Other people’s lives: Freemasons, gangsters, a cat killer and the Cold War

Owners of fine petrol stations across UK

Last night, I went to Stowmarket in Suffolk to see two excellent Edinburgh Fringe preview shows by Doug Segal and Juliette Burton.

On the way back, just before midnight, I filled up at a BP petrol station somewhere on or near the A14.

Inside, a man dressed as a green duck was talking to a woman dressed as a yellow chicken.

“It was brown and grey and French,” the man said.

“Karen has always been difficult,” the woman replied.

Then they left.

Despite that, I have no particular blog to write this morning, so I idly looked through some old diaries at what happened today in previous years. These are extracts, going back in time to another era. Some names have been removed.

Two negotiation tools often used to settle disputes in Glasgow

5th MAY 2002

In  the evening, I went with (a fairly well-known English comedian) to a gig at a Masonic Hall in Easterhouse, a legendarily rough part of Glasgow. The low, unmarked building was surrounded by empty space, like a free-fire zone, and had 7 ft tall spiked grey metal railings surrounding it with barbed wire on parts of the roof. There was a full house: perhaps 150 people, all dressed up in their Sunday best as if for a West End occasion. They hated (the fairly well-known English comedian’s) performance. Their favourite star was ‘Christian’ a 64-year-old who sings as if it were still the 1970s.

The son of one of the people who ran the club told us: “My nose is getting better now. It’s still just tender here, towards the top.”

The other night, he had been driving home from some late night DJ work and stopped at a petrol station. After paying, he walked back towards his car. A man appeared, said “No-one talks to my wife like that!” and hit him.

Three other men then appeared and all four attacked him, knocking him down and kicking him, breaking his nose.

The police say they have the men’s faces and the number plate of their car on video but, because the beating itself is not seen on any video, there is no point finding and prosecuting them.

It seems that the DJ boy, drunk, had reached the pay counter at the same time as the angry man’s wife and (he says) told her: “You go first.”

Seeing this from outside, the other man and his friends somehow misinterpreted what had happened and got angry.

How is this common sight linked to the Great Train Robbery?

5th MAY 2000

I had lunch with a chum. Last week, (a prominent London gangster) told him one of the Great Train Robbers who was never caught is black and now works as a London cab driver. He kept all of his share.

My chum went to Charlie Kray’s recent funeral in Bethnal Green. As Reggie Kray came out of church after the service, handcuffed to a policewoman, my chum found himself shouting “Let him out!” and it was taken up by the rest of the hundreds of bystanders. When Reggie went to his brother Ronnie Kray’s funeral, he was handcuffed to two gigantic policemen to make him look small, but instead it made him look very dangerous. This time, my chum reckoned, he had been handcuffed to a woman to try to belittle him in fellow-gangsters’ eyes.

Later, I talked with another chum on the phone. She has just got back from cruising the Caribbean in a yacht. She said the Caribbean is full of white South Africans who have left the country and put all their money into buying yachts and cruisers. She said her bottom was probably on the Internet because one man spent 39 days sailing from South Africa to the Caribbean and, when he got there, he was greeted by her buttocks exposed to him spelling out WELCOME NICK.  He took a digital photograph to send to his friends as an e-mail attachment.

Portrait of a pitiless kitty killer with a track record

5th MAY 1999

I had lunch with a chum at BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane.

Last weekend, he and his girlfriend went to Chichester, where she has friends. In the evening, they were all watching a video of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Halfway through, the chief baddie was saying something to the effect of: “If things don’t happen, people will lose their digits.”

At this point, the living room door was suddenly pushed open – slammed open, really – by the family cat, who entered the room with the hind legs of a rabbit dangling from its bloodied mouth. The cat strode in, dropped the legs on the carpet, looked up at the humans and strode out of the room. The cat’s owner said they’d once sat and watched the same cat eat an entire rabbit in the garden, head first.

“You sat and watched?” my chum asked incredulously.

When he got back to his home in Brixton that same night, my chum found the head of a toy Teletubby (the yellow one) in his back garden. Just the head.

He recently negotiated a per-day pay rise for himself at the BBC; then negotiated a 4-day-week for himself thus, in effect, getting paid the same money for a day’s less work. He intends to try to write a novel on Mondays. His female boss is also going to take a day off work each week in an attempt to write a novel.

When I got home from the BBC lunch, I found an e-mail from another chum who works at Anglia TV:

Hey, today’s Eastern Daily Press is full of a story about an ex Anglia TV carpenter who murdered his wife and attempted to murder his daughter. You would recognise him. He looked like a little gnome and wandered around fixing things with a white coat on. He stabbed her to death because she spent more than £60 a week on the housekeeping!

Later, shopping in Tesco’s, I met the woman who used to live next door to me in Borehamwood. She, her husband, son and daughter moved to nearby Shenley about six years ago. She said her daughter was now twelve and “getting hormonal”. Nothing she (the mother) could do was right and her daughter was embarrassed by her.

Tashkent earthquake memorial in 1985

5th MAY 1985
(four years before the Berlin Wall fell)

Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The old city was flattened by an earthquake in 1966 and rebuilt mostly in ghastly Russian tower block style.

Walking along a street this morning, I encountered three thin policemen and a tubby officer with a moustache talking to a shirt-sleeved man who seemed to have committed a traffic offence. The shirt-sleeved man took some pieces of paper out of his right-hand pocket and offered them to the officer. But the officer noticed me – an obvious tourist – approaching with a camera over my shoulder. He dismissed the man’s offer of (I presume) roubles with a wave of his hand.

Walking into the grounds of a mosque, we were given a very crude propaganda magazine about how local Moslem customs are respected and how the Soviet state is renovating mosques. The Russians must be very worried about the Moslems in Soviet Central Asia.

My German chum yesterday encountered a local Uzbek newspaper editor called Igor who had met a girl in Bulgaria whom he (Igor) wanted to marry. This romance came to the ears of the KGB who interrogated Igor and told him there was no way he could marry her.

Igor earns 250 roubles per month compared to the average of 160 roubles per month, so he is well-off. He lives in a three-room apartment – unusually spacious – but he has to share it with his brother and one other man. There are weekly political meetings at his apartment block with a register of names and it is compulsory to attend them unless you are working.

Igor came very nervously to our hotel tonight to talk to my German chum. He wants to send my German chum a book but will have to get a friend to take it to Yugoslavia and post it from there. If Igor got mail from the West, he would be questioned by the police. He tried to persuade my German chum to send him money so he can travel to Yugoslavia himself and then on to Germany. My German chum met him just outside the hotel for this chat and thought it might be some form of set-up by the security police.

Why Chris Dangerfield’s new Edinburgh Fringe show is not the true story of him being a Lady Boy of the Khmer Rouge

(A re-titled version of this piece was published on the Indian news site WSN)

Chris Dangerfield with a suspiciously sweaty forehead

“There’s two interviews I did with you which I don’t remember doing,” Chris Dangerfield told me yesterday in London’s Soho Square. “When we had scones…

“There’s a photo of me with my forehead just sweating and I know I was really hitting the crack hard then. I look awful. And – I don’t know if it’s the same interview – there’s another one when I talk about my mate and his gun.

“They’re the two. I don’t remember doing them. Someone said to me: Why do you keep getting out of your head and doing interviews with John Fleming? and I said I haven’t talked to John for months and they sent them to me and the weird thing about them is that someone’s driving , someone’s doing the talking.”

“George the autopilot takes over,” I suggested.

“When you read an interview that you don’t remember doing,” explained Chris, “and it’s not like 20 years ago – it’s six months ago – it’s like haunting yourself, it’s like you’ve become your own ghost, it’s kind of… Freud calls it ‘oceanic’, like when you stand at the beach and the vastness of the ocean is something you can’t grasp. There’s a photograph of you; there’s words and sentence structures that you know you use. In a court of Dangerfield law, I’d say Yes, that is me, but I don’t remember anything about it.”

“It’s strange,” I said. “You’re actually very responsible and together. You turn up on time. You talk fluently. If you’re off your skull, you should be all over the place.”

“What you’ve got to remember,” said Chris, “is I set up my million pound company when I was taking 2 grams of heroin a day.”

“What million pound company?” I asked incredulously.

“You know about my lock-picking business!” Chris replied, equally surprised. “It’s worth a million pounds if I was to sell it. We manufacture and retail tools to pick locks. In the second year, it turned over more than £1 million and now I’ve got staff – three full-time, a couple of part-time, a couple of consultants. UK Bumpkeys Ltd. We’re the biggest lock-picking retailer in Europe at the moment. There were people on a level with us, but they no longer are.”

“Remind me why this is legal?” I asked.

“Remind me why is shouldn’t be!” said Chris.

“Picking locks is…” I started to say.

