Edinburgh Fringe BBC News crisis comedy – and without Jimmy Savile!

Sara Pascoe, Hal Cruttenden & Dan Starkey in Making News

At the Edinburgh Fringe in August, there will be a play titled Making News about a newly-installed female Head of News at the BBC who has to handle a breaking story about the corporation itself, a TV reporter frustrated about a story she can no longer sit on and the fallout from the decisions taken that “threatens to bring down the BBC”.

For non-British readers of this blog:

In 2011, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight conducted an investigation into DJ Jimmy Savile, a former Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It presenter. The investigation was never screened by the BBC. When allegations of paedophilia were subsequently broadcast on ITV, the BBC was accused of a cover-up and another Newsnight report wrongly implicated Conservative politician Lord McAlpine in the widening child abuse scandal.

Making News has been written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, who had a big success at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe with their political play Coalition about a fictional British coalition government. Britain currently has a coalition government.

Robert Khan studied law at university and is now a Labour councillor in Islington. Tom Salinsky studied mathematics and now runs training company The Spontaneity Shop. He also co-wrote The Improv Handbook with Deborah Frances-White.

I had a chat with Robert and Tom at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington last night.

Robert Khan (left) and Tom Salinsky last night in Islington

“Mathematics… playwriting… improvisation?” I asked Tom. “They don’t go together.”

“I’ve always liked problem solving,” he replied, “and plotting a play involves quite a lot of problem solving.”

“You talk about careful plotting,” I said, “but you’ve written a book on improvisation and you run a training company called The Spontaneity Shop. So what’s an improvising-type person like you doing writing scripted plays?”

“Improvising,” explained Tom, “is like solving problems at 100mph. Improvisation’s really about making a series of choices and the delightful thing for the audience is they get to see the moment of inspiration – that moment of creativity – actually happen in front of them.

“The sometimes discouraging thing for the improviser is l’esprit de l’escalier – not thinking of the right thing to do until you’re on the bus on the way home. So, writing a scripted play, you don’t get the rush of instantaneous creativity, but you’re able to revise and improve.”

“Making News has a cracking cast of comedians including Phill Jupitus,” I said. “Do you let them improvise?”

“Aahhhhh…..” said Tom and Robert in unison.

“We discourage it,” said Tom. “In rehearsals, anything goes…”

“Yes,” said Robert.

“… but once it’s on stage, it’s discouraged,” continued Tom.

“Heavily discouraged,” agreed Robert.

“Are you frustrated actors yourselves?”

“No,” laughed Robert.

“I am,” said Tom. “Incredibly frustrated as a writer backstage unable to influence events onstage.”

“And you’re both heavily into politics?” I asked.

“I think I’m politically aware,” answered Tom, “whereas Robert is politically active.”

“So why write two plays about politics?” I asked.

“I think it’s interesting to begin with…” started Robert.

BBC crisis: Hal Cruttenden & Phill Jupitus with Sara Pascoe

“The new play isn’t party political,” Tom corrected me. “It’s current affairs, but it isn’t party political, whereas Coalition was.”

“We were interested,” explained Robert, “in how a large institution that has to report the news impartially reports bad news about itself.”

“And the strange thing is the BBC does,” I said.

“Oh yes,” said Robert. “I imagine the debates internally are quite difficult.”

“There’s a sort of Catholic guilt about it,” suggested Tom, “that they have to be particularly fearless when they have to report bad news about themselves.”

“Have either of you worked for the Beeb?” I asked.

“No,” said Robert.

“I’ve not been a salaried employee,” said Tom, “but, in my capacity as corporate trainer I’ve worked for all sorts of bits of the BBC – picture research, BBC Worldwide, current affairs… They hired my company for training.”

“Picture research?” I asked, surprised.

“One of their big problems,” explained Tom, “was that the people making the programmes wouldn’t co-operate with them. The conversation would go:

• We want to take a picture of this big star

• He’s not available…. 

• Then we’ll have no pictures of him to give to the press… 

• Well tough.

…so our job was to go in and help them build stronger relationships.”

“What was the logic,” I asked, “behind saying We’re not going to promote our own thing?”

“Well,” explained Tom, “and it’s something we explore in the play… the BBC don’t see themselves as part of one big Corporation. They see themselves as a bunch of loosely-associated but basically independent units all looking out for themselves.”

“It’s true of all large organisations,” said Robert. “You break down into smaller units. It’s the only way human beings can operate… and you then become competitors.”

“So what’s your insight into BBC News?” I asked.

