A remarkable fire-eater talks about a death and British alternative comedy

A poster for the Nell Gwynn/Gargoyle Club

In a blog a couple of weeks ago, the So It Goes blog’s occasional correspondent Anna Smith wondered what had happened to her acquaintance, an exotic dancer from Winnipeg called Karen, who was last heard-of in London.

Unfortunately, I can tell her.

I had a drink this week with Philip Herbert, best-known to me as fire-eating comedy act Randolph The Remarkable.

“Sadly Karen passed away,” Philip told me. “She got knocked off her bike in London. She was overtaking a lorry and a bus came towards her.”

“When was this? I asked.

“About 15 years ago,” Philip told me.

“The last time I saw her, she was on her bike and I shouted: Careful on that bike!

“That was the last thing I said to her. And, about a fortnight after that, she was dead.

“At the time, I was on a 12-week tour, doing A Tale of Two Cities at the Oxford Playhouse. So I couldn’t get to the funeral. Her parents thought she was working as an au pair and teaching; they had no idea she was working on the strip circuit. All her friends were freaks, were punks, were entertainers. Apparently the wake was weird because everyone was pretending they knew Karen through her teaching.

“She was going into comedy. She was beginning to speak and tell stories and do poetry.

“In the old days, there was a cross-over between stripping and comedy. 69 Dean Street was the Nell Gwynne strip club until about 11 o’clock and then it suddenly turned into The Comedy Store. When it got successful, they stopped doing the stripping on Friday and Saturday and they did two comedy shows – an 8 o’clock and a midnight.

“If you were on the circuit then, you’d do first act in the first house at the Comedy Store, then go off and do a pub in Stoke Newington or wherever, then rush back and do second or third on the bill in the second show at the Comedy Store. If you were good, you were working in more than one place. Everyone worked round each other and there was a cross-over between street acts and alternative acts”

Philip performed feats of skill as Randolph The Remarkable

“I must have first seen you in the 1980s,” I said, “when you were Randolph The Remarkable.”

“I still do Randolph The Remarkable: Fire-Eater Extraordinaire. Feats of Skill Involving Fire and a Blue Bowl of Lukewarm Water. The only trouble is now, because of Health & Safety, you have to have a Risk Assessment and Public Indemnity Insurance and a fireman standing in the wings who holds a bucket of sand. If you can do all that, then they’re prepared to book you. In the old days at the Comedy Store, you’d get £5 and a drink token and I used to work under a sprinkler and there couldn’t be anything more dangerous than that. I don’t suppose they’d allow that now.”

Philip (right) often performed as Hugh Jelly with Julian Clary

“Back in the 1980s, it was much more risky and exciting and there was that cross-over from people who worked as street performers – I started off as Randolph at Covent Garden and Camden Lock… and people saw the act and said Oh, you must do the Comedy Store. Then people would see you at the Comedy Store above the Nell Gwynne strip club and say Oh, you must do the new variety Cast circuit.”

“How did you get into fire-eating?” I asked.

“I was an actor in a community company,” explained Philip, “and we were asked if we wanted to learn how to fire-eat for a historical tour. We did Southampton and Portsmouth. We took people round different historical sites and pubs and re-enacted history – it was a pub crawl, really – and then, as the light faded, we stood on the city wall and did fire-eating and fire-blowing.

“Then I was out of work for months and I thought This is ridiculous. I’ve got this skill. So I did it at Covent Garden and, back then in the early 1980s, you could just turn up and do it. You didn’t need a licence; you didn’t need to audition. Now you have to go through this whole rigmarole and they don’t allow fire there any more because there was a silly accident where somebody spilled paraffin into the crowd.

“I still do Randolph at the Punch & Judy Festival at Covent Garden every year.

Philip as Drag Idol favourite Nora (photograph by John Tsangarides)

“And I did Gay Pride last year and I also do a drag act now called Nora Bone. I was a finalist in last year’s Drag Idol. I was in the last four out of 200-odd acts. I wear a red wig; I’ve been described as a bloated Geri Halliwell, because I wear a Union Jack dress. Not a mini – just below the knee. And white tights and very low heels, because I used to be on a higher heel and I fell. A lower heel is much more sensible for a lady of my age.”

“Are you an attractive woman?” I asked.

“Beautiful. I make the boys’ heads turn. I’m trying to do songs that other people don’t do. Not Life’s a Cabaret or I Did It My Way. I do I’m Too Sexy For My Skirt, Save All Your Kisses For Me, Madonna’s Holiday. The idea is that I’m an ex-recording artist that people don’t remember; an ex-supersize model; that I did a lot of ‘before’ photographs in diet magazines; and I’m a stand-in for Adele.”

“Do you regret not being a full-time actor?”

“Well, Nora is all acting. And doing circus, doing panto… a lot of straight actors knock panto. But I tell them To do panto well is as difficult as doing Shakespeare well - because it’s a set piece. You’ve got all the set stuff with the audience, the interaction. And you’ve got men playing women and women playing men.”

“You’re a character actor, really,” I suggested.

“Last year,” said Philip, “I was in a play about music hall legend Dan Leno – The Hard Boiled Egg and The Wasp. When he was committed to what his wife thought was a care home but turned out to be an asylum, I played the warder.

…Philip The Poet…

“I also do a character called Philip The Poet. I’ve always written poetry. I met John Hegley on a bus on National Poetry Day and he said to me Why don’t you do a couple of poems? because he runs a regular night at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon. He knew I wrote poems but I didn’t perform them. So I performed at John Hegley’s venue and I really enjoyed it, so I’m doing more and more of that.”

“Would you like to be a straight poet?” I asked.