“I used to rob houses,” interrupted Chris, “and I never used a set of lock picks. They’re the wrong tools for the job. They’re non-destructive. Lock-picking is non-destructive entry.”

“But, if you’re burgling somewhere,” I asked innocently, “why would you want to be destructive? It’s noisy.”

“Because it’s quicker,” sighed Chris. “If you sit down at two locks and pick ‘em, you could be there a half hour. But if you put a foot through the door… Look, the only times I ever used lock picks for criminal activity – and this is going back 10-15 years – was chemists.”

“So,” I said, changing the subject, “you lured me here under the pretext – and I can quote the text message you sent me exactly – Yes, sweet tits, I have two exclusives for you – biggies – and now you tell me we can’t talk about either of them in print…”

“I’ve got an hour’s TV documentary,” Chris said.

“But we can’t say what?” I asked.

The self-confessed millionaire lock picker in Soho, yesterday

“Not in detail. But I’m writing and presenting an hour’s TV documentary about the usual Dangerfield palate of experience of activities on the margins of society.”

“You should be a copywriter,” I told him. “People get paid thousands of pounds to write things like that.”

“We got the green light this morning,” said Chris. “That’s happening. That’ll be on telly in November.”

“Probably,” I cautioned Chris. “This is a TV company. Things change.”

“Don’t say that, John,” said Chris. “It’s a respected terrestrial TV company. Respectable.”

“Stuart Hall!” I said.

The veteran TV presenter Stuart Hall had admitted 14 charges of sexual abuse that morning.

“Who’s next?” I asked. “Sooty having a threesome with Mr Methane and Sue Lawley? It’s the Rule of Three… Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall… Who’s next?”

“Ken Barlow, innit?” said Chris. “He’s got arrested, didn’t he?”

“I’m not sure I believe it,” I said. “He’s a Druid and he’s always been a bit holier-than-thou. But then, you think, what sort of man dresses up in robes and walks round Stonehenge at the Summer Solstice?”

“But you hit the nail on the head there,” said Chris. “That is over-compensating. They always do it. All the paedos I knew were like… As a kid, I joined a magic club. I got there early; no-one else was there; it was in their house; this bloke called Xxxxx Yyyyy; and he got out what he said was a magic magazine. To an 11-year-old kid it was like Wow! No way! and the house had magic tricks everywhere: it was like an Aladdin’s Cave. I could only afford little £1 tricks and they had expensive props.

“Then he put this magazine in my lap and I thought Wow!!! and, in my head, I thought I’d be a professional conjuror the following week. And this ‘magic magazine’, when I opened it, had pictures of all blokes. I just felt awkward. I put it down on the floor and he picked it up and said You can look at THAT one and I said No, I’m alright and there was this to-and-fro-ing with the magazine and then, when he’s finally forced the magazine on me, he just started wanking. And the hideous thing about that story is I don’t know the end. I don’t know what happened.

“I don’t remember leaving the room. The story ends there for me, in my head. How did we get onto that?”

Putting the past behind him outside Soho shop

“A respectable terrestrial television company,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” said Chris. “My mum is almost going to look me in the eyes now. When she found out I had two celebrity chefs following me on Twitter, she told me: You have MADE it!”

“Getting back on track,” I said, “What’s the second thing I can’t write about?”

“The second thing you can’t mention yet,” said Chris, “is the sponsor for my new Edinburgh Fringe show.”

“Which is called?”

“Chris Dangerfield: How I Spent £150,000 on Chinese Prostitutes.”

“So,” I said, “after last year’s show Sex Tourist, when you were sponsored by an Edinburgh escort agency…”

“The criteria for choosing a sponsor last year,” said Chris, “was that I wanted a certain level of  inappropriateness. I wanted people to think: Oh! You horrible bastard! Last year, punters got a discount on the sponsor’s services if they had one of my flyers.”

“So,” I prompted, “this year, you originally thought you couldn’t equal the level of last year’s sponsor…”

“Yeah,” said Chris. “But this year there will again be the opportunity to get some free products from the sponsor. You know who the sponsor is, John, so you know why that’s funny…”

“Have you got a full gig diary?” I asked.

“I’m in a position now,” explained Chris, “where I don’t have to punt for work. My diary has drawings of naked women with wings and I’ve got a giraffe picture. I set myself the task of drawing something that was half-giraffe, half-tank – but sexy. Not comedy sexy. I wanted it to be erotic.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Depends on your tastes.”

“Ah!” I said, remembering. “Ah! Originally we were meeting up because you were going to talk to me about your gig at the Comedy Cafe Theatre next week when you’re doing the last-ever performance of your Sex Tourist show.”

“The tickets sold out three days,” said Chris. “A record selling-out for that venue.”

“That’s a level of success, “I said. “So what’s your goal?”

“I’m there,” said Chris. “I’m doing what I want to do. I wanted to be able to do stuff that I found funny about subjects that I know people like to brush under the carpet and I wanted people to laugh at that. And I’m doing that now.”

“And your next goal?”

“To live in South East Asia in the winter and be a comedian in Britain in the summer. The Edinburgh Fringe show this year about Chinese prostitutes was originally going to be a true story of me being a Lady Boy of the Khmer Rouge.

“Up in Laos and over the borders, there’s this big fight going on between the Chinese Communists and the Lao guerillas, basically over the heroin market – and now the crystal methamphetamine market – there’s the Burmese guerillas and the Marxists as well. And the Khmer Rouge are still in the jungle in Cambodia. It’s a massive fight. You can make the stuff for like £50 a kilo.

Chris’ bottom, as seen on Twitter yesterday

“I was going to go out there… go to Phnom Penh,” explained Chris. “I had all the clothes. I had stuff my girlfriend had left. If you looked at my Twitter page this morning, there was a picture of my arse in some stockings. Amazing. I’ll send it to you for the blog.

“Pair of heels, little mini-skirt, bit of make-up, some electrolysis, get a Kalashnikov, get a Chinese No 4 habit – it’s the finest heroin in the world – and give it a go. Meet the Khmer Rouge and come back and tell the story at the Edinburgh Fringe… if I wasn’t dead.”

“And how did this tragically not happen?” I asked.

“I booked a flight to the wrong country,” said Chris.

Ignore the new Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, this is how the Profumo political sex scandal really happened

John Profumo, the UK’s disgraced Secretary of State for War

 

 

A couple of days ago in my blog, there was a discussion between comedy club owner Martin Besserman and writer Harry Rogers about whether people accused of sex crimes should be named in the press before they are prosecuted.

There is another interesting angle to this which Harry Rogers knows a bit about. Not a sex crime but a sex scandal… The Profumo sex scandal of 1963 which ultimately brought down Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.

But this blog is really about Johnny Edgecombe, whom I think I probably met at Malcolm Hardee’s Up The Creek comedy club in Greenwich in the 1990s. By then, he was known as Johnny Edge. I have a vague recollection that Malcolm introduced me to Johnny Edge once; but I can’t be certain.

What interests me about Johnny is how small incidents in apparently insignificant individuals’ lives can change history.

For those too young to remember, the Profumo Affair involved ‘good-time party girl’ Christine Keeler having sex with John Profumo, the UK’s Secretary of State for War. This was not good, given that he was married to actress Valerie Hobson. Worse though, given that Profumo knew Britain’s entire defence secrets and this was the height of the Cold War, was that Christine Keeler was also having sex with Yevgeni Ivanov, a senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London. All military attachés are assumed to be spies.

In October 1962, the United States and the USSR almost stumbled into a nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

At the same time, in London, Johnny Edgecombe was Christine Keeler’s boyfriend and allegedly her pimp. Before that, Keeler’s boyfriend had been drug dealer ‘Lucky’ Gordon. When she split from Gordon, he attacked her with an axe and held her hostage for two days. She then became Johnny Edgecombe’s girlfriend.

Just before Christmas 1962, she split from Johnny Edgecombe. What happened then resulted in a court case in which John Profumo’s name was mentioned in open court and the whole Profumo scandal became public knowledge.

Johnny Edgecombe went to prison for what happened in the mews.

I had a drink with Harry Rogers last night.

Harry Rogers remembers Johnny in Greenwich last night

“I met Johnny Edge just after he came out of prison,” Harry told me. “I think the intelligence services knew very well what was going on with Christine Keeler: that she was having an affair with Profumo and was also seeing Ivanov.”

“What had Johnny done before the Profumo thing?” I asked.

“He’d been friends with lots of jazz musicians in London,” Harry told me. “And he’d worked for Peter Rachman.”

“The dodgy slum landlord?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Rachman bought a lot of properties up and, when he had trouble getting people out of a property, he would get Johnny Edge and a couple of others to go and take over the basement in the building and set up a shebeen. A shebeen is an illegal drinking establishment with lots of loud music pumping all night. So Johnny’s role was to set up the shebeen and get musicians to come in there and party. They had a great time and the people got so fed up with the noise they left. It was like constructive dismissal – constructive eviction, really.”

