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Roddy Doyle was in Edinburgh this weekend to discuss his latest book at the 30th Edinburgh International Book Festival.  Doyle’s debut novel The Commitments – the story of a group of Dublin teenagers who set out to form the world’s greatest soul band – firmly established him as one of the finest writers of his generation,  and was subsequently made into a hit film by Alan Parker. 

Doyle revisited the Rabbitte family in two more novels, The Snapper and The Van, which formed his Barrytown Trilogy, and he has since won the Booker Prize for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and continued to publish acclaimed novels and short stories. 

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In  he again returns to the character of Jimmy Rabbitte Jr.  Now in his late 40s, Jimmy has made a lot of money in the dotcom boom, he’s happily married and the devoted father of four children, but he’s facing a diagnosis of bowel cancer. ÌýÌý

Tonight Roddy Doyle talks to Kirsty about why he’s returned to Jimmy Rabbitte yet again and about why he has finally adapted The Commitments for the West End stage.   

The Edinburgh International Festival began this weekend, bringing the crème de la crème of theatre, opera, dance and music from around the world to Edinburgh's stages. 

This year the Festival features , in a celebration of his ground breaking approach to writing.  Tonight we hear from actors Michael Colgan and Peter Egan and directors Richard Eyre and Atom Egoyan about Beckett’s significance as an artist and his pioneering interest in new technology.ÌýÌý

Image © Anthony Woods

Edinburgh has become a mecca for the stand-up fraternity.  It is after all where the likes of Steve Coogan, The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen all made their names.  But to what extent is the Fringe still the launch pad for would be comics and why do famous names still come back again and again?ÌýÌý

This August David Baddiel has returned to Edinburgh for his first full solo stand-up show in 15 years.  Caroline Rhea, star of US TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch, has returned to slum it in Edinburgh for another stand-up run.  And Aisling Bea is back on the Fringe after winning last year’s So You Think You’re Funny contest.  Kirsty asks all three why Edinburgh is still so important in the comedy calendar?

Leading choreographers from Mark Morris to Michael Clark, Lucinda Childs to Pina Bausch have premiered work in Edinburgh but contemporary dance can be one of the most misunderstood of art forms.  

Pete Shenton and Tom Roden - aka the award winning dance/comedy duo New Art Club - have made it their mission to bring new audiences to the world of dance, so we asked them for the lowdown on what to expect from this year's movers and shakers, including Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project and Jose Montalvo, whose Don Quichotte du Trocadéro brings burlesque, slapstick, urban dance and commedia dell’arte to a new interpretation of Cervantes’ classic novel. ÌýÌý

Image © Patrick Berger

Three of the most talked about plays on this year’s Edinburgh Fringe tackle issues of contemporary relevance.  We asked three Edinburgh veterans to give their verdicts.ÌýÌý

Playwright Mark Ravenhill reviews Chalk Farm, by Kieran Hurley and AJ Taudevin, which explores the London riots of 2011 through the stories of a teenage boy and his mother who are caught up in chaotic scenes of violence in north London. 

Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner reviews Nirbhaya, from South African writer and director Yael Farber (who was behind 2012’s Fringe hit Mies Julie), which features the powerful testimonies of women in India who have suffered sexual and physical violence.  Inspired by the attack of Jyoti Singh Pandey on a Delhi bus, which made headline news around the world, this production is performed by survivors of abuse themselves.   

Broadcaster Gyles Brandreth reviews Making News, the new play from Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, who were behind last year’s political satire Coalition.  The play – about a crisis at the heart of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ - stars Phill Jupitus as the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s Director General, Suki Webster as the Corporation’s Acting Head of News, and Hal Cruttenden as a vain news presenter.ÌýÌý

To play us out tonight, a performance by Manchester-based steel drum group Steel Harmony, favourite collaborators of the artist Jeremy Deller. 

To mark the opening of the group performed a series of Joy Division and Buzzcocks classics and we were there to capture one on film.ÌýÌý