“Straight-ish,” replied Philip. “With a comical kick at the end. I like my poetry. I comment on things I see. I can write a poem that isn’t a funny poem – that doesn’t need a smile at the end – but I think if you can say something that gets a sharp intake of breath that leads to a laugh… That’s as rewarding as a big guffaw. If you say something that’s quite shocking or meaningful and people gasp and then you undercut it with something that’s funny, then the gasp changes into a laugh and there’s a relief in the laughter. I do like my poetry, but there’s no money in it.

“I sometimes compere gigs as a character called Sebastian Cloy. He comes on in a big frilly shirt – old school compere but not gay – he tells jokes and does the odd song, if required.

“You’re always doing characters,” I said.

“If you create a character then you, in a way, hide behind that character. It’s like a mask. A clown nose. Basically, you put on the clown nose and that allows you to behave in a foolish way. I think it takes a lot of courage just to stand in front of people and say I’m now going to attempt to make you laugh or I’m now going to attempt to sing you a song which I hope will move you.”

“Do you ever actually perform as yourself?” I asked.

“Hardly ever,” said Philip. “though I’ve been doing a one-man show on-and-off for about three or four years. It’s called Naked Splendour. I’ve done life modelling for artists for as long as I’ve been an actor. When I started, the pay was £1.94p clothed and £1.98p naked – 4p difference.

The man himself in his own Naked Splendour (photograph by John Tsangarides)

“I’ve performed Naked Splendour at the Hackney Empire, the Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre and The Rosemary Branch.

“In it, I sit and pose. People can draw – they’re given materials as they come in. I start dressed, then I undress and I sit and pose and tell true stories. Funny stories. Not all funny. Stories like falling asleep. When you’re in a long pose lying down, you do nod off sometimes. And then, at the end, I get dressed and invite people to bring their work down. They put it on the floor and we have a mini-exhibition like a show-and-tell.

“The trouble is, being on your own, you end up doing four months promoting via the computer. For me to do it again, I’d need someone to take it on.”

“So in Naked Splendour,” I said, “you are yourself.”

“But,” came the reply, “I always cringe slightly if I’m introduced as Philip Herbert, because I’m not used to it. When people say Philip Herbert’s here, I look round and say Who? Whereas, if someone says Randolph The Remarkable or Hugh Jelly from Julian Clary’s show… then I know that’s me.”

YouTube has a video of Philip in bed with Julian Clary:

Gay love hopes of two Celtic comics dashed at Israeli killer’s comedy gig

Daphna Baram – killer comic last night

I went to Miss D’s Silver Hammer last night – the weekly London comedy night run by Israeli comic Daphna Baram who tends to successfully deter any potential hecklers by pointing out in advance that she has diabetes and has been trained to kill by the IDF. Not, as I at first thought, the International Diabetes Federation but the Israeli Defence Forces.

Next Monday, she has an entirely Irish group of comedians performing her day-after-St-Patrick’s-Day show, but she did pretty well on the Celtic line-up last night too.

I was there to see Irish podcast supremo Christian Talbot perform and also because he and Daphna Baram had mightily pushed to me the talents of camp-ish Dubliner Al Porter.

Also performing were two Glaswegians – non-gay Gary Sansome (soon to de-camp to Australia) and extremely talented and gay-in-both-senses-of-the-word Larry Dean.

Al Porter last night, ooh missus, t’be sure

Al Porter was, indeed, as good as Christian and Daphna had told me. Both reckon he will become very successful very soon and he well might do, though one can never tell.

Talent is usually never enough but sure Al has the gift of rapid patter in depth, great audience controlling charm and very good clothes sense (never something to underestimate with this sort of act).

He claimed on-stage that the only reason he had accepted the gig was to meet the afore-mentioned gay Glaswegian Larry Dean who tragically, between booking and performance, had become tied-up in a monogamous relationship, thus scuppering Al’s cherished hopes.

In other circumstances, I might have thought this was part of the act.

Sadly, I fear the wreckage of Al’s shattered dreams may have been a reality.

I had been told there was an element of Frankie Howerd in Al’s act. I could see very faint traces, but only because the idea had been planted in my mind. The delivery was so fast, so smooth and so overwhelming that the act was nothing like the blessed Frankie.

Oddly, what last night reminded me of was seeing an early-ish stage performance by Steve Coogan at Manchester University Students’ Union in what, I guess, must have been 1992.

There was something about the self-confidence of the delivery and movements, something about the sharpness of the costume and something of the ambitiousness behind the eyes which reminded me of that 1992 Steve Coogan both on and off stage.

Christian and Daphna may be right.

Al Porter may well be very successful very fast.

But, as I say, you can never tell.

Sometimes talent – and even sharp, driving ambition – are not enough.

On the other hand, if I were being superficial – “perish the thought” as my dead father used to say (before his death) – a flamboyantly gay, brightly dressed, highly-self-confident Irish comedian with strong audience empathy is a good starting point and a good selling point for English and American audiences.

I expect to see him on the David Letterman show within five years.

Or maybe Al will have his own chat show in Ireland or the UK.

But my comic expectations are often dashed.

And, as I oft quote: Nobody Knows Anything (Saying © William Goldman, 1983)

Fanny & Stella: “I had wanted to write a book which was completely gay”

Last night, I had a gay old time with Chaps in Dresses.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned at heart. Like many others, I lament the change in meaning of the word ‘gay’.

But, last night, the highly esteemed Sohemian Society hosted an evening billed as Chaps in Dresses.

The evening started with the recitation of a limerick from famed Victorian porno publication The Pearl, circa 1879-1880.

There was an old person of Sark,
Who buggered a pig in the dark;
The swine, in surprise,
Murmured “God blast your eyes,
Do you take me for Boulton or Park?”

Last night’s Chaps in Dresses was a talk by writer Neil McKenna nimbly plugging his new book Fanny & Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England about Boulton and Park.

The Sohemian Society meeting took place in an upstairs room at the King & Queen pub in Foley Street in what I think estate agents now call North Soho. It was a stone’s throw – or as Neil McKenna put it – “a strong ejaculation away” from 19 Cleveland Street, the site of a famous Victorian male brothel.

