Dear Scotland

This month in Scottish Entertainment and Actor News (SEAN) we have highlights from Craig Ferguson’s recent trip to Scotland. Clips below include an interview with First Minister Alex Salmond, a visit with Greyfriars Bobby, and a trip to Craig’s old school Cumbernauld High (with subtitles).

In 2010 DS interviewed Django Django when they were set to make their first trip to SXSW, but unfortunately the band never made it due to visa issues. This year The Djangos finally made it to Austin and were undoubtedly one of the buzz bands of the week. Here is that interview with new video. [...]

The South by Southwest madness has already started here in Austin with the Film and Interactive festivals and SXSW Music officially starts on Wednesday. From various sources I have compiled a list of 59 Scottish gigs over the next few days. My head is already spinning.

Earlier today the Scottish Music Industry Association announced via press release that eleven Scottish bands, DJs and producers will showcase as part of this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The updated list adds several new acts to those that were already made public by SXSW last month.

A trawl through the 2012 SXSW music schedule published earlier today reveals that there at least 8 Scottish bands who have been invited to attend this year’s festival in Austin, Texas. We expect more to be announced in the next few weeks.

No-one predicted 2012 would be the best year for Scottish football in decades, and looking back, it’s still hard to believe what just happened. Motherwell’s amazing form from mid-January to May pushed the Old Firm until the last day of the season; three teams are in Europe past Xmas; and the national team sit clear [...]

Earlier today the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) updated its list of showcasing artists for the 2012 music event. Included in that announcement are the first two Scottish bands who are expected to make the trip to Austin next March – Laki Mera and Three Blind Wolves. More below.

The draw for the 2014 World Cup qualifying groups will take place later tonight in Rio. Scotland are in pot 4 which means we could be in a Club Med group with Greece, Turkey and Israel or a Club Dread group with Spain, France and Ukraine. Details below.

If you’re looking for some off-season Billy, here’s a quick one – a Word Cloud I created from the McLeish Report. What’s a Word Cloud?  A visualisation of the relative frequency of words in a piece of text – which can give insights into that text. In this case, I cut and pasted the entire [...]