Founded in 1991, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) uses the tools of investment to help build market economies and democracies in 30 countries from central Europe to central Asia. Its mission was to support the formerly communist countries in the process of establishing their private sectors.^[1] By the seventh meeting, representatives of 40 nations and two European institutions had reached agreement on the bank's charter, its initial size,and the distribution of power among shareholders.^[2]

Headquartered in London, the EBRD is now owned by 63 countries and two intergovernmental instituitions. Despite its public sector shareholders, it invests mainly in private enterprises, usually together with commercial partners.

EBRD provides project financing for banks, industries and businesses, both new ventures and investments in existing companies. It also works with publicly owned companies to support privatization, restructuring state-owned firms and improvement of municipal services.

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development member states

  Members, only financing

  Members, recipients of investments

The EBRD’s mandate stipulates that it must only work in countries that are committed to democratic principles. The EBRD is directed by its founding agreement to promote, in the full range of its activities, environmentally sound and sustainable development.

The following countries are members and recipients of investments:^[3] Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

The following countries are financing members only: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic (receiving member until 2007-12-31^[4]), Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Two European Union institutions are also financing members: the European Community and the European Investment Bank.

In 2006 the organization stated that it would cease spending in the Baltic and central European nations by 2010, and funding would be shifted to Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.^[5] Due to the financial crisis this graduation process was postponed till 2015.^[6] Among the former communist countries only the Czech Republic has graduated within EBRD so far (this happened in 2007) and gained the status of the only ex-communist country that is a shareholder within EBRD and not a borrower any more.^[7]

Requirements for EBRD financing[link]

Direct investments generally range from million to million. Smaller projects are financed both directly by the EBRD and through financial intermediaries. By supporting local commercial banks, micro-business banks, equity funds and leasing facilities, the EBRD has helped finance over 1 million smaller projects.

The EBRD provides loan and equity finance, guarantees, leasing facilities and trade finance. The Bank also finances professional development through support programmes.

Smaller projects may be financed through financial intermediaries or through special programmes for smaller direct investments in the less advanced countries.

To be eligible for EBRD funding, the project must:

• be located in an EBRD country of operations
• have strong commercial prospects
• involve significant equity contributions in-cash or in-kind from the project sponsor
• benefit the local economy and help develop the private sector
• satisfy banking and environmental standards.

Project structure[link]

The EBRD tailors each project to the needs of the client and to the specific situation of the country, region and sector. The EBRD typically funds up to 35 per cent of the total project cost for a greenfield project or 35 per cent of the long-term capitalisation of the project company. The Bank requires significant equity contributions from the sponsors, which must equal or be greater than the EBRD’s investment.

There must be additional funding from the sponsors, other co-financiers or generated through the EBRD’s syndications programme.

Sectors supported by the EBRD[link]

The EBRD finances projects in most sectors. These include:

• agribusiness
• energy efficiency
• financial institutions
• manufacturing
• municipal and environmental infrastructure
• natural resources
• power and energy
• property and tourism
• telecommunications, information technology and media
• transport

Presidents[link]

List of all presidents to date (as of 2009^[update]).^[8]

• Jacques Attali (1991-1993)
• Jacques de Larosière (1993-1998)
• Horst Köhler (1998–2000)
• Jean Lemierre (2000-2008)
• Thomas Mirow (2008–2012)
• Suma Chakrabarti (2012– now)

United Nations Development Business[link]

The United Nations launched Development Business in 1978 with the support of the World Bank, and other major development banks from around the world. Today, Development Business is the primary publication for all major multilateral development banks including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, United Nations agencies, and several national governments, many of whom have made the publication of their tenders and contracts in Development Business a mandatory requirement.^[9]

See also[link]

• Ukeep
• Development Finance Institution

References[link]

External links[link]

• EBRD web site
• Bank Information Center
• US Commercial Service Liaison office to EBRD
• Central and Eastern European Bankwatch network of civil society groups monitoring and lobbying on public Bank projects and policies

István Szabó
István Szabó, 2004
Born	(1938-02-18) 18 February 1938 (age 74) Budapest, Hungary
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1959–present

István Szabó (born February 18, 1938) is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director.