Fanny & Stella is a merry tale of Victorian men who liked to dress as women – Fanny and Stella were actually Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton who, according to the book’s publicity, had their “extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores revealed to an incredulous public” at a show trial in Westminster Hall “with a cast of peers, politicians and prostitutes, drag queens, doctors and detectives” in a “Victorian peepshow, exposing the startling underbelly of nineteenth century London.”

But I was equally interested in Neil McKenna’s tale of the problems he had getting the book published. He gave a health warning before his talk:

“When I did a talk in Kirkcudbright in Scotland,” he explained, “in a hall where the average age was about 82, they provided not one but two defibrillators. We got through without mishap but then, a couple of weeks ago at Gay’s The Word, we were doing very well when suddenly a lesbian fainted and had to be carried out. Then I did a talk at Waterstone’s Gower Street and I was just getting into my stride when a woman rather ostentatiously walked out.

“We must also spare a thought for poor Virginia Blackburn, a reviewer for the Sunday Express who read my book and said she was no prude but felt she had to skip over some passages – which begs the question What sort of ‘passages’?”

Neil McKenna believes that, until very recently, gay history has been largely written by heterosexuals who “have an agenda” but, to an extent, things have slightly improved. For example, this month is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-Gender History Month - a title which, Neil McKenna admits, is “a little bit of a mouthful”.

“Gay history, as generally told,” Neil said last night, “is a history of criminality, repression and punishment but, actually, gay history is also the history of people who fall in love, people who go out and have sex with each other, people who create a sub-culture and who form an identity. And that’s really what I wanted to write about, although the story in the book is framed within the context of a criminal trial.”

Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park were arrested in drag outside the Strand Theatre in 1870 and put on trial in 1871.

“My publishers, Faber, were a little ‘challenged’ by the content of the book when I first delivered the manuscript,” Neil admitted last night. “They went a bit green and then a bit white and then they went a bit blue and, more or less, said This is not at all what we were expecting. I said Well, you’ve met me. What were you expecting? Hardly Patience Strong.

“So they were all a bit tense and we had quite a few tense weeks of discussions and chit-chats. My agent sort-of abandoned me and said: You’re on your own. But it was all resolved because Stephen Page, the CEO of Faber, read the book and announced that he liked it. So suddenly everyone liked it, which was rather useful.

“Instead of having a book they were rather sceptical about – I think largely because it’s an in-your-face book – they got behind it and I think it’s quite new and quite exciting for Faber to publish a rip-roaringly gay, unmediated, utterly-butterly book about gay men, drag, bottoms, fucking and cock-sucking.

“I had wanted to write a book which was going to be completely gay. I was fed up with writing stuff that had to be seen through a prism of heterosexuality. I just thought I’m going to go for it. I’m going to write a book that is totally and completely gay. I’m going to call Fanny and Stella ‘she’ because that was what they called themselves… and that was a little bit of a sticking point again at various stages of the publication process. I much preferred to call them ‘she’ and that was a battle I won.

“I wrote the book because I’d finished my book on Oscar Wilde and I was looking for another subject. I had mentioned Fanny and Stella in the Oscar Wilde book and I wondered if there was any mileage in them.

“I discovered there was a full trial transcript in the National Archive, put together with maybe 30 or 40 depositions and maybe 30 or 40 letters. It’s remarkable, because most Victorian trials don’t survive. Sometimes there’s a shorthand account of a trial or part of a trial but, usually, we’ve only got fragments. I think that’s because the Public Record Office was bombed in the War and lots of stuff was destroyed. But also lots of stuff was never kept. It was never considered important to keep. So I’m very grateful to the the succession of people at the National Archive who thought this was – maybe – important to keep.

“That was my first step… and then I found curious things like a ledger of Treasury payments to some of the witnesses in the trial and to some of the policemen in the trial. It was strange, because normally the Treasury shouldn’t be paying witnesses, even in 1870. So why were there payments to some of the witnesses? That started little alarm bells going off in my head. And, as I probed and probed, I discovered that there was… well, Fanny and Stella were accused of conspiracy to induce and incite men to have sodomitic sex with them.

“But there was also a parallel conspiracy… the police, probably the Home Secretary, certainly the Attorney General and perhaps Sir Richard Mayne, the Chief of the Metropolitan Police had all conspired to create a show trial, to make an example of two young cross-dressers.

“I discovered Fanny and Stella had been followed for a year. They had been under surveillance for a year. In the MePo files – the Metropolitan Police files – in the National Archive, there are also surveillance reports not of Fanny and Stella but of various other people who were considered a threat to the State. So we know in the late 1860s, 1870s, Britain was becoming a little bit of a police state, because lots of people were being surveilled.

“But why were Fanny and Stella such a threat? What was the problem with two very silly young men? They’re not intellectuals, they love to dress up, they love to perform, they love the theatre and when they weren’t in the theatre, they were on the streets selling their bottoms to raise a bit of cash to buy frocks so they could perform. They were very silly boys. They were not a threat. They were not terrorists. They were not Fenians. So why bother?

“The death penalty for buggery was only abolished in 1862, eight years before the arrest of Fanny and Stella. I think it has something to do with sexual identity.”

But, even so, why the big hoo-hah, the conspiracy and the trial in Westminster Hall? And why did the jury find them innocent after deliberating for only 53 minutes?

“You’ll have to read my book,” Neil McKenna said last night.

What the c*** word meant when the Daily Mail reported a comedy court case

Guy Earle: a scary homophobic monster?

Yesterday afternoon, comedian Guy Earle contacted me from Canada to correct my blog of yesterday morning.

My blog had been about a case in which Guy was accused of  making comments during a comedy show in which he was said to have attacked an audience member’s “identity and dignity as a woman and a lesbian”. His defence was: “I don’t hate anyone based on their sexual orientation… But I do hate hecklers, and sometimes I get a little vehement.”

