Arts Diary: Will Marriott

YORKSHIRE could well have another star in the making. At 70, Mollie Daley, from Keighley, is already something of a showbiz veteran, but next week she will make her debut as a TV talent show judge.

Showboaters will see 10 amateur entertainers battle it out to win a place in a cruise ship troupe and Mollie, casting director for the Skipton-based Peel Entertainment Group, will be keeping a watchful eye on the contestants, who include at 56-year-old hairdresser and a 21-year-old steelworker.

“My greatest pleasure is to mentor and encourage young people but I do have a very strong work ethic which I like to impress upon people,” says Mollie, who started her career in Rep. “I’ve been in the business a very long time and like to think that with age comes experience.” The show starts on Sky1HD on September 13 and with Mollie having already been credited with making Simon Cowell look like a pussycat, you have been warned.

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AHEAD of their homecoming gig next week, Kaiser Chiefs are whetting fans’ appetites by posting footage of two recent live performances on their website. The Leeds band, who play Kirkstall Abbey next weekend, released their fourth studio album The Future is Medieval this summer and two renditions of standout track Starts With Nothing can now be viewed at www.kaiserchiefs.com

AMERICAN actress Anne Hathaway may have come in for some stick thanks to a slightly dodgy Yorkshire accent in the blockbuster One Day, but even her co-star Huddersfield’s own Jodie Whittaker admits to feeling the pressure. “Whenever I told people I had a part in One Day, they would say pretty much without fail, ‘That’s my favourite book’, which puts you under a certain amount of pressure to deliver.“

SOME of us just get a few weeks holiday a year, but it seems the Arctic Monkeys really know how to relax. Much to the disappointment of fans, the Sheffield band have announced they are taking a 12-month break from the recording business, insisting they won’t return to the studio until 2013.

The band have been a familiar face on the festival circuit this summer, following the release of their album Suck It and See, and have a UK tour planned for later in the year, but frontman Alex Turner says he does not want to write the band’s next album while on the road. “We come up with a few ideas on sound checks and that but I have written too many terrible lyrics touring around,” he said, adding that when they do record a new album it could be a very different sound.

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“It’s hard to do the old chip shop rock ‘n’ roll. After you’ve done it once, you don’t sort of hang around that many chippies any more. I think it’s natural, I couldn’t ever write about my surroundings in the same way as I did back then.”

Until Turner is struck by artistic inspiration, fans will have to be content with an online trailer from their two headline shows at Sheffield’s Don Valley Bowl in June, which has been posted on their website, starting rumours a behind-the-scenes DVD could well be in the making.

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