Jimmy Savile death threat linked to Beatrix Potter’s historic child abuse via UK comics Bob Slayer & Mr Merthane

Mr Methane, farter of alternative comedy

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that Mr Methane, the farter of British alternative comedy, had e-mailed me:

“I met Bob Slayer at the weekend. The tank broke down due to fuel starvation, so he wasn’t able to arrive from out of the sea on an amphibious craft but is hoping to try again next year.”

… and I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

So I asked Bob Slayer.

He replied:

“I farted on Mr Methane’s elbow at the weekend and he said that was the closest to his face anyone had ever farted! And Jimmy Saville: The Punch & Judy Show has received it’s first death threat.”

This did not clarify the amphibious tank. So I doggedly pursued the story for my own peace of mind.

Eventually, I crowbarred this out of Bob Slayer’s deranged memory:

“At the weekend,” he told me, “I was doing a gig at the Freerange Festival run by lovely people in the Brewery Arts Centre at Kendal in the Lake District.”

It came as no surprise to me that, somehow, the word “brewery” was involved.

“They had me performing outdoors on Morecambe Bay,” Bob told me, “at a place called Humphrey Head, where the last wolf in England was killed. We did some rock climbing and a tiny bit of caving and found some quicksand.

“I was supposed to arrive on an amphibious tank belonging to Mr Methane’s friend Ben but it broke down before it got to me. So I had to arrive late on foot instead.”

I then asked Mr Methane: “Tank? Your friend Ben has a tank?”

Mr Methane on the Superduck non-tank (photo Ben Barker)

“Well,” said Mr Methane, “not a tank exactly. It’s a BRDM2 Superduck Amphibian. It had been in a barn all winter and, about dinner time last Friday, we decided at the very last minute to get it out, take it to Humphrey Head and let Bob use it as a prop to make his grand entrance… Unfortunately, the diesel had got contaminated.

“We think the lining of the fuel tank had started to degrade and pieces of debris clogged the injectors up. Hence it never made it to Humphrey Head and consequently we were late getting there but Bob seemed very happy that we had brought what he described as a Dolly Bird with us.”

Bob then continued his story:

“I apologised for my late and undramatic entrance and explained that the previous year’s gig was supposed to have ended with me flying off Gummers Howe in a paraglider but that also didn’t happen because it was too windy… but we did have a lovely time then and I found an alternative ending by eating a cow pat.

“I figured a cow pat was only part-digested grass and would be OK but I probably wouldn’t eat a cow pat again as (a) it was not very tasty and (b) someone has since pointed out to me the parasites that I could have picked up.

Beatrix Potter, 15, with spaniel, Spot

“I stayed up for the Saturday in Kendal and also went on Barbara Nice’s tour of the lakes. The captain of the boat told us that Beatrix Potter was not very nice to kids. So Barbara Nice set up an impromptu court to get to the bottom of the child beating allegations and it turned out that it was Beatrix’s mother who was the abuser of the young and we have now all vowed to clear the good name of the writer of children’s books. BEATRIX POTTER DID NOT BEAT CHILDREN. Perhaps you can link from that into the Jimmy Savile death threats…?”

“Perhaps not,” I replied. “What about the farting on Mr Methane’s elbow?”

“I have already been booked back for the Freerange Festival next year,” replied Bob, apparently changing the subject. “They are lovely people. I will do some other outdoor gig nonsense – and, as nothing ever goes to plan, I might as well make the plan as ridiculous as possible.”

“But what about the farting on Mr Methane’s elbow?” I repeated.

“I could do helicopter rides around the Lake District,” enthused Bob. “Diving out into a lake of custard… that sort of thing.”

So I asked Mr Methane.

“What about the farting on your elbow?” I asked.

“I was sat down in the bar at the Priory Hotel in Cartmel,” Mr Methane told me, “where Bob was staying. He lent against my arm and farted on my elbow. As I am 6′ 7″ when stood up, it was the nearest a man – but not a woman -  had ever farted to my face. Bob’s delivery was disturbingly HomoErotic but the stink soon killed off any innuendo in that direction. I think he needs to see a doctor. Perhaps colonics.”

