in 2006 that Patrick Swayze performed in Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit. With the film-to-stage adaptations satuating the West End at the moment, you could forgive me for being a little on the cautious side. After all, Shrek: The Musical, despite sounding awful, did not suck (apart from Richard Blackwood as Eddie-Murphy-as-Donkey). Still in previews, the show is a faithful by-the-numbers adaptation of the film, brought up to date for the 21st century, complete with Euro signs and a digital camera. Richard Fleeshman, best known for playing tort...

I am aware, that when I started this blog that it would be covering things of a sci-fi nature. But after reading a certain story in tonight's Evening Standard , I had to speak out. Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker of our House of Commons is clearly bored. Not content with her husband presiding over Parliamentary sessions, she has taken to Twitter to air her views on absolutely everything. This week, failing retailers Carpetright, Thorntons and Jane Norman have come in for some spectacularly ill-timed and wincingly juvenile criticism, a la Bercow. Of Thorntons: 'yuck tasting rip-off' Of Carpetright 'over-rated' Of Jane Norman: only sold 'clothes for skinny minies (sic)' Not only can Bercow, an alumus of independent school Marlborough College, have trouble spelling (minies, anybody?), she also displays breathtaking insensitivity towards the thousands of staff who have lost their jobs as a result of store closures. Interesting to note that Habitat, also in adm...

Us girls finally have our very own Da Vinci Code novel - with angels. Lauded as the new bad-asses of supernatural fiction, with Legion and Supernatural as prime examples, this new offering cuts a hefty swathe through the reams of pithy vampire-fiction out there, (anyone for a sparkling vampire?) courtesy of Stephanie Mayer and co. This one definitely ain't one for the tweenies..... Angelology follows Evangeline, a young nun in Upstate NY who stumbles onto a millienia-old battle between the fallen angels of old Testament fame who took a fancy to human women; their offspring, The Nephilim, and a group of anti-angel secret service agents. Richard Dawkins would just be salivating at the thought. In the meantime, a young art historian is approached by a mysterious family, headed by a menacing old man who appears to be hiding something.... The story jumps between present day New York and World War II Paris and Eastern Europe, where the quest is on to find an item of impossible value...