Szabó is the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European auteurism, he has made films that represent many of the political and psychological conflicts of Central Europe’s recent history, as well as of his own personal history. He made his first short film in 1959 as a student at the Hungarian Academy of Theatrical and Cinematic Arts, and his first feature film in 1964. He achieved his greatest international success with Mephisto (1981), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, most of Szabó's films have been international co-productions filmed in a variety of languages and European locations. He has continued to make some films in Hungarian, however, and even in his international co-productions, he often films in Hungary and uses Hungarian talent. Szabó became involved in a national controversy in 2006 when the Hungarian newspaper Life and Literature revealed that he had been an informant of the Communist regime’s secret police.

Life[link]

Born in Budapest, Szabó is the son of Mária (née Vita)^[1] and István Szabó, the latter of whom was a doctor from a long line of doctors.^[2] Szabó came from a family of Jews who had converted to Catholicism, but, considered Jews by the Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian Nazis), they were forced to separate and hide in Budapest sometime between October 1944, when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary and installed the Arrow Cross in power, and February 1945, when the Soviets defeated the German Army in Budapest. Szabó survived by hiding at an orphanage, but his father died of diphtheria shortly after the German defeat. Memories of these events would later appear in several of his films.^[3]

In 2006, the Hungarian newspaper Life and Literature revealed that Szabó had been an informant of the Communist regime’s secret police. Between 1957 and 1961, he submitted forty-eight reports on seventy-two people, mostly classmates and teachers at the Academy of Theatrical and Cinematic Arts. According to historian Istvan Deak, only in one case did Szabó's informing cause significant damage, when an individual was denied a passport. After the article was published, over one-hundred prominent intellectuals, including some of the people Szabó had denounced, published a letter of support for him. Szabó’s initial response to the article was that informing had been an act of bravery intended to save the life of former classmate Pál Gábor. When this claim turned out not to be true, Szabó admitted that his true motive had been to prevent his own expulsion from the Academy.^[4]

Career[link]

Pre–1964[link]

As a child, Szabó wanted to be a doctor like his father. By the age of 16, however, he had been inspired by a book by Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs to become a film director.^[5] Upon graduation from high school, he became one of 11 applicants out of 800 who were admitted to the Academy of Theatrical and Cinematic Arts. At the Academy, he studied with the famous director Félix Máriássy, who became something of a father figure to Szabó. Among his classmates were Judit Elek, Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács, Janos Rozsa, Pál Gábor, Imre Gyöngyössy, Ferenc Kardos, and Zoltan Huszárik. While at the Academy, Szabó directed several short films, culminating in his thesis film, Koncert (1961), which won a prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Thanks to János Herskó, head of the Hunnia Studio at which he apprenticed, Szabó was given his first opportunity to direct a feature film at the age of 25, rather than being required to spend ten years working as an assistant director.^[6]

The beginning of Szabó’s career coincided with the beginning of a “new wave” in Hungarian cinema, one of several new wave cinemas that occurred around this time throughout Western and Eastern Europe. The Eastern European new waves were caused by political liberalization, the decentralization of film industries, and the emergence of films as valuable commodities for export to Western European markets. The resulting films were more formally experimental, politically anti-establishment, and, especially in the case of Szabó, psychologically probing than the films of the previous generation. Hungarian filmmakers in particular experienced a significant increase in freedom of expression due to the reforms of the Kádár government.^[7]

Hungarian films, 1964–1980[link]

Szabó’s first feature film, The Age of Illusions (1964), is an at least partly autobiographical film about the struggles of Szabó’s generation in starting a career, encountering the obsolescence of the older generation, and establishing romantic relationships. The appearance of a poster for Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in the background of a scene suggested Szabó’s artistic compatibility with Truffaut and the French New Wave.^[8] The film won the Silver Sail for Best First Work at the Locarno International Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize for Best Director at the Hungarian Film Festival.^[9]

Father (1966) is a coming of age story that displays Szabó’s increasing fascination with history and memory. The main character copes with the childhood loss of his father against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and memories of the Arrow Cross dictatorship.^[10] The film won the Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at Locarno, and established Szabó as the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker of his time,^[11] as well as an auteur in the European film tradition. In 2000, Father appeared as number 11 on a list of the 12 best Hungarian films according to a group of Hungarian film critics.^[12]