Casual Violence with Mr Methane farting around, plus Fringe comedy, David Icke & the Bilderberg conspiracy

Last night, I saw comedy sketch group Casual Violence performing what they called a ‘work in progress’ version of their upcoming new Edinburgh Fringe show House of Nostril.

It was slick, sick and silly, peculiar, perverse and potty – in other words classic Casual Violence weirdness.

James Hamilton, Casual Violence writer and twice Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award nominee, reckons his stuff is not weird but, then, he IS weird, so what does he know about it?

Casual Violence have even put a video about hair on YouTube this morning.

After the Casual Violence show last night, I got back to relative normality at home when I received to an email about the World Farting Championships at Utajärvi in Finland.

It seems the Chortle comedy website’s Fast Fringe preview is on 11th July in London and Chortle’s Steve Bennett had inquired into the availability of Mr Methane, the farter of alternative comedy, but he was sadly unavailable because he will be off to the World Farting Championships.

When I intruded into Steve’s grief last night, he told me: “It’s a shame. Mr Methane would have added something very distinctive to the atmosphere of the gig. However, the other 28 acts who are on the bill will possibly be grateful as the dressing rooms at Leicester Square Theatre are very small.”

I asked Mr Methane about his now tragic non-appearance at the upcoming Chortle gig:

“Being invited to the Fast Fringe,” he told me, “is a significant acknowledgement for any performer who is out there working his ring off, so it goes without saying that I’m more than a little frustrated at having a Diary Clash.

“But, that said, I can’t let down my fans in Finland nor the World Farting Championships – The promoters had already booked my tickets and announced my appearance.

“I have promised them some anal japery and anal japery they will get. My word is my bond. Mr Methane always come up trumps.”

“But,” I asked him, “what if you HAD appeared at the Fast Fringe preview: what would you have shown them?”

“I would,”  he told me, “have given potential Fringe goers a taster -  if that’s the right word – of what to expect at my Edinburgh Fringe show.

“It’s not just a performance show this year. I am attempting to give audiences the ‘back story’ of my 20+ years at the ‘bottom end’ of showbusiness… the quirky, stupid stuff that to me has become everyday normal but to everyday normal people is anything but normal.”

I thought of Casual Violence at this point.

“That said,” continued Mr Methane, “I realise that many will just want to see the farting so I’m going to do that as well… All the crowd pleasers… Candle in the Wind, the cake, the talcum powder, farting the dart…

“It’s going to be tricky getting the balance between spoken word and farting right, but I’m sure that wherever the balance point ends up I will share some good crack.”

His show – Mr Methane: My Life in Farting – is at the Edinburgh Fringe 13th-17th August – at Bob Slayer’s new venue Bob’s Bookshop. It should, as Steve of Chortle said, add “atmosphere”.

Never knowingly under-promoted: my upcoming Fringe show

For better or worse, I may have to inhabit some of that atmosphere, as my show Aaaaaaaaaaaarrghhh! So It Goes- John Fleming’s Comedy Blog Chat Show is in the same venue 19th-23rd August. Let us hope the sweet smell of success transfers.

Mr Methane had two other little snippets of news for me.

The first was something totally unexplained in an e-mail. He told me:

“I met Bob Slayer at the weekend. The tank broke down due to fuel starvation, so he wasn’t able to arrive from out of the sea on an amphibious craft but is hoping to try again next year.”

I have absolutely no idea what this means.

The second thing he told me was in the same e-mail:

“BTW there is a Fringe Festival happening near you very soon – the Bilderberg Fringe Festival. Speakers confirmed so far include David Icke and Alex Jones, who Rolling Stone described as a giant in America’s conspiracy sub-culture.

Publicity for Bilderberg Fringe features esteemed David Icke

“Fancy! The Bilderbergs just happening to set up shop down the road from you and then along comes a Bilderberg Fringe Festival as well. They’ve got an alternative media centre outside the hotel – That’s a whole week’s blog material right outside your front door. It’s come a long way since Jon Ronson covered them.”

