Exquisite bad taste gets UK comedian Diane Spencer into trouble in Bahrain

(A version of this piece was published on the Indian news site WSN)
(NOTE: I have changed the names of the people in Bahrain)

Diane Spencer’s DVD recording next week

Next Wednesday, Diane Spencer is recording a live DVD of her Exquisite Bad Taste comedy show.

“What is your image?” I asked her yesterday via Skype. “I guess it’s fresh-faced, clean-cut English rose who shocks by saying rude things?”

“I prefer ‘edgy’ instead of ‘rude’,” she told me. “I have never told a joke to offend anyone. The first time I was called ‘shocking’, I was surprised. I thought Am I? And the first time I got called ‘crude’. I was really surprised. I’ve never aimed to be crude. When people call me ‘foul-mouthed’ I think OK, well I understand. I think I just have an in-the-pub sense of humour.”

“So that promoter booking you in Bahrain recently was surprising,” I suggested.

“When they initially booked me to go to Bahrain,”said Diane, “I actually asked them: Are you sure about this? You’ve seen my act. And they told me: You’re exactly what they want in Bahrain. They’ll love it. Don’t censor your act. They have people going over there censoring their acts and that’s not what they want at all. They want you to do what you do.

“There were two gigs: one at a local comedy club and one in the hotel where we were staying.

“I was nervous about the whole trip , but I talked to my friends who had been there and they said: As long as you’re polite and you observe the customs...

“Well, I don’t walk around in short skirts and sleeveless tops anyway. I’m ginger. I don’t do very well in the sun. I wore a headscarf. I was trying to be respectful of other people’s culture.

“I went over there with Joe Lycett and Jarleth Regan and Joe was already slightly nervous. He told me: I keep asking them about the gay thing.

The Gulf Daily News publicised the fateful show in Bahrain

“I told him: Well, you’re a gay guy. I’m an outspoken ginger woman. So I think they’ve sent us on purpose. I think it’s going to be fine, otherwise they wouldn’t have made this particular weird selection.

“So we fly into Bahrain and meet Peter, who has organised everything, He says to me: I saw your show at the Edinburgh Fringe. I really enjoyed it.

I say, relieved: So you’ve already seen my act! 

“Yeah yeah yeah! he says. It’s gonna be fantastic!

“So we arrive at the comedy club that night and they’re mainly British people. There were not many people wearing the headscarf.

“We sat backstage and there was an exit to the outside where there was this massive wall at least eight feet high. Then we met the guy who was organising the gig.

“Hi! My name’s Muhammad! he tells us. I’m in telecommunications! I’m a bum! I don’t do anything! And you just know he’s like a billionaire. I don’t do anything! he says. What do I do? I do nothing! I just bum around! I just get comedians in! 

“So everything’s OK and the woman who books the comedy – Susan – comes in and she’s lovely. She’s enthusiastic: Oh, I’m so excited about this! she says. I’m so excited!

“So Joe and I think: This is all going to be good.

“Muhammad tells us: Just do it! Just unleash! Just do it! I don’t care what happens! If they don’t like it, who gives a shit? It’s comedy! You guys are hilarious! Go for it! Whatever they say, I’ll take it!

“And I thought: Well, that’s lovely. How nice. He’s giving me creative freedom.

“So the gig starts and Jarleth gets up on stage and does his act and everybody loves it.

“Then Joe gets up. They LOVE Joe. He keeps saying Salam in such a camp way they find him absolutely hilarious.”

“And he mentions being gay?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” said Diane. “No problem. But then I get up…

Sunset at King Fahd Causeway linking Bahrain/Saudi Arabia

“I walk on stage and there’s two tables of women who fold their arms and glare at me. They are the Any other woman is a threat kind of women.

“I start off gently and it’s going well and it’s building and then I hit… erm…

“Well we WERE given censorship rules. Two rules…

“First rule: Do not mention politics or the local situation or the recent troubles. One of the boys did touch on it, but very lightly.

“The other rule: Nothing about the Bahrain Royal Family. 

“Now, being called Diane Spencer, I had pointed out to Susan beforehand: Look, I do have jokes about the Royal Family, but it’s the British Royal Family – Is this OK? 

“And she said: Oh, God, yes!

“So I start off gently and it builds and builds and builds… and then I get into my Prince Harry jokes which then lead on to my Princess Diana jokes, which I have only ever written to make people laugh. And I underline that.

“When people laugh, it’s really great. Sometimes they don’t laugh and I do try and say to them: Look, it did happen in 1997 – Diana’s death – so I think it’s OK if we laugh about it now.

“But, in Bahrain, I start to lose half the crowd. The people who are enjoying me are getting quiet. The people who are not enjoying me are getting vocal.

Diane performing recently at Soho Theatre

“So then what happens is I fall back to my super-clean, completely non-offensive material about my eyesight, my tooth, my ginger hair. I start to win them back and then I realise I haven’t got many options left now in my immediate mind. I have got options. But I can’t remember them. I can only really remember my British comedy club set. So I do my club set.

“And the reaction is incredibly mixed.

“At the end, when I say Well thankyou very much, half the crowd cheer and applaud. Twenty people have walked out. And the other half of the remaining crowd seem to be in a kind of weird shock.

“I walk offstage and… well, I don’t just walk offstage, I walk out of the building to this place with the high wall and I just stare up at the sky feeling a million miles from my culture.

“Joe comes out to say Hi and he can see I’ve got tears in my eyes and he’s telling me: No, no. Just relax, relax. 

“Then Susan comes out and Peter and Muhammad come out. Susan is panicky and stands about two inches away from my face and says: I’m going to be taken down to the police station! They say it was public obscenity!

“She’s now shitting herself and repeating: I just think you went too far! I just think you went too far! I mean, you did some clean material, but then I think you went too far! I think you went too far! They’re talking about taking me down to the police station!

“She is talking very, very fast and Peter is trying to calm her down while saying at the same time to me: No, that’s OK. You did… I love what you did and I… and everybody is kinda really confused. And what happens eventually is that Peter sweeps Susan and Joe away, leaving me and Muhammad outside.