Yesterday, he told me: ”I have been misquoted more than Churchill.

“You put in your blog that I said to her: You’re fat and ugly. You’re not even lesbian. No guy will fuck ya! That’s why you’re with each other. Somebody put a cunt in her mouth and shut her the fuck up. Which one of you wears the strap-on dildo? Because silicone cunt crazy is still cunt crazy in my book.”

I told him I had picked up this quote from a 2011 article in the Daily Mail which used asterisks for the four-letter words.

“C***” is ‘cock’ not ‘cunt’,” he explained. “I actually NEVER called them the C word – Quoted that I did, it makes me real unlovable by about 51% of the world’s population.

“I did use the C word once, however, on stage that night. It was when (some of) the dumbass Vancouver amateur comics groaned when I stuffed it to the hecklers…

“I was like: Oh, you cunts, shut the fuck up!… Do you even know what stand-up is? I provide a stage for you and you groan at me when I’m dealing with an unruly heckler when you should be going over to their table and asking them to shut the fuck up or get the fuck out? WTF!!!”

He told me the exchange with audience member Lorna Pardy who, he says was heckling him, actually went like this:

Lorna Pardy – Hey Asshole, you’re not funny!

Guy Earle - Oh? I’m not funny?… Well, guess what? You’re not a lesbian, you’re just fat and ugly and nobody will fuck you… Somebody put a cock in her mouth and shut her the fuck up… and – while we’re on the subject – I’ve actually never had the opportunity to use these jokes – but since I got ya in front of me, can you answer the question: ‘When you’re both on the rag – how do you choose which one gets to go on the fishing trip?’

Lorna Pardy - ’Blah blah blah’ wish your mother aborted you, etc.

Guy Earle - You say you’re lesbian but you still wear a strap-on, right? Which one of you wears the strap-on? ’Cause silicone cock-crazy is still cock crazy, in my books…

Lorna Pardy - ‘Blah blah blah’ I’d like to break this beer bottle and jam it in his neck, etc…

“I mean,” he told me in an e-mail yesterday, “you have to at least get my jokes right. You see, all the quotes (as included in yesterday’s blog) – when you look at them – don’t even make sense as JOKES.

“I HATE defending myself and correcting my quotes.

“In the freedom of speech/rights perspective – I should NEVER have to defend myself and I abhor it BUT when people are misquoting my JOKES it is a double-edged sword in the side.

“People misquote me to make me the monster – I am the fricking victim here.

“I’ve been five years without work, can’t get a gig as a liability, can’t get my book published due to ‘perceived homophobic undertones’, lost my will to stand up, lost my future (temporarily – as a film maker) and await sweet vindication for a ‘crime’ I didn’t commit – all because some half-drunk asshole in dyke’s clothing tried to make a cash-grab. The biggest joke of all is: I don’t have a pot to spit in.”

“Maybe the best way to look on it,” I suggested, “is that all publicity is added profile for you.”

“The publicity has been unfavourable,” he told me, “and I have been repeatedly used in the media for some political mandates that have no bearing on the actual issue. For example, there was big media on me the week before they elected Steven Harper – big conservative – right wing – down with the Human Rights Code kinda politics.

“Then I was dropped like hot shit when I started focusing on the problems with the country. The country remains ignorant and I remain notorious, at best, but perceived as some homophobic hack – which, again, isn’t surprising given what people write about me.

“So, ironically, I become famous but as a pariah. Publicity CAN be bad – Don’t let the cliché fool ya.”

I told Guy I would probably blog about his responses today.

“Do you have a recent, non-copyright photo of yourself?” I asked .

Guy got a Golden Shaft Award + a large cheque

“I don’t really have too much recent stuff,” he replied. “But I like the short hair ones where I’m all slicked-back hair. Go ahead and use that – It makes me look like the scary homophobic monster (and mysterious). Or how about me dressed up as Jesus on my MySpace page? No? How about me surrounded by naked painted chicks during my winning of the Golden Shaft award? I can’t write this shit – It’s my fucked-up life!”

Guy was born in Guildford, England, though he now lives in Canada. He told me yesterday:

“I hope, someday, to come to the UK to do comedy. Actually, it’s a childhood dream. I have this notion that I would be welcomed by ‘my people’ and this romantic idea that the UK is where I was ‘meant’ to ‘make it’. Where are you from?”

“Scotland,” I replied. “Campbeltown and Aberdeen, but then Ilford in Essex and now Borehamwood in Hertfordshire.”

“North Americans are so bloody sensitive to sarcasm, it’s ridiculous,” he told me. “Something that I love about the Scottish – Their attitude is of blunt-honesty and, if you step out of line, you get snarked… People here don’t always get that – they’re too fucking serious all the time and taking themselves too seriously.

“My mom taught me to poke fun at things starting with MYSELF – after that, everybody else is fair game.”

Canadian comedy chaos. Loud lesbian heckler? Or irate picked-upon punter?

Canadian comedian Guy Earle just hates hecklers… quite a lot

This may be the 21st century, but news can still travel slowly from the American Colonies to Britain.

The So It Goes blog’s Vancouver-based correspondent Anna Smith has drawn my attention to something which started back in 2007.

It happened when English-born comedian Guy Earle was hosting an Open Mic comedy evening at Zesty’s club in a restaurant in Vancouver. He felt that a lady called Lorna Pardy and a group of friends were disrupting his show. He responded, according to Canada’s gay and lesbian news magazine Xtra!, “by letting loose with what he no doubt considered to be some clever putdowns on the topic of their apparent lesbianism.”

And ended up in court.

Lorna Pardy said she was in the process of placing a drinks order with two waitresses when her girlfriend kissed her on the cheek and that Earle then said: “Don’t mind the inconsiderate dyke table that just walked in.”