I looked up the Bilderberg Fringe website after getting Mr Methane’s e-mail. It says:

“The Bilderberg conference is an annual, unaccountable, off-the-record summit attended by royalty, politicians, intelligence, Big Pharma, tech, banking and corporate CEOs plus policy-makers and media moguls from all over the world. The press are not invited, nor given any details beyond a participant list and a sketchy agenda.

“The group is run by a Steering Committee (which is the Bilderberg Group proper). The UK’s Minster of Justice Kenneth Clarke has been a member of the steering committee since at least 1998.

“Seeking to stimulate hearts and minds and unite the politically conscious, the Bilderberg Fringe Festival is an unmissable occasion for conscious citizens from all over the world to join together. We are expressing our outrage at this travesty of democracy the only way we know how. By hula-hooping in the sunshine and dancing barefoot in the grass. Except where cows have been.”

Perhaps James Hamilton and Casual Violence are not as uniquely weird as I thought.

Comedian Malcolm Hardee, a man in a van from Up North and a beautiful swan

Confrontations with swans very seldom have a good outcome

While comedian and prop-maker Martin Soan was painting the public areas of my home at Fleming Towers, the subject of dead comedian Malcolm Hardee came up, like it does.

“When I first met my friend Don,” Martin told me, “he just challenged me all the time. Exactly the same as when I first met Malcolm.

“Malcolm told me: I’ve fucked all the women round here. And I said to him: Fine. That’s great. Cool. So then he knew I was no competition.

“Don did exactly the same thing. We’d been thrown together like me and Malcolm and Don just casually said: I could kill you. I know how to. And I told him: Fine, mate, but why? You don’t want to kill me.”

“And he said: No. I don’t wanna do that. But I could if I wanted to.

“And I said Fine again and he knew I was no competition.

“When Malcolm and Don eventually met, they did exactly that same face-off to each other that both of them had done to me individually when they first met me. It might be a machismo thing.”

“I think it might be,” I agreed.

“It was a face-off to test the other man,” said Martin. ”If you were to reply How are you going to kill me? You can only kill me if you’re within five paces of me, then he’d know he has a competitor.”

“So,” I said, “in this face-off between Malcolm and Don, who won?”

“Well,” said Martin, “they accepted each other. I think Don, with his Northern work ethic, lost out to Malcolm, really. Because Malcolm already had the air of celebrity. There was mutual respect there.

“The most beautiful story Don ever told me,” said Martin, “and the most tragic, was when he was doing a job and he had to get up very early on a Sunday morning and he was driving along the M62 in the North, which goes over the Pennines. It’s the highest motorway in Britain.

“There’s this long valley you go along and you can see the other end which is like four miles away or something.

“It was early on a Sunday morning. No other traffic at all. Very early. And he was driving towards the sun and he saw a swan flying low over the motorway towards him in the same lane.

“So he changed lanes.

“And the swan, still flying towards him, changed lanes.

“Don changed lanes again.

“The swan changed lanes, still coming towards him.

“Whatever he did, the swan mirrored him to the point that they collided.

“The swan flew through the windscreen into the cab.”

“And the van crashed?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Martin. “Completely wrote off the van.”

“Don has talked long and hard,” said Martin, “with loads of different types of people and the only theory anyone can come up with is that the swan was confused and was flying towards the sun’s reflection in Don’s windscreen.”

“Face-offs with swans very seldom have a good outcome,” I said.

“No,” agreed Martin.

“Did Don return the body of the dead swan to the Queen?” I asked.

“No,” said Martin.

The end of the UK’s Greatest Show On Legs and the naked balloon dance?

Martin Soan rubbers-up for Thriller at The Hob last night

Last night I went to see Martin Soan perform as part of The Greatest Show On Legs, the comedy troupe he created years ago. They were performing at the always interesting Hob venue in Forest Hill, South London.

In the interval, a large group of men in the audience cornered Martin in the bar.

“They asked me Have you finished painting yet?” Martin told me this morning. “They’d read your blog. They were out on a stag do. It’s the strangest stag do I’ve ever heard of: coming along to see naked men. But, there you go, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They follow your blog and they know me from my various… eh… performances.”