“Well,” said Tom, “we’ve certainly spoken to a few people.”

“But we can’t talk about that,” Robert told me.

“Some fairly senior people within News,” Tom added.

“Have you talked to any of the people you’re parodying?” I asked.

There was a long pause.

“As with Coalition,” said Tom, “we’re not parodying any particular individual. We’re looking at the roles. The hero of Coalition wasn’t based on Nick Clegg. It was an answer to the question What pressures would somebody IN THAT POSITION feel? Likewise, in Making News, we have a Director General, a Head of News, but they aren’t specifically based on any present or past people.”

“And we stress that very heavily,” said Robert, carefully.

“We are looking,” said Tom, “at What does being in that position do to you? When you come under these pressures, how might you react?

“I don’t think we need to do a pastiche of real characters,” said Robert.

“We create our own characters to inhabit those roles,” agreed Tom.

“It could be a tragedy rather than a comedy,” I said.

“Well, the difference is very small,” said Tom. “There’s a quote in the play that Labour governments resent what they see as the BBC’s lofty patrician heritage and try to cut the Licence Fee and Conservative governments think the BBC is a seething bed of Leftie hotheads and try to cut the Licence Fee.”

“If you have a state broadcaster that’s independent,” said Robert, “it’s always going to sooner or later rub-up the elected government the wrong way. And long may that continue.”

Phill Jupitus as the BBC’s DG

“I felt sorry for the extraordinarily inept Director General George Entwhistle,” I said, “because he got crucified for saying I didn’t feel it was my position to ask any questions - but that’s the DG’s cleft stick at the BBC. If he interferes in producers’ independence, he’s wrong; if he doesn’t interfere in producers’ actions, he’s wrong.”

“It’s a very, very difficult job,” agreed Robert.

“When did you start writing Making News?” I asked.

“During the Edinburgh run of Coalition last August,” said Tom.

“So before George Entwhistle became DG?” I said.

“Yes,” said Robert. “Way before the Jimmy Savile scandal.”

“Operation Yewtree,” added Tom, “cast a slightly distasteful shadow over the idea. We don’t go near any of that sex stuff in Making News. It would have been difficult to make that funny and it wasn’t what we wanted to write about.”

“The stakes are very high for the BBC,” said Robert. “Three Director Generals in the last 20 years have had to resign – essentially been sacked – Alasdair Milne, Greg Dyke, George Entwhistle. That’s quite a dramatic organisation to work for.”

“For a long time,” said Tom, “we were going to cast the Director General as the central figure. By this time, Entwhistle was DG. We thought we’d do A Year in The Life of a DG, ending in ignominy… and then he resigns after 54 days… We’d been trumped by reality! We had to more-or-less start again from scratch at that point.”

“Do you envisage a TV version of Making News?” I asked.

“I don’t think it would be on the BBC!” laughed Robert.

“Why not?” I asked. “They’d be dramatising themselves honestly and fairly.”

“Self-flagellation can only go so far,” Robert said. “Scotland on Sunday asked them about our play and the BBC issued a statement saying: This is not something we would comment on.”

“In Edinburgh last year,” said Tom, “we had both The Culture Show and Late Review come to see Coalition… It will be interesting to see if they turn up for Making News. They may feel completely happy to review it impartially or they may get the hump.”

“In the end,” said Robert, “this is more affectionate than Coalition was. We do hold the BBC in huge respect and affection.”

And so do I.

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

Mr Methane, farter of alternative comedy

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

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

… and I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

So I asked Bob Slayer.

He replied:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob then continued his story:

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

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

Beatrix Potter, 15, with spaniel, Spot

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

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

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

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

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

So I asked Mr Methane.

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

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

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

Martin Soan – stimulated by home decorating

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

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

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

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

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

“Did you ever see it?” Martin asked.

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

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

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

A Perrier bottle without any Boothby Graffoe

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

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

“Yeah,” said Martin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And at Edinburgh?” I asked.

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

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

“And this was outside?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

Nine more answers to questions asked by virgin Edinburgh Fringe comedians

What performing looks like at the Fringe

A couple of days ago, I re-blogged some two-year-old Answers to nine questions asked by first-time Edinburgh Fringe performers. 