She claimed she did not know a comedy show was going on and denied Earle’s claim that the table was heckling him, saying: “It’s just not the way I conduct myself in public”.

According to Earle’s version of events: “These two lovely guests came in from the patio and sat right in front of the stage and started making out, like tongue and tonsil wrestling. I didn’t care if it was two guys, two girls, a horse and buggy, you know? Whatever. I don’t hate anyone based on their sexual orientation or whatever. But I do hate hecklers, and sometimes I get a little vehement.”

He claimed the women ignored his “request” to be quiet and told him Fuck you asshole! and Shut up! He said they insinuated he had singled them out for being lesbians: “So then I broke into it. I said You’re fat and ugly. You’re not even lesbian. No guy will fuck ya! That’s why you’re with each other. Somebody put a cunt in her mouth and shut her the fuck up. Which one of you wears the strap-on dildo? Because silicone cunt crazy is still cunt crazy in my book.”

He said people then started booing him and walking out. When he walked by Ms Pardy’s table and stopped to look at her, she threw a glass of water in his face.

Another comic then performed on stage after which, as MC, Earle went back to the microphone and briefly closed the evening. Lorna Pardy’s version is that, when he returned to the stage, he “continued to mock and humiliate” her.

Earle – clearly not a wise man at this point – says he then walked by Ms Pardy’s table again, at which point she allegedly threw more water at him. He reportedly claimed she “got up and faced him, puffing her chest out.”

‘I lost it for two seconds,” Earle admitted afterwards. “This is the part that I publicly apologize for.”

He snatched her sunglasses off her head and broke them in half, he admitted, “like a little baby dumb.”

In court, Lorna Pardy’s lawyer’s version of this was: “When Ms Pardy later went to the washroom to compose herself, Mr. Earle cornered her on her return, continuing to physically intimidate and verbally abuse her. He grabbed and broke her sunglasses, and dropped them to the floor at her feet.”

Ms Pardy works as an airport weather technician and said she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress as a result of the evening. She complained to British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal. Her lawyers invoked Section 8 of British Columbia’s Human Rights Code, which forbids anyone to “discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public.”

Earle was quoted as saying: “They pissed me off so I said some rude things. Does that mean I should go to court? If you’re an asshole, should you be arrested?”

He could not afford the airfare to attend the court and the presiding judge ruled he could not participate by any electronic means. Earle’s lawyer sought a Supreme Court ruling that the tribunal had no authority to rule on the case and the Supreme Court directed that the tribunal should not proceed “until the jurisdictional issue had been resolved”. But the tribunal went ahead anyway.

In May 2011, it ruled in favour of Lorna Pardy, awarded her $15,000 to be paid by Earle for “injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect” and $7,500 to be paid by Zesty’s club owner Salam Ishmail. It also reportedly banned Earle from performing in British Columbia.

Tribunal member Murray Geiger-Adams said Earle repeated vulgar language in public and attacked Pardy’s “identity and dignity as a woman and a lesbian”. Earle’s lawyer argued that his client’s speech should be protected under “freedom of expression”.

The court ruling was:

“Mr Earle submitted that it was his job to engage disruptive patrons to quiet them. However, the Tribunal found no evidence of any rational connection between this and attacking a patron’s sex or sexual orientation on or off the stage… There were measures available to accomplish the purpose of ending any disruption of the show well short of attacking Ms Pardy’s sex and sexual orientation.

“None of the witnesses testified that Mr. Earle was telling ‘jokes’ and there was no evidence that he was using comedy to expose the stereotypes of others.

‘The discrimination had a significant physical and psychological effect on Ms Pardy, which was supported by unchallenged medical evidence. This was aggravated and prolonged by public statements made by Mr. Earle about her, which falsely portrayed her as a drunken heckler and instigator.”

Guy Earle’s reaction was: “I’m shaking over here… What a bloody joke. $15,000 for being misquoted and I NEVER thought I would have to correct/defend my words in a free country!”

In July this year, Earle’s lawyer brought the case back to British Columbia’s Supreme Court for “judicial review” on the basis (among other things) that Earle had been accused of breaking Section 8 of the Human Rights Code, which forbids anyone to “discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public,” but that a comedian’s performance is not the “provision of a service” but an artistic expression.

There has been no decision yet.

(Guy Earle contacted me and corrected some mis-quotes in this blog HERE.)

What connects Richard Gere, George Clooney and John Travolta?

There’s a lot of news here in Milan – if only I can remember it

I have a notoriously bad memory.

Last night, I watched some slides taken by a friend whom I met on a trip to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in 1989. We also went to Nepal and Tibet together in 1990. I could not remember most of the incidents on the slides.

Apparently, in 1990, we drove by coach from Kathmandu to the Friendship Bridge which marks the border between Nepal and Tibet. For surreal Chinese bureaucratic reasons, we then had to walk unaccompanied over the border for around six or seven miles to link up with our Chinese guides and their coach. I remember none of this. I thought we must have switched coaches at the border.

I could not remember about 75% of the people we travelled with on those trips either – including some bloke I shared a room with for about two weeks

Then there was the photo of the mind-reading parrot in Kathmandu.

I remember nothing of this creature but there it was, captured on film.

Nope. No memory at all.

My eternally-un-named friend has suggested that maybe my memory was affected by the accident I had in 1991 when I hit the back of my head. I have blogged before about how, since then, I am unable to read printed books although, oddly, I can write them on a computer screen.

Maybe that is why.

But my memory has always been bad. I tend to remember trivia but, then, I’m interested in trivia.

The title of the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera translates as The Evening Courier but it is the morning newspaper here. That’s Italy for you.

Yesterday, Corriere Della Sera carried a photo of Richard Gere kissing a woman. Today it has a photo of George Clooney kissing a woman and the caption says they have a special look in their eyes.

There is also a news report about a tunnel which has taken twenty years and 120 million Euros to build but now the authorities are unable to finish it because they can’t afford the tarmac.