“It’s the irresistible attraction of The Greatest Show of Legs and the naked Balloon Dance,” I said. ”But you told me you’re not always going to be in The Greatest Show On Legs from now on.”

“No,” said Martin. “I keep trying to pass it on to other people, but they keep saying they can’t do it without me.”

“Well, they can’t,” I agreed.

“It’s perfectly feasible,” said Martin. “If I got them Paul Merton to go out as part of the Greatest Show On Legs, are you telling me people wouldn’t go see that and enjoy it?”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

“Well, not the same exactly,” agreed Martin.

“Paul Merton – nice man, but he hasn’t got your grace,” I said. “And he wouldn’t do the nude bit.”

“I just think it’s time to make The Legs more sophisticated,” said Martin.

“Sophisticated!!” I spluttered.

“Yeah,” said Martin. “Sophisticated.”

“That’d be like Fast & Furious without the cars,” I said, having just watched the trailer. “So there’s Steve Bowditch and now Dickie Ryszynski, but that’s only two people. There has to be three people… Chris Lynam was in the audience last night.”

The Balloon Dance was performed at The Hob last night

“He would be a good contender,” agreed Martin. “The first issue is there are three gigs coming  up in Switzerland.”

“You gotta go to Switzerland,” I said.

“I’d go to Switzerland,” said Martin, “but not by plane.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m not going to fly again,” explained Martin. “I’ve done all my flying. There’s a lot of comedians like me.”

“You think your luck might run out the next time you fly?” I asked.

“No. I just really do not want to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and hang around in airports and sit in a little metal tube and go up to 33,000 feet. I’ve done all that. And I don’t want to go by coach. I want to go by train or car. But the others don’t want to, because it’s more expensive.”

“Why not by coach?” I asked.

“I’ve lost people to coaches,” explained Martin. “Three people. And I was in an accident myself as a kid. Coming home after Christmas, the coach went off the road and into a ditch. No-one was killed, but it scared the living bejesus out of me as a child… and as an adult.”

The Red Sparrows took a more sophisticated turn last night

“The other issue is I said I only want to do The Legs with new material. You saw a bit of new material last night and getting the old material and doing it properly would be… Last night, for the first time with the Red Sparrows routine, we got proper vapour trails. I think that’s up to speed now.”

“And,” I said, “you now have a routine that can actually follow the naked Balloon Dance, which I would have thought was impossible… You say you don’t want to do old material, but you have to do the Balloon Dance.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right there,” agreed Martin. “I just want to do new material. I’m not saying I want to be taken seriously as an actor.”

“Oh, go on, say it,” I said.

“I want to be taken seriously as an actor,” said Martin.

“As a vagina?” I asked.

“No, but if we follow the simple rule…”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well,” said Martin, “The Number One rule is that in certain situations – not all situations – the prop is more important than you.”

“Even when you’re naked?” I asked.

“No,” said Martin, “Not when you’re naked.”

“Good,” I said.

“Rule Number Two,” said Martin. “Come in hard. Exit hard.”

“Is that just in performance or in other things?” I asked.

“Everything,” said Martin. “So it’s not as if I’m a stick-in-the-mud. It’s just that there are rules. Observe the rules and you’ll do fine.”

Audience participation Greatest Show On Legs style last night

“What’s the third rule?” I asked.

“Why should there be a third rule?” asked Martin.

“The Rule of Three,” I said.

“OK,” said Martin. “Rule Three – There is no Rule of Three.”

“But,” I said, “Just to check. The three of you are coming up to perform at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe on Friday 23rd August.”

“I’ll be coming up especially for that,” confirmed Martin. “By train.”

“You could sail up to Edinburgh,” I suggested. “You’re near the River Thames. Get a boat; take it up to Edinburgh. Although I suppose Malcolm Hardee’s not a good example of surviving on water.” (He drowned in 2005)

Despite the gloss, Martin paints this morning

“We once got a gig in Rotterdam,” said Martin. “Malcolm said Let’s go by boat. I said Yes. Steve Bowditch said No. Not in any way whatsoever.