“I’m one side of this eight-feet wall and I think maybe if I go outside I’m going to have stones thrown at me… by British people!

“But Muhammad says to me: This comedy club! This thing! Oh, I lose thousands on it! And then he tells me this story about when the troubles were happening a couple of years ago and they took him into custody for two weeks – He told me what happened – And then he says: 36 million? Gone! 

“I say What?

“He says: $36 million. Gone! And I’m never going to get that back. That’s fine. Whatever.

“They seized his assets.

“$36 million.

“So then I thought: Well, my problems really are nothing. My bad gig is not an issue.

Diane remembers the Bahrain gig, talking on Skype yesterday

“The next day, I sat by the pool at the hotel and restructured my set. I know people say Oh, you should just do what you do but, no, it’s about the crowd.

“I played Tetris in my mind with all my old material.

“That night, we re-arranged the second gig, which was in the hotel. Jarleth went last, Joe went first and I went in the middle. The hotel had drawn a bigger crowd, because people had heard what had happened at the comedy club the night before and were coming to see this cataclysm.

“Joe went on first. They loved him. Then I went on and I knocked it out of the fucking park. It built up, built up, built up and it was just lovely.

“In the break, people were coming up to me saying: We thought you were fantastic! You should START with the filthy stuff! Those people last night! What’s their problem? That was great!

“I also found out that the manager of the local comedy club had actually run into the dressing room the night before, after the gig, to try and find me and tell me that he loved it and to say he didn’t know what was wrong with the twenty people who walked out. He said I loved it!

“But, because of me, they’re now putting a disclaimer on the local club’s leaflets stating that they do not control any of the comedians.”

Frank Skinner & Mr Methane TV act banned by the BBC (and Phil Spector)

Someone on the BBC TV show ended up looking like a Muppet

The comedy ‘Rule of Three’ and Fate have combined to decree that Mr Methane appears in my blog for the third day running.

One of his better stories can never be told because, before the performance, he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that he would never tell anyone the performance had taken place in that location to those people…

However, yesterday he reminded me about one publishable non-appearance he made.

Mr Methane is the Farter of Alternative Comedy, a phrase I will repeat until someone else copies it.

Comedian Frank Skinner used to have a chat show on BBC TV.

One week, Frank had actor Gene Wilder on his show and the subject of Blazing Saddles came up: a movie with a famous farting scene.

Frank mentioned Mr Methane’s performances to Gene and, in Mr Methane’s words, “slagged me off in a comic fashion, said I had played a few ‘bum notes’ and then did a bad impression.”

Mr Methane, a self-publicist experienced in blowing his own trumpet, took Frank to task about slagging him off and the result was he ended up on Frank’s TV show the next week, doing a duet of Da Doo Ron Ron, the 1963 Crystals song originally produced by Phil Spector.

Frank appeared with Mr Methane, but the BBC got windy

“Frank was genuinely sorry about what he’d said the previous week and meant no offence,” Mr Methane tells me. “It was just a comedy slag off.”

According to Frank Skinner’s autobiography Phil Spector was not happy about the farted version of Da Doo Ron Ron. Neither was the BBC who got windy – not because of the song but because of the references to farting in the previous week’s show and the amount of complaints it had generated.

The BBC insisted that Frank edited out the Da Doo Ron Ron performance from his show before it was transmitted.

Act still unseen on the Unseen video

Later, the farted version of Da Doo Ron Ron was included on a video titled The Unseen Frank Skinner TV Show, but, Mr Methane tells me, “Phil Spector’s music publishers had an injunction put in place and all the videos had to be withdrawn just before Christmas. My section was edited out and a sticker put on sleeve saying This Video Does Not Contain Mr Methane… because most of sleeve artwork was basically press cuttings about our duet being axed from the original show: Beeb Blow Out Musical Bum, etc. All the re-editing delayed the video’s release and Frank missed the Christmas sales boom. No-one was happy.”

In his highly-recommended autobiography, Frank Skinner also talks about the occasion when Phil Spector, while receiving a lifetime music award, went into a rant live on Australian TV about the farted duet of Da Do Ron Ron, saying that Mr Methane and Frank Skinner had taken his work of art and desecrated it.

In 2009, Phil Spector was convicted of murder – shooting actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. He is serving a prison sentence of 19 years to life.

There is a YouTube video of the banned BBC footage which also features Ronnie Verrel (who did the drumming for Animal on The Muppet Show) on drums.

Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and Roman Polanski. Comparing artists and arses.

(This was also published by the Huffington Post)

Spice World released with scum removed

“Roman Polanski?” someone said to me yesterday afternoon. “Well, he’s not as bad as Jimmy Savile, is he?”

That is like a red rag to a bull.

Was Jack The Ripper not as bad as Adolf Hitler because he did not kill as many people? You could even argue Adolf Hitler was a morally better person than the Jack The Ripper because, as far as I am aware, Hitler did not personally kill anyone during the Second World War.

It is a pointless argument.

Jimmy Savile had-it-off with more under-age girls than Roman Polanski and was apparently at-it for 50 years. Roman Polanski was only prosecuted over one girl.

But the truth is you cannot compare evil.

Most things are grey. But some things are black and white and incomparable.

I had a conversation with two other men a couple of days ago and which I started to write a blog about the next day but which I aborted because it was too dangerous…

One man was involved in the comedy business. The other had been involved in the music business. We had got talking about Gary Glitter.

When the Spice Girls’ movie Spice World was made, it included a big musical routine involving Gary Glitter. Very shortly before the film’s release, he was arrested on sex charges. He was cut out of the film because (quite rightly) it was thought to be dodgy given the movie’s target audience.

But now, in many places, several years later, his music is, in effect, banned from being played because the act of playing it – and saying his very name in the introduction – is thought to be in bad taste.

The conversation I had with the other two men revolved around Art v Scum.

Just because someone is scum does not mean they cannot create Art.

Just because they have been rightly arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned for an act of evil does not lessen the level of any Art they may have created.