And there is a report about the entertaining politician Silvio Berlusconi’s girlfriend who was unable to get to the toilet yesterday because she was surrounded by photographers. It is quite a lengthy report.

Meanwhile, in an interview today in the weekly Italian gossip magazine Oggi (Oggi, of course, means “today” not “weekly”), John Travolta admits the reason he is in “great shape” is due to yoghurt and Scientology.

Now that I might remember.

3 Angry Daddies, 3 Real MacGuffins & an elfin comedian upstaged by a mouse

The three Angry Daddies having a gay old time in Los Angeles

Yesterday, I thought I knew what today’s blog was going to be about.

Last week I blogged about Mike Player, organiser of America’s gay Outlaugh Comedy Festival

This Friday, at the Outlaugh Festival/Hollywood Fringe, Mike is performing an improvised show as one of the three Angry Daddies: they are Mike (one of the Gay Mafia comedy group), Mark S.Barnett (from Second City) and Dave Fleischer (from iO West)

Oh, I thought, That might make an interesting blog: the difference between being a solo comic and being part of a comedy group. And Mike is now in at least two comedy groups.

“Does this mean you got bored with the Gay Mafia gents?” I asked him.

“No,” he told me. “It’s just like I’m just taking a lover on the side. It’s very French to do that. At least that’s what I was taught as a child.”

“But why would a straight audience watch three gay guys doing comedy?” I asked, trying to rile him.

“Well,” he replied, undermining my ruse, “only two of the Angry Daddies are gay. One is straight. Mark is an actual father of progeny. The Daddies are ‘post-gay’ where the gay thing doesn’t matter as much but is not shied away from. Dave and I play straight guys and Mark plays gay. We mix it up. There’s something for everyone, except dogs. And dogs don’t understand comedy.”

“Would it work in the UK too?” I asked.

“Well,” he replied, “Mark is from Bath, England, and has an English accent and everything. So we come fully equipped. In a commercial, Mark played a giant hotdog that runs through a park and explodes…twice. We have got it all covered.”

Still, I thought, there is something to be said about the difference between solo and group work.

“What’s it like to be in a group rather than being an individual performer?” I asked him. “Don’t all performers want to be the sole centre of attention?”

“I like groups,” Mike told me, “because you can react and do physical comedy in scene work. With good improv, there is collaboration which can be very exciting. Plus you can blame other people if the laughs aren’t big enough. I like to blame Dave and Dave always threatens legal action.”

I thought I would see if a couple of British comics thought the same.

So, early yesterday morning, I e-mailed ever-amiable Englishman Dan March, one of The Real MacGuffins.

The Real MacGuffins lean on a metal post in Soho yesterday

“The major difference with doing group instead of solo for me,” he e-mailed me back a couple of hours later, “is that when a gig goes wrong I blame Matt and Jim and when it goes right I take all the credit. Doing solo work it’s different – obviously I take the credit when it goes well but when it goes wrong I blame the audience. Also the writing process is more fun with a group – I get to shout ‘Not funny!’ at Matt which is very therapeutic.”

Laura Lexx played cricket last year

My elfin comedy chum Laura Lexx, is appearing as part of Maff Brown’s Parade of This at this August’s Edinburgh Fringe. Yesterday, she told me: “The main thing is that with more than one person you simply have to rehearse, which is not something comedians really naturally do (for the most part). So it feels quite unnatural and hard to make yourself do it properly. We struggle to rehearse for more than about an hour without getting horrifically distracted and trying to go to the pub! It’s hard to rehearse and then it’s also hard not to ad lib once you’re on stage because that’s where you’d naturally go with stand up. I think they’re two completely different disciplines.”

So, late yesterday afternoon, strolling through Soho, I was content in my blog about the nature of doing group comedy. I can do something with all that, I thought.

Then, just six feet ahead of me, I saw Dan March and the other two Real MacGuffins standing round an unexplained black metal post, leaning on it, looking at me.

“I’ll take your picture for the blog,” I said.

And I did. And that was it. A perfectly rounded blog idea.

If it were not for the mouse.

Two nights ago, my eternally-un-named friend was staying at my home (we are an ex-couple). She was born and partly brought-up in the Mediterranean. I was brought up in Scotland. She leaves outside doors open because she thinks it’s hot outside. I shut everything because I think the cold outside air will make my penis drop off.

There was also the trauma of the mouse a few years ago. I have not yet written about this in my blog. But I will, dear reader. I will. Perhaps in a few days. It was about five years ago. I still bear the psychological scars.

Yesterday morning, my eternally-un-named friend confessed to me:

“I saw a mouse last night.”

Relative of the wee, not-so tim’rous beastie loose in ma hoose

“Where? There on the stair?” I asked.

“In the living room,” she said, worried at my reaction, given my previous rodent-induced trauma.

“I have built a trap,” she told me reassuringly.

“You built a mouse trap overnight?” I asked.

“It’s a piece of newspaper,” she explained, “put across the top of a bowl which is half-full of water. The newspaper has a cross cut in it in the middle with bait on top of it, balanced on the cross cut. The weight of the mouse, as it goes across the paper to reach the bait will make the paper cave-in and the mouse will fall into the water below. Hopefully I’ve done it so it’s deep enough that the mouse will drown.”

“Where is the bowl?” I asked.

“Under the dinner table,” she told me.

“Rats swim, don’t they?” I asked, searching my memory for movie references.

“They’re more intelligent,” she said. “and it’s a very small mouse.”

“What’s the bait?” I asked.

“Half a Mars bar,” she replied.

“You won’t let ME eat Mars bars!” I almost shouted.

“They would make you fatter,” she replied rather too smugly.

“Why do you want to kill it?” I asked. “A poor little baby mouse.”

“Don’t be stupid!” she said. “You’re going to turn this into a ridiculous blog because you’re stupid.”