“Then I looked it up and the English Channel into the port of Rotterdam is the biggest navigable waterway in the world. Absolutely frightening. Even Malcolm chickened out of that one. I think we would have died… Though what a brilliant death…

“You could have blogged and blogged about that one, John. Two of us dead in one go and it could then have been the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee/Martin Soan Awards. And it would have been a lot bleedin’ easier for me. I wouldn’t be here painting your woodwork with old-fashioned gloss paint.”

“Is there a new-fashioned gloss?” I asked.

“Yes there is,” said Martin.

“I like the old gloss,” I said.

British comedian Martin Soan forgets two old vaginas but is offered a third

Martin contemplating vagina offer yesterday

The redecoration of the public areas of Fleming Towers continues apace with comedian and prop maker par excellence Martin Soan up ladders painting. (I have a fear of overbalancing induced by a childhood trauma on a rope-and-plank bridge in Scotland when I was around nine.)

Late yesterday afternoon, Martin came downstairs and said:

“I’ve just been asked to play a vagina. This woman’s rung me up and asked me to play a vagina. Which is OK. Alright. I can accept that there’s a vagina in a play. I’m quite open and liberal about it. But then she told me she wants me for the BIG vagina. There is another part in the play for a SMALLER vagina.”

“Who’s playing that?” I asked.

“I’ve got no idea,” said Martin.

“Have you met this woman before?”

“No,” said Martin. “Someone just gave my number to her.”

“Obviously,” I said, “she was asking around for someone who could be a cunt and people suggested you.”

“It must have been Boothby Graffoe or someone like that,” mused Martin. “She did mention it was so-and-so but she was talking fast and… someone has just passed my number on…

“She was reading through the whole play over the phone for about five minutes,” he continued in disbelief. “She said: Hang on a minute! Hang on a minute! I’ll just open the curtains to let some light in the house. I mean, it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon now and she’s just opening her curtains to let some light in her house.”

“But you have no idea who the small cunt is?” I asked.

“I did suggest Andy Linden,” said Martin. “I’d play the big vagina if Andy Linden was playing the small vagina.”

“Would you be a talking vagina?” I asked.

“I presume so,” said Martin. “There are lines. It’s a play.”

“Vagina lines?” I asked. “What lines?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Martin replied. “She was reading the script to me, but my head was swimming.”

“Where would this play happen?” I asked.

“At The Lost Theatre in Vauxhall,” said Martin. “That’s a good place to do a play if you’re straight, isn’t it? It’s the gay capital of the world.”

“It’s not the Vauxhall Tavern?” I asked.

“No,” said Martin, “but every pub round there…”

“That’s where MI6 is!” I interrupted. “Vauxhall… James Bond can’t be gay!”

“But,” explained Martin. “MI6 is on the other side of the road. They’re separated by the one-way system. They call the bit opposite Gay Village.”

“Do they?” I asked. “I haven’t lived, have I?”

“No, you haven’t,” said Martin.

“Didn’t you build a vagina for someone once?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Martin. “I’ve made two vaginas.”

“For…?” I asked.

“I can’t remember,” he said. “One was for a dead-straight stand-up. He wanted an all-singing-and-dancing talking vagina. I used silk. It had hair and eyes that one. It was really scary.

Martin re-installs my pussy painting at Fleming Towers today

“And I did another vagina for someone else, but I can’t remember the name.”

“Honestly!” I said. “Your life is so full and complicated that you can’t remember who you made a talking vagina with eyes for?”

“No,” said Martin. “I block all these things from my memory.”

“I suppose that’s possibly wise,” I said.

A British film about a South American psycho killer made by a kung fu master

Chet Jethwa – kung fu man

The enterprising Chet Jethwa is a chum of the equally enterprising Borehamwood-based Jason Cook, about whom I’ve blogged before.

Chet has a movie he directed currently being sold at the Cannes Film Festival. So we had a chat via Skype this morning.

“I’m originally a kung fu martial artist,” he told me. “I got into the film world when I was asked to do a fight scene in a low budget film a friend was making – The Estate. I went along for the day and played a Bruce Lee type character in a fight scene and had fun.”

“So how did you end up directing your own full-length feature film?” I asked.