Lovefilm (1970) focuses on a young man’s relationship with his childhood sweetheart, told through flashbacks that include the Arrow Cross dictatorship and 1956, and rendered in an experimental, fragmented form. This experimental tendency in Szabó’s films reached its apotheosis in 25 Fireman Street (1973), which began as a short film, Dream About a House (1971). 25 Fireman Street takes place during the course of a long, hot night in Budapest, during which the residents of a single apartment building are plagued by dream-memories of pain and loss spanning thirty years, including both World Wars, the Arrow Cross dictatorship, the Communist takeover, and 1956. While the film won the top prize at Locarno, Szabó was upset by its lack of success at the box office and at film festivals. Attributing this lack of success to the film's complex structure, he decided to give his next film a simpler structure.^[13]

In Budapest Tales (1976), Szabó traded his earlier, complex narrative structures, characterized by flashbacks and dreams, for a more linear one. At the same time, he traded the literal representation of history for an allegorical one. The film follows a disparate group of people who come together on the outskirts of an unnamed city at the end of an unnamed war to repair a damaged tram and ride it into the city. Allegorically, the film was interpreted by critics variously as representing Hungarian history specifically or universal human responses to war and reconstruction more generally.^[14]

Szabó's first four full-length films featured the actor András Bálint in roles based on Szabó himself. While Bálint also appeared in Budapest Tales, this was Szabó's first feature film that did not contain a significant amount of autobiographical material. He did not make another autobiographical film until Meeting Venus, eighteen years later.^[15]

Budapest Tales was even less successful than 25 Fireman Street at the box office and festivals. According to author David Paul, this may explain why Szabó shifted gears even more dramatically in his next film, Confidence (1980), in which historical events are represented straightforwardly, and are filtered through neither memory nor allegory. The film focuses on the relationship between a man and woman who are forced to share a room as they hide from the Arrow Cross toward the end of the Second World War. It garnered a Best Director award for Szabó at the Berlin Film Festival.^[16]

International co-productions featuring Brandauer, 1981–1988[link]

Szabó’s next three films constituted a new phase in his career – moving away from Hungarian productions, in Hungarian, written by Szabó alone, and featuring Bálint, and moving toward international co-productions, in German, written by Szabó in collaboration with others, and featuring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. ^[17] The informal trilogy—Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988)—features Brandauer in a series of roles based on historical figures who, as represented in the films, compromised their morals in order to climb the ladder of success within a context of authoritarian political power. In Mephisto, based on a novel by Klaus Mann, Brandauer plays an actor and theater director in Nazi Germany, a role based on Mann’s former brother-in-law Gustaf Gründgens. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the award for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and greatly increased Szabó’s international prestige.^[18]

In Colonel Redl, Brandauer plays Alfred Redl, counter-intelligence chief of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who was blackmailed into espionage for the Russians in order to prevent the revelation of his homosexuality. The film won top awards in Germany and the UK,^[19] but provoked a scandal in Austria, where several periodicals accused the film of bringing the country into disrepute.^[20] In Hanussen, Brandauer plays Erik Jan Hanussen, a clairvoyant performer whose growing fame brings him into increasingly close—and dangerous—contact with the Nazis.^[21]

1991–present[link]

After his Brandauer trilogy, Szabó continued to make international co-productions, filming in a variety of languages and European locations. He has continued to make some films in Hungarian, however, and even in his international co-productions, he often films in Hungary and uses Hungarian talent.^[22]

Meeting Venus (1991), the first of several English-language films directed by Szabó—and his first comedy—is based on his experience directing Tannhäuser at the Paris Opera in 1984. Niels Arestrup plays a Hungarian directing the opera at an imaginary pan-European opera company, and encountering a multitude of pitfalls that symbolize the challenges of a united Europe.^[23]

With Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe (1992), Szabó returned to a strictly Hungarian subject – this time, however, focused on a contemporary, rather than historical, social problem. The film follows two young, female Russian teachers facing the obsolescence of their specialty after the fall of the socialist government, as well as a variety of types of sexual harassment in the new Hungary. The film won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.^[24]