“But eventually,” I said, “he met Christine Keeler, she left him and that triggered off the whole thing.”

“Yes,” said Harry. “When Christine Keeler left him – he was kind of pimping her in a way; he was living off her earnings, anyway – he wanted money and he needed money and also Johnny was in competition with Lucky Gordon, who was out to get Johnny. He saw him as the person who had taken ‘his Christine’ away from him – cos he’d been pimping her too.

“Lucky Gordon had caught up with Johnny in the Flamingo club in Wardour Street in Soho and there had been a big running fight through the club. They were chasing each other about all over he place. Lucky Gordon was going to beat up Johnny, but Johnny pulled a knife and ‘striped’ his face.

“After that, Lucky Gordon was really, really angry and so he got a machete and he was threatening to cut Johnny Edge’s head off. And that’s why Johnny got a gun. And the gun that he got was Christine Keeler’s. She had a Luger pistol.”

“Why did she have a gun?” I asked.

“I think for protection,” Harry replied. “Anyway, Johnny took her gun and he was carrying it because he knew that, if Lucky Gordon did catch up with him – if he wasn’t protected – Lucky was going to kill him.

A 1964 book on the Profumo Scandal

“When Christine left Johnny and went to Stephen Ward in the mews, Johnny got a taxi to the house. Christine was there but wouldn’t come to the window. Mandy Rice-Davies came to the window and told Johnny Christine doesn’t want to speak to you - Here’s some money – Go away! – and threw a handful of fivers out the window.

“That made Johnny angry, so then he decided he was going to go in and talk to Christine. So he tried to do what they do in the movies. He tried to shoot the door open by blowing the lock off the door with the gun.

“That didn’t work, so then he got back into the taxi…”

“The taxi driver,” I asked, “had just been sitting there twiddling his thumbs through all this?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “The cab driver was still waiting. Johnny got back in the cab. And they drove off.

“Meanwhile, the police had been phoned. They caught up with Johnny and arrested him and charged him with attempted murder. They said he’d actually tried to shoot Christine Keeler from the street through the window. He never did that. But they needed a court case to break open the whole thing so they could officially look into everything that was going on. And, from that point onwards it all came out.

“What Johnny told me was that not only was Stephen Ward supplying various members of the Establishment with women… There were a number of them: Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, Rona Ricardo and two or three other girls were involved in this circle, this kind of call girl ring that he was running… They would all go down to Lord Astor’s place (Clivedon in Buckinghamshire) and have the swimming pool, the weekend orgies, all the rest of it… not only was Stephen Ward doing that, but he was also supplying lots of Members of Parliament and the aristocracy with marijuana.”

“Which would be a big thing then,” I said.

“Which was a big thing then,” Harry agreed. “And which Johnny Edge was supplying to Stephen Ward.”

“How did the Russian get involved?” I asked.

Profumo resigned because he lied to MPs

“Well,” explained Harry, “Stephen Ward would host parties which diplomats and all sorts of people would attend – He was just a military attaché. I don’t think there was any attempt to screw information out of Profumo. There’s no way that Christine Keeler was pumping Profumo for information to give to Ivanov, who she called her ‘Russian teddy bear’. It was all just sex and drugs, really. But spooks, being what they are, often read a lot more into the situation than is there.

“Profumo was a pretty honourable man. He just liked screwing.”

“You’ve heard about the new Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical that’s being written about Stephen Ward?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Johnny Edge told me Stephen Ward was a great guy and it was terrible the way he was vilified out. Really, he was just serving a need.”

“And was driven to suicide,” I said.

“And,” said Harry, “Johnny was sent to prison. He spent about six years inside. The Labour Party – Bessie Braddock in particular – said, as soon as they got into power, they would ensure he was released. But, of course, what happened when the Wilson government came in? They left him there to rot. He kept writing to them from prison trying to get them to honour what they had said they were going to do, but they left him there.

“He’d been sent to Dartmoor! For a while he shared a cell with Frank Mitchell.”

“The Mad Axeman?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Everybody was really frightened of Frank in there. Not just the prisoners, but all the Screws. He was like an animal. But he took a liking to Johnny so, consequently, life was easy for Johnny inside because he had total protection. In those days, it wouldn’t have been easy being a black West Indian like Johnny in prison.’”

“And you met him soon after he got out?” I asked.

“When he first came out of prison,” explained Harry, “he didn’t go back to Notting Hill, he moved to a flat in Blackheath, then later he moved to a flat on a council estate by what’s now the Up The Creek comedy club.

“His aim was, if he could ever make enough money, to go out to the West Indies and buy a boat like his dad had had. Of course, it never happened.

“He would wake up in the morning and smoke a joint. Then he would get washed and dressed. Smoke another joint. Have breakfast. Smoke another joint. Then he was set up to go out for the day. He was always stoned. Always.

Johnny Edgecombe in later life + one of his cigarettes

“He decided he was going to make money from selling chess sets. He met somebody who had access to a whole load of reproduction fancy chess sets: the Lewis chess set, the Reynard The Fox one, a Mexican carved crystal one and an erotic chess set – pornographic, basically – the bishops had little boys sucking them off. They weren’t cheap. He made a good mark-up on them.

“Also, if you wanted to buy half a pound or a pound of dope, Johnny knew where to go. In 1971, you could probably get a pound of dope for £500 and he’d charge you £550. He wasn’t a big dope importer or anything, but he was big mates with Howard Marks, who was.

“After the chess sets, he got into buying VW camper vans in Amsterdam and filling them up with Second World War leather jackets and overcoats he bought in a warehouse near where he bought the VWs. They looked like Nazi overcoats but weren’t – most were actually Dutch motorcycle police coats, but they looked the business.

“So Johnny would fill the camper vans with these coats, bring them back to Britain and sell them. The rock singer Chris Farlowe used to run a Nazi militaria shop and Johnny Edge used to sell him these Dutch police overcoats as genuine Nazi wartime overcoats at a massive mark-up.

“Needs must when the Devil drives. There was no way he was ever going to get employed in a straight job; he was so stoned all the time.

“He was a very likeable guy. He was a great guy.”

“And he died just over two years ago,” I said. “What did he die of?”

“Lung cancer,” said Harry.

So it goes.

The Rolf Harris sex ‘arrest’ – Why was he NOT named and why did the police bring Jimmy Savile’s name into it?

Yesterday’s front page Sun ‘exclusive’

Yesterday, the Sun newspaper ran what it called a World Exclusive under the headline.

ROLF HARRIS SEX ABUSE ARREST

To most people, the word ‘arrest’ means that someone was detained, was charged and will appear in court in the very near future.

But the police now seem to be using the word ‘arrest’ in a very non-colloquial way. What they seem to mean by ‘arrest’ in any high-profile case – especially anything within an intercontinental ballistic missile’s reach of the headline-grabbing Jimmy Savile paedophile story – is that they have simply questioned someone under caution in a trawl for evidence.

Having a headline saying ‘arrest’ makes it seem that the police are actually doing something. They are indeed doing something, but there is an element of PR-led bullshit rapidly creeping in here.

Yesterday’s Sun story:

WORLD EXCLUSIVE
ROLF HARRIS SEX ABUSE ARREST
TV LEGEND, 83, QUIZZED OVER ASSAULT CLAIM

was more complicated than it seemed.

The Daily Express front page today

The story was actually that the UK TV star Rolf Harris “was held” (note the Sun’s use of the past tense) “over historic sex abuse allegations by police from the inquiry set up following the Jimmy Savile scandal”

There is obfuscation here, again caused by the police’s PR-led attempts to show they are actively doing something.

In fact, the Sun story ‘revealed’ that police had raided Rolf Harris’ home on 24th November last year (he was not there), interviewed him under caution on 29th November last year and arrested him on 28th March this year.

As far as I am aware, this ‘arrest’ means he was questioned under caution, not that he was actually charged with anything nor with any court date pending.

The police were quoted in yesterday’s Sun as saying: “The individual falls under the strand of the investigation we have termed ‘others’.”

The police started off investigating the Jimmy Savile paedophile case and people connected to that. Then, quite rightly, they started investigating totally unconnected claims of (particularly media-connected) non-paedophile sexual incidents brought to their attention.

These cases are labelled by them as ‘others’. But, by saying that ‘the Savile enquiry police’ are investigating these ‘others’, the police PR machine implies the cases are connected directly to the paedophile investigation and this (presumably intentionally) gets the police ‘brownie points’ in the public’s eye.

What interested me, though, was that the Rolf Harris arrest story was not new.

As the Sun reported yesterday in their Rolf Harris ‘exclusive’, “Harris has been named on social media sites by hundreds of thousands of people” and “the world’s media have been camped outside his home since he was first questioned”.