I am sure all sorts of artists over the centuries have committed all sorts of morally and criminally heinous acts. But that does not mean we should not appreciate their art.

You may see where this is going and why I abandoned writing this particular blog a couple of days ago. Just by discussing it I might seem to be lessening my dislike of what the scum did. Which is not the case. But it is a danger.

Just because Gary Glitter is scum does not mean he did not create some very good pop music. Perhaps it was not high art. But it was good pop music. The fact that he was imprisoned for having pornographic images of children in Britain and committing sex crimes in Vietnam does not mean his records should be banned.

There is the fact that, if you buy his records, he will receive royalties. That is a problem, but does not affect the theoretical discussion.

Clearer examples are actors Wilfred Brambell and Leslie Grantham.

Homosexuality was stupidly illegal in the UK until 1967. In 1962, Wilfred Brambell (old man Steptoe in the BBC TV comedy series Steptoe and Son) was arrested in a Shepherd’s Bush toilet for “persistently importuning”, though he got a conditional discharge. Ooh missus. He died in 1985. In 2012, he was accused of abusing two boys aged aged 12-13 backstage at the Jersey Opera House in the 1970s. One of the boys was from the Haut de la Garenne children’s home, which is now surrounded by very seedy claims of child abuse, murder and torture (and which Jimmy Savile visited, though this is strangely under-played in newspaper reports).

Actor Leslie Grantham – who famously played ‘Dirty Den’ in BBC TV’s EastEnders - is a convicted murderer. In 1966, he shot and killed a German taxi driver in Osnabrück. He was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment and served ten years in jail.

Wilfred Brambell’s presumed sexual sleaziness and Leslie Grantham’s actual imprisonment for killing someone does not mean the BBC should never repeat Steptoe and Son nor old episodes of EastEnders, nor that it would be morally reprehensible to watch the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night because Wilfred Brambell plays a prominent role in it.

It does not mean that Wilfred Brambell and Leslie Grantham’s undoubtedly high acting skills should not be appreciated.

A chum of mine was recently compiling a history of glam rock for a BBC programme and was told he could not include Gary Glitter. That is a bit like not including the Rolling Stones in a history of 1960s British rock music or not including Jimmy Savile in a history of BBC disc jockeys.

Which brings us to Roman Polanski.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think he is scum and (figuratively speaking) his balls should be cut off and he should be thrown into a bottomless pit of dung for eternity.

He drugged, raped and buggered a 13-year-old girl.

End of.

The defence “She was not that innocent” is no defence.

In January next year, the British Film Institute starts a two-month “tribute” to Roman Polanski at the National Film Theatre in London.

I have no problem with that. I might even go to some of the movie screenings.

Dance of the Vampires, Rosemary’s Baby and Macbeth are brilliant films. Chinatown and Tess are very good – although I have also had the misfortune to sit through the unspeakably awful Pirates.

As a film-maker, Roman Polanski deserves a tribute. As a criminal on the run from justice, he deserves to be arrested and imprisoned.

Art is often created by people who are scum.

Here is the deleted scene from Spice World:

The road to Hell – my defence of sexist, racist and (yes certainly) rape jokes

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

Frankie Boyle’s autobiography

As I write this, comedian Frankie Boyle is still in the High Court. He is suing the Daily Mirror for libel after they called him a “racist”. His barrister says it is perfectly OK to call him “vile” but not a racist.

His barrister told the jury that, during his Channel 4 Tramadol Nights show, Frankie had told a joke which contained the word ‘nigger’. The thrust of his argument was that racist words do not necessarily mean racist thoughts. Frankie Boyle, his barrister said, was attacking racists in the joke. Context is everything.

Almost a fortnight ago, I wrote a blog headed In Defence of rape jokes though, in fact, it said that I do not like rape jokes, as I have known and worked with three women who were raped as children and, by and large, the people who tell rape jokes are bad comedians going for a cheap (shock) laugh.

I wrote: “Trying to ban rape jokes is like trying to put sticking plaster over a symptom to hide an unsightly abscess, not cure the problem. It is the wrong target. The aim, surely, should be trying to stop audiences laughing at rape jokes.”

My So It Goes blog was picked up and reprinted a week later by the Huffington Post (though dated by them as 4th October).

In response to that Huffington Post piece, I got this e-mail from the people at ‘Rape Is No Joke’ (whom I had not named):

___

Dear John Flemming, (sic)

I am writing to correct a number of inaccuracies in your article ‘In Defence of Rape Jokes’ regarding our campaign ‘Rape Is No Joke’.

We are not advocating a ban on rape jokes and we do not believe a ban on something will fundamentally tackle an issue.

We are not calling for the subject of rape to become a taboo that is never mentioned in comedy. We are against jokes that trivialise the issue and the victim (which the vast majority of jokes about rape do).

Our pledge is asking comedians and venues to voluntarily sign up to say they won’t tell rape jokes or have them told in their venues as part of our campaign.

Our aim is to educate and tackle the, increasingly common, attitude that rape is something to be laughed at.

Obviously comedy isn’t the biggest offence facing women. However, comedy doesn’t exist in a bubble, it often reflects and has an effect on attitudes in wider society. Rape jokes add to the culture of dismissal and trivialising of rape that exists all too often in wider society. Whilst 80,000 women in the UK are raped every year, only 15% of them report it. Many of the other 85% are scared they won’t be believed or taken seriously. We want to start to tackle that culture. And we want to be able to enjoy comedy without misogyny.

We would be grateful if you could edit your article accordingly and remove the claims we want to ‘ban’ rape jokes.

Yours Sincerely,

_________

Now, far be it from me to criticise well-intentioned people, but this e-mail says: “We are not advocating a ban on rape jokes… Our pledge is asking comedians and venues to voluntarily sign up to say they won’t tell rape jokes or have them told in their venues”

If that ain’t advocating a ban on rape jokes, then daffodils are fish.

Good intentions. Bad idea.

