Earlier this year, it emerged that Radio 5 Live's Nicky Campbell and Casualty actor Mark Moraghan had gone into the studio to record an album together.

The pair will go out on the road for their Moonlighting tour next year, but to ensure their vocal chords are in full working order, the duo will be warming up in Yorkshire. Moraghan and Campbell are set to play three gigs later this month in Guiseley, Wakefield and Harrogate. Tickets are limited for the events, but for more information, visit www.
kula-productions.com.

The rumours have been doing the rounds for some years, but now it seems that a film based on the boardgame Monopoly may finally be in the offing.

The brainchild of the Leeds-based Waddingtons, the property game has been a family favourite for generations and it now looks like it will make it to the big screen.

"I took the approach of thinking of the main character falling down a rabbit hole into a place called Monopoly City," said producer Frank Beddor. "The main character is envisaged as a dorky Manhattan real-estate agent who is also an obsessive Monopoly player. A magic chance card transports him to the city where Monopoly money is currency, and where the evil Parker Brothers must be defeated."



There's a definite Yorkshire presence on Dame Shirley Bassey's new album.

The Welsh diva has recently returned to the music scene with her first release of new material in two decades.

Recording tracks written by the current crop of musicians, it's hoped that The Performance will introduce the Goldfinger singer to a new generation of fans and word has it the melancholic After The Rain by Sheffield's Richard Hawley and I Love You Now, penned by Kaiser Chief Nick Hodgson, are among the stand-out tracks.



WH Auden is among the country's best-known and favourite poets.

Sadly, Alan Bennett doesn't have too many good words to say about him. Writing in the London Review of Books about his new play, The Habit of Art, inspired by the relationship between the poet and Benjamin Britten, Bennett describes him as "infuriating", adding in his trademark style: "Auden somewhere makes the distinction between being boring and being a bore. He was never boring – he was too extraordinary for that – but by the time he came back to live in Oxford he had become a bore." Ouch.



It seems Alan Plater is going back to his roots. Born in Jarrow-on-Tyne, the playwright and screenwriter moved to Hull as a child and has always maintained strong links with the city.

However, his new period drama, Joe Maddison's War, will be a chance for him to return to the North-East. Set in Newcastle, the one-off film for ITV will star Kevin Whately as a 1930s' shipyard worker who, with his friend Harry (Robson Green), volunteers to join the Home Guard.

Plater said: "Joe Maddison's War splices three elements: solid historical research, half-remembered family folklore and gossip and a lot of simple, old-fashioned invention. Add them together and it's a love letter to a remarkable generation of ordinary folk who proved their ability to be extraordinary and heroic. I owe them everything."