Their story concluded with the line: “Other celebrities arrested include Freddie Starr, Jim Davidson, Dave Lee Travis, PR guru Max Clifford — who all deny wrongdoing — and Gary Glitter.”

The difference, though, is that when those people were questioned – or “arrrsted” as the police phrased it – they were named in newspapers.

The original detention by police of Rolf Harris WAS reported when it happened, but the reports did not name him. Variations of the phrase “prominent children’s entertainer” were used. Why?

On my Facebook page yesterday, referring to the Rolf Harris arrest report in the Sun, I posted:

The only surprise is… Why was this not reported last November?

This resulted in an online conversation between Martin Besserman, owner of the long-running Monkey Business comedy club in London, and writer Harry Rogers.

I reprint it here in full with their permission:

Martin Besserman’s current Facebook profile picture

Martin Besserman: It’s wrong to name. The man has not even been charged, let alone found guilty.

John Fleming: Everyone else was named. In this case, variations on the phrase “prominent children’s TV presenter” were used.

Martin Besserman: John, again it’s not impossible someone wishes to cash in on his fame, to set up so to speak.

John Fleming: In this specific case, it’s relevant that I worked in television for several companies… But my point is why were others named but not him?

Martin Besserman: So are you saying name and shame without even being charged? That surely is not reasonable!

John Fleming: I tend to agree. But I am saying either name or do not name. Why were the others named and not Rolf?

Harry Rogers’ current Facebook profile picture

Harry Rogers: Probably ‘cos he had had such close access to the Royals

Martin Besserman: John, I hear what you are saying, but I don’t feel anyone should be named unless found guilty

John Fleming: Again, I tend to agree with you. But why was Rolf, almost uniquely, not named?… I actually agree with you. There should be anonymity. But, if there is not, then everyone should be reported equally.

Harry Rogers: The BBC reported there were legal restrictions until today and now those restrictions have been eased, otherwise he would have been outed before today

John Fleming: It would be interesting to know what the restrictions were. A super-injunction?

Martin Besserman: The same stigma for men accused of rape. Woman not named, but sometimes they make up stories. The law needs addressing. It’s outdated.

Harry Rogers: Wait and see

Martin Besserman: The sad thing about all of this now is that a man in his eighties will now be remembered for sex charges, as opposed to decades of being a wholesome hugely talented entertaining individual.

Harry Rogers: And if he is guilty? Then what….

Martin Besserman: Well, if guilty very sad because he will be judged as a person for that and not for his wonderful contribution as artist, entertainer and indeed as a well known animal lover.

Harry Rogers: As such a person that you describe he should have known better, if guilty. It is an abuse of privilege that allows many celebrities to believe that somehow they are different to everybody else, but the reality is that they are the same as the plumber or the school caretaker and should be treated accordingly.

Martin Besserman: Harry, this is subject for debate. An error of judgement perhaps 40 or 50 years ago, although not condoning, surely is not revealing of a person’s real character necessarily.

Harry Rogers: Tell that to the Nazis still hiding even now after the holocaust and those who spend their lives hunting them down. If sex offenders had not given way to their proclivities there would be no story here. Sexual abuse and violence are things which harm people for years. As a teenage boy I was raped by a minor pop star and said nothing for years because I felt ashamed, however it did cause me a lot of grief. You think Rolf deserves to be let off for a minor indiscretion, if he did it. If he did do it then he abused a position of trust and power and deserves to face the music. Sun arise early in the morning.

Martin Besserman: I hear what you are saying Harry. Let’s say his crime was just wanking a boy off 40 years ago. Would that be reasonable to pursue charges now? I am not so sure. If it was rape of a child that of course is another matter… My main concern is the naming and shaming before a verdict! Undemocratic

Harry Rogers: I hardly think the police would be wasting so much time and effort if that was the case, Martin but, in terms of naming and shaming, Rolf Harris can easily come forward and defend himself. There isn’t a TV or media outlet that wouldn’t give him a platform to tell his story… And, anyway, child wanking is still an abuse of power

Martin Besserman: Harry, this is the problem. Police keep on wasting time and public money.

Harry Rogers: The pursuit of child sex offenders is not a waste of public money… As a tax payer this is one police activity I am in favour of

Martin Besserman: Harry you are right. My main concern is the naming and shaming before a verdict

Harry Rogers: As I say if he is innocent then let him stand up and deny it and if that is proved to be true then let him sue the accusers for bundles.

John Fleming: I would be surprised (guessing from what I know) if there is any accusation of child sex abuse in the Rolf Harris case. I would be very surprised if it involved boys or under-age girls. The police say it is not directly related to the Savile case; it comes under their ‘others’ category.

Martin Besserman: The accusers probably don’t have millions. It might be the Michael Jackson case that made people think they might cash in

Harry Rogers: Speculation is dangerous

Martin Besserman: So what should I do Rolf Harris is my Facebook friend?

Harry Rogers: Justice is important. The BBC is putting its neck on the line by running the story again so soon after the Savile debacle… As for Facebook Martin it’s probably best if we all wait and see. I have no idea what the accusations are, neither do I know whether he is guilty of anything, I am prepared to wait and see what happens, however I am interested in the fact that he has been arrested and will watch this case with the view of an abuse victim to see how it pans out. The fact that we know his name is meaningless. It is the evidence that counts. And we are all adults so we are able to make up our minds about it provided it is all out in the open.

Martin Besserman: My problem with this is a man now in his eighties cannot walk the streets in fear of attack etc. This has to be wrong!

Harry Rogers: Rubbish

Martin Besserman: I don’t think so

Being a comedian inside Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane…

Matt Price at Soho Theatre in London last week

Yesterday’s blog told the story of how comic Martha McBrier was attacked in Glasgow, left partially deaf… and how her family and partner, comedian Matt Price, tried to get justice by contacting violent Glasgow gangsters.

In 2008, Matt told the story to a comedy promoter and ended up going to Broadmoor high security hospital for the criminally insane.

When I met him last week, I asked: “What did the promoter say?”

“It will give you an insight into the criminal mind, is what she told me. And it did, but not in the way I anticipated. At the end of it – it was horrible but – at the end of it, I had another gig and, as I was waiting to go on stage, I was on the phone to her crying my eyes out and she asked Why are you crying? and I said I don’t know. I think I’ve been in the presence of evil.

“She said Are you sure it’s not just that they didn’t laugh at any of your funny jokes? and I thought Yeah, dry your eyes.”

I prompted Matt: “You said that it had an effect on you but not the type of effect you’d thought it would…”

Matt told me: “I had been quite proud of myself – and I think ‘proud’ is the right word – to be able to go and see Glaswegian criminals. That kinda made me proud in the sense I had faced a fear. It had been quite a big deal when I realised I didn’t have to take violent revenge on somebody.

The comedy show put on inside Broadmoor

“So, when Broadmoor was mentioned to me, I almost didn’t hear the ‘criminally insane’ bit.

“The comedy promoter told me: You’ve got a great personality. You’re gonna be brilliant.  It’s the first and last day they’re going to do comedy in Broadmoor. You should go along and there’s murderers and rapists and paedophiles there. It will give you an insight into the criminal mind.

“I almost didn’t hear the murderers and rapists and paedophiles bit either. I just thought: Oh, I’ve got personality. I’m a people person. It’ll be great.

“But what I realised as a result of going into Broadmoor is that comedically you have to have something in common with the people you’re in front of – or you need to give them the ability to relate to you at some level. You can’t do that when the person in the audience has sawn off someone’s feet or beaten them to death with a hammer. Empathy goes out the window. It’s very difficult to do observational comedy in front of people who are criminally insane, because what do you observe?

“We were told in advance: You can’t talk about sex or violence. Try not to swear. Don’t say anything that will remind them of the outside world. 

“Because of the emotion behind it, because I was essentially there because of what happened to Martha, I was very emotional and believed that in some way I could get some closure from performing in Broadmoor.

“But the inmates were coming up to me and touching my fists. Some of them were very childlike. I was told Don’t let this freak you out. Well of course I’m going to be freaked out because it’s the worst thing to say to anybody Don’t let this freak you out! - You’re automatically frightened.

“One of the nurses had told me: When they walk in, you’ll be able to tell what crime they’ve committed. And, because she put that into my head, I was fine until they came in. Then suddenly I thought Yes. I can see. You’re a rapist. You’re a murderer. You’re a paedophile. Suddenly the room’s spinning around.

Broadmoor high security hospital for the criminally insane

“I asked if I could just go outside for a little while and I was told No, because it will remind them they’re incarcerated. And secondly, I was told, you’ll probably notice the patients are physically very big. This is because they eat a lot of junk food. The junk food that they don’t eat, they feed to the squirrels. So the squirrels living outside Broadmoor are massive – several times the size of normal squirrels. You think you’re scared now? If you see squirrels four times their original size, they will frighten the life out of you.

