I talked to performer Juliette Burton in Australia this morning. After awesome reviews for her show When I Grow Up at the Adelaide Fringe, she has now had her first awesome review at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival after only three performances. The reviewer was there on the first night thanks – Juliette says – to me.
Juliette Burton outside the Little Cafe of Awesome today
“The closest cafe to where we’re staying,” Juliette told me this morning, “is called The Little Cafe of Awesome. The first time we walked past it, I said to Frankie (Juliette’s musical director): We have to go in there, because John Fleming thinks I say ‘awesome’ all the time and I do.
“So we went in there on our first day here and it’s run by Lee Bemrose and his wife Ann, but their actual names are Grumpy and The Dreaded One.”
“Their actual names?” I asked.
Writer & Awesome cafe owner Lee Bemrose
“Yes,” said Juliette. “That first day we went in and I read the menu, which has Lee’s comedy column on it. He’s really funny. I was laughing out loud. He writes a blog. He also writes reviews for the Australian Stage, so I told him about my show and he came along last Friday – the first night – and the review was published yesterday. So I have my first Melbourne review out because of a very chance meeting and because of John Fleming’s blog.”
(A tenuous link, but I’ll grab it.)
NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT
As it happens, tonight my increasingly prestigious blog is also up for an award at the Scottish Comedy Awards in the category of Best Online Contribution. I do not quite know how it got nominated in the established prestigious company of Darren Connell’s Twitter, Joe Heenan’s Twitter, Scottish Comedy FC and Limmy’s Twitter, but I reckon I should milk this presumably doomed nomination for all the short-term self-publicity I can get.
When I am inevitably shamed tonight, I think my best course is to bitterly complain to organiser Alan Anderson that I think all the other nominees are Lowlanders and they should have been disqualified as Sassenach Hanovarian scum.
NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT, as it says on the edge of a Scottish pound coin.
Campbeltown – known for its whisky – and, in my day, its fish
I am a proper Teuchter (Highlander) born in Campbeltown on the West Coast of the Highlands and brought up in Campbeltown and Aberdeen, so I clearly outrank them. Indeed, I was brought up within smelling distance of Highland fishing boats. (My father serviced marine radar on the fishing boats.)
Throughout my life, I have maintained an unhealthy diet involving lots of sugar, confectionery and generally fried fatty things.
Does good breeding and bad eating habits count for nothing in the new Scotland?
My award as Best Awarder of Awards
Anticipating shame at tonight’s Scottish Comedy Awards, I am quietly consoling myself with the fact that, in 2010, I won a Fringe Report Award as ‘Best Awards Founder’ for starting the highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards in 2005. All three Malcolm Hardee trophies were designed by mad inventor John Ward… so, in 2010, I won an award as best awarder of awards by a Ward.
When I was around 11 years old, I also won a Brooke Bond Tea Award for handwriting so, from now on, I am gong to bill myself – especially at the Edinburgh Fringe – as “the multi-award-winning John Fleming”.
Hear me roar.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 
Ghorsh! – a mench! – oh how the memories flood back..sigh….Mum always said it was worth getting a Ward in hedgeways…