“Well,” he told me, “I decided to do more movies, but no-one gave me the time of day, which basically pissed me off. So I told myself: I’m going to do it myself. So I decided to make a few short films and get some producing, acting and directing experience.

“My first 10-minute film – D.O.D. – won at the Angel Film Festival in London in 2009. This gave me the confidence to continue and I met Jason Cook on that. The second short I made – 55 Hill Rise – was the incentive I needed to move onto feature films. Jason helped me to produce that. I shot it, completed the final edit, put it on the shelf and then started writing my feature Carlos Gustavo – the one that’s now at Cannes.”

“Why this particular idea?” I asked.

Carlos Gustavo – the psychopath with instructions not to kill

“Well, because it’s not your typical British film,” explained Chet. “Carlos Gustavo is a South American hit man who has been hired to come to Britain and find a biological weapon by hunting down a scientist. He is a psychopath – Carlos is – but, on this mission, he’s not allowed to kill the guy because he has to bring him in alive. In the process, you’ve got MI5 chasing him, but they are not as competent as they should be.”

“And,” I asked, ”he manages to kill a few people using kung fu?”

“There isn’t a lot of martial arts in the film,” said Chet. “It’s more to do with the characters.”

“How did you get finance for a film about a South American hit man running around Britain not killing people with kung fu?” I asked.

“It was very difficult,” said Chet, “and I pulled-in a lot of favours from everyone. But we shot it in just under thirty days in HD. We had to change a couple of cast members halfway through filming, so we had to re-shoot all those scenes, which added another couple of days, then we went straight to post production.”

“Why did you have to change the actors?” I asked.

“They didn’t get the concept, basically.”

“Which bit of the concept didn’t they get?”

“Their roles.”

“Well, Apocalypse Now!,” I said, ”was re-cast after a week’s shooting. Martin Sheen replaced Harvey Keitel. And that worked well.”

“It happens,” said Chet. “Whatever the budget.”

“When did you finish Carlos Gustavo?” I asked.

“About a month before Cannes started,” said Chet, “so there was a lot of rush going on to get it out there in time. We got an international sales agent involved – Eddie Leahy.”

“What interested him?” I asked.

Current Cannes poster for Chet’s new movie

“That Carlos Gustavo is a different type of action thriller,” said Chet. “It has a lot of interesting twists. What you see at the beginning and what you think all the way through the film… In the end, you find out something completely different. It’s a really big story twist. What attracted everyone to get involved was the storyline.

“We’re hoping to get the international territories first and then bring it over to the UK and USA. I did a lot of research before shooting and people want strong characters rather than it all being action. This film, hopefully, will create an emotional response, rather than just having lots of action thrown in. It focuses more on emotional response.”

“I did see research once,” I said, “which found that, when audiences watch violence, they don’t look at the punch or the bullet hitting the victim; they look at the face of the victim. So their eyes don’t watch the action, they watch the reaction.

“In martial arts,” I prompted, “you’re in total control of what’s going on, but making a film is anarchy and everything changing…”

“Yes,” said Chet, “ it’s very difficult. You just work hard and keep hopeful, really. It’s certainly very difficult to get finance up-front.”

“And the cliché,” I said, “is that you never make money out of movies because the distributors nick it all.”

“It happens,” said Chet. “Creative accounting. But I’ve done my maths and we’ll have to be hopeful, really. Just get the film out there.”

“What about piracy?” I asked. “If you have a film that makes $200 million, you can afford to lose $20 million but, with small-budget films, online piracy can wipe them out and the distributors don’t/can’t stop it.”

“You can never be sure what will happen,” said Chet. “It’s really difficult to get the support you need from the industry people, so you’ve got to do it yourself. It’s very hard to get an opportunity, so you’ve gotta make the opportunities yourself.”

A UK comic with a building reputation and a collapsing Edinburgh Fringe show

Martin Soan – stimulated by home decorating

“I don’t mind admitting what I find stimulating,” said Martin Soan over breakfast this morning.

Pull The Other One comedy club runner Martin Soan is decorating my hall, stairs and landing this week.