“So I wanna go outside, but I can’t go outside because of the squirrels.

“And so then I started wondering Am I the one who is mad?

“The patients were coming up and touching my fist and shaking my hand and getting physically close to me. One of them actually said In prison we do it like this and made me touch fists with him. Part of me was thinking, as I was feeling quite sick and afraid, Are you telling me I have the same qualities as you? Am I the same as you? And it was going through my head: I’ve never raped anybody. I’ve never murdered anybody. Maybe I’m the one who’s criminally insane. 

“Couple this with the fact that, when I was on stage, a big guy was shouting out: Well, WHO’S institutionalised NOW? He shouted: Your SANITY means NOTHING to me! Do you UNDERSTAND me? It means NOTHING to me!

“What do you say to that?

The UK’s Sun newspaper reports the 2008 Broadmoor event

“The stage was high, but one guy stood in front of the stage and his head was sticking over the top and I remember thinking: I could kick your head off the top of your shoulders now and I’d end up in here for the rest of my life.

“Everything just made it frightening. The fear of being around these people, coupled with the squirrels. It made it the most surreal experience. And part of me thought: Did I make that up? Did she really tell me that? Maybe I made up the whole squirrel thing? Maybe I am temporarily psychotic? But, no, it’s true.

“Then I thought: Well maybe she just said the bit about the squirrels to stop me going outside. 

“After the show had finished, we had to wait in the foyer and all the patients were walking past and allowed to go to their bedrooms. We were told Once they’ve gone, you can leave. We wanted to leave anyway because we were both afraid. I was with Ray Peacock, a brilliant comic, and someone walked by and looked at me and said Oh I thought you were brilliant and let out a cackle – Heh! heh! heh! heh! heh! – and I jumped up out of my chair to square up to him.

“Normally, I don’t square up to anyone. It’s not my thing. But I did. And I remember saying to this inmate: Yeah! Go on! Facebook me! and Ray Peacock had his head in his hands laughing. I thought he was going to die laughing. Facebook me!

“And then the woman who was in charge came over and said to me: Well, that wasn’t very professional, was it? And I said I’m scared! You need to understand I’m genuinely scared! And then we left. Quickly.

“I thought I could make sense of it, but some things you just can’t understand or some things, at least, are beyond my comprehension.

“It did change how I felt about people. It took my naivety away a little bit, because I always thought I could get on well with anyone. In ordinary life, I always thought it was possible to find something of common interest with someone. But with the criminally insane? It’s just not possible.”

“So,” I suggested to Matt, “meeting gangsters in Glasgow didn’t change you because, in a sense, they were normal people. But people in Broadmoor are not ordinary people. They’re mad.”

“Well,” said Matt, “I think gangsters do things that are on the madness scale.”

“Like the guy who screwed people’s hands to the floor,” I conceded.

“Yes,” said Matt, “But it’s so weird, because he cried when his grandchild was born.”

Asking a Glasgow gangster for revenge after an attack on a female comedian

Comedian Matt Price at Soho Theatre in London last week

When I met comic Matt Price for tea last week in London, I did not know his partner is Glasgow comedian Martha McBrier.

“Martha got attacked,” he told me, “and then, about a year later, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and, between those times, a member of her family went to buy a gun to shoot the man who attacked her.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“This was in 2008,” Matt told me.

“Martha was attacked in Glasgow in 2007. The guy who lived above her attacked her. He was a small-time drug dealer.

“Martha and I were in a long-distance relationship. I was living in Cardiff, struggling as a comedian, but just about holding it together, getting to see her once a month or so. She was doing well in comedy, but she got attacked and it all ended. She has taught me more than anyone about comedy and I felt guilty for quite a long time that I could do it and she wasn’t physically able to.

“She lost not the ability to do it, but the… the… She went from being truly hailed to being in a room that was too big and everything went wrong.

“The guy kicked her in the side of the head. After the attack, she went downstairs. She phoned the police. Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door. Four or five of them from upstairs came in. One of them hit her. He was wearing a ring and it bruised her face. The hearing in one ear had already gone. The other ear was about 75%. She said it was like being underwater.

“When the policeman came, he was very very upset. He said he’d been in the business for thirty years. He was really distressed. He had to shout. The guy had, essentially, smashed her face in. So she went to hospital and a few weeks later was diagnosed with a brain tumour… It might have been a few months later… You know what time is like.”

“The brain tumour also affected her hearing?” I asked.

“It’s a thing called an acoustic neuroma,” said Matt. “It’s a non-malignant brain tumour. One of the side-effects is you lose your hearing.

“She went to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 and had a nightmare. The room was too big. She used to like to interact with the audience but, because she couldn’t hear and her balance was bad, she wasn’t able to do it any more. The venue told her she couldn’t get off the stage. I’m not saying she won’t come back. She did a kids’ show last year and got two 4-star reviews.”

“But,” I said, “before this, after she was attacked, people wanted revenge…”

“No-one did anything,” Matt explained. “So it made it very hard. And the guy lived above her for another 18 months. He boasted one day about how he’d been boxing with his neighbours. He also beat up a teenage boy in the close and nobody did anything.

“So someone in Martha’s family went to see somebody about buying a gun to get it dealt with. The guy was an old-fashioned debt collector who used to screw people’s hands into tables to get their undivided attention. Like all violent criminals, he was quite blasé about the whole process. He still sells cigarettes, but his wife doesn’t know – because she disapproves of cigarettes.”

“But,” I asked, “she doesn’t mind him screwing people’s hands into tables?”

“No,” said Matt. “They’re unusual people…

Martha McBrier was attacked in Moodiesburn, near Glasgow

“This is how the justice system works in Moodiesburn, where Martha lives. I went there on New Year’s Eve and went to bed just after ‘the bells’ – at about a quarter past midnight. It was my birthday on New Year’s Day and I was awoken at about 2 o’clock in the morning by the sound of fireworks. I thought Oh great! The Scots! This is typical Hogmanay!

“Martha’s sister came in about 11.30 the following morning, when I was looking forward to my birthday breakfast, and said a local drug dealer had sold some heroin to a young boy who died and the fireworks had been the sound of petrol bombs being thrown at the drug dealer’s house. That’s how the justice system works there.

“It’s a very close-knit community. In the case of Martha being attacked, everybody knew. It became a question of Well, if everyone knows about it, who’s going to deal with it and how will it go? Bear in mind that the person who attacked her… everybody knows his family as well and they all know that he deals drugs – albeit at a very small level, because he wouldn’t be on that estate, surrounded by poverty, if he made a lot of money. He made enough money for a couple of sports cars.

“So this member of Martha’s family went to buy a gun to shoot the man who attacked her and the guy who could have provided her with a gun said No. I’m a criminal. I’m a professional. You’re not. Take your money. Buy Martha something nice.

“I met a few people and eventually someone phoned me and said: Look, I know what’s happened and I will take you in my car to meet someone who can genuinely help you. We ended up in a hotel. I’m a big man and the person with me was a very big man. We went down into the gym and there’s this old guy in his mid-70s, white hair, pounding on a treadmill like I’ve never seen before.

Matt’s 2009 Edinburgh Fringe poster

“The old guy had a history, a reputation. His sports car was outside with a designer number plate on it. He told me to go upstairs and sit at a table. The reason, I found out later, was that there were cameras everywhere – kinda for my protection and for his. If anything kicked-off, the cameras would pick it up.

“I was told to wait for half an hour. An hour and a half later, he turns up, comes over and says, Very nice to meet you. What do you want? And I said, Well, I don’t know.

He said: I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and give you ten minutes.

Eight hours later, we were still together. He drove me around, took me to his house, showed me all over Glasgow, He explained how he’d got into crime. He said he’d gone to school with ten other people who were later convicted of murder and told me: This is not an excuse for what I’ve done. But I needed a way out, so I stole a raincoat and then I started to steal other things in the raincoat and then I wanted some credibility so I stole another raincoat and got a friend and then we stole to order. Then, about five years later, I did my first warehouse. Then I realised the psychology of criminality is what really counts. If you tell someone you can do something and you tell them with enough conviction, then they will believe you.

“He asked me about Martha and then said: You see that young lad over there? He’s got a slash down the side of his face. Someone cut his face. His dad shot the guy who did it. That’s how you get revenge. He didn’t kill him; he shot him…. to teach him a lesson.

“I sit here all day and watch people after my work-out. I’m no longer in business. I speak to people who are. I watch people. I’m an expert. I’m a psychologist. I can tell by the look in your eye that the sort of hurt you want to inflict on this man is the type of hurt that will change you both forever. You need to ask yourself do you want to make the change? It may sound like something from the movies, but do you love Martha more than you hate the guy who attacked her?

“I said, Of course I do.

“He told me that the life of a drug dealer… The cruel irony is that drug dealers usually end up with children who’re addicted to drugs and/or die of them.