Sunshine (1999)—a three-hour historical epic, and an English-language, international co-production—was viewed by many critics as Szabó’s most ambitious film, and, along with Mephisto, his most important. Hungary’s Jews had figured in either a marginal or coded fashion in several of Szabó’s earlier films, produced during the socialist period when discourse around the history of the country’s Jews was more highly circumscribed. In Sunshine, for the first time, Szabó focused explicitly on this aspect of Hungarian history, which he himself had experienced as a child during the Arrow Cross dictatorship. Ralph Fiennes plays three generations in the Sonnenschein family as they experience the trials of twentieth-century Hungarian Jewish history, from the late Austro-Hungarian Empire through the Holocaust to the 1956 Revolution.^[25] Several characters are based on real people, including the Zwack family, with their successful liquor business, the Olympic fencer Attila Petschauer, and the Jewish police official Ernö Szücs.^[26] The film won European Film Awards for Best Screenwriter, Best Actor, and Best Cinematographer.^[27] It received a rating of 74% Fresh from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.^[28] An example of an extremely positive review was that of Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who called it “a movie of substance and thrilling historical sweep.”^[29] A. O. Scott of the New York Times had a more mixed reaction, writing that, by the end, “the movie has accumulated sufficient power and momentum to erase the memory of its earlier awkwardness. It shows such sympathy for its characters, and approaches its subject with such intelligence, that it's easy to forgive the clumsy editing, the haphazard insertion of black-and-white newsreels, and the hyperventilating sexual ardor that seems to be a Sors family curse.”^[30]

In Taking Sides (2001), Szabó returned to thematic territory he had explored in Mephisto. Stellan Skarsgård plays real life German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Harvey Keitel a U.S. Army investigator interrogating Furtwängler about his collaboration with the Nazis. The film won several awards at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina, including Best Director.^[31]

Being Julia (2004), based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, stars Annette Bening as a famous British actress experiencing a series of romantic and professional rivalries. Bening won a Golden Globe Award for her performance.^[32]

Rokonok (2006) was a Hungarian production based on a 1932 novel by Zsigmond Móricz about political corruption. Sándor Csányi plays a newly elected attorney general whose relatives (rokonok) come out of the woodwork looking for favors.^[33]

The Door (2012), an English language production based on a Hungarian novel by Magda Szabó (no relation), focuses on the relationship between an affluent novelist (Martina Gedeck) and her poor, mysterious maid (Helen Mirren).^[34]

Szabó’s frequent collaborators have included actors András Bálint, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Péter Andorai, and Ildikó Bánsági; cinematographer Lajos Koltai; and screenwriters Péter Dobai and Andrea Vészits.

Themes[link]

Several interconnected themes run through Szabó’s films, the most common being the relationship between the personal and the political or historical. On the personal level, his first three feature films deal with coming of age issues, but political/historical events form the backdrop of these issues and continually rupture the attempts of the characters to lead their private lives. In an interview in 2008, Szabó said, “My mother once told me, ‘We had a nice childhood and our youth was beautiful, but our life was destroyed by politics and history.’” ^[35] The political/historical events most commonly depicted are the dominant traumatic events of mid-20th century Hungarian and Central European history—Nazism, the Second World War, and, in Hungary—or, more accurately, Budapest—the Arrow Cross dictatorship and the Holocaust, the Communist takeover, and the 1956 Revolution. Szabó himself has frequently referred to this theme as the search for security.^[36]

A related theme is the moral compromises individuals make in order to succeed in immoral political systems. In an interview about Taking Sides, Szabó said, “I don't think that life is possible without making compromises. The question is only one of limits: how far to go. When one crosses the line, then the compromise starts to be a bad, even deadly, one.”^[37] This theme is dominant in the Brandauer trilogy and, as Istvan Deak points out, may be related to Szabó’s own collaboration with the Communist secret police.^[38]

Another closely related theme is the arts—most often theater, but also music and film itself. In several of Szabó’s films—most famously in Mephisto—artists become caught up in conflicts around politics, role-playing, and identity.^[39]

Style[link]

Szabó’s early films—culminating in Lovefilm and 25 Fireman Street—were influenced by the French New Wave in their experimentation with flashbacks, dream sequences, and unconventional narrative structures built on these techniques.^[40]

Szabó emphasizes iconography in his films, insofar as he tends to invest certain objects and places with symbolic meaning. Tram cars play this role in many of his films, and one becomes the central image in Budapest Tales.^[41] Budapest itself plays an important role in many of his films, including scenes of the Danube and of buildings Szabó lived in when he was a child.^[42]

Acting also plays a key role in Szabó’s films, as he values psychological complexity in his central characters.^[43] In his first several features, he tended to use the same lead actors over and over—first András Bálint, then Klaus Maria Brandauer. Consistent with this focus on acting, he frequently employs long close-up shots to emphasize the play of emotions on the faces of his characters.^[44]

Other work[link]

In addition to writing and directing films, Szabó has also served in a variety of other capacities in the film industry, including writing and directing television movies and episodes, short films, and documentaries, as well as serving as assistant director, screenwriter, producer, and actor in films directed by others.^[45]

Szabó has also directed several operas, including Tannhäuser in Paris, Boris Godunov in Leipzig, Il Trovatore in Vienna, and Three Sisters in Budapest.^[46] He has taught at film schools in Budapest, London, Berlin, and Vienna. In 1989, he was one of the founding members of the European Film Academy,^[47] and, in 1992, of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts.^[48]

Filmography[link]

Television[link]

Appearances in documentaries[link]

Notes[link]

Sir Suma Chakrabarti, KCB was elected as the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on 18 May 2012 for the next four years, from July 3, 2012 ^[1].