Here is a follow-up which I also blogged two years ago. I have made slight updates, particularly in the final answer

1. IF THERE ARE ONLY TWO PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE, SHOULD I CANCEL THE SHOW?

No. Even if there is only one person in the audience, perform the show. You do not know who those people are in the audience (particularly at the Free Fringe and the Free Festival where there are no complimentary tickets). I have blogged before about an Edinburgh Fringe show performed in the early 1990s by then-unknown comedian Charlie Chuck. There were only four people in the audience. He performed the show. Two of the audience members were preparing an upcoming new BBC TV series The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and, as a direct result, Charlie Chuck was cast as ‘Uncle Peter’ in the series. After appearing in that, he was no longer unknown. The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

2. BUT IF I GET LOW AUDIENCES, SURELY I AM A FAILURE?

Very possibly, sunshine, but not necessarily. In reality, it means you are an average Edinburgh Fringe performer. Unless you are on TV, you will not get full audiences unless there is astonishing word-of-mouth about your show. Scots comedian Kevin Bridges could not fill a matchbox, even in Scotland. He appeared on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on BBC1. After that, he was filling auditoriums the size of Bono’s ego. What is important at the Edinburgh Fringe is not the size of the audience but who is in the audience and the perception of your impact by the media. It is not How Many? but Who? which is important. It can also be argued that, if you get an audience of zero then, by definition, no-one knows you had no audience, so there is actually no harm in media terms. The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

3. BUT I AM GOING TO THE FRINGE TO GET SEEN BY AUDIENCES, AREN’T I?

No you are not. You are going to the Edinburgh Fringe to lose money. A comic whose name I have tragically forgotten, so cannot credit, likened it to standing in a cold shower tearing up £50 notes. You may have sold your grandmother into sexual slavery to afford this trip to the Fringe, but you are not in Edinburgh to perform shows to ordinary people. If you wanted to do that, you could have gone to the Camden Fringe or down the local pub on a Friday night. You are going to Edinburgh, the biggest arts festival in the world, to get seen by critics and, with luck, by radio and TV people, all of whom can boost your career. If you can create good word-of-mouth among the small audiences who do see your shows at the Fringe, then that may attract a few of the influential people. And, if the media perceive you as being successful, then you ARE successful even if you are not. The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

4. I AM A COMEDIAN. AUDIENCES ARE NOT LAUGHING ALL THE WAY THROUGH MY SHOW. WHY?

Well, probably because you have a shit show, so tweak it or consider a career working at a call centre in Glasgow. There are some comics who should reconsider their lifestyle and bank balances. On the other hand, most comics are insanely insecure for very little reason. I have sat through many a show where the comedian thinks the audience did not like part of the show because it did not get enough laughs but I know for sure, because I was in the audience, that the punters enjoyed the show tremendously. They were just mesmerised in rapt attention during the quiet but important bits. It is all about perception.

Street art truth at Edinburgh Fringe in 2012

5. BUT WHY DON’T AUDIENCES LAUGH AT EVERY LINE?

Possibly because a good comedy script is not 100% laugh-at-every-line. Not over a whole hour. If you think your show is that funny you are either deluded, on cocaine or have a serious psychological problem (not that the first or last is any drawback in comedy). Watching a man take 10 seconds to jump off a cliff 66 times in a row is not exciting; it exhausts and bores the viewer after a while. What is exciting is a rollercoaster. A build-up followed by an adrenaline rush. Excitement followed by relief followed by excitement followed by relief followed by a climax. Ooh missus. An hour-long show is about pacing. If you remove the build-up before the punch-line, you will lose the laughter on the punch-line. Of course, the highly-experienced comic can get three subsidiary titters in the build-up followed by a big belly-laugh at the climax. Ooh misses. Ooh missus. Even (billed in alphabetical order) the brilliant Jimmy Carr, Milton Jones and Tim Vine, who mostly deal in one-liners, have pacing where their audiences can relax amid the laughter. It is all about perception.

6. SHOULD I WORRY IF I DO NOT GET REVIEWS?

Yes, but it is largely a matter of luck. I always tell people they have to play the Edinburgh Fringe on three consecutive years. The first year, no-one will notice you are there. The second year, you have some idea of how the Fringe works. The third year, people will think you are an Edinburgh institution and the media will pay some attention to you. You have to go for three consecutive years. If you miss a year, when you return, you are, in effect, re-starting at Year One. It is not just audiences but critics who change year-by-year. Critics reviewing shows at the Fringe may not have been doing it two years ago. The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

7. I ONLY HAVE 30 MINUTES OF GOOD MATERIAL. WAS I WRONG TO ATTEMPT TO DO A 60-MINUTE SHOW?

Yes. You are an idiot. You should have delayed your trip to the Fringe and gone next year. Going before you are fully ready is never a good idea. Yes, go up and play a few gigs on other people’s shows. Yes, go up as part of a three or four person show. But, if you are doing your first solo 60-minute show and you have anything less than 80 minutes of good material, you risk rapid ego-destruction.

