My Bristol favourites: Angie Belcher

Angie Belcher is a stand-up, poet, actor and writer who came to Bristol to do a sociology degree at UWE and has stayed here ever since. She tours the South West‘s bars, dives and draughty tents. Catch her performing a preview of her Edinburgh Festival show at The Thunderbolt on May 3.

Here are Angie’s top-five Bristol favourites:

Charity shops
“I’m a total charity shop junkie, in fact I’ve just written a poem called Welcome to the Jumble in honour of my favourite pastime of rootin’ round wrist-deep in other ladies’ cast-offs. My favourite hunting ground is Westbury-on-Trym. I like to catch the bus up there, bag some bargains, put on all my juicy booty then drink cocktails in the Rummer (the only bar I’ve ever encountered that has see-through toilet cubicles), cos I’m decadent as well as thrifty.”

Arnos Vale Cemetery
“Arnos Vale is a beautiful unkempt gem of a place still fills me an eerie sense when I walk through it. The seven-year-old Angie inside still imagines I’m a walk-on in The Secret Garden, while the 17-year-old me wants to light candles over an Ouija board. You can map out Bristol’s political heritage and learn so much about resistance, rebellions and suffrage in just the first few graves. I love that it’s a bit unkempt and raggedy. Stay scruffy, Arnos Vale.”

The Adam & Eve
“My favourite meal of the week is Sunday lunch. A bad one means I’m miserable on a Monday so don’t bother asking me to do a free performance for your charity night unless my need for mustard-smeared taters has been sated. The Adam & Eve in Hotwells, or ‘Adam and Steve’ as we like to call it, consistently delivers a brilliant meal. The newly loved-up can eat in the secluded nook, Lovers Corner. Dogs are welcome too, so when we go there’s three of us in Lovers Corner and I never get to finish my own lunch.”

The Everard Building
“This is my favourite building. Edward Everard was a man so passionate about the written word he commissioned this monument on Broad Street to celebrate it. I sometimes to go and stare at the beautiful ‘spirit of Literature’ which takes pride of place in the middle of the facade. The architect stuck William Morris on to honour his commitment to the arts and crafts movement which, kids, is a bit like tagging a famous pop singer in a post on Facebook. The actual interior is long-gone but if I ever amass a small fortune with my silly shows I’ll kick out the bankers and turn it into a spoken word temple. The design sums up Bristol for me; the perfect ménage à trois of art, words and industry.”

Totterdown
“Totterdown is the best place on earth. The people, places and peculiar habits of Totters folk constantly feed my stand-up routines, from their obsession with putting unwanted household items on their walls to plastering an endangered tree with love notes (don’t try and put up a culling notice, Bristol City Council: Totterdown WILL turn it into a shrine). Last year in Edinburgh, nervously flyering for my inaugural fringe show, I bumped into the entire Victoria Park Bowls club who insisted on coming to my show, all 25 of ’em. You gotta problem? Totterdown will solve it.”