Early Life[link]

Suma Chakrabarti was born in 1959 in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India. He was educated at City of London School, New College, Oxford (BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), and the University of Sussex (MA in Economics). He is married and has one daughter.

Political Career[link]

Chakrabarti joined the ODA in 1984 as a senior economic assistant working on macroeconomics issues and UK aid projects. He previously worked in Botswana on an Overseas Development Institute Fellowship. He was seconded by the UK government to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the 1980s. On returning to ODA in London, he became Private Secretary to the Conservative Lynda Chalker, then Minister of State for Overseas Development based at the Foreign Office. Chakrabarti subsequently became Head of Aid Policy and Resources.

He moved to H.M. Treasury in 1996 before taking a Cabinet Office post responsible for creating the new central Performance and Innovation Unit to support the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in coordinating reviews of long-term issues that cross public sector institutional boundaries. Still in the Cabinet Office, he headed the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat, also maintaining a foot in the then Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions.

In 2001, returning to the ODA's replacement, he became DFID Director-General for Regional Development Programmes, managing 1,200 staff in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.

On December 8, 2009, Chakrabarti gave evidence to The Iraq Inquiry, discussing preparations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[2]

Current Function[link]

Sir Chakrabarti is currently serving as a Permanent Secretary (senior civil servant) at the UK's Ministry of Justice. He holds office as Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, and, as such, is responsible for the running of the Crown Office, under the directions of the Lord Chancellor. He was appointed on 15 November 2007.^[3] Prior to this, from 2002, he was Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development (DFID) - formerly the Overseas Development Administration (ODA).

Offices held[link]

References[link]

1. ^ http://www.ebrd.com/pages/news/press/2012/120518g.shtml
2. ^ "Iraq details for aid workers 'were scanty before war'". BBC News (BBC). 8 December 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8401001.stm. Retrieved 28 January 2010. 
3. ^ Suma Chakrabarti - Ministry of Justice
4. ^ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutDFID/opd/opdnewsletter2002.pdf

External links[link]

• Profile on Ministry of Justice website

Tony Hawks
Born	Antony Gordon Hawksworth (1960-05-12) 12 May 1960 (age 52) Brighton, Sussex, England
Other names	Tony Hawks
Occupation	comedian, author
Known for	Morris Minor and the Majors, Stutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime), Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, Round Ireland with a Fridge
Website
http://www.tony-hawks.com/

Antony Gordon Hawksworth, better known as Tony Hawks, is a British comedian and author.

Early life[link]

Born in Brighton in 1960,^[1] Hawks was educated at Brighton Hove and Sussex Grammar School (1971–76) (became Brighton Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College in 1975) and Brighton College (1976–78).^[2] He stated during an appearance on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue that he briefly attended the University of Manchester.

Career[link]

Hawks first attempted to break into show business as a serious singer-songwriter, but it was with a novelty record that he had his first brush with fame. As leader of the trio Morris Minor and the Majors, he reached number 4 in the UK charts with the Beastie Boys parody, Stutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime) in 1988. It went on to sell 220,000 copies, and was number one in Australia. The follow-up, a pastiche of Stock Aitken Waterman called This Is the Chorus, fared less well.

A TV series followed from this, Morris Minor's Marvellous Motors, written by and starring Hawks. In it the fictional bandleader attempted to maintain his pop career while running a garage. It ran for one series in 1989.

Hawks performs stand-up comedy, and is a regular on TV and radio panel games in the UK, including I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Just a Minute, The Unbelievable Truth and Have I Got News for You, although he first came to prominence as one of two resident performers — the other was Jo Brand — on semi-successful BBC monologue show The Brain Drain.