8. IF I GET REVIEWS, ARE THE NUMBER OF STARS IMPORTANT?

In Edinburgh, absolutely. The stars are everything – provided you get above three stars. Put four or five stars on your posters and flyers – with short quotes – immediately. All your competitors – and, in Edinburgh ALL other performers, however seemingly friendly, are your deadly competitors – will be using the number of stars on a review to boost their own ego or to try and deflate yours. After the Fringe is over, the stars mean bugger all. They are unlikely to bring in crowds on a wet Thursday in Taunton. But their real value lies next year at the Fringe when you can quote them and they will have some effect. And always remember the admirable enterprise of the late comic Jason Wood. Highly influential Scotsman critic Kate Copstick gave his Fringe show a one star review. The next morning, all his posters in Edinburgh proudly displayed a pasted-on strip saying “A STAR” (The Scotsman). The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

9. WILL I WIN THE PERRIER PRIZE?

No. Partly because it no longer exists. The name has changed several times. But mostly because you just won’t. Don’t be silly. Fantasy is a valuable part of the performer’s art, but never fully believe your own fantasy.

You stand a better chance of winning one of the increasingly-prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards - the longest-running comedy awards with the same name at the Fringe. And, unlike their insignificant competitors, the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards are guaranteed to run until the year 2017 because we have already had the trophies made.

It’s all about publicity and ramping or maybe camping it up.

I allegedly organise them, but intentionally try not to be too organised as that would be lacking in respect to Malcolm’s memory. Do not bother to apply to me because there is no application process, plus it interferes with my chocolate-eating.

Your show format is probably neither that original nor, frankly, that good and we will almost certainly hear about anything which actually IS that original. In Edinburgh, word-of-mouth is the strongest thing after a deep-fried Mars Bar soaked in whisky for 20 minutes.

The Edinburgh Fringe is all about publicity and perception.

To quote Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ movie The Producers:

“When you’ve got it, flaunt it, flaunt it!”

A good show will not necessarily get noticed amid the adrenaline-fuelled mayhem in Edinburgh.

A well-publicised show will get noticed.

A sound technician at the Edinburgh Fringe can face wetness and nudity

Misha Anker sounded good at Hampstead Theatre yesterday

Last August, Misha Anker was sound technician for the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show - as she was for several other shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Three weeks ago I got this e-mail from her:

“It is with many apologies and a heavy heart that I must inform you that I won’t be able to tech at the Fringe this year. No amount of back-of-the-envelope maths will make my student loan even cover my rent for the summer let alone allow me to save the necessary £1,000 or so the Fringe requires me to have upfront in August.”

I talked to her at Hampstead Theatre in London yesterday and have now arranged for her to come up to specifically handle sound on this year’s Malcolm Hardee show. (She’s open to other offers!) When we met, she had recently handled sound at the Accidental Festival and the Machynlleth Comedy Festival.

“How many hour-long shows did you tech at the Edinburgh Fringe last year?” I asked.

“I had a core run of six a day,” Misha replied, “and then, at weekends, I did an extra one in the morning and some days I’d have an extra one in the evening. A couple of days I worked noon to midnight.”

“Good sound technicians have to very organised,” I said.

“Organised,” said Misha, “but not necessarily functional as people. If you take them outside their job, they just revert to being a man drinking beer and mumbling in the corner of a pub.”

“Yes,” I said, “most sound technicians are men.”.

“That’s why I have to have a short haircut,” said Misha, “otherwise they wouldn’t know what to do with me. You’ve either got to have a beard and a pony tail – which is difficult for me – or short hair and piercings.”

“I suppose a lot do look like ageing hippies,” I said.

“Ageing roadies,” Misha suggested. “You get to the point where you’re too old to travel in a van, so then you move into a theatre. And then, when you’re too old to climb up and down a ladder, you become a lecturer.”

“Comedians are of a breed too,” I said. “Usually wildly disorganised.”

“When I have to write a CV,” laughed Misha, “I always put down that I ‘provided technical support and emotional support’ because most of the job is somewhere between operating things and being their mother.”

“And what do you do to keep your own sanity?” I asked.