The problem with banning any joke about anything is that who defines what the subject or the object of a  joke is? No rape jokes would, presumably mean no jokes – or sarcastic comments – about some of the late Jimmy Savile’s appalling activities. And, as I said in my original blog, where does it end? If rape jokes are banned then, surely, you must also ban jokes about murder. And, if you ban jokes about certain subjects told live on stage then, logically, you have to ban those same jokes on television and ban them in books, magazines and newspapers. Pretty soon, you will be trying to avoid people reading unacceptable comments previously expressed by burning books.

Today, comedian Rowan Atkinson is in the papers attacking the Public Order Act and “the creeping culture of censoriousness” and the “new intolerance”.

Rowan Atkinson attacks – in the Daily Mail today

According to today’s Daily Mail - not a publication known for criticising the police – a 16-year-old boy was recently arrested under the Public Order Act for peacefully holding up a placard reading ‘Scientology is a dangerous cult’, on the grounds that it might insult Scientologists.

In 2005, the Daily Mail points out, an Oxford University student was arrested for saying to a policeman: “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?” Thames Valley police said he had made “homophobic comments that were deemed offensive to people passing by”. And a 16-year-old from Newcastle who growled and said “Woof!” to a labrador within earshot of police was prosecuted and fined £200 (later over-turned on appeal).

If the policing of public morality is happening at this unimportant level to this ludicrousness, then how much more oppressive would be the policing of any ban on more serious things – like jokes about rape?

Frankie Boyle’s barrister has been saying in court that the comedian has been called “racist” for telling jokes which were actively aimed against racists.

In a comment on my Facebook page about the Frankie Boyle court case, comedian Richard Herring observes:

“In none of the examples I have seen is Boyle using the words in a context other than to highlight other’s racism. If he is racist for just using the word, then anyone saying, ‘saying the word Paki is racist‘ is racist. So presumably everyone involved in the court case can now be called racist.”

Rowan Atkinson said yesterday: ‘The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm… can be interpreted as insult.”

The same can be said of jokes about rape. In my original blog, I linked to a superb piece of comedy by Janey Godley in which she referred to the fact that she herself was repeatedly raped as a child. This could, very clearly, be labelled a ‘rape joke’ though, in fact, it is not in any way making a joke of rape.

Banning any jokes about anything is a bad idea. Trying to get comedy club owners to ban comedians who (they believe) tell or have told or may tell ‘rape jokes’ is not just a bad idea, it is actively dangerous. Where does the censorship end?

Freedom of speech includes the right to be offensive.

The road to totalitarianism – to a police state – is partially paved with the good intentions of well-meaning people.

In defence of rape jokes

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

Tragedy/comedy masks, Hadrian’s Villa – but which is which?

A comedian phoned me yesterday evening, angry that another comedian was Tweeting trying to get comedy performers and promoters to sign up for a ‘No Rape Jokes’ pledge.

The idea is to ban comedians who tell rape jokes.

The first promoter to have ‘signed the pledge’ appears to be a club that only allows female comedians to perform, which seems a little ironic. I am thinking of opening a comedy club at which Jewish performers are banned but at which no rape jokes would be allowed. No problem there, then.

Trying to ban rape jokes is like trying to put sticking plaster over a symptom to hide an unsightly abscess, not cure the problem. It is the wrong target. The aim, surely, should be trying to stop audiences laughing at rape jokes.

Unless – in my opinion – they are funny.

Funny is funny.

I have known and worked with three women who were raped as children. All bore psychological scars. Obviously.

When I hear a comedian tell a rape joke, I cringe because of this. But also because the comedian is usually getting an easy laugh. He (seldom she) knows the audience will laugh in shock because the subject is in bad taste. They used to be able to get a laugh by just using the word “fuck”. That word’s shock value disappeared. Then it was the word “cunt”. Now that word on its own no longer gets a laugh.

But now you can get an easy laugh by telling a rape joke or a joke about (presumably) murdered little girl Madeleine McCann or her parents. It is lazy comedy. Knee-jerk comedy.

I do not like rape jokes. By and large. The comedians who tell them are bad comedians. By and large.

But Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz has told rape jokes. He is a brilliant comedian. The jokes were funny. I laughed. I enjoyed the jokes as jokes.

Fellow Scottish comedian Janey Godley (who was repeatedly raped as a child) used to tell stories around the subject of child abuse and rape. There is a fascinating clip on YouTube of her starting her act.

Normally, I do not repeat comedians’ routines. But this one is worth repeating because what is being said is in no way funny yet it gets big laughs because, as Frank Carson might have said: “It’s the way she tells ‘em”.

It is a masterclass in how to get laughs from an audience.

Janey says:

“When I was five, I was sexually abused by my uncle… Now, I don’t want you to all rush the stage and give me a hug, cos it’s OK… cos I got him killed for my birthday later on (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… Yeah (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… No, I did (BIGGER AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… That’s no a joke (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… Yeah (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… Got his cock cut off (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)… So… (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)…”

What is being said here is not funny.

At no point does Janey say she is joking. She says the exact opposite. She tells the audience a man was murdered and – five times – she points out to the audience that this is not a joke. She is joking about murder and sexual mutilation. But the laughter continues and heightens.

If rape jokes are to be banned, why not also ban murder jokes, incest jokes, adultery jokes and jokes about travelling salesmen, mothers in law and rabbits? All were certainly offensive to the ears of pre-War BBC Radio.

It is a short and slippery slope from banning jokes to burning books.

Lewis Schaffer, a Jew, has what I consider to be (currently) the world’s best three-part Holocaust joke, Should he be banned from telling it? He says on-stage that he is allowed to tell that joke. And not for the reason you might think. And that is part of the joke.

Blanket bans on jokes can never be a good idea. Let the audience decide. Or try to change audiences’ attitudes. But don’t try to ban the jokes.

I talked to comedian Bob Slayer about this last night.

“I’m thinking of blogging about The Rape Thing tomorrow,” I told him. “If I did, I could glide into the attack I have not yet launched in my blog on left wing neo-Fascism. That should get me spat at in the bars of Soho and the streets of Edinburgh… Love Bernard Manning. Hate Tony Benn,.. Something along those lines…”

I am old enough to remember the late-1960s and early 1970s when the Vietnam War was being fought. When people were booked at universities to speak in support of the War, demonstrations were organised by well-meaning left wingers who believed strongly in Freedom of Speech… to get the person banned from speaking.