He has also appeared in Red Dwarf in a number of supporting roles, on several occasions as a voice artist for intelligent machines. Hawks provided the voice of a vending machine in "Future Echoes" and "Waiting for God" and the voice of a suitcase in "Stasis Leak", and appeared onscreen as The Guide in "Better Than Life", The Compere in "Backwards", and Caligula in "Meltdown". On the 29th May 2009, Tony featured in an episode of Carpool, with his Red Dwarf co-star Robert Llewellyn.

He also provided the voice-over for a restaurant ad in the episode "Me²", although this role was uncredited. In the first few seasons of "Red Dwarf," Hawks performed a warm-up act for the live audience before taping began to get them laughing. His continuous presence during the early seasons of the series led to his being nicknamed "The Fifth Dwarfer"^{[citation needed]}. More recently he has appeared in the television series Grumpy Old Men and a contestant on the BBC quiz show School's Out.

In November 2010 he was a guest on a number of TV and radio programmes to discuss the film version of Round Ireland with a Fridge including Simon Mayo's Radio 2 show, Loose Ends, Radio Wales and Radio Scotland. He was also a contestant on a special edition of Mastermind for Children in Need and featured as part of Comic Relief 2011.

In March 2011 Tony travelled to Japan to appear at the Okinawa International Film Festival where Round Ireland with a Fridge was nominated for Best Comedy.

In the Autumn of 2011 Tony completed his first national theatre tour for a decade, taking his one man show Random Fun to 30 towns and cities around the UK. He was also a guest on many TV and Radio shows during the tour including BBC Breakfast and The Wright Stuff.

His new feature film version of Playing the Moldovans at Tennis will be released in spring 2012.

Books[link]

Hawks has written five books:

• Round Ireland with a Fridge: His first book was an account of his attempt to hitchhike around Ireland with a fridge to win a bar bet. It sold over 800,000 copies. (ISBN 0-09-186777-0)

• Playing the Moldovans at Tennis: His second book, also the result of a drunken bet (with the comedian Arthur Smith), this time involved an attempt to beat each member of the Moldova national football team in a game of tennis, based on the theory that people good at one sport aren't necessarily good at others. (ISBN 0-09-187456-4)

• One Hit Wonderland: His third book, describes his attempt, over 10 years after his first, to write a second hit song. This culminates in him performing on Albanian television with Norman Wisdom and Tim Rice (ISBN 0-09-188210-9)

• A Piano in the Pyrenees: The Ups and Downs of an Englishman in the French Mountains: An account of his purchase of a house in the Pyrenees in the south of France, after deciding that the two things he wanted in life were to meet his soul mate, and to purchase an "idyllic house abroad somewhere abroad". (ISBN 0-09-190267-3)^[3]

• The Fridge Hiker's Guide to Life

Hawks has also contributed to the collection The Weekenders.

Influences[link]

Hawks chose The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle as the book he would take with him to a desert island.^[4]

Film adaptations[link]

The full-length feature film version of his book Round Ireland with a Fridge, starring Tony, Josie Lawrence, Ed Byrne and Sean Hughes, was released in Autumn 2010. Filming on the follow-up, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, with Steven Frost, Angus Deayton, Morwenna Banks and Laura Solon, has just^[when?] been completed.^{[citation needed]}

Other activities[link]

Tony Hawks donated half of the royalties from his book Playing the Moldovans at Tennis to a trust fund for Moldova,^[5] which was used to open the Hippocrates Centre, a medical centre that provides rehabilitative therapy for disabled children from socially vulnerable families. Hawks continues to support Hippocrates through fundraising and personal involvement.

Hawks is the co-founder and public face of the "Tennis for Free" campaign which aims to make Britain's existing municipal tennis facilities available to all.^[6]

Hawks is currently collaborating with Chesney Hawkes on various songs available from a MySpace website.

He is frequently confused with Tony Hawk, largely because the latter's video game franchise uses the possessive apostrophe ("Tony Hawk's"). Hawks maintains a list of emails intended for the skateboarder and his mischievous responses to them^[7] on his website. On 2 January 2008 he appeared on an edition of Celebrity Mastermind, with Tony Hawk as his chosen specialised subject.^[8] Hawks noted that his correspondents "might be able to do backside varials but they can't spell to save their lives."^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tony-Hawks.com (Official Website)
• Tony Hawks' Twitter
• Download Tony Hawks' music free
• Tennis For Free website
• Tony Hawks and Chesney Hawkes MySpace page
• Round Ireland With A Fridge
• YouTube interview with Tony Hawks