“Last year in Edinburgh, I played a game with Stuart Goldsmith,” said Misha. “It was called Wife or PA? He and I had to guess if the attractive lady following the other comedian round was his wife or his PA. It’s hard to tell. The average very shambolic comedian is often being followed around by a woman. Is she married to him or trying to make him do his job? Sometimes it’s both.”

“And sometimes they don’t know the other exists,” I said. “What is the attraction of men with no money who can’t organise their own lives?”

“God knows,” laughed Misha.

“The other game I played last year,” Misha told me, “was called Sweat or Rain? You can play it in the Underbelly Belly Dancer or in The Caves or any venue that gets quite clammy. You have to feel the back of your head and decide whether it’s all hot and damp and wet because you’re really sweaty from running around or because the inside of the venue has rained on you. That, of course, is a game you can only explain to someone who’s been in those venues. At least, outside, you know the rain has only come out of the sky.

“There was one show I saw in Edinburgh where they had plastic bin-bags over the speakers because it was raining from the ceiling inside the venue.”

“Ah!” I said. “The joys of water and electrics!”

One reason Misha is so good is her flexibility e.g. her thumbs

“Well,” Misha told me, “I was at a venue the other week (not in Edinburgh) where the roof was leaking when we arrived and the speaker stacks and cables were in a puddle. They told me: Oh, it’s fine; we’ve been using it like that all week and I said, OK, but I’m not going to be the one to turn it on. I quite like the idea of not being electrocuted. They turned it on and it was OK, but that was a night I was operating from arms’ length just in case.”

“You should wear rubber wellingtons when you’re working,” I suggested.

“I wear Doc Martens with rubber soles,” explained Misha. “They’re just about sturdy enough  if you drop something on your foot and they have rubber soles for when you unintentionally attach yourself to the mains.”

“That would have been a good sound effect,” I said.

“I was once asked to create the sound of a shadow crossing the moon,” said Misha. “I tried to create the sound of impending doom… And I was once asked to create the sound of summer rain. It can’t just be rain, they told me. It has to somehow ‘evoke’ summer. “

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“It involved some real rain and I spent far too long listening to summer birdsong.”

“But,” I said. “even real things don’t necessarily sound like themselves.”

“Yes,” agreed Misha, “Someone scrunching up newspaper sounds a lot more like walking through snow than actually walking through snow does. I think it’s partly to do with the way we perceive sounds. It’s not just what you hear through your ear. It’s the vibrations of the tiny bones inside your head. When you hear the recording of a real noise, you’re hearing it as recorded by a diaphragm, not the way you would hear that real sound internally through your ear.

“The most awesome things I’ve ever come across are binaural microphones, which are like two little headphones that you wear in your ears and they use the way your inner ear vibrates to record exactly as you hear things. It’s both very clever and really strange to listen back to. It’s proper surround sound. Really clever and really freaky.”

“Talking of which,” I said. “What did you think of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards show last year?”

“It was fun,” said Misha. “It was chaotic, but fun.”

“That’s why I wanted you back again this year,” I said. “Because it was chaotic but nothing went wrong technically. You doing the sound and Gareth Ellis helping on the lighting. It must have been awful for you, because things kept changing during the show.”

“It comes with working on comedy a lot,” said Misha. “When you do a mixed bill night, you get people turning up saying: There’s a point in our sketch. You’ll know when to play it or You’ll know when it’s ended. And I think I really won’t and I ask Have you got anything more specific? and they never do. I think the trick is, at all times, to have a laptop with you – I have a MacBook – and make sure it’s running every type of software available.”

“Scripted plays much be much more satisfying that chaotic comedy,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” said Misha. “When the same thing happens every night, you could almost automate to a time schedule and go away. Whereas comedy is fun.”

“And the performers?” I asked.

“I suppose it’s like being a mother with children. They can be frustrating and annoying and you might sometimes want to slap them but, at the end of the day, it’s worth it because there are moments where it’s just the most fun you could possibly have. Though the thing about working with comedians is they don’t understand to concept of I need an early night.”

“Ah,” I said. “The Malcolm Hardee Awards Show ends at one in the morning.”

“I have to tell you,” said Misha, “that the Counting House is not the place for that show. If you’re directly in front, the Naked Balloon Dance is very clever but, because the technical position is off to one side and slightly behind the performers… from that angle, the balloons are not doing their job. Last year, I saw more of Bob Slayer than I ever want to see again. It was really quite difficult to work out where to look. I thought: I’m just going to stare at shoulder height…”

“I dread to think how many times I saw the red spots on Malcolm Hardee’s buttocks,” I said.

