The festival starts today on the Lloyds Amphitheatre and continues until Sunday, with stalls, talks and cookery demonstrations happening during the day and then the music taking over in the evening.

Happy Mondays are the pick of the acts, playing their first Bristol gig in more than 15 years.

Also on the bill are Caravan Palace, The Farm, 808 State, The Abyssinians, Macka B, The Boxettes, Kitten and the Hip, and a DJ set from Peter Hook.

Visit www.bristol.vegfest.co.uk for tickets and more information.

So says Knowle West boy Tricky in an interview with the Guardian to promote his new album False Idols, released on Monday.

Now living in Paris, Tricky also reveals his current relationship with 3D from Massive Attack:

“He came over eight months ago. What’s funny is I hadn’t seen him for 10 years and within an hour of walking into my house we had a big argument. I had to say to him: ‘Fuck Massive Attack. No one cares who the fuck you are.’ And he was all right after that.

“Look, 3D’s a good heart, but he likes being 3D. Which winds me up. He didn’t used to be the cool guy he is now. So I like bringing him down a bit. We recorded three tracks, but then I started getting texts. I don’t wanna be your friend, mate. It ain’t that kind of relationship. So I stopped answering my phone.”

This one-off event will see the Stokes Croft restaurant taken over for one night only by international touring theatre company Le Navet Bete.

To kick off their upcoming run at the Tobacco Factory Theatre, the clowns are having a brief career break to serve up Poco’s seasonal tapas menu.

But as the night progresses, they’ll inevitably lose their cool, culminating in a unique performance.

Competition: To win two tickets for the dinner and performance, send a joke, your name and contact details to competitions@bristol-culture.com by midday today. The joke deemed the best will be declared the winner.

There are still a limited number of seats available for the evening. Click here to book tickets.

The Memory Dealer and Praxis Makes Perfect are two examples of this. The Memory Dealer is on until Sunday, whereas Praxis Makes Perfect was a one-off performance last night, so let’s deal with the former first.

Imagine if memories were traded, both legally and on the black market, and a resistance was formed to stop their wholesale exploitation. That is the premise of The Memory Dealer, which uses an iPhone app as a key part of this promenade performance.

The list of collaborators, from Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio to Nottingham University, is almost as big as the cast, who we meet in various locations within a short radius of the Watershed, including a hotel, a car and dentists waiting room.

For me, the hotel room was the most interesting location, with snippets of memories contained within the pillow and from a corner of the room if we stood still.

The participation element here was that you listened to instructions via the iPhone and then from the actors, but you could choose how to follow them and of course how to answer questions – so long as you had been paying attention to the audio.

The most fun was walking around the city centre like a spy on a secret mission that only you knew about in a well-thought out and memorable show.

There are 12 shows of The Memory Dealer between 11am and 4.30pm from today until Sunday. Each show lasts 90 minutes.

Visit  www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/event_2013/the-memory-dealer/ for more information.

Praxis Makes Perfect managed to secure Motion as a location, and thank goodness it did because it was often a tight squeeze, especially as pieces of stage were wheeled around through the audience.

This show by the National Theatre of Wales was so good that it was possible to forget that Super Furry Animals lead singer Gruff Rhys was taking part, here with the electro-pop of Neon Neon who providing the soundtrack for a tale about the imagined life of millionaire Italian communist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.

Feltrinelli lived an extraordinary life – smuggling the manuscript of Dr Zhivago out of Russia, tortured by the CIA, playing basketball with Fidel Castro – and Praxis Makes Perfect had lots of fun exploring it.

This time, the audience were revolutionaries, giving left fist salutes and swapping books as if they were precious gold as the actors moved among us, to best affect when they were a Soviet brute squad looking for the manuscript that always stayed just out of their grasp.

Part-theatre, part-gig, part-history lesson, this extraordinary production was not just a Mayfest highlight but will be an undoubted highlight of Bristol’s theatrical year.

Photo by Paul Blakemore

This wasn’t to be any old shop though, but a shop that in Eve’s words only sells “delicious things”.

“I wanted to open a wine shop because I love wine and think that people should enjoy buying it as much as they enjoy drinking it,” Eve, 24, from Westerleigh, told Bristol Culture.

Champagne on the Steps is now open on the Christmas Steps. It has wallpaper featuring colourful flowers and birds, and oversize wine glasses and champagne flutes in the windows, but what it most unusual is that it sells wine on tap to take away.

In Italy, this is called “sfuso”, or loose wine, and is often sold in shops, traditionally from small local vineyards.