“They make millions of pounds, he said. They have no friends, they’re looking over their shoulder all the time, they’ve got nowhere to spend it and someone’s always trying to knock them off the top of the perch because they want that ‘respect’. But it’s not respect. 

“Then he said: Nobody would blame you if you beat the guy’s door down in the middle of the night. That’s down to you. I know what I would do. But I’m not you, so you have to make your own decision. 

“I walked away from that quite comfortable with it. I was upset. I was emotional. But it was a real release. There’s no way in the world I’m going to get a golf club and beat someone to death with it. I’m just not that guy. I’m not from that world. I needed to know that it was OK for me as ‘a man’ not to have to take violent revenge. And also, if I’d done that, Martha would have killed me anyway.

“About a year later, I went to the old man’s funeral. A beautiful church. It’s snowing outside. There’s about 500 people there and I’m sat on the back row with these dodgy-looking guys, some of whom are wearing sunglasses.

“I got the Megabus up to his funeral and the criminals thought that was hilarious. They all have money and can drive around in flash cars. The fact that not only was I prepared, as a non-criminal, to go and meet him but to go to his funeral and pay my respects to him and to come up on the Megabus for twelve hours from Cardiff – they thought it was the funniest thing ever. I was told I got huge kudos, but a lot of laughter.

“I told a comedy promoter that story and ended up going to Broadmoor, meeting these really bad guys…”

CONTINUED HERE…

Comedian Chris Dangerfield on his new Edinburgh show and starting up a sex business without the Chinese Triads.

(This was also published by Indian news site WSN)

Chris Dangerfield looking over his shoulder yesterday

SERIOUSLY… A SEVERE WARNING… REALLY:
This blog contains very sexually explicit material and should not be read if you find that sort of material offensive.

* * *

I met Chris Dangerfield for tea in London’s Soho yesterday.

When I arrived in Chinatown and phoned him, as arranged, at 5.00pm, he said “Hello, John,” and then put someone else on the line.

“Hello, John,” a female Chinese voice said.

“I’ll be five minutes,” said Chris.

When he arrived, he told me he had had eight hours sleep in the previous three days.

“You know Pam died?” he asked.

“Pam?” I asked.

“Pam. Beggar. Been round here twenty years. Stood as tall as your knee. Green hands from moving 2p coins in them. Gambling addict. She died. Died just before Christmas. Probably cancer. She had it. Was treated. And I only found out yesterday that she died. So that was a bit of a shock.”

“She was a tramp?” I asked.

“She lived in sheltered housing,” said Chris, “but she was a gambling addict. It’s all about addiction. Last time we spoke, I was on the way to rehab for my hideously re-occurring heroin addiction…”

“…for a weekend,” I added.

“Yeah,” said Chris, “well, it went on a bit longer than a weekend.”

“Did it work?”

“Yeah, I’m clean. Yeah. But I got a girlfriend and she’s been hit by a car and she’s in hospital. That’s why I’m kind of… I left her on Sunday and I found out this morning (Thursday) that’s she’s in hospital.”

“What happened?” I asked. “A broken leg?”

“I don’t know,” said Chris, “because I’m trying not to get too… I just don’t know, John. It’s all  very… new. So that’s why I’m a little bit… more confused than usual… I’m also trying to buy 50 kilos of silver off of someone… That’s another complication… I’m all up-in-the-air.”

“All a great source for comedy,” I suggested.

“I had an interesting phone call,” said Chris. “The Comedy Cafe phoned me and said If you can fill our venue, you can have 100% of the door. An interesting business model. I said What’s the capacity? They said A hundred people. So I’ll do an hour’s show there. I’ll get £800. I can fill it. I am very good at marketing these things.”

Coming soon – the last ever performance of this 2012 show

“When is this?” I asked.

“25th of April,” said Chris.

“You’ll manage that,” I said. “Are you doing last year’s Edinburgh Fringe show?”

“Yes. And it’ll be the last performance of it. The last time I ever perform Sex Tourist. So that’s also a selling point for it.”

“So things are going well?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been asked back to Swansea,” said Chris.

“Whaaaat???” I reacted.

“I know,” said Chris. “It was a nightmare, a living nightmare last time. You blogged about it. I’ve been asked back by Richard Griffiths, the same person who booked me last time. He said I’m in demand down there. He rang me up and said £400 plus travel expenses.”

“Perhaps news of your nightmare has spread,” I suggested. “Did Richard Griffiths explain why he has had this mental aberration?”

“I don’t care,” said Chris. “£400 plus travel expenses to go down to Swansea and do a gig is OK by me. He’s got a different venue. I said I’ll do it. I want the money in advance. I’m not going all the way down to what is essentially a… a… well, I don’t even need to describe it. Everyone knows what Swansea’s like. I’m going to go down there and preview my new show, which is now called Enter The Dragon.”

“Because?” I asked.

“It’s about how I spent £150,000 – I’m done the maths now and it wasn’t £200,000 like I told you, it was only £150,000 – So it’s now called Enter The Dragon: How I Spent £150,000 on Chinese Prostitutes… sub-titled Looking For Love in All The Wong Places.”

“Aha,” I said.

“Now,” Chris continued, “when you rung me up, I was in a Chinese brothel, as you know, because I put one of the girls on the phone. I am going to set up my own massage parlour…

“I am trying to get Will Self – who I know – to let me do a gig to just him. I want to preview my Edinburgh show just to Will, because I want him to write a review because he’s excellent with language and I grew up reading Will Self stuff. That sounds like it might be on the cards, but I also told him about setting-up this massage parlour because you know I had a meeting with the Triads?”

“Errrr…. No,” I said. “Which Triad?”

“They’re actually the Xxxxx Family,” said Chris. “Hong Kong organised crime, essentially. They wanted an Englishman to front a massage parlour for them in London. I had a meeting with them and all these Chinese women came in first – all beautiful – and I thought they were laying them on. I thought it was like a little sweetener. It was 11 o’clock in the morning in a hotel in North Soho and I thought, Jesus Christ, man, this is it. Game on! but then the boys come in and discussed terms with me.

“I was with all these Triads and these women and the meeting went on for about three hours and halfway though – and I say this embarrassed – I was squinting my eyes and my accent had changed slightly – Ah. This ah sounds like-ha good ideeah in a Chinese accent – because it all seemed just so seductive to be part of their world. The weird thing is I’ve never felt I belonged anywhere. The only place I’ve ever belonged is rehab. When I’m in rehab, I think Yes, I should be here.

“I’ve got a terrible history with organised crime. I’ve had people put guns in my mouth. I’ve been chased round the country. I’m still paying someone off for some very very naughty business I used to be involved in.

Chris Dangerfield in Chinatown yesterday

“So I said to the Xxxxx Family, You have a terrible reputation for cutting people’s hands off. And we all laughed. Hahahahaha we went and they said, Yeah, but we just wanna make money.

“Anyway, I turned that business model down. I decided not to do it. But the woman you spoke to on the phone today – me and her are going to set up a massage parlour. And that’s part of my new Edinburgh Fringe show. That meeting with the Triads and what happened before and after. I’m not saying I have a particularly bizarre life, but I wouldn’t put it in my show unless it went worse than just a meeting with some crooked businessmen.

“This year’s Fringe show opens with a true story about having sex with an Alsatian called Emma.”

“This is a woman from Alsace, not a dog?” I checked.

“No, it’s a dog not a woman,” Chris corrected me.

(I have changed the dog’s name to preserve its privacy)

“The thing is,” said Chris, “you know they say You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink? In much the same way, you can lead a dog to penis but you can’t make it fuck. I did not rape the animal. I did insert my penis into an animal, but it took to it like a… duck to… water. It truly did.

“I didn’t fuck it… I’ll tell you why I call it ‘it’ in a minute. Weirdly… You know some people name their pets with human names like a gerbil called Scott? Well, this Alsatian was called Emma. It really did not help to have my penis inside a dog called Emma. I was quite high and remember stroking its back and thinking Emma’s got amazingly soft hair.

“My point is that, although the dog was called Emma, I couldn’t tell if it was a male or a female. My question to you, John, is Has anyone ever seen a dog’s vagina?”

“Another dog, I presume?” I managed to suggest.

“Have you yourself ever seen a dog’s vagina?” Chris asked me.

“Errr… Not that I remember.”

“If you were going to have to put your finger in a dog’s orifice, starting under the tail… Weird, isn’t it?”

“It seems that way to me,” I agreed.

“Fill yourself full or heroin and tuinal,” Chris continued. “Look… I had a penis; the dog was happy to reverse onto it. In Germany, they’ve got animal brothels. They’re trying to get them closed down, but I’ve seen men fucking horses and you can’t make… I’ve seen a horse fucking a man on a video… and you can’t make a horse do that. The horse either wants to do it or not. I’ve seen a man – not on video, live – put his penis in the massive chasm that is a horse’s rear end. It wasn’t pleasant.”