“Well,” said Misha, “I think I’ve seen Tom Parry of Pappy’s and Lee Griffiths from Late Night Gimp Fight naked more than any other men I know. Both of them just seem to have this desire to expose themselves. The more people there are in the room, the more exciting it is for them to take all of their clothes off.”

“It may be a growing trend,” I said. “I saw The Beta Males at the Brighton Fringe last night and…”

“Yes,” said Misha, “John Henry likes to take his clothes off a lot.”

“But he does have great tits,” I said.

I regretted saying it almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

The Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show gets thrown together – much like spaghetti – at the Edinburgh Fringe

The Awards Show poster at the 2012 Fringe

I always tell people that staging the annual two-hour Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe is a win-win situation.

If the show goes smoothly, that is good.

If the show turns a bit shambolic, then it is a true tribute to Malcolm and just as good.

The trick is really to book a good MC. Last year I struck gold with the excellent Miss Behave, who was and is on the right wavelength of Bizarre and knows all the best odd acts. This allowed the show to comprise even more speciality acts and less straight stand-ups. I hope she will present the Awards Show again this year but her availability is still uncertain – as is always the case with all acts at the Fringe.

I am not going to approach most acts until after the Fringe Programme is published on May 30th and I know who is actually in town, but I have some building blocks.

Last year, we had a very successful celebrity Russian Egg Roulette contest – instead of holding guns to the head, two people face each other across a table and smash hard-boiled eggs on their foreheads BUT one of the eggs is not hard-boiled – it is raw. The result is messy and that person loses.

Last year, contestants included comedians Richard Herring and Arthur Smith as well as eventual winner Lewis Schaffer.

This year, the World Egg Throwing Federation’s esteemed president Andy Dunlop will again be supervising a contest and has agreed our event will be the official Scottish Russian Egg Roulette Championship.

I feel honoured and humbled. And somewhat soiled.

Even British Mensa member Noel Burger had trouble juggling spaghetti in Edinburgh in 2011

The two-hour Awards Show will also (I hope) include the return of uncooked spaghetti juggling.

Several Fringe performers and passers-by tried this a couple of years ago outside the Beehive Inn in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket. The only one who managed it truly successfully was juggler supreme Mat Ricardo who (unless he gets a better offer) will recreate his triumph on the show.

It is also likely that the farter of Alternative Comedy, the world’s only performing professional flatulist Mr Methane (after a run of his own show earlier in the Fringe), will make a special trip back up to Edinburgh to perform on the Comedy Awards Show.

As for publicity, I will be hosting five daily chat shows in the week of the Awards Show, titled Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrghhh! So It Goes – John Fleming’s Comedy Blog Chat Show. Book early to avoid disappointment - it’s only a fiver.

Malcolm Hardee pioneered the use of Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrghhh! in Fringe show titles as a way to get first listing in the Fringe Programme. One can but pray no-one else has added more letter ‘A’s this year. The Awards Show itself is titled Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrghhh! Free! It’s the Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show.

Details of who is appearing in the show will be posted on my website www.thejohnfleming.com and on the long-due-for-a-re-design Malcolm Hardee website www.malcolmhardee.co.uk/award

But also, in keeping with the title of the show, I have bought the domain name www.increasinglyprestigious.co.uk as well as www.fringecomedyawards.co.uk and, as the current newish sponsors of what used to be the Perrier Awards keep misleadingly implying that they have been sponsoring their awards for the last 30+ years, you can also find details of the Malcolm Hardee Awards at www.fosterscomedyawards.co.uk

This is in a general hope that they may try to sue me for misleading punters – something that is, I would argue strongly, at the heart of the Fringe experience. We do, after all, have an annual award for the best Cunning Stunt.

Our two hour charity variety show will, of course, include the presentation of the three annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards (even I would not be THAT misleading). These are:

- The Malcolm Hardee Award For Comic Originality

- The Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award (for best Fringe publicity stunt)

and, hopefully self-explanatory…

- The Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid’ Award

The Malcolm Hardee Awards await collection by Forth Bridge

Obviously, there are no rules, no forms and no application processes. The winners emerge, much like a new Pope, after obscure consultation in small rooms and modest tea-drinking by the judges who are more talent spotters than Simon Cowell type judges.

We hope to stumble on the winners. We do not particularly encourage people to suggest themselves.

The winner of the main Comic Originality award has to have a truly original act, show or persona. Anyone who thinks their show is “zany” is on the wrong wavelength. We have no idea what we are looking for – if we knew what to look for, it would not be truly original – but we recognise it when we see it.

