It’s smelling like a good time at this long weekend’s Escape! festival in Tauranga. If you don’t have a ticket in your pocket to the sold out dinner by the dynamic young chef  championing sophisticated food using Māori cooking techniques Monique Fiso, fear not, there’s plenty more to do and smell. Here are eight of The Big Idea’s top picks (seven if you don’t have red hair):

1. ‘My Best Dead Friend’, Anya Tate-Manning’s one-woman show named ‘Best of’ at this year’s Wellington Fringe Festival

2. Award-winning Dunedin novelist and non-fiction writer Laurence Fearnley explores how using taste, scent, sound and touch can add richness and detail to written work in Beyond the Visual

3. A cartooning workshop suitable for all levels run by Tom Scott, New Zealand’s most prolific cartoonist. Then a conversation between Tom and Guyon Espiner about his career in Parliament’s press gallery that has spanned from Norman Kirk to Jacinda Ardern and his recent autobiography, Drawn Out

4. A panel of stroppy women including Sue Bradford, Mary Dillon and Tracey Slaughter talk to Michelle A'Court about what gets their goat

5. A talk (and if you’re lucky, a meal cooked) by Dynamic young New Zealand-born chef, Monique Fiso.  She is using her Michelin-star experience to champion sophisticated food using Māori cooking techniques and native ingredients

6. A day-long workshop on comedy theory, writing and performance on Monday, June 4 run by NZ 2010 Comedy Guild Female Comedian of the Decade Michelle A’Court.

7. Michelle A’Court talking about her new book, How we Met

8. Red hair? A little bit strawberry? Join the queue to get your snap taken by award-winning photographer Bianca Duimel who specialises in portraying people with red hair, she wants to meet and photograph as many red-haired people as possible.

See the full Escape! programme at www.taurangafestival.co.nz. Tickets from www.ticketek.co.nz or at Baycourt Theatre in Tauranga.