“You like Tom & Jerry cartoons,” I pointed out, ”but now you are trying to kill Jerry.”

“You kill flies,” my eternally-un-named friend riposted.

“They’re insects,” I replied.

“So?” she asked.

“A mouse is a mammal,” I said.

“You eat chicken,” she said.

“That’s a bird” I said.

“Lamb,” she countered.

“Sheep are stupid and deserve to die,” I parried.

“Stupidity doesn’t enter into it,” she said. “You don’t deserve to die. Well, not for that… It is a small mouse. I have put a ruler resting on the side of the bowl, so it can climb up from the carpet to get to the bait on the newspaper over the water.”

“It’s like you are making it walk the plank!” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” she said, I thought unecessarily triumphantly.

I was out in central London all day yesterday. When I got home late last night, I asked her: “Why do you want to kill the mouse? We should trap it alive and take it out into a field and release it into the wild.”

“You’re turning into a Buddhist,” my eternally un-named friend said. “Why don’t we just open the front and back door and let all the mice come in? Then you could have a little family of cute mice and any time you wanted to kill one it would be easy. There would be a whole festering mass of them crossing the bloomin’ floor.”

“Bloomin?” I queried.

“Bloomin,” she insisted.

“Let the mammal live…” I pleaded. “Or I could buy a cat.”

“You could rent a cat,” she said. “That’s what people did in days-gone-by.”

“We should try to take a picture of it for the blog,” I suggested.

“The cat?”

“The mouse… I suppose it moves too fast…”

“I saw it twice today,” my eternally-un-named friend told me. “It just sauntered across the floor from under the bureau to under the sofa. Then, a little later, it sauntered back again. It was in no hurry.”

“You saw it?”

“I looked at it…It looked at me…We were both surprised… What can I say?”

“Perhaps it doesn’t like Mars bars,” I suggested.

“I was going to drop a file of papers on it,” she said. “but my file was in the kitchen. I have added peanut butter to the Mars bar. I Googled how to trap mice and people were saying mice like peanut butter. Cheese has no effect.”

“I’m sure I tried honey when I had the previous mouse,” I said.

“But, when that happened, did…” she started.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I interrupted. “It was traumatic.”

Then, half an hour later, my eyes got itchy and I started sneezing. A lot.

“I think I may be allergic to mice,” I said.

“And I have a sty in my eye,” she said. “It started about two hours ago. I didn’t like to tell you.”

“We have to out-think it,” I said. “We have to think like a mouse.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” my eternally-un-named friend said. ”I don’t want to have to keep shutting the living room door to keep it trapped in here. I’ll let it go upstairs. I’ll help it upstairs. It can get into your bed.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

We left my home and drove late-night to Greenwich where we stayed overnight.

I am still there.

I will have to face the mouse again later today.

“It is very small, but seems to have inner confidence,” my eternally-un-named friend tells me.

Gay American comic would steal babies

Mike Player: the shock of the funny gays revealed in the US

(This was also published on the Indian news website WeSpeakNews)

The 5th annual Outlaugh Comedy Festival - America’s first gay and lesbian comedy festival – is currently being held in Los Angeles and lasts for another two weeks.

Mike Player wrote the book Out on the Edge: America’s Rebel Comics. He created and organises the Outlaugh Festival.

I asked him how and why it started.

“I lost my mind,” he told me, “which is the only way to get anything done in the U.S. At the time, America had no national queer comedy festival and we (the comedians) were all tired of things like Gay Tuesday Night at Mongo’s Steakhouse. We wanted something that actually meant something.”

I have been to Los Angeles but not San Francisco. I think of the West Coast as being fairly laissez-faire and (in the British use of the word) liberal, but Mike tells me is was not easy for gay comedians even eight years ago:

“In 2004, my comedy group, The Gay Mafia, got kicked out of a club in Hollywood. We were doing a sketch where two retired Navy SEALs were getting married. The straight club owner had a brother who had died in Iraq and he said that portraying Navy SEALs as gay was deeply offensive to him and that he would pull the light cords out if we did the sketch. So, naturally, we did the sketch. We sold out the house and he was too busy helping sell drinks at his bar to pull the plug. But he kicked us out afterwards.”

So gay comedy was not totally accepted even eight years ago?

“I can tell you,” Mike says, “that The Gay Mafia, was reviewed by the LA Weekly without them mentioning that anything we did in the show had any gay content or that the show was gay at all. I heard the reviewer only showed up for the free meal.

“But,” Mike admits, “there was no real resistance to the idea of starting a gay comedy festival. No-one resisted except, oddly, the queer TV and film companies, though we conquered them in the end. The place you find the haters hating Outlaugh is on Netflix where they write homophobic reviews of our movie and TV show.”

Because the even more admirable thing – to me – is that Mike managed to get a movie made about the first Outlaugh and then an 8-part TV series The Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack. I asked him How come?

“I financed the movie with my own money,” he told me, “which is amazing because I didn’t have any money! But it made all its investment back. With the TV show, for once, I was in the right place at the right time. We had Margaret Cho hanging out with The Gay Mafia and everyone in America worships celebrity more than Jesus. All you have to do is spoon cat food onto a dish in a commercial and people will treat you like you captain a spaceship.

“I was on a conference call with the folks at MTV’s LOGO network and Margaret Cho and my production company associates and we all listened in sad horror while a network executive sniveled and begged Margaret to do anything and be on any shows in addition to Outlaugh.”

“During the production of our TV series Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack, conference calls happened every day with the production company I worked with, myself as the artistic director, the network and what they call ‘listeners’ who are opportunistic network assistants who actually spy on conversations for some network reason – probably to take over the country. LOGO and other networks have to hear a celebrity commit to a project to prevent celebs from backing out. People have to sign agreements and swear on the Bible – or just the parts that don’t condemn gays.