If anyone has to tell us they have pulled a cunning publicity stunt, then they are not going to win by definition – If they have to tell us because we have not heard about it, then the stunt has failed to get publicity.

As for the ‘Million Quid’ award, the number of people likely to pretend to think they are going to make a million quid is too high to even begin to think about. Even if they do make a million quid, it will probably be squandered on drink, drugs, sex and agents they can’t afford, so it is usually a hollow success. But it sounds good as an Award title.

Last year, Ireland’s Rubberbandits won the Award For Comic Originality… England’s Stuart Goldsmith won the Cunning Stunt Award… and South Africa’s Trevor Noah won the ‘Act Most Likely To Make a Million Quid’ Award.

As usual, the three Awards this year will be presented by The Scotsman’s legendary comedy reviewer Kate Copstick and the evening will end, I hope, with The Greatest Show On Legs performing their traditional naked balloon dance. I certainly hope this is going to happen, because central ‘Leg’ Martin Soan is coming up to Edinburgh solely for this show and is stealing my bed in my Edinburgh flat on the basis he will get his kit off and wave some inflated rubber spheres around in a balletic manner.

Other performers will be announced nearer the date. Previous Malcolm Hardee tribute shows have included Jo Brand, Jimmy Carr, Jools Holland, Stewart Lee, Johnny Vegas et al. Do not expect Justin Bieber.

The Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show is part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival - free entry, but with the audience encouraged to donate money as they leave. A full 100% of all money collected (with no deductions of any kind) goes to the Mama Biashara charity run by Kate Copstick.

As Malcolm Hardee’s reputation on money was not angelic, I feel obliged to spell out the exact details.

Especially as this year, for the first time, the Awards Show will be sponsored.

Just The Greatest sponsors the 2013 Comedy Awards

The new Just The Greatest comedy audio label is kindly donating a lump sum to cover the cost of designing, printing and distributing flyers and posters… and the cost of the Fringe Programme fee, the sound teching of the show and the cost of engraving the trophies. A full 100% of any money left over from this lump sum will be donated to the Mama Biashara charity.

I have always been a bit wary of sponsorship for the Awards because of the risk of anything too corporate being connected with an anarchic-imaged set of awards. Also, I do not want to make or to be misinterpreted as making money out of giving awards in memory of dead Malcolm. And I would have trouble getting top acts to perform for free if the few pennies donated were not going to charity or if I were making anything out of it. So I have never covered any of my costs before.

Because of Malcolm’s rather dodgy reputation, just to be clear… None of my personal costs are being covered. No transport; no accommodation costs; no personal costs. Nowt is being covered except show costs – the Fringe Programme entry, flyers, posters, engraving and sound teching. To save money, the flyers and posters will probably advertise both the Awards Show and the five days of my chat shows. In that case, only 50% of their costs will be taken from the sponsorship money (to cover the Awards Show element) and I will pay for the other 50% (to cover the chat shows’ advertising) out of my own pocket.

100% of any sponsorship money not spent on specific show costs will go to the Mama Biashara charity. As will 100% of all money given by the audience on the night of the Awards Show – Friday 23rd August, the final Friday of the Fringe.

Jesus! The hoops I have to make sure I am seen to jump through just because Malcolm might have been a bit creative with money. And I will still be losing money on the show. All this for some dead bloke with big bollocks!

Comedy writer James Hamilton tries and fails to persuade me he is not weird

I only just discovered this morning, when inserting a link into this blog, that James Hamilton has put a very large quote from me on his website. James is the writer and begetter of the Casual Violence comedy sketch troupe. The quote on his website reads:

“I think he might need psychiatric help. Though not creative help. There’s something very original in there – I just don’t know what the fuck it is.”

That pretty much covers it.

Over lunch yesterday, I asked James:

“How’s you father? Is he still living that odd Hobbit-like subterranean life in those strange Silver Vaults in Holborn?”

Gollum honestly does not live in the Silver Vaults in London

“He’s not in there any more,” said James.

“WHAAAAT?” I reacted.

“Did I tell you that my father and his brother fell out?” James asked me.

“No,” I said, smelling the hint of bloggable weirdness.

“He and his brother used to be in business together,” explained James. “But they fell out. They both had businesses in the Silver Vaults and…”

“In those strange, metal-and-stone, cell-like caves,” I interrupted.

“They both had businesses in the Silver Vaults,” repeated James, “and my father had to walk past my brother’s shop every day.”

