The Scotsman 19 September 2023

The story goes that Douglas Maxwell was on holiday in Greece when he met a man in a bar. The guy was a DJ with ambitions to run his own club, but claimed to have another role.

“He said the way he was saving his money was by keeping an eye on the Brits abroad,” says Maxwell, who as a playwright is always on the lookout for interesting characters. “But Kalamaki was full of old people so there was nothing to do. I came away thinking, ‘Gold dust!'”

Perhaps a story is all this was. According to Maxwell’s wife, theatre producer Caroline Newall, nothing of the kind happened. Yes, they were on holiday in Zante, no doubt they visited a bar or two, but the rest is her husband’s imagination. [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).