The bassist of The Beautiful Strangers, Gerry Cooke, uploaded a recording of Janice Long, Peter Powell and Kirsty sharing their views on the band’s first and only single, ‘Elizabeth’ on the BBC Radio 1 programme, Singled Out. It was broadcast 40 years ago today.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1348924883974693

From Ruby

Here’s a video of Billy performing ‘A New England’ at the We Are One event in Leicester on 10th October 2010 (The day of the Kirsty tribute concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire).

From Ruby

In January, Alan uploaded the Kirsty performances on his ‘Mandy Doubt’ YouTube channel.

Mountain Stage, West Virginia (22nd January 1995)

World Cafe, Philadelphia (6th November 1993)

From Ruby

‘Theatre Workshop Or The Ballad Of Ewan And Joan’ is an audio drama by the playwright, Jane Walker. It celebrates and tells the story of Theatre Workshop, the pioneering theatre company founded by Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood in Manchester in the 1930s. It produced plays such as Shelagh Delaney’s ‘A Taste Of Honey’ and Joan’s ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’. As some of you may know, Joan was Kirsty’s godmother. Kirsty’s mother, Jean joined Theatre Workshop as a choreographer in 1948, eventually marrying Ewan a year later. Kirsty, herself, was in John Newnham Selective Secondary School’s production of ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’ in Croydon in the 1970s.

The cast:

Michael Ashtiany as Ewan MacColl

Francesca Anderson as Joan Littlewood

Charlie Richards as Newsboy and Kenneth Tynan

Tom Rope as Archie Harding and Gerry Raffles

Kathryn Georghiou as Shelagh Delaney and Rosalie Williams

Rebecca Bugeja as Jean Newlove and Avis Bunnage

Jane Walker as Woman

Chris Gregory as Colonel Pennyman

Other voices were played by members of the cast.

Most of the characters in this drama are based on real people who played vital roles in the Theatre Workshop story. However, this drama is a work of fiction and the conversations are imagined based on real events and don’t accurately represent actual conversations or interactions.

You can listen to it using one of the links below.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/411730/episodes/18495128-theatre-workshop-an-audio-drama-by-jane-walker

https://podscan.fm/podcasts/pen-to-print-podcasts-for-aspiring-writers/episodes/theatre-workshop-or-the-ballad-of-ewan-and-joan-write-on-audio-and-friends

https://podtail.com/podcast/alternative-stories-and-fake-realities/-theatre-workshop-an-audio-drama-by-jane-walker/

From Ruby

The Wonder Stuff frontman, Miles Hunt did a interview with Mark Millar for ‘The XS Noize Podcast’ talking about 40 years of the band and working with Kirsty on ‘Welcome To The Cheap Seats’.

From Ruby

Simon Wilson has created sheet music for Soho Square at muscore.com (the first link is directly to the PDF while at the muscore link you can register for free to download the mscz file for editing or key changes etc)

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all having a wonderful day so far. You may recall that I did a post on Kirstyfest 2025 and mentioned that I would be doing a collaboration with Tobias Gronvall for his YouTube channel.  I met up with him in Reading on 21st December to discuss all things Kirsty.  On Friday the 30th, Tobias uploaded the interview. I had a brilliant time meeting up and I’m looking forward to doing more videos with him in the future.

From Ruby

Having covered ‘They Don’t Know’ with Matthew Sweet under the guise of Sid n Susie back in 2013 for ‘Under the Covers Vol.3′ on BooBoo Records, Susanna Hoffs’ version was  released in 2024 under her own name on Baroque Folk Records, you can also find it on Qobuz and presumably the other streaming services.

Here’s Kirsty’s version of ‘Days’ with Ray Davies’ vocals on top taken from The Kinks’ original 1968 version. The mix was done by buggers77.

From Ruby

On 16th December, Play Something We Know! uploaded their wonderful rendition of ‘They Don’t Know’, sung by Jules Winchester.

Paul McFadden played bass along to Kirsty’s version of ‘A New England’.

Years Apart’s cover of ‘Chip Shop’ was uploaded on the 5th.

Return 2 Sender performed a fun version at the Catholic Club in Doncaster last week on the 6th.

From Ruby