In the real world, left wing irony has never been widespread.

Nowadays, freedom-promoting left wingers sometimes say candidates from the right wing BNP should not be allowed to promote their views in TV programmes or on the streets. But the BNP is not an illegal political party. If their views are so appalling, a law should be passed to ban the party. But, if what the BNP believes is expressed in a perfectly legal way, then trying to ban them from speaking is, in my view, Fascistic.

I personally agree that the BNP is abhorrent, but that is irrelevant.

I blame the French.

We say ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ because of the seating arrangements in the Estates General during and after the French Revolution.

The reality is that political extremism is part of a circle, not a horizontal line.

Hitler’s political party was correctly called a (national) Socialist party… Because extreme right wing views about a strong centralised state overlap into extreme left wing views about ‘the people’ controlling everything via a strong centralised state.

Wanting to ban jokes about rape is indefensible if you do not also want to ban jokes about murder. And, if you ban talking about certain things at live gigs then, logically, you have to ban the same things on television and in print.

It is a short and slippery slope from banning jokes to burning books.

Bob Slayer disagrees with me. He supports attempts to ban rape jokes in comedy clubs.

“Of course,” he says, “all of this will require a comedy police force to ensure that these rules are adhered to. Someone will have to vet every comedian, judge them before they even do their first open mic gig and award them with a provisional licence to perform clean, pre-approved jokes. They can then work towards proving they are capable of a full comedy licence to make up their own jokes.

“A comedian licence would work along similar lines to the one for buskers on the London Underground. It used to be that buskers who were homeless and looked like they were only busking in order to keep in the dry were driven outside to think about their lives while they slowly died of cold.

“Thankfully, they were then replaced by college students and trustafarians who had achieved at least grade 4 on their chosen instrument. These approved buskers were then given a laminated badge and allowed to entertain commuters with officially sanctioned playlists.

“I look forward to comedy being ordered in the same way.”

The Edinburgh Fringe is sick. What is missing? The true spirit of the Fringe…

A comedy god has vomited on Edinburgh

The anonymous Poster Menace has e-mailed me another photograph. It is of an food trolley standing unattended in the street after some unknown accident. Unexplained. It could be an exhibit from Tate Modern. To me, it looks like abstract vomit. And a sign of the former essential anarchy now largely missing from the Edinburgh Fringe.

Walking round the streets of Edinburgh this last week, I have realised there is something odd this year.

Things are neater.

They were neater last year.

They are even neater this year.

The Fringe is sick.

The original basis of the Fringe is that it is an open festival. No-one is invited; no-one is organised. Anyone can come, put on any show they like in any place they can get and no-one actually controls what they do. The central Fringe Office simply issues a Fringe Programme with information provided by the performers. It does not control what goes into the Programme or what the performers do.

Except now it does.

As of this year, it has censored shows’ titles, it has censored shows’ descriptions, it has even insisted that the written description of shows printed in the Fringe Programme should use correct English grammar in the phrasing. It has become a schoolmasterly control freak.

Parallel to this, Edinburgh Council has controlled how shows are advertised on the streets. You can still say COCK, PRICK, SHIT in large letters on your posters prominently displayed in public thoroughfares throughout the city (although the Fringe Office has banned these words in its printed Programme – despite the fact they were acceptable in previous years).

In a seemingly reasonable move a couple of years ago, Edinburgh Council stopped turning a blind eye to random postering in the streets by rogue postering companies. This seemed reasonable enough. You cannot, so the argument goes, have people randomly postering on private and public properties and walls all over the city. It also meant the Council could charge for postering. But there was a consequence.

Now you can only poster in designated ways on designated sites using designated postering companies.

Look around the streets of Edinburgh and it still seems like hundreds of different shows are being advertised. But, look closer, and you see that (ignoring the mega big posters which were always put there by big companies) the ‘normal’ sized posters on the streets are almost all for the Big Four venues or for acts being put on by the big promoters.

Any small or middling shows have been marginalised to the half-glimpsed windows and doorways of small shops or, almost invisibly, inside and to a tiny extent outside the smaller venues.

The original basic and essential anarchy and uncontrollability of the Fringe is being reined in and controlled. The big venues are becoming bar areas with performance rooms not performance rooms with bars. The Fringe Programme is becoming a magazine where people have to pay to advertise but have no final control over their own paid-for words. The street advertising has already been moved into more corporate control.

The Fringe has been officialised, standardised and controlled. The PBH Free Fringe  and Laughing Horse Free Festival (occasionally bitter rivals) have re-invented the spirit of the old Fringe. But it may be too late.

On the other hand, there are still some free spirits and uncontrollable events.

Janey Godley and Paul Provenza in Edinburgh last night

Last night I went to see my comedy chum Janey Godley perform on Paul Provenza‘s (terrifying for performers) improvisation-based Set List. She stormed it, but told me afterwards: “It’s like the opposite of normal comedy. Set List gets harder the more you do it. You run on adrenaline the first time but then, the more you do it, the more your brain knows how difficult it is and tries to sabotage you!” 

An extra last-minute guest on the show was Phil Kay, who arrived without a plectrum for his guitar. Someone lent him a credit card and he played with that. There will probably be some Fringe rule preventing this soon, unless the credit card belongs to a Fringe-sponsoring bank.

When I got back to my flat at 3.30am, I found Free Festival/Alternative Fringe promoter Bob Slayer had sent me yet another e-mail. Is there no end to his quest for self-publicity? Let us hope not.

His venue The Hive is on Niddry Street, a narrow, steep street linking the higher Royal Mile with the lower Cowgate. A couple of doors down from his venue is the rival PBH Free Fringe venue The Banshee Labyrinth. At the bottom of the street are Bannerman’s pub and some Just The Tonic venues.

Bob’s latest e-mail reads :

____________________ 

Bob Slayer’s show has ended up in the gutter

John -

I want you to know that it wasn’t me! 