It might seem odd having a man decorate your house who is best known for creating a naked balloon dance.

But Martin has more than a bit of previous, as prop-maker to comedy performers (of which I am not one).

“There was that Edinburgh Fringe show in 1995 where you created a kitchen for Boothby Graffoe,” I said.

“Did you ever see it?” Martin asked.

“No, I missed it,” I said. “But just getting the set in and out of the room must have been a nightmare.”

“For the first 20 minutes,” Martin explained, “Boothby did stand-up in front of a curtain while we erected the set behind the curtain. But, after the third day, I’d ironed-out all the problems and we could erect it in about 8 minutes. There was a table, oven, sink, bookcases, walls, doors and lots of little sight gags round the place.”

“And it was nominated for the Perrier Award,” I said, “but legend has it Boothby didn’t get the award because he wouldn’t be photographed drinking from a Perrier bottle.”

A Perrier bottle without any Boothby Graffoe

“He didn’t like playing up for the cameras” admitted Martin. “I was perfectly ready to prostitute myself. But, to be honest, we weren’t going to win, because it was about time a woman won it.”

“That was Jenny Eclair’s year?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Martin.

“Well, at least it was a chum of yours,” I said.

“And good luck to her,” said Martin, “But Boothby didn’t behave for the Perrier publicity and  Avalon (Boothby Graffoe’s agent at the time) didn’t want to put the show on tour because they couldn’t see any profit in it. Insane.

“Such a pity, because there were some brilliant gags in it. The concept was there were sight gags all round the kitchen and, five minutes before the end of the show, Boothby said: I’ve gotta just put some washing in the washing machine. Then he said Look after it and left the stage.

“Then there was just an empty kitchen with the washing machine in the middle going Brrrrrrr…. There was a great big pause and silence, then giggles from the audience. Then it goes into spin mode and I’d taken some of the ballast out of the washing machine so it really started shaking and that started vibrating the whole of the set and gradually, bit by bit, everything started falling down.

“The oven walked out and exploded – I had a stick and the top would come down and I’d weighted the top so, when it hit the back of the thing, it lifted everything up in the air….

“The Welsh Dresser’s shelves fell down alternately, either side, and the plates would run down like some sort of pinball machine…

“There was just lots and lots of stuff. We had great big lumps of cornice at the top which were knocked off and the wall was strips of lino so it looked like a solid wall but, of course, when the set fell apart, it used to curl up and fall to the floor…

“The table legs used to jump up in the air and the table would collapse.

“The door was fantastic – a floating door – so there were sight gags with that, where you would open the door one way, close it, then open it the other way and it used to spin on its axis.

“Boothby did this sketch about No 10 Downing Street. The door would spin round. It was black and had No 10 on it. He put on a policeman’s outfit and pretended to be the copper outside No 10, looking around. Then he’d open up the letterbox and shout in You wanker! Then the door would open and I’d stand there bollock naked wearing a John Major face mask.

“There were three of us putting up the set every day, then packing it away and putting it into a Portakabin. There was me and Suzie the stagehand and a guy called Adam. It was a massive show which packed down into almost a zen thing.”

“How long did it take to design and build the set?” I asked.

“About 9 months to make it,” replied Martin.

“And at Edinburgh?” I asked.

In the absence of photographs of a collapsing kitchen at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1995, Martin Soan in my hallway today…

“I used to get there around five hours before the show,” explained Martin, “and I’d be fixing stuff because things got damaged every day. About 2 hours before the show, I’d start arranging the gear in a specific order for a massive get-in real quick when the show started.”

“And this was outside?” I asked.

“We had the Portakabin,” explained Martin, “and I stuck up tarpaulins outside in case it started raining.”

“You got full houses at the Edinburgh Fringe, didn’t you?” I asked.

“The first day, people were really, really worried we could pull it off,” said Martin. “Then there were respectable-sized audiences the first three days and the show was sold out from Day 4 for the rest of the run.”

“So you and Boothby made lots of money out of it?” I asked.

“There were £33,000 of tickets sold, “said Martin, “and we got a £400 cheque nine months later, after loads and loads of hassling.”