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MUSEUM LATES: FRINGE FRIDAYS

The National Museum of Scotland opens its

doors once again for this adults-only, after- hours showcase of performances, comedy

and music, curated from the festival madness outside by The List. The evening of 16 August

will feature appearances by comedians Jay

Lafferty, Harriet Dyer and Sam Taunton;

performances by the Black Blues Brothers and Noise Boys; as well as cabaret star

Gingzilla. Guests will be able to keep fresh into the late hours with plenty of bars and nibbles

on hand, as well as free entrance into the NMS’ summer exhibition, Wild and Majestic:

Romantic Visions of Scotland. National Museum of Scotland, 16, 23 Aug, 7.30pm,

£20 (£18), nms.ac.uk

SO YOU THINK YOU’RE FUNNY?

The semi-fi nalists of Gilded Balloon’s So

You Think You’re Funny? competition have battled it out through the month of August,

performing seven minutes of their best

material before a panel of discerning judges. Now the winners of the semi-fi nal heats will

ascend to the competition’s ultimate stage: a

two-and-a-half hour showdown which will see

one person nally crowned the funniest up- and-coming comedian around. The judging

panel this year will feature Gilded Balloon head honchos, Karen and Katy Koren; The

Times’ Helen Harkins; Beyond the Joke’s Bruce Dessau; director of the Melbourne

Comedy Festival, Susan Provan; and celebrity

judge Jenny Eclair. Previous winners and

contestants have included the likes of Aisling

Bea, Maisie Adam, Graham Norton, Dylan Moran, Lee Mack and David O’Doherty.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, Thu 22 Aug, 7.30pm,

£15.50, soyouthinkyourefunny.co.uk

TRACEY THORN Pop veteran and best-selling author brings her latest release to the Edinburgh International Book Festival

B efore she became one half of acclaimed musical duo Everything but the Girl, and author of the best-selling memoir Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn was just another cynical teenager living in a commuter town, waiting for her life to begin. The musician and writer comes to the Edinburgh International Book Festival to discuss her latest book Another Planet, which explores her adolescence growing up in post-war suburbia. Written with warm insight and her signature wit, Another Planet has been a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, and hailed as ‘wise, tender, beautifully observed [and] deadly funny’. Her Book Festival talk promises to go into greater detail about the lasting effects that this stifl ing environment had on her life and career, as well as the other creative icons to have emerged from the green belt cul-de-sacs of the 1970s. Thorn’s talk is part of the EIBF’s Telling Her Story strand, which brings women’s experiences and the ght for gender equality to the forefront.

Charlotte Square Gardens, 19 Aug, 8.30pm, £12 (£10). 96 THE LIST FESTIVAL 14-26 Aug 2019