Tish Tindall and David Gest

The Scotsman 9 January 2023

Tish Tindall was as surprised as anyone when she heard David Gest wanted to meet her. It is not that Tindall was new to showbiz – she is the co-owner of Lossie Entertainment Academy Studios, a podcast host and a prolific songwriter. But the Inverurie-born musician and teacher is hardly the type to hang out with someone like Gest, a friend of Michael Jackson, ex-husband of Liza Minnelli and contender on I’m A Celebrity. What could this Hollywood publicist and producer possibly want from her?

The answer, it seems, was authenticity. Gest, who died in 2016, had a passion for Robert Burns and, through a mutual friend, wanted Tindall to help turn the Ayrshire poet’s life into a musical. This was a long-standing obsession of his; one he claimed was shared by his childhood friend Michael Jackson who, he said, had used Tam O’ Shanter as an inspiration for Thriller. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).