“Just like straight people, though, queer people in entertainment are mostly out for themselves. In TV and film, it’s all about whose project something is, rather than the merit of the project. I had film people and TV ‘suits’ fighting over who should get credit over what, more than how to make the idea of Outlaugh good. I had to make sure Outlaugh was good myself.”

Even today, Mike tells me, gay comedy in the US is not totally acceptable.

“A lot of the comedy clubs out here,” he says, “have ‘gay nights’ on non-weekend nights and many advertise the comedians as Some Gay and Some Not to get people to attend. I think that’s bullshit. Imagine advertising a ‘black comedy night’ with Some Black and Some Not. There is a sentiment which is fading away that ‘gay comedy’ is not accessible to everyone. Again, bullshit.”

In my British Islander ignorance, I think of San Francisco as being more gay and Los Angeles less so, but Mike tells me I am wrong:

“LA is actually gayer,” he says. “There is more gay theatre and comedy going on here than in San Francisco. I think because all the closet cases finally came out and because it’s chic to be gay now. I wish John Travolta would realize that.”

Inbrook, the New York based entertainment company for which I am a UK consultant, is in discussion about bringing Outlaugh to Britain.

Mike says: “I would steal babies for that to happen!”

“But,” I asked him, playing devil’s advocate: “why should the UK have a gay comedy festival? Isn’t that ghetto-ising gays?”

“No,” he argues. “It’s centralizing gays. There are gay film festivals and gay pride festivals and gay political organizations. Comedy is another major art form that we can rally around to tell our stories and assert our outrage.”

Comedians’ traumas: Holly Burn cuts herself and Bob Slayer fakes his gay dad

Bob Slayer & Stephen Frost at Pull The Other One last night

Things are looking up. I’ve seen two stonkingly good comedy shows on two consecutive nights.

After Nick Wilty’s OyOyster Comedy show in Whitstable two nights ago, I went to Martin Soan’s Pull The Other One at the Half Moon pub in Herne Hill last night and it was a spectacularly successful show.

Compèred by Stephen Frost and Bob Slayer, magician David Don’t did, OTT surrealist Holly Burn managed to cut herself but continued the act with blood smeared on her forehead, Laurence Tuck continued to develop his oddball stage character with new even-sharper gags, Boothby Graffoe climaxed with a monkey from Hartlepool (while the audience joined in with their mouths) and former doctor Paul Sinha, always good but last night 5-star brilliant, managed to develop what seemed to be hay fever sneezes in mid-act at around 11.30pm. Bob Slayer had come to the show directly from the Download Festival where, he told the Pull The Other One audience, he had fallen out of a wheelie bin doing a crowd surf. They did not look re-assured.

The show ended just before midnight and, inevitably, I missed something. When I woke up this morning, there was a text message on my iPhone which Bob Slayer had sent at 01.57. It read:

“I have found a new thing. Find the lonely nutter in the pub. Let him latch on, then convince folks that he is your absent father who cannot accept a gay son. His denials only add to the story. Tonight I had a girl screaming that he should respect his son’s choices. I told her he didn’t mean to beat my mum.”

Later this morning, he told me: “I left my new dad with some people outside the Half Moon. A woman was berating him for not accepting my choices. I shouted at him: I wish I could pretend you were not my dad! and ran off crying into the night.”

I felt my heterosexuality under threat at Bob Slayer’s Edinburgh Fringe preview show in London Comedy Cafe last night

Yesterday: Do I look like I’m Topping?

Do I look gay?

Last night, for the second time in my life, I was mistaken for Michael Topping of the gay comedy duo Topping & Butch. This time, the culprit was comedian Nick Sun who, in an admittedly dark corner of London’s Comedy Cafe mistook me for Michael.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being gay and certainly nothing wrong with being mistaken for either Topping or Butch. They are both very very nice people. I first met them a few years ago at the monthly gay club they ran in Brighton.

Look – I was there because I was giving my Glaswegian comedy chum Janey Godley a lift from London to Brighton, alright?

Does Michael Topping look like he’s suave John Fleming here?

I was at the Comedy Cafe last night to see the first of anarchic Bob Slayer’s Edinburgh Fringe previews/tryouts for his Heroes of Alternative Comedy acts. He is running the Hive venue in Edinburgh this year, as part of his Alternative Fringe under the banner of the Laughing Horse Free Festival.

The Hive hosted an eclectic bunch of performers last year, from Phil Kay to Kunt and The Gang. This year, Phil Kay will be back at the Hive with the likes of “internet-sensation” Devvo, the much blogged-about Lewis Schaffer and last year’s Malcolm Hardee Awards co-host David Mills. The line-up was announced yesterday.

Bob Slayer – beyond compere at the Comedy Cafe last night

Last night’s Hive headliners at the Comedy Cafe were Trevor Lock and the seemingly short-sighted Nick Sun. Next Monday night, it’s the Greatest Show on Legs strutting their stuff.

Bob’s Alternative Fringe at the Hive is an interesting combination of the ‘free’ show and the ‘paid’ show models. Unlike traditional venues in Edinburgh and elsewhere, the PBH Free Fringe and the Laughing Horse Free Festival do not charge acts to rent their venues and the audiences do not pay to get in; they can pay what they like (or nothing) at the end of the shows, depending on how much they enjoy them.

With his Alternative Fringe at the Hive, Bob will be promoting £5 shows in the evening and free shows in the afternoon.

He says:

“If you want to pay £12 to see a show where the artist is more than likely going into debt while the promoter and venue make a profit and there’s no bar and the sweet smell of desperation coats the walls all sponsored by Richard Branson, then you have plenty of Fringe venues to choose from. However, if you want to see a Fringe show where the artist is actually getting paid and happy, where the price to get in is either £5 or free, where there is a well-stocked bar and in place of a Virgin Bank sign there is condom vending machine… well, we’re your alternative.”

It all sounds very gay.

In the original meaning of the word.