You can check out videos from last year’s shows on our new London Fashion Week channel. We got fantastic interviews backstage with Christopher Kane, Jens Laugesen and Duro Olowu. We also caught up with the fabulous Diane Von Furstenburg at her new shop in Mayfair. Have a look though the interviews to whet your appetite for the September shows.

t5m cameras and presenters will be backstage at all the best runway shows all over the city, covering the most exclusive On schedule shows and the most obscure and exciting Off schedule shows, hoping to unearth this year’s new design talent. This very blog will be bringing you a catwalk report every afternoon, with the latest on the collections and what the talk of the tents was each day. As well as exclusive videos, we’ll also have guest fashion writers posting articles and photo blogs every day of fashion week.

For now, there are new videos up on t5m’s WOMAD channel, including some charming chats with drumming legend Bobby Cobham, loveable junglist Roni Size, and some very special interviews with Eddy Grant on playing for his idol Nelson Mandela.

We’ve also got a new London Film Festival channel on the site, where you can watch interviews with the likes of Halle Berry, Sienna Miller and Wes Anderson. It’s ready to be filled with more red carpet interviews from this year’s festival. Stay tuned!

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Hannah caught up with him outside his tourbus at the WOMAD Festival where he talked to us about his pioneering days as a young musician, the challenges that he overcame early on in his career and his era-defining work in the studio that he set up.

The EMI deal, and Eddy’s involvement in it as an artist and composer, represents one response to the changing landscape of the modern music industry. To hear the music industry discussed in detail, by the managers behind the biggest names recording and performing today, check out the Music Managers Forum Channel on t5m and become part of the debate.

The first programme, shown on Monday, was a sensitive and in-depth look at the man behind the theory, examining aspects of Charles Darwin’s personal life.

The programme revealed his curious mind, often debilitated by psychosomatic illness and sorrow due to the loss of his young daughter.

Be sure to tune in to the next two programmes, airing at 8 p.m. on Channel 4 on Monday 11th and then Monday 18th August. Vehement atheist Dawkins presents Darwin’s ideas on evolution with passion and expected enthusiasm.

He meets a woman who has developed a resistance to the AIDS virus, and demonstrates the history of life on Earth using a piano. Intriguing stuff.

Not to be missed, however God ‘deluded’ you are!

If that whets your appetite, there are many more fascinating clips on Richard Dawkins’ channel on t5m

Enjoy!

t5m

So up next on the agenda was Chinawhite’s ‘Rock the Polo’, one of the most exclusive events of the year so far.

The event was for the England vs Australia polo match, but as we soon found out most of the guests were pretty oblivious to the polo, and who can blame them, with the endless supply of free champagne, gourmet food, outstanding entertainment, great music and to top it off, one of the hottest days of the year so far.

So I chucked the festival-chic to the side and rocked up in some of my designer gear!

The Chinawhite tent was amazing, with five different sections in total, including a nightclub which was built on the back of the main section.

Words can’t describe how beautiful it all looked but I’m sure some of our stills do!

The tent soon filled up with the who’s who of high society, spreading to the whole of the London scene and beyond - well, west London at least! Fantastic mixture of people from models to actors to club owners to sportsmen.

Everyone looked like they were having a great time, and who wouldn’t be with Laser man as entertainment…helium filled balloons with attached acrobats, the world’s best African drummers and flame throwers not to mention Mark Ronson’s set, joined by Wiley who dropped ‘Rolex’ not once but twice!!

Highlights of the day-

DJ lesson with the fantastic Sparkie M’Larkie,…

Getting up close and rather personal with a few of the male ELITE models…

Doing some hilarious people-watching and deciding what NOT to wear at the polo with Holby City’s Tina Hobley, who is absolutely stunning and really lovely. Her polo love story brought a tear to my eye! (check the interview)

Being chatted up by the new Bond villain,

and finally magician Dynamo playing his typical tricks on me!

Rock the Polo was a great event this year and if you weren’t there you seriously did miss out, I can’t wait until next year.

Chinawhite didn’t just rock the polo this year they smashed it!

Until next time then, but for now I’m ducking out to Ibiza…

Hannah

xxxxx

Babylon Circus was an intriguing French artist whose music sounds a bit like reggae dub. It’s hard to categorise them! Their presence on stage is remarkable, so much energy, they always kept the audience entertained. So I was excited to finally meet the main man for an interview.

Out of all the interviews at WOMAD this one really went deep, during the interview we discussed his near-death experiences. These remarkable events had added to the expression in his music. I was amazed at how freely he spoke about this and touched that Babylon Circus felt the trust and connection to open up to us.

Eddie Grant’s interview excited me so much before it had even begun! I was finally getting the chance to interview Eddie, an artist I really admired. Being the first black man to open a studio in England is pretty ground breaking, the challenges he’s faced throughout his career have always intrigued me as well as the collaborations he done.

Waiting at the side of his tour bus while he finished his lunch i felt like a school girl waiting to go into my first exam, for some reason I really wanted to impress him, and I’m hoping I did!