The blocked drains at the PBH Banshee Labyrinth that are causing poo and pee to flow down the street into PBH Bannermans are nothing to do with me! The Alternative Fringe flyers which are floating out of the drain and along the river of tepid toilet water are merely a coincidence… 

Earlier in the week, Daryl at Just The Tonic came up and asked me if I had anything to do with their power cut. 

And now I am getting fingered for blocking drains… ____________________ 

Some people will do – or, at least, suggest – anything to get mentioned in this blog.

Three things I cut out of my blogs: Apple computers, racism and bankers

Cutting edge blogging?

Occasionally, there are little bits that I do not include in my blogs which I think are interesting but which just don’t fit that particular blog. Here are three of them:

APPLE COMPUTERS AND THE NUMBER 42

I mentioned to a friend that I had once interviewed Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, in which the answer to everything is 42.

“Oh,” she said, “I have a friend who is a big fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide. He works for Apple computers in California. He has to alter things and, whenever he comes to some situation where he is not certain of the amount to alter it by then, if it’s vaguely sensible, he puts in the number 42. Obviously, if it should be nearer to five billion, then he doesn’t. But, if it’s a change that might have a numerical value between 1 and 100 then, if he’s not sure, he just puts in 42.”

“Does it usually work?” I asked.

“It does,” my friend told me.

THE BBC AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD

When I was talking to violinist Bobby Valentino recently about his surreally low payments for the worldwide hit song Young at Heart, he told me:

“A few years ago, when I was with Los Pistoleros, I was at a festival up at Newcastle for the Tall Ships Race and the BBC were hosting the website for the festival and we said we were the best honky tonk band in the land and they censored the word ‘honky’. They put five asterisks instead of the word honky. They said it was racist.”

I asked Bobby: “Did the word ‘honky’ as in ‘honky tonk’ ever have a racist meaning?”

“No,” he said, “The poor white folks in the Southern states of America were called honkies because they went to honky tonks. Honky tonk is the origin of the word ‘honky’ but a honky tonk is basically a working men’s club down South. It wasn’t a formal club, just a bar.

“There are loads of songs with the words ‘honky tonk’ in them. The BBC play the Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Women without any problem, but they thought the phrase the best honky tonk band in the land was racist!”

COMEDY CLUB OWNER NOEL FAULKNER ON BANKERS

When I recently chatted to London Comedy Cafe owner Noel Faulkner about the state of British comedy, we started by talking about Las Vegas.

“The one time I went to Vegas,” I told him, “I decided not to gamble at all, but I went into this massive room with rows and rows of one-armed bandits and a blind Chinese woman was led in to play on the machines. I would have thought the whole point of one-armed bandits is that they’re visual: you see the images on the wheels rotate and you see them either line up or not line up. This woman was blind. I suppose she heard the sound and that was the atmosphere she got from it. But it was bizarre. A blind woman pulling the handle on a one-armed bandit in Vegas.”

“Las Vegas to me,” said Noel, “is all these machines and they’re saying Yeah, just put yer money in here. It’s Amusement! Certainly it’s fucking amusing. To the casino owners. But the banks are a bigger racket than Vegas. At least when you go to Vegas, you know you’re being fucked. Vegas is for the damned.

“You go to Vegas; you get fucked.

“You open a bank account, you don’t expect to get fucked, but you really get it up the ass.

“At least in Vegas you get to pull a handle a few times. When you get involved with the banks, you get to pull your own dick, that’s all, because you feel like a wanker after they’ve fucked with you.

“All these Boris bicycles around London,” Noel said, “are sponsored by Barclays and they have the name painted on them but, instead of RCLAY, I want to go round painting STARD on them.”

How Fringe legend Mervyn Stutter was inspired by the Daily Mail & male nudes

Mervyn Stutter was at home with his self-portrait yesterday

In yesterday morning’s blog, I mentioned the current censorious state of the Edinburgh Fringe Programme and Fringe legend Mervyn Stutter’s reaction to it, as well as the fact that performer Martin Soan had told me The Greatest Show On Legs intended to perform their naked balloon dance in the street outside their Fringe venue, to attract an audience.

After reading the blog, Mervyn e-mailed me: “It reminds me that I wrote a song about the Greatest Show on Legs for BBC TV. Looking for it now…..”

Mervyn has been performing at the Edinburgh Fringe for 26 years – 5 years doing solo shows, then (including this year’s) 21 annual Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of The Fringe shows in which other acts (very carefully chosen by Mervyn) perform highlights from their own Fringe shows.

Yesterday afternoon, by coincidence, I had to take a friend to see a solicitor in Bournemouth. (Don’t ask.) Mervyn lives in Christchurch, just beside Bournemouth. So, of course, the lure of hearing a song about The Greatest Show On Legs and the possibility of getting a free meal and drinks was too much to ignore and Mervyn and his wife Moira fell for our “we haven’t eaten” ruse.

What he told me perhaps gives a glimpse into another, different social era.

“In the mid-1980s,” Mervyn told us, “I had to write songs for the first ever BBC daytime television programme, Open Air. The two presenters on the pilot were Pattie Coldwell and Alan Titchmarsh and the series itself was presented by Pattie and a very thin Irishman, just off the boat, called Eamonn Holmes. It was in the days when the topical song was popular and wasn’t ridiculed, as it has been a lot since.

“Pattie put me up for it and I had to send a tape in of several topical songs so the producer knew I could do it.

“In the Daily Mail that week – Tuesday 26th July 1986 – was an article headlined Anger Over BBC’s Nudes.”

Daily Mail outraged at nudity

The article started: Outraged people in a TV audience walked out of a show hosted by an MP when three naked men danced on the set with only balloons to protect their modesty.

The pilot show for a new TV discussion programme called Day To Day had been chaired the previous Sunday by Robert Kilroy-Silk. The show had been about nudity and audience members had included ‘moral campaigner’ Mary Whitehouse, the streaker Erika Roe, Page Three girl Linda Lusardi and, according to an outraged Daily Mail, ‘teenage girls’ .

The Greatest Show on Legs performed their naked balloon dance to – again according to the Daily Mail – great outrage.

