Chitra Ramaswamy
Chitra Ramaswamy is an author and journalist whose criticism links popular culture, food and intimate relationships to wider questions of memory and belonging. She writes TV criticism, features and opinion pieces for the Guardian, and restaurant reviews for national newspaper titles, alongside long‑form non‑fiction books. Her work is distinguished by a narrative approach: she treats a TV show, a meal or a friendship as a story to inhabit rather than a product to score. Even when the subject is music‑driven entertainment, she pays close attention to atmosphere, character and the emotional charge of the event.
TV and culture criticism for the Guardian
Ramaswamy is a freelance TV critic and commentator for the Guardian, contributing reviews and cultural pieces that sit at the intersection of television, celebrity and everyday life. Her coverage of a music‑heavy programme built around Madonna and Kylie Minogue, framed in her headline as “gay heaven” when Kylie arrives, shows how she latches on to the mood of a broadcast and the communities it speaks to rather than treating it as a neutral performance.
In TV work she writes as both critic and storyteller, building the review around the people on screen and the feelings they inspire, with music, camp and spectacle as part of that texture. Her remit extends beyond pure entertainment into features and opinion, using television moments as a way into questions of friendship, family and social change.
The through‑line is that programmes are never just content; they are lived experiences that she situates within a broader cultural and emotional frame.
Restaurant criticism and food writing
Restaurant criticism is a major strand of Ramaswamy’s work, and she reviews for national newspaper food sections with a particular focus on Scotland’s dining scene. Profiles and interviews describe her as the restaurant critic for the Scotland edition of the Times, writing in its Alba supplement, and as a restaurant critic for the Observer. In conversation about her reviewing, she rejects “lazy criticism” and instead foregrounds service, atmosphere and the labour that makes a restaurant work, paying attention to fairness and context as much as flavour.
Her reviews tend to be immersive narratives that locate a meal within place, history and the lives of staff and diners, rather than simple round‑ups of dishes. This narrative style, with its interest in who a restaurant is for and how it treats people, makes her food writing particularly sensitive to questions of representation and hospitality.
Across outlets, she uses restaurants as a lens on community, class, migration and care, bringing the same curiosity about people to food that she brings to TV and books.
Books and long‑form non‑fiction
Ramaswamy’s books underpin her journalism and show the themes she returns to in her criticism. Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy is a collection of essays on the nine months of pregnancy and birth that won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award.
Homelands: The History of a Friendship, a work of creative non‑fiction about her friendship with a German Jewish refugee, won the Saltire Non‑Fiction Book of the Year and was selected by the Guardian as one of the top memoirs and biographies of 2022.
These books deepen her interest in friendship, intergenerational memory, displacement and everyday care, and that interest carries into her journalism. When she writes about cultural subjects, including music‑inflected TV or restaurant dining rooms, she often treats them as stages where these deeper stories play out.
Her long‑form practice gives her a strong sense of structure and voice, which is visible even in short reviews.
Features and opinion writing
Alongside criticism, Ramaswamy writes features and opinion pieces for the Guardian and other outlets, drawing on more than a decade of experience as a columnist, interviewer and feature writer. Earlier in her career she worked on features and columns for magazines and newspapers before moving to freelance work, and she continues to use first‑person and reported narrative forms in her journalism. Public profiles consistently describe her as a journalist with substantial experience across news, features and cultural commentary, not confined to a single desk.
In these pieces she often blends personal reflection with reported detail, a mode that matches her books and makes her a natural fit for stories that need both subject‑matter insight and a human narrative line.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alex Rigotti
Alex Rigotti is a freelance music and culture editor and journalist who joins fast-turnaround music news with detailed reporting on artists, fandom and politics. They report breaking stories and live music updates for NME and Paste Magazine, covering pop, rock, club music, underground scenes and cultural debates around art and identity. Their live-music beat includes setlists, tours, festival appearances, cancellations, ticketing, venues and onstage collaborations. They previously served as a contributing editor for NME’s Radar section, supporting coverage of emerging artists and new scenes. Rigotti also writes features on rap lyrics and criminalisation, Eurovision and politics, queer feminist bodybuilding, astrotherapy and contemporary art. Their reporting is direct and specific, using clear quotes, concrete details and artists’ own words to explain what happened and how music fits into wider cultural and industry trends.