WOMAD was an amazing festival for 2008 and a great experience for me who’s a WOMAD virgin. it is a true festival at heart with such a great respect for its performers. its shows diversity at its best within music and gives the real artists of this world the platforms they need but most importantly deserve.

Roll on next year! Until then, have a look at all the interviews on the WOMAD channel on t5m.

Hannah

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So this weekend I hooked up with t5m to cover some really extraordinary and exclusive events.

Seeing as I only heard the master plan for the action-packed weekend on the Friday, I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. Little did I realise just how much fun we’d have as we gathered some great interviews and collected a feast of comical memories!

So on Saturday morning, t5m and I hit WOMAD- one of the most amazing music festivals with a line up of artists from all over the world.

Initially I was preparing to chill with some hippies, run around in my festival-chic gear, grab some organic beer and get my face painted - I was good to go.

An inappropriate but essential 8 a.m. start and I met up with the super fly team- the t5m boys. The Director himself Mr Tom Hall, crazy kid but heart-broken Rory the cameraman, and last but not least, a mixture of party-boy and Adam Sandler - Konal. We began our journey on the ‘bus of love’.

I opted out of Konal’s radio selection, and fell into a deep sleep for the majority of the journey. I woke up at the perfect time, as we pulled up to the gates of WOMAD…..

The site looked beautiful; rolling green hills and bright, bright sunshine.

We got straight down to work interviewing some of the most renowned and modest artists I’ve ever come across. The thing is with WOMAD, you are surrounded by such a huge number of musicians from such a wide spectrum of genres from all around the world.

The artists we were interviewing were a far cry from the processed, fake and purpose-built acts that dominate the charts, but were original, mind blowing artists like Babylon Circus, Eddy Grant and Bobby Cobham. Each interview was special, as I feel I genuinely bonded with most of them and this felt really special, as interviewing someone three times my age, intellect and musical knowledge can feel pretty daunting!

More from the festival in the next blog post-

Hannah

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Bobby Cobham, without doubt one of the most amazing drummers in the world. Bobby has a really peaceful aura about him and really intrigued me during his interview, he reminded me of a gentle granddad. We hit it off straight away, but then the inevitable happened and the camera battery died!

What could been an awkward situation actually gave us the chance to have a relaxed conversation. I found that Bobby was from Panama but also part Nigerian, which I never knew, but we bonded over our shared heritage, as I’m mixed Nigerian too.

As cliched as that sounds, we actually ended up having a bonding hug! Definitely a very memorable moment. For a full insight into Bobby’s career, see the interview clips on the WOMAD channel on t5m and footage of his amazing drumming workshop!

Hannah

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With everything happening at the event, it’s easy to forget the reason everyone’s there in the first place: the Polo! It was a great day for England, as they pipped Australia to win the Coronation Cup by ten goals to nine. It topped off a great day for Prince Charles, who was visibly pleased when the final chukka ended after a tense run of play. Earlier in the day, the Hurlingham team won the Prince of Wales Trophy, beating the Prince of Wales Team by only half a point, seven to seven and a half!

During the event guests enjoyed a lavish lunch and all day drinking, with many of our interviewees remarking on the fortifying effect of an open bar on a hot day! However, you’d never know it, with the ladies elegant and the men dapper in beautiful summer outfits all through the day (and into the night).
It really was a great day out, and we were lucky to snag the best footage and interviews from the event. If you didn’t have the chance to go this year, we definitely recommend getting a sneak peek behind the scenes on t5m.

LJLO’B

Ricky Hatton was so sweet, he was thrilled to be presenting the Silver Clef award to Oasis. His interview is so funny, ‘Oasis’ is the answer to every question! He’s a ‘big massive fan’.

Also presenting an award was a very excitable and eloquent Russell Brand. He enthused to us about the ins and outs of atomic particles and ‘guess what I learnt the other day? it’s this thing called quantum entanglement!’ Never a dull moment.

Russell also found the time to present The Newcomer Award to Amy MacDonald. She was really sweet, chatting to us about Nordoff Robbins, the music therapy charity that the lunch raises money for. She’d actually performed to pupils at a primary school that Nordoff Robbins work with, and she said it was ‘one of the best experiences of my life’. The girl’s played every festival I can think of, but she told us that these kids were ‘the best audience ever’.

Her life motto is ‘what’s meant for you won’t pass you by’. Certainly true in her case! We also gleaned a few life mottos from other stars milling around; Lisa Stansfield’s straightforward ‘get on with it!’ and The Fratellis’ ambiguous ‘he who sticks his nose in a beehive will get more than a noseful of honey’. Hmmm.

Bruce Springsteen is certainly making a comeback, as he was a fixture on the iPods of the stars. Simon Pegg and Natt Weller offered some interesting and unusual music recommendations, have a look at the videos.

The whole event had a fantastic vibe, everyone was on great form and there was that lovin’ feeling in the air! As Jeremy put it so succintly,

‘It’s a great lunch. And people benefit’

Enjoy!
t5m
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As expected there was an eclectic collection ranging from classic jazz to the very latest cutting edge bands.

Check out the clip and register to be entered into our monthly draw for an iPod Touch