Bottles at Champagne on the Steps are for sale from £1, which are then corked to be drunk. You can taste and then choose your wine, then fill up your bottle to take away.

Three English wines are currently being sold this way at Champagne on the Steps: nettle, sloe and ginger. There are also three Italian wines, a Merlot, a Sauvignon Blanc and a Prosecco.

According to Eve, drinking wine this way is not just better for the environment as it cuts down on the huge amount of glass waste produced each year.

It also means that you get better wine for your money as you are not paying for the bottling, labelling and extra transport costs, and is of course also much more fun.

As well as the wine on tap, in the future Eve hopes to sell lots of sparkling wines from all over the world.

“Basically I think that bottles of wine and champagne are supposed to be wonderful, decadent and exciting things and shouldn’t be sold in dull, soulless shops by people in matching polo shirts who aren’t excited.

“I am pleased every time someone buys something from me because I imagine what a nice time they will have when they go home.

“Everyone can drink lovely wine and become a bit more knowledgeable about what they drink; you don’t have be pretentious or a millionaire.”

Champagne on the Steps, 17 Christmas Steps, Bristol, BS1 5BS.
0117 929 9642.

www.champagneonthesteps.co.uk

Sounds triggered when a person passes are of dockworkers whistling and muttering as they go about their business.

Regardless of what noise Victorians make when spending a penny, the soundscape also hopes to draw attention to the craftsmanship of the 130-year-old pissoir; which according to the ss Great Britain team is one of just two made by James Allen Snr & Son of Glasgow remaining in the world.

The other is located beneath Sydney Harbour Bridge, but similar examples of Victorian and Edwardian cast iron public conveniences can be found in Bristol at Mina Road Park in St Werburgh’s, on Horfield Common near the Wellington pub and at the top of Whiteladies Road in Clifton.

The Great Spavaldos certainly looked like one of the most interesting of shows within this year’s Mayfest lineup.

Made for just two people, you are not an audience member, more of a participant embodying one of the mysterious Spavaldo brothers, with their luxuriant moustaches and fearless acrobatics.

Headphones and then video goggles are provided as you walk into The Island, and then the show – with you at the centre of it – begins.

It’s lots of fun and a treat for the senses. Only 20 minutes in length, I saw it during a lunchtime and walked back onto Bridewell Street feeling giddy with excitement at what I had seemingly just accomplished.

The Great Spavaldos is at The Island until Sunday. Visit www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/event_2013/the-great-spavaldos/ for more information.

An evaluation of Britain through the eyes of what at first glance looks like a swaggering, gum-chewing shaven-headed football manager. But like a Cristiano Ronaldo free-kick, Total Football bends and swerves in all directions.

Preconceptions are dashed and Ridiculusmus, the name of this company, live up to their moniker in the Bristol Old Vic studio as some surreal events unfold, culminating in the walls literally collapsing in.

The two actors and co-writers, David Woods and Jon Haynes, switch between doing impressions of IOC president Jacques Rogge and a spot of fishing in a play is enjoyably surreal.

The 38-year-old Easton councillor was born in Bangladesh and has been married to his wife Shilpi for 14 years, with their three children all attending Hotwells Primary School.

Property businessman Choudhury used to own the Joy Raj restaurant in Clifton and is currently looking for a location to open a new company, the Mango Indian Deli.

He lists his interests on the council website’s Lord Mayor page as: “Politics, Worldwide affairs, Community engagements, include advocacy and mentoring work in building proactive communities. Passionately follow Cricket and Football. Likes to travel with family at most opportunities, enjoy the experience of new cities cultures, food and languages.”

The Lord Mayor is a ceremonial position with the real power remaining in the hands of elected mayor George Ferguson.

However, it is also the job of the Lord Mayor to chair meetings of the full council.

Choudhury’s first diary engagements from next week include attending the Royal Bath & West Show, a St John’s Ambulance award presentation and a meeting of Hartcliffe & Withywood Teenage Parents Group, and officiating at a number of citizenship ceremonies.

All of the stories that are part of Here will be based around the railway station and Bristol city centre, and will also be available through bookshops, libraries and venues, as well as on posters around the city as near as possible to where they are set.

Joe Melia, who is behind the project, is the founder of international writing competition the Bristol Short Story Prize.

“Capturing the past and present, and speculating on the future of the area, some (of the stories) will feature influential people with a strong connection to the city, others will recount landmark events, all will be imagined and completely original,” Joe says.

“Here will bring together Bristol’s unrivalled artistic and creative talent in a vibrant and electrifying celebration of the city’s past, present and future.

“The book will be something permanent to treasure, bringing the city to life and inspiring and informing all those who experience it.”