Tania Harrison's insight to Latitude 2007

What exactly was it about the saucy nipple tassled cabaret or the Drag Queen Workshop that made me want to book them for the Latitude audience? Good questions. But not ones I’m supposed to write about in my blog apparently. Luckily there are a huge number of acts performing at Latitude that are as exciting and it's so difficult to pin down just a few. It's been a frenzied week of booking and this week we are announcing Richard Curtis and Shane Meadows doing a BAFTA Q&A in the Music and Film Arena, plus James Franco (Tristan & Isolde), Richard Hawley (Love Actually) and Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls) reading short stories by Ron Carlson and Nick Hornby in the Literary Arena. In fact I have to stop on that one because WordTheatre is a great concept; very basically actors bring the short story to a very vibrant life. WordTheatre is huge in L.A. and Al Pacino and Tom Hanks have done it over there and we have to'd and fro'd with some incredibly brilliant actors this week including Meryl Streep (ha, then I woke up) and have confirmed some great performances to bring to Latitude. One low in the rollercoaster ride of confirmations was, I invited the New Statesman to a political debate with The Spectator in the Literary Arena. Surely both would take up the challenge? No, The Spectator declined, apparently they don’t ‘do’ festivals. Shame really. The idea of John Kampfner v Boris Johnson showdown would have been enormous fun. Boris and John in the Guilty Pleasures tent dancing to ELO as and aftershow? Anyhow, back to life. Phil Collins (the Turner prize nominee not the drummer from Genesis thankfully) is another personal favourite and I was thrilled that he has agreed to do an art installation at the festival. Am hoping it will be his Korean/Smiths/karaoke show which is brilliant fun. There are so many interesting art collaborations in the M& F Arena that I want to mention them all but if I had to choose just one it would probably be the Chris Shepherd Q&A. Chris Shepherd has worked with the genius of understated and fiercely witty art; David Shrigley and Chris has created dark and edgy animated movies with David and will be talking about those and his own films prior to the screenings. Phew, and not a nipple tassle in sight...