RUSSELL TOVEY - No.340

Bi-lines for Russell Tovey

Corden & Kylie Minogue
by Ronita Dutta iVillage Magazine

Chubby comic James Corden wowed the audience at last night's Glamour Women of the Year awards with his singing and rapping skills while Kylie Minogue was the big winner of the night, picking up two gongs

As compere for the star-studded event, he opened the glitzy award show with an impressive acapella rendition of I am What I Am and later dueted with fellow rotund comic Jack Black to perform a hilarious version of Kanye West's Gold Digger.

Later in the show Corden further revealed his rapping talents, breaking into an impromptu rap of hit single American Boy with singer Estelle, who picked up the prestigious Editor's Special Award from Glamour Magazine's Editor Jo Elvin.

The event, which took place under a specially erected canopy in London's Berkley square gardens, attracted an A-list crowd.

iVillage spies spotted Lee, Duncan, Anthony and Simon from the pop band Blue, Singer Katy Perry, DJ Chris Moyles, Dizzy Rascal, TV presenters Kirsty Gallacher and Claudia Winkleman, Formula One champ Jenson Button, musician Mark Ronson, singer Rachel Stevens, actor Russell Tovey, Dermot O'Leary, Piers Morgan, WAG Abbey Clancy and Pixie Geldof, among the seriously glam crowd.

Minogue scored the only double of the night, scooping both Entrepreneur of the Year and the coveted Glamour Woman of the Year award, but didn't seem to be enjoying the three-course menu of Roasted Pepper Carpaccio with goat's cheese, roast halibut and asparagus and Peach Melba, most of which was left untouched.

Goodie bags at the end of the night were stuffed full of goodies from event sponsors Aussie Hair care and also included Elemis, Revlon, Nivea, Simple, and Benefit products.

The Turner Prize

from Tribune Magazine 11th July 2010

Who is Aidan Turner? Well, sometimes he's a DJ who works as a doctor's receptionist, sometimes he's a pre-Raphaelite genius and libertine, and sometimes he's a 100-year-old vampire who's kicked the blood-habit and is sharing a flat with a werewolf and ghost.

Being Human was originally made for BBC3 as a once-off pilot starring a completely different set of actors, and when it was commissioned as a six-part drama series they decided to recast it. So out went Angela Riseborough and Guy Flanagan and in came Lenora Crichlow as a friendly ghost, and our own Aidan Turner as a vampire called Mitchell who's trying to be good. (The only actor remaining from the original cast was Russell Tovey as Mitchell's uptight werewolf flatmate.)

"I got a call from my agent telling me about the project: a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf sharing a flat in Bristol," explains Turner. "I was convinced it was a comedy and she was convinced it was a drama. It turns out it was somewhere between the two. I met the producer and I met the director; I had a good meeting, went on holidays. Then they called me back towards the end of the holiday and flew me back to meet me one more time and I got it.

"The funny thing is, when the idea was conceived, Toby Whithouse thought of the character as Irish for no other reason than he wanted to have an Irish vampire. Maybe subconsciously when I went into the meeting it triggered something in his head and worked in my favour."

Being Human is great television: a sitcom premise that develops into a spooky, witty and much bigger story about conspiracy, addiction and denial. It's dark. "And it's going to get darker by the end," Turner promises gleefully.

Turner seems like an enterprising sort, landing theatre job after theatre job and appearing in The Clinic before moving to London and landing two high-profile BBC shows within two months. "Well, the second one wasn't that difficult," he admits. "When you do a read-through for the BBC everyone's there, all the top execs. And they'd been looking for this character for Desperate Romantics for weeks so they asked me to send off a tape. So I got Russell [Tovey] to shoot me on a little handycam doing a scene. The bloody camera was shaking and it was a complete disaster. [He is a werewolf.] But we sent it off and a couple of weeks later I got the part."