Set aside quality time over the holiday to enjoy Brian Brennan’s Brief Encounters with a star-studded cast of 64 entertainers. (Modestly-priced subscription required, see below*. If you’re a subscriber and lack your pass code, please email editor@canadianjournalist.ca)
From poignant to charming to hilarious, the columns include Brennan’s interviews with satiric songwriter Nancy White; pop superstars Michael Nesmith and Kenny Rogers; actor Elizabeth Taylor; actor-director John Neville; authors John Mortimer, Leon Uris and Brian Moore; and singers Cleo Laine and Vera Lynn.
Here’s a wee taste:
“Andy Williams cracked open his fourth bottle of beer and pointed it at my notebook…”
“Kenny Rogers was having a musical-identity crisis at age 39”
“What’s past is prologue,” said Sylvia Tyson.
“By the time he was 49, Johnnie Ray had dried the tears that carried him to stardom…”
“I think we should go and have lunch,” John Mortimer said. “Do you like to drink wine?”
“Rejecting the “theatre of taxidermy” in his native England, Keith Johnstone vowed to create something different …”
The final entry in Brief Encounters is now published, completing the series. Read it here on F&O before its next iteration — as Brennan’s 12th book, currently in progress.
Click here for the Brief Encounters column page.
*Note to readers: To read Brian Brennan’s column, click here to contribute to F&O. After payment you’ll be taken to a page with the pass code. We work on the honour system, and request a minimum of $.27 for one story. If you are already a subscriber, and your site password did not get through, please email editor@canadianjournalist.ca. Thank you for supporting independent, no-ads, no-spam journalism.)