... By HELEN GOULD TODAY'S variety performers look a mess on stage and are taking glamour out of showbusiness, one of the country's leading stage dressers warned this week. Liverpool dressmaker and designer June Lornie has turned out costumes for the top stars in light entertainment, among them Gary Glitter, Bob Carolgees and Lenny Bennett. But a slump in the industry and sloppy dressing has now ...

... ANTI-APARTHEID campaigners in Labour-run London council, Southwark, have been landed with a massive bill after their first foray into the pop business flopped. The council's race equality commit tee spent £2,250 producing a 12-inch record by reggae singer Roy Shirley, Abolish Apartheid Now, for its ten-day campaign festival in June. But since its launch only 35 singles have sold and the ...

... Sooty girl in prison drama BRENDA Longman, the actress picked to play Australia's hardest woman prisoner in the British stage version of Prisoner Cell Block fi, leads a secret double life she's been Sooty's girlfriend for the last eight years. Producers Charles Haley were so impressed with her audition that they chose Brenda for the part of hardcase inmate Bea Smith for the touring show which ...

... Paul Taylor Dance Company- third and fourth programme SADLER'S WELLS THERE ARE no Paul Taylor types either in personality or build discernible among his company of 18. Each dancer is selected for lack of affectation and mannerism. Therefore, though the dances are illusionistic there is also a sense of reality about Taylor's characters when presented in a narrative context. Take the haunting ...

... THE COURT of Appeal this week threw out a bid by American record giant, Motown, to stop a British promoter using the famous name for a nationwide tour. The record label made an appeal against a previous High Court decision by Justice Warner last month when the judge refused the company's applica tion for an injunction against the orga nisers of the Magic of Motown tour, starting on September 1 ...

... ASIAN dancers are to have a special umbrella organisation promoting and encouraging de velopment of their art in the West. Yorkshire-based group AdiTi lifts off next week with the backing of the Arts Council and Yorkshire Arts. It will act as a liaison body for all South Asian dance groups and artists in the UK, organising, publicising and monitoring projects and also providing a directory of ...

... COMEDIAN Ken Dodd is to top the bill of Blackpool's 26th Mid night Matinee. It will be the comic's first stage appearance in the resort since being cleared of tax evasion charges last month and breaks with the tradition of having a Blackpool summer season star headline the glittering Opera House fund raiser. Provisionally Dodd is scheduled to dominate the second half of the Septem ber 20 show ...