“I think this conversation is getting out of hand for my blog,” I said.

“Well,” said Chris, “you’ve got the Triads, you’ve got the bestiality, you’ve got the mother-and-daughter prostitutes who, whilst wanking me off…”

“I must have missed that one,” I said. “My attention must have wandered. Run that past me again..”

“The mother-and-daughter prostitutes who, whilst wanking me off,” repeated Chris, “had an argument that ended up with them hitting each other, whilst they’re still wanking me. They did not stop. You’ve got to admire that…”

I shrugged casually.

“So this new Edinburgh show is going to be excellent,” Chris told me.

“I’m going to regret using this phrase,” I said, “but you’re not sucking up to me with made-up stories just to get publicity in my blog, are you?”

“You know me by now.” said Chris. “It’s all true. I can take you to meet the people. This is my Edinburgh show. Every single thing is true. You know me by now, John. You know that I don’t actually have an imagination. I can’t write jokes. I’ve never written any comedy down. I buy books. Every year, I think: It’s time to grow a bit as an act. I buy a book. I open the book up, I do a pencil drawing of a goose with human legs and it gets put in the bin. It’s all true.

“Another bit of news is… When is this blog being published?…”

“Probably tomorrow,” I said.

“OK, then I can’t tell you this next bit. It’s a PR stunt. I’ll ring you and you will be the first to know. But I can tell you I’m doing a UK tour – me, Trevor Lock and Lee Kern of the TV show Celebrity Bedlam… The three of us are doing a UK tour with a very, very, very odd, different… I’m not going to tell you any more, but it is not just a comedy tour.”

“Does it involve any woodland creatures?” I asked.

“There’s no animals,” said Chris, “unless anyone brings one along to the show. But there will be no reversing them onto me.”

“At my age,” I said. ”I am thankful for small mercies.”

Attractive Norwich sheep in a pub; Gary The Goat charged in an Australian court

The Bishop of Norwich was not involved

In May 2011, I wrote a blog about cat wrestling and a sheep in a pub in Norfolk. It seemed like a good idea at the time and is fairly normal stuff for Norfolk.

At the time, Norwich comedian Dan McKee told me a tale about a local pub – the Ironmongers Arms:

“The peculiarities of the old Ironmongers Arms knew no bounds,” Dan said. “The landlord had no tongue, but he did have a pet jackdaw which hopped around the bar and Friday night entertainment consisted of a young lady singing the hits of Tina Turner. She didn’t sing to karaoke tracks but actually sang over the original Tina Turner records on the juke box and she just tried to sing louder than Tina’s vocals…

“Then there was the night somebody brought a sheep in for a pint. We asked him why he had come in with a sheep and he replied: Well, I couldn’t very well leave it at home.”

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Howard Posner in Norfolk. It read:

“A friend of mine just referred me to your old blog on the tale of the sheep. The sheep was, in fact, stolen from a field on the way back from a rugby game at Beccles in 1976.

“It travelled on the rear seat of a old Ford Cortina. I was in the front seat. The sheep was very placid and was taken into the pub by some of the University of East Anglia’s rugby fourth team (The Rams). I played for the team on and off for three season (two of which went undefeated).

“At the time, UEA’s first team was called the “u’s” and consisted of a lot of lads who were prepared to train regularly and drink a lot. The second and third teams were made up of those who failed in their efforts to get in the first XV. And the fourth team was made up of ‘social’ students, plus a couple of junior lecturers and a chef from the kitchens at Fifers Lane – who had quite a lot of ability but no desire to conform.

“Our pre-match routine was to meet in a pub somewhere and consume beer in such quantities that we would often arrive at the game with less than the requested fifteen players. Luckily, most of the opposition where of a similar sporting standard.

“As the fourth team, we adopted the Ram as our emblem and acquired a rather large advertising hoarding for pure wool with a sheep on it. The sheep was called Louise and we took this with us to all our games and wrote the results on the hoarding.

“On the way back from winning in Beccles on that fateful night, we decided that it would be more appropriate to have a live ram. There were lots of sheep in the area and we ‘acquired’ one. How were we to know the difference between a male and female sheep? We picked that particular sheep because it was the prettiest in the field.

“Our destination was the usual one, the Ten Bells pub, who would not let us in with a sheep. But the landlord of the Ironmongers Arms was happy to allow in at least fifteen drinking men and a sheep. Sadly, the sheep would not drink the beer, which I recall was high quality Norwich Bitter. When it urinated in the bar some of the liquid was mopped up into a pint glass and was quite favourably compared to the Norwich ale in look and smell. As the evening progressed, our numbers swelled and we moved on.

“When Spencer’s night club would not let us in on the grounds that the sheep was not a member, it was taken away. I was told it was released in a field of other sheep (not its own) but there was a tale, never substantiated, that it was actually taken to the Wild Man pub, escaped and was last seen heading towards the Cathedral. I like this version better.”

Coincidentally yesterday, comedian Bob Slayer also updated me on the progress of Gary The Goat, best friend of Australian comic Jimbo Bazoobi.

Bob’s adventures with Jimbo and Gary The Goat as they crossed Australia last Spring were partially blogged about here last year and Bob is about to publish an eBook about their joint exploits.

Gary The Goat reads the charges against him in Australia

As I mentioned in a blog last month, Gary The Goat was recently disgracefully arrested for eating some grass and (police allege) some flowers.

As a result of this arrest, Gary The Goat’s Facebook page, which had 400 likes, zoomed up to 8,500 likes and the first post about the case went viral, had 25,000 likes and was seen by nearly half a million goat-fascinated folks…

The latest news is that Gary The Goat is going to court next Wednesday, accused of ‘damaging vegetation without authority’.

“Earlier this week,” Bob Slayer tells me, “FOUR cops arrived at Jimbo’s place to deliver their ‘brief of evidence’. It is a 200 page document. So far, I’m only half way through reading it.”

Feared UK comedy critic Kate Copstick now has links with African criminals and has started dealing drugs in Kenya

(This piece was also published by India’s We Speak News and by the Huffington Post)

Kate Copstick at her Mama Biashara charity shop yesterday

Early tomorrow morning Kate Copstick, doyenne of British comedy critics, flies to Africa for three weeks.

Yesterday in London, at her Mama Biashara shop in Shepherd’s Bush, I was talking to her about possibilities for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show at next year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Every year, 100% of any money collected at the Awards show goes to Copstick’s Mama Biashara charity, which helps poor people in Kenya – mostly women – start up their own small businesses.

I organise the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards but take no money of any kind for it and cover none of my expenses because, that way, comedians and others know there can be nothing financially dubious about it (always a possibility with anything connected to the late Malcolm).

100% of any money collected at the end of each Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show is given (with no deductions) to Copstick’s Mama Biashara charity which, similarly, deducts no money for its running costs.

Copstick takes no money of any kind in any way from Mama Biashara and covers none of her expenses. She pays for her flights to Kenya and any other expenses she incurs in running the charity she pays for herself.

“A little goes a long way,” she told me yesterday, “as long as you don’t start paying out expenses.”

“Because it’s a short and slippery slope?” I said.

“Yes,” said Copstick, “because, once you start, you may say Well, maybe we’ll take a few pennies just for a coffee or Well, the charity could pay for lunch with a possible donor… Next thing it’s OK, we’ll cover justifiable travel expenses. Then it’s I was a bit late so I had to get a taxi. And then, because it’s about Mindset, once you think it’s OK to take a little, it’s only a question of degree before you take bigger amounts. I think taking anything is wrong.

“Luckily enough for me, I own my flat, I had some money saved up and my vices were only alcohol, Class A drugs, very young men and older women… and I’d given up most of them. People can guess which ones I’ve not given up.

“So my outgoings – if you’ll pardon the expression – are minimal. As for the charity, we don’t have any big donors and there are no deductions. If someone spends £5 in this shop, that’s £5 going into the pot and it only takes five £5 and I’ve started a woman in a business in Kenya. That’s her life and her family’s life changed. They’re not rich, they’re never going to be rich, but they’re independent and there’s the psychological thing of self-respect.”

“What happens to the shop when you’re in Kenya?” I asked.

“It’s a bit of a nightmare,” replied Copstick. “Despite all the ‘friends’ who say I’ll do anything to help and Oh! It’s a lovely shop! they all disappear like snow off the proverbial dyke – the dry stone variety, not the kd laing variety – when I say I’m going to Kenya for three weeks. Would you do a couple of hours in the shop? They’re all bastards. You’re all cunts.

“So my sister comes in a bit and we’ve a couple of other volunteers but sometimes I have to put a big notice up on the door saying Terribly sorry. Opening hours will be incredibly irregular while I’m away spending vast amounts on prostitutes and rent boys.