The report claimed that “Clean-up campaigner Mary Whitehouse has registered a formal complaint with BBC Director General Alasdair Milne, demanding ‘that the people responsible for this outrage should be disciplined’.”

Publisher Ian Critchley’s wife, the article continued, was in the audience and he “was considering legal action against the BBC for shocking her”. In those far-off golden days, ladies had to be protected by their husbands and were unable to cope with such manly things as taking legal action to protect their own modesty. Mr Critchley warned, possibly echoing the Daily Mail’s own outaged thoughts: ‘The BBC are on the slippery slope to depravity’.”

The presenter of the Day To Day pilot, Robert Kilroy-Silk, was always a staunch defender of the arts and bravely told the Daily Mail: “I was simply helping some friends at the BBC and had nothing to do with the balloon men. They were not my responsibility.”

However, in their final sentence, the Daily Mail quoted the BBC as pointing out: “Most of the audience thoroughly enjoyed it”.

“So,” Mervyn told me yesterday, “I wrote a song called One Little Prick about how outrageous it was, which ended:

If the audience did get up and leave, of course.
It would be The Greatest Show on Legs

“I did it on the audition tape for Open Air, but whether it was ever broadcast, I can’t remember.”

Mervyn played the song for us in his dining room yesterday evening and, with luck, he may turn up singing it during The Greatest Show on Legs’ own performances at the Edinburgh Fringe this August… and, of course, at the much-anticipated (at least by me) Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show on the final Friday night of the Fringe.

So there we have it.

An insight into the anarchic way in which people may or may not be booked to appear in shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Edinburgh Fringe: publicising comedy shows with nudity in the street

“Two red bollocks and a sawn-off cock…”

After my blog yesterday about the Edinburgh Fringe’s sudden censorship of show titles, English grammar and risqué images this year, pink-suited Fringe veteran (how he will love that description) Mervyn Stutter pointed out to me: “Ooh that Pr*gr*mme cover, J*hn! It looks like two red b*ll*cks and a sawn off c*ck……..NURSE!!

Mervyn, whose Pick of The Fringe show celebrates its 21st birthday this year, also suggested that, if you list a show in the Fringe Programme as being Theatre not Comedy, you are more likely to get less censorious scrutiny:

“Molly Wobbly’s Tit Factory,” Mervyn pointed out, “sailed through without comment! What a load of nonsense. But then this Tit show is a proper musical from Dublin and is therefore Art. See the difference?………No, nor me.”

Australian performer John Robertson told me: “Mervyn may be right. I was allowed to call a show about sleeping with Queen Elizabeth The Old Whore. The Fringe Programme features a picture of her face PhotoShopped to appear goofy and hideous. Thank goodness ‘whore’ isn’t classified as slang, eh?”

With the Programme now published, performers’ thoughts are turning to how best to promote their shows in August. Martin Soan told me yesterday:

“We’re trying to approach all the people who’ve ever performed with the Greatest Show on Legs – and there are a lot of them – to see if they’re around in Edinburgh this year and fancy performing sketches with us.”

“Vic Reeves did it, didn’t he?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Martin. “On an episode of The Tube.”

“And…?” I asked.

“Well,” explained Martin. “At the time, he was a self-seeking publicist. He’s gone on to do great stuff and he’s very talented and I wouldn’t take any of that away from him. But we used to do The Tube regularly and we were proud of our work on it. Vic Reeves was supposed to be a heckler from the audience who was supposed to say one thing, but he crow-barred his way in and went on for about five minutes. It destroyed a rather good sketch.”

“And,” I prompted, “Keith Chegwin did the naked balloon dance on an Amnesty gig, didn’t he?”

“He let his balloon slip,” said Martin, “and showed his bollocks halfway through the balloon dance, which is not the way it’s done. He rather mis-interpreted the ‘artistic’ side… The idea is to go through a rather drunken side-stepping routine to some cheesy music, hiding one’s bollocks all the way through to the end and then let the balloons go, show your bollocks and then just walk around and chat. I think he didn’t like me much, because I was drunk.”

“And I saw Simon Munnery do the naked balloon dance at Glastonbury,” I said.

“That was one of the times I didn’t turn up at Glastonbury,” Martin replied.

“So why did all these people perform with The Greatest Show on Legs?” I asked.

“I guess because they knew they could do whatever they wanted.” Martin suggested. “When we were in Oswestry, Paul Merton appeared as a pyjama-clad comic.”

“But no women,” I said.

“Holly Burn,” said Martin. “She was the first woman to appear as part of the Greatest Show on Legs.”

“But not doing the balloon dance,” I said. “A woman couldn’t do it. It would sexualise it and they’d have to wrangle three balloons.”

“Mmm,” said Martin.

“You told me you were thinking of not doing the naked balloon dance in the Edinburgh Fringe show this year,” I said. “You have to finish the show with it, surely?”

“Or start the show with it,” said Martin. “Get it out of the way. If people want us to do it, then of course we will. In fact, we may do the balloon dance outside of the show – in the street. Let’s get into real trouble. We will do a naked balloon dance in the street with an old-fashioned portable ‘Brixton briefcase’ cassette player – to get the punters into the venue… and then, when the audience are in the Hive, we’ll get them to take their clothes off and then we’ll perform completely clothed in front of a naked audience. I think that’s a very good idea, don’t you? No-one can get in and see us unless they’re completely naked.”

“You think the police may object in the street?” I asked. “Have you had any problems with the police in the past?”

“Only when there was a fight and Chris Lynam stuck a firework up his arse,” Martin replied, ”There was a fight which we tried to break up and the police were involved in that and there was a bit of surprise when Chris Lynam stuck a firework up his arse outside the venue.”

“Why did he do that?” I asked.

“Because the venue wouldn’t allow us to put a firework up his arse inside,” replied Martin.

“Which venue was this?” I asked.

“I can’t remember,” said Martin. “It was in a pub basement near the big roundabout.”

“Why can’t you remember?” I asked.

