1. Steamer the Cooking Wizard

Jo Leslie-Briggs is a Stanmore mum who has launched a personal crusade to encourage children to eat more healthily by publishing a new book which presents food and cooking in a fun and original way. Steamer the Cooking Wizard is a magical master chef on a mealtime mission – to inspire children and their parents to eat more healthily, in the wake of growing childhood obesity and diabetes. Jo has co-written the book with French chef Fabienne Viner-Luzzzato, and the two of them have set essential facts about fats, sugars and additives in the context of witty and engaging stories for children, alongside a number of delicious recipes for families to try out together.

  • Steamer the Cooking Wizard is available now from Swift Publishing Ltd and Amazon

2. Cirque Berserk

The high-energy contemporary ‘thrill circus’ drops into Hayes this week, combining cirque-style skills with off-the-scale thrilling stunt action. This danger-filled spectacle will amaze and astound audiences of all ages with the world’s most dangerous circus act – the legendary Globe of Death, which sees three motorcyclists haring round the inside of a steel cage at more than 60mph. Plus, enjoy spectacles from a troupe of jugglers, acrobats, aerialists, dancers, musicians, death-defying stuntmen and clowns.

  • Beck Theatre, Grange Road, Hayes on Wednesday, February 11 at 7.30pm and Thursday, February 12 at 5pm and 7.45pm. Details: 020 8561 8371, becktheatre.org.uk

3. MEGALOPOLITAN

Harrow’s Luminary Theatre is taking part in this year’s Vault Festival in London, the frenetic, six-week celebration of multi-arts entertainment. With more than 500 individual events featuring more than 80 artistic groups, there’s something for everyone on offer – music, performance, dance, comedy, discussion, debate and loads more. Luminary Theatre is a multi-disciplinary theatre collective dedicated to the creation of innovative and intrepid new writing and performance. MEGALOPOLITAN uses spoken word, shadow puppetry, a live soundscape score and animation to explore enlightenment and information overload in our LED-illuminated world, while questioning the condition of the collective consciousness.

  • Luminary Theatre perform at Vault Festival 2015, The Vaults, Leake Street, Waterloo from Wednesday, February 18 to Sunday, February 22. Details: vaultfestival.com, luminarytheatre.com

4. **** or, The Anatomy of Melancholy

Harrow book blogger Matthew Selwyn has published his own first novel, an examination of life and masculinity in the digital age, a study of loneliness and mental decay, and a satire on the consumption of literature of disaffection. Brutally honest and darkly comic, it is a very modern novel about a very modern life.

Matthew, who used to deliver the Harrow Times when he was a boy and worked in a number of local libraries, is a psychology graduate who is interested in the relationship between mental illness and technology. He currently works in an academic library and runs one of the biggest personal book review sites in the UK, www.bibliofreak.net.

**** or, The Anatomy of Melancholy is available now from Electric Reads. Details: electricreads.com, bibliofreak.net

5. Good Figures

Celebrated Harrow sculptor and artist Jane McAdam Freud is one of 30 contemporary women artists taking part in an exhibition that depicts the female form.

Good Figures celebrates the diversity and shared focus of the selected artists, who range from ages 22 to 82 and from emerging talents – Irene Lees, Liane Lang, Kate Montgomery and Alice Dyba – to Royal Academicians – Jane, Eileen Cooper RA, Cathie Pilkington RA, and Annie Kevans.

Jane says on ‘why the female form’: “I live in it and it is endlessly there in every medium, in all times.”

  • The Mall Galleries, The Mall SW1, from Monday, February 9 to Saturday, February 14. Details: tint-art.com