“AND jailbirds,” Copstick added. “That was a new one, last time. I was persuaded slightly against my better judgment – but it’s all worked out well. There was a group of young men in their twenties who had recently been released from prison and, bad as the prison system is here, in Kenya it’s even worse.

“It’s pretty-well fucked-up here in Britain but, in Kenya, one rogue policeman can arrest you, put you in prison and then just ‘lose’ the paperwork so nobody even knows you’re there. And we’re not exactly talking the Kray Twins of Nairobi. One guy had been arrested for smoking dope. One guy had been arresting for attempting – but not succeeding in – pickpocketing.”

“So,” I asked, “people are getting thrown in prison for Dickensian crimes like stealing cheese off a wheelbarrow?”

“Absolutely,” said Copstick. “But these boys had been eventually released from prison and there were four groups of ex-cons that Mama Biashara funded. I’m quite excited. All the businesses are going well and I’ll be checking up on them when I go this time.

“With one of them – it’s really quite exciting, this – Mama Biashara has gone into drug dealing. I realise that the clean-cut readers of your blog won’t know what I’m talking about, but there is a herb called khat, well-known to Somalis. Anyone who has ever had a Somali taxi driver will have noticed the constantly-moving jaw and greenish teeth.”

“Have you ‘had’ many Somali taxi-drivers?” I asked.

“Many, many, many,” replied Copstick. “It’s a mild stimulant.”

“The herb?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Copstick. “It’s known as mira in Kenya and it’s entirely legal there and here in the UK. Over here, we get little stumpy stems which, by the time you’ve chewed them, you’re exhausted, so it doesn’t matter what stimulant effect the herb has. In Kenya, you get the fresh leaves and there’s a massive Somali population. They love it and the profit margin is astronomical. It’s a Friday evening thing. On the way home, the guys pick up a bottle of booze and a bunch of mira…”

“…and get half-khat,” I suggested.

“…and chomp away,” said Copstick. “I was amazed at the profit margin, so there’s a Mama Biashara group selling mira, a group selling chickens, a group selling goats.”

“There’s a bigger profit margin on cocaine,” I suggested.

“Well,” said Copstick, “there’s not much of it about it Kenya.”

“And they can’t afford heroin or cocaine,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Copstick. “In the slum areas – which is really all I know – glue is the thing. They have industrial strength glue which they sniff. I mean toxic. And, until very recently, they had something called chang’aa which is a home-brewed illicit alcohol fortified with ethyl alcohol. The main side-effects are blindness and death. When people there say I’ve got a blinding hangover, they literally mean a blinding hangover. It was recently outlawed, but…”

“So,” I interrupted, “you’ve been branching out from ladies to criminals. These young men – like the attempted pickpocket – What sentences had they served?”

“Most,” explained Copstick, “had been in prison for about 18 months without ever coming to court or without even being arraigned, because you just disappear into the system and, if you’re poor, you don’t have a lawyer and you can’t afford to bribe anybody. So that’s it. You’re scuppered. Unless you get picked up by some organisation who’re willing to help. It’s horrific there.”

“In my blog back in September,” I reminded her, “you were talking about building a Mama Biashara centre out in Kenya.”

“We had the chance,” said Copstick, “but, after meeting the ex-crims and a couple of experiences where we came up against some local bureaucrats and a couple of rogue policemen who were dealing with gay rent boys, it was kind of brought home to me that, the minute I raise Mama Biashara’s head above the parapet, the 100% of money that goes to Kenya will, in fact, be going into official pockets all over the place. They’re lying, cheating, stealing bastards. That’s from the government right down to the lowest-of-the-low of officialdom.

“The local chiefs are actually pretty good to deal with because they live there among their people and understand their people. But I realised, if I had a centre, officials would say Oh! You’ve painted it the wrong colour! You need to pay us this amount or Oh! You didn’t have this certificate or that certificate! and they’re like blackmailers. If you pay once, you never stop paying.”

“So there won’t be a Mama Biashara centre?” I asked.

“No,” confirmed Copstick. “That would be wonderful. But the cost in backhanders would never stop. And it’s tragic. Because, to have that base, to have the clinic, to have the little peanut butter making place would be fabulous. But it’s one of the things you just have to accept: the whole system is too corrupt and, if you’re going to do good, you have to be a guerilla.

“And, when people know a white female is involved… Once they know you’re there, once they know where to get you, once they know where to come to frighten you… That’s the other thing I’ve had to accept. As much good as Mama Biashara does – and it does truckloads of good – unless I’m quite careful…

“If officials see that people are getting money from Mama Biashara… It happened once… Someone Mama Biashara gave money to… The week after I left, her landlord came up to her and said Hey! You got a mzungu – a white friend – So your rent is doubled!

“I have to be careful how I help people: that I don’t damage them by helping them, because no-one is safe. It’s just a different way. Everyone has a massive amount of bastard potential in a different way from here. No-one is your friend.”

“What’s it like here in the UK?” I asked.

“I think most people are on the make a bit here,” said Copstick. “People really don’t care here. People are not nice. People really do not want to help. They’re happy to say they want to help, but it’s very much a What’s in it for me? society where everybody already has something.

“OK – mixed metaphor coming up here – the gatekeepers of the safety net are not the nicest of people, but the safety net is there. Nobody is going to die of starvation here. I’m not going to say nobody’s going to be homeless, but there is a safety net here, if you want to use it.

“But, in Britain, there is an attitude. Not just Britain, but the white Western world. Black Africa is different.

“If the stuff in this shop had been made in Italy, people would go Ooh! £20? That’s so cheap! If I say Africa, they say, Oh, that’s very expensive, isn’t it? Like everyone in Africa should be living on beads and a packet of nuts.

“When I say to people Well, they have no water, they say Well, they’re used to it. There is a very definite mindset that somehow the black African doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t feel hunger, doesn’t feel thirst, doesn’t feel anything in the same way white people do.”

“Or,” I suggested, “that they feel those things, but they’re used to it.”

“Yes,” said Copstick, “That’s what people think here and so they think that makes it OK.”

Last night, I had a dream about naughty big powerful people and little children

Once upon a very long long time ago….

I had a dream last night.

It is very rare for me to remember my dreams, but I remember this fantastical story I dreamt last night.

Once upon a long long time ago in a fairy tale land far far away beyond the Misty Mountains, there was a home made of chocolate where little children lived.

But they were not happy little children.

Because the fairy tale land in which the home made of chocolate stood was run by naughty big powerful people. The naughty big powerful people were called politicians and policemen and some of the naughty big powerful people ‘liked’ the little children too much. They ‘liked’ the little children in an illegal way.

But the naughty big powerful people were not subject to the laws because they were naughty big powerful people.

Far away but not too far away not to have heard what was going on, there was a magic place which made pretty pictures which could fly through the air.

This place which made pretty pictures which could fly through the air heard about the bad things which were happening in the home made of chocolate not so far far away and they made up a big long story about what was happening there and named one of the naughty big powerful people.

This naughty big powerful person was very annoyed and he told everyone that the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air had defamed him and he had not done such naughty things.

The naughty big powerful person went to some places called courts where people dressed up in funny costumes and spoke in a funny make-believe language and the naughty big powerful person ‘sued’ the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air.

It cost a lot of gold.

But the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air had a fairy godfather which protected it when it got into trouble. The fairy godfather protected lots of people. They paid him money and, if anything bad happened to them – like being taken to the court where people dressed up in funny costumes and spoke in a funny make-believe language – he would pay for all their costs from his magic purse of gold.

But, one day, the fairy godfather told the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air that the cost of defending them against the court case by the naughty big powerful person in the court where people dressed up in funny costumes and spoke in a funny make-believe language was too too high to carry on. He told the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air that they would have to say sorry to the naughty big powerful person and say they were telling fibs and pay him money.

“But we were not telling fibs,” said the people who ran the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air. “He is a naughty man and he did all the naughty things we said he did in the story we told in our pretty pictures which flew through the air.”

“That does not matter,” said the fairy godfather. “It is costing a lot of gold.”

The people who ran the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air were very upset and argued and argued with the fairy godfather, but he said: “He who holds the strings of the magic purse of gold can tell you what to do.”

And so the place which made the pretty pictures which could fly through the air said sorry to the naughty big powerful person and they said they had been telling fibs and they paid him gold from the fairy godfather’s magic purse.

There is no moral to this story because, just like ‘real’ life, morals are no good to you in isolation: a fairy godfather will not always protect you. The people who hold the strings to magic purses of gold are only interested in their – and other people’s – gold. The courts where people dress up in funny costumes and speak in a funny make-believe language will not help you.

And do you want to know what happened to the children in the home made of chocolate in this fairy tale land far far away beyond the Misty Mountains once upon a long long time ago…?

Well, I woke up at that point.

Not all stories have endings.