Be adventurous this weekend with Ben Fogle, Dara O Briain, John Wayne and some Slow Readers, as CHARLES HUTCHINSON recommends

York Press:

In the wild: Ben Fogle 

Friday night is..Going wild in York night

Ben Fogle: Tales Of The Wilderness, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

BEN Fogle, off the telly, combines storytelling and adventure as he shares tales of swimming with crocodiles and conquering Mount Everest, crossing Antarctica and rowing the Atlantic Ocean. In his inspiring evening of stories from around the world, Fogle will recall a year as a castaway on an island in the Outer Hebrides and his participation in the world stinging nettle-eating championships.

York Press:

Yer man for all reasons: Dara O Briain

Dara at the double

Dara O Briain: Voice Of Reason, York Barbican, Saturday and Sunday, 8pm

MOCK The Week host Dara O Briain will dismantle all manner of bogus theories as a man for all reasons at the Barbican this weekend. Under discussion in the Irish stand-up's first show in York since November 2015 will be nerds, fake news, ordinary life at home, the Internet and much more. "First and foremost Voice Of Reason is just a load of funny stuff," he says. "It is not meant to say, ‘You’ll be laughing, but you’ll also be learning'. Of course, if that happens, that’s grand."

Play opening of the weekend

Pick Me Up Theatre in Privates On Parade, 41 Monkgate, York, tonight to March 16, 7.30pm

ROBERT Readman directs York company Pick Me Up in Peter Nichols' play with songs by Denis King, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977. Built around the outrageous antics of a song-and-dance unit staging concert parties to entertain British troops in South-East Asia at the end of the Second World War, it charts the journey of naive Private Steve Flowers when he is posted to the SADUSEA, led by the flamboyant Captain Terri Dennis, played by Rory Mulvihill.

York Press:

Booked in: The Slow Readers Club at Fibbers

Gig of the Weekend

The Slow Readers Club, Fibbers, York, Sunday, doors 6.30pm

MANCHESTER indie electro doom pop quartet The Slow Readers Club already have sold-out tours under their belts, playing the London Garage and Glasgow's King Tuts among their highlights. They have drawn big festival crowds too at the Isle of Wight Festival, Kendal Calling, Victorious, Sounds of the City, Dot to Dot, Beautiful Days and Festival No6, and now they are on a 32-date British tour. Their third album, Build A Tower, was released last May.

York Press:

Wayne's world: The Duke in The Searchers

Film event of the Weekend

The Searchers (U), Vintage Sundays, City Screen, York, Sunday, high noon

UNDERPINNED by complex moral themes and spectacular vistas of Monument Valley, John Ford's The Searchers follows a grizzled war veteran (John Wayne) on an obsessive five-year odyssey to rescue his niece from the Comanches who abducted her. It may be a grim quest, but it is miraculously purified of its furies in a final moment of epiphany: one of the peaks of the western film genre.