SOUND AND VISION
From music to film and the written word, Theresa Talbot reveals her cultural favourites
I love female torch song singers, so either Judy Garland (above), Edith Piaf or Amy Winehouse. They were all quite vulnerable and taken before their time. The first time I heard Amy she was only 15 or 16. I worked at a radio station where one of the DJS was sent new music. Her voice touched me.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I love this book, it has everything – crime, relationships, weird people. I love that the main character is never named, even though it’s written in the first person. It’s brilliant.
Gregory Peck. As a kid, all the movies shown on TV were from the ’40s and ’50s, and I thought that’s what men were like. His voice came from the chest, and he was a good actor and also looked good. He seemed like one of the good guys.
I used to live near Kelvingrove Art Gallery as a young child and I loved looking at it. I also enjoy the folklore of it supposedly being built back to front and the builder throwing himself off it to his death. I love any tale that’s a bit macabre.
I haven’t watched TV through lockdown, but I’m going to go back to Cranford, with Judi Dench and Celia Imrie, which was brilliant, and Six Feet Under (right), the US series set in an undertaker’s. That was something completely different, so dark and funny.
In The Snack-bar by Edwin Morgan. He came to our school for a reading and I was blown away. I read this and cried for days. The older it gets the more it affects me. It’s about an old blind man and the indignities he has to go through. It’s wonderful, but so sad and tragic.
Three stand out – Tony Bennett, Frankie Valli and Liza Minnelli. My sister and I went to see Liza and we couldn’t believe we were watching Judy Garland’s daughter. We called my mum and let her hear Liza singing, and she thought Liza might even be better than Judy.
Usually I would have a huge list from Michelangelo to Amy Winehouse but now I would just love a big family dinner, which probably sounds naff. My parents are gone and I don’t have kids, but my husband has two sons and his mum down south, so it would be lovely to have them as well as my brother, sister, nieces and nephews, and a big revolving door for friends to drop by.