“God, John!” said Martin. “Over the years? They just all… I tell you who was on with us. The Brighton Bottle Orchestra…”

“Ah!” I said. “Ah!…”

“They were on the show before us,” Martin explained. “And they were very very funny.”

“Indeed they were,” I agreed.

“Very funny,” said Martin. “It was a pub near the big roundabout. There’s probably something else there now. The Fringe changes.”

“Indeed it does,” I said.

Censorship chaos @ Edinburgh Fringe: stupid asterisks but pubic acceptability

The Greatest Show on Legs – the pubic face of silly censorship

Comedy critic Kate Copstick made me four chocolate cupcakes in the early hours of this morning. It was not until my bladder got over-full and I had to go with the cupcakes and her to the toilet - where Copstick took off her orange wig – that I realised it was all a dream. Margaret Thatcher then started handling the four chocolate cupcakes on my behalf. Mrs Thatcher wore Meryl Streep’s hair.

Fringe Programme cover may scare kids

The rather-frightening-looking Edinburgh Fringe Programme was published today. My copy arrived in the post this morning before I woke up, but it was not part of my dream. Some writer less subtle than me might say it was my nightmare. But no, not me. Ooh no. I would not write that. Ooh no. It would be far too tabloidy and tacky.

I have blogged before about the draconian new ‘rules’ that have been unleashed by the Fringe this year. The most ludicrous is that entries now have to be completely “grammatically correct” – despite the fact that performers pay just under £400 to put a strict maximum of 40 words into the Programme – so it is the wording of the performer’s own paid ad which is being censored by the Fringe.

But there is also the ludicrous randomness of the new censorship, epitomised by the fact that the excellent Kunt and The Gang can print their name in full but Stuart Goldsmith’s show Prick has to be printed as Pr!ck (with an exclamation mark replacing the “i” despite the fact it looks the same and a ! is just an i upside down). And then there is the, by now infamous, way Richard Herring’s show Talking Cock was censored (without Richard’s knowledge) as Talking C*ck because, the Fringe claims, the ‘family audience’ reading the Fringe Programme’s comedy listings may be offended by a title which is going to be plastered in full on posters and flyers all over Edinburgh in August.

Interestingly, in his Metro newspaper column last week, Richard Herring wrote about this ludicrous censorship (of a title which has no sexual origin – the origin is ‘cock and bull story’). In Richard’s piece, the words “cock” and “penis” and “Jack the Dripper” and “Spurt Reynolds” and others were printed in full by the Metro – a newspaper freely available to men, women, children and born-again Christians at railway stations and street corners across England’s capital and elsewhere. As far as I am aware, no-one complained.

On the same page as Richard’s column in the London edition of Metro was their Pet of the Day picture, featuring ‘Stripey The Moggy’, the seven best Twitter tweets about food by Middle England’s Nigella Lawson and a quarter-page ad from Westminster Council headed: Could You Foster a Child Like Me?

See the point? Family newspaper. No worry about causing offence.

Clear cock-up

The Fringe Programme asterisked another show’s title – Jon Bennett‘s Pretending Things Are C*ck despite the fact the accompanying picture (printed in the Programme – see right) clearly shows the offending word C*CK rising like a penis from a man’s groin.

They also rejected a tiny picture supplied by me to accompany The Greatest Show On Legs’ Fringe Programme entry because – if you magnified it 300% – it was possible to see a vague outline under a balloon which may or may have been the bottom of one of the late Malcolm Hardee’s testicles.

Original picture

That is the photo to the left at approximately the size it would have appeared in the Fringe Programme. If you can Spot The Ball, you are a better man or woman than I am.

Without anyone’s permission, the Fringe then Photoshopped in a third balloon to obscure the potentially offending vague shape. This (a) was ludicrous and (b) would be impossible-to-replicate in the stage act. When I objected, the Fringe wanted a replacement photo.

One of the few colour photos available of the naked balloon dance – which is a main selling point of the Greatest Show On Legs – is the one you can see at the top of this blog.

I sent an e-mail to comedian/promoter Bob Slayer – in whose Hive venue the Greatest Show on Legs will be performing:

“I think the Martin Clarke photo (attached) would be much better than the Fringe wankers’ ludicrous one with the Photoshopped extra balloon. But the Martin Clarke photo has some of Malcolm’s pubic hair showing.

“If the Fringe refuse to run this one too, it can be whipped up into more publicity now. I would make a point of grudgingly letting them run their Photoshopped version – milking it for publicity – and then, at the point at which they publish it in the Programme, there is more publicity to be had.

“If, on the other hand, they accept the new photo then, at the point of publication, the angle is that they refused to print a pretty-much-invisible hint of one of Malcolm’s bollocks, but they did accept a photo with more visible pubic hair. Either way, the fact the Fringe Programme people this year are idiotic wankers will give The Greatest Show On Legs more publicity.”

There is a lesson for all here, I think.

If people are wankers at the Fringe – particularly if they try to censor anything – it will not be effective and it should be viewed by performers less as an annoyance, more as a publicity opportunity.

It’s in the shadows

What a pity they have never objected to the ‘shadow puppet’ image I have used to publicise the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards for several years now, showing Malcolm with what some with a particular – obviously deranged – attitude of mind might consider to be an erect penis.

It’s a funny old world.

The Greatest Show on Legs will be performing at The Hive venue for five days, 22nd-26th August. They will also be appearing in my own two-hour Malcolm Hardee Awards Show compered by Miss Behave in the ballroom of the Counting House on 24th August, 2300-0100.

The two shows are listed in the Fringe Programmes as:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaarghh! It’s the Greatest Show on Legs
and
Aaaaaaaaaaaaarghh! It’s the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show with Miss Behave – and It’s Free!
in a this-year-unsuccessful attempt to get them listed first in the Comedy section of the Programme. A show called Aaaaaaaaargh! It’s the Monster Stand-Up Show has cheekily added more ‘A’s in its printed listing so it becomes Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! It’s the Monster Stand-Up Show – Free and has shamefully beaten us to the Number One slot.

B*uggers!

Meanwhile, I think it is the Satanic cover of the new Fringe Programme which will scare small children sh*tless.