“Like Gollum,” I mused.

“Your skin does changes colour down there,” James agreed.

“Do people down there call each other My precious?” I asked.

“No,” said James firmly.

“So your father and uncle don’t talk?” I said.

“This Monday,” replied James, “was my grandmother’s 80th birthday and that was the first time in 15 years or so that we managed to get the two of them to the same table for a meal. They sat at opposite ends of the table and did not talk.”

“How long was the table?” I asked.

“Long enough,” replied James. “Anyway, my uncle is still working down in the Silver Vaults and my father recently left. So now he’s… I don’t know what he’s doing… He’s off… He’s just trying to make money doing stuff… I don’t keep track.”

“How long was he toiling down in the Silver Vaults?” I asked.

“25 years or so.”

“And he sold the entire business?”

“No, he just sold the premises. He’s still keeping the business going.”

“So where’s all the silver?” I asked. “Everyone down there has things like giant silver ostriches and small Regency pepper pots and extravagant pheasants.”

James honestly does not know where the family silver is now

“I genuinely don’t know where it all is,” said James. “I presume it’s still in Britain.”

“He could have sold it and bought some country,” I suggested. “Perhaps Greece.”

“That’d be good, wouldn’t it?” said James.

“Not Greece,” I said.

“No, not Greece,” James agreed.

“There’s the basis of a sitcom there,” I suggested.

“Well,” said James, “If you do comedy, the one thing you do hear a lot is, if something ridiculous happens in your family, people say: Oh! There’s a sketch in it! or That’s a sitcom!”

“Oh,” I said, rather deflated.

“They tend,” said James, “to be people who’ve never seen my comedy. When they see what I do, they tend to stop saying that.”

“I’ve seen your comedy,” I said, slightly crestfallen.

“It’s really rather sad,” said James. “As a result of the falling-out, my dad has had no contact with that other side of the family. I have got little cousins between the ages of 8 and 13 and they were chatting away about their lives at my grandmother’s birthday party on Monday and that was simultaneously lovely to see and quite sad. My grandmother was really happy and was hopeful that, at some point in the future, my dad and his brother might be able to do that again.”

“What?” I asked. “Not talk to each other?”

“Yes,” said James, “not talk to each other, but in the same room rather than being in different places… Have you met Jorik Mol?”

“Alas,” I said, “no.”

“He has this running joke, when he sees my Edinburgh Fringe shows, that they are all about my daddy issues.”

“But you don’t particularly have dads as characters in your shows,” I said.

“Well, we kind of do,” said James. “In Kick In The Teeth, the only one was in the battleship sketches where we had the father who dies at the beginning and the son who goes out to avenge him. But, in Choose Death there was Roger & Charlie in the taxidermy house, which is like a whole father/son relationship. And I’m returning to it this year in our new show House of Nostril. The main storyline is a father & son relationship.

“When I do my solo show next year – at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014 – it’s going to be the first time I’ll have consciously mined my own experience to write stuff. The Casual Violence shows are not about me.

James will not be playing the part of Conk, Dyslexic Goblin

“In this year’s show, House of Nostril, the character of Conk, The Dyslexia Goblin came from two separate ideas. I wanted to have a carer/caree relationship where the guy who’s being cared for can see a goblin but the nurse can’t.

“And there was a play we’d all done years ago about using face cream to cure illnesses. So we started talking about curing dyslexia with face cream. And that became Conk, The Dyslexia Goblin and there’s a lot of cream being rubbed on people’s faces while the goblin makes sandwiches.”

“Not at all weird,” I said. “It’s social realism, really.”

“That’s the only weird part in the new show,” said James warily.

“What else is in it?”

“We’ve got a series of sketches about chimney sweeps. The premise is that one has retired at the age of 10 and this other 8-year-old sweep is trying to convince him to come out of retirement, but he doesn’t want to do it because he’s on the wrong side of 10.

“Our director said to me: Oh, I see – it’s a metaphor for the coal mining thing! and I said No and he got really annoyed with me, because apparently that’s what I had written: I just didn’t know I had.

“And it was the same with Conk, especially with what happens in the storyline, which I won’t spoil. Somebody at the last rehearsal told me that Conk, The Dyslexia Goblin was actually all about Alzheimer’s and dementia… No, it’s not about dementia; it’s about goblin dyslexia cream and loneliness and that’s all it’s about.”

“Loneliness?” I asked.

“He is a lonely goblin,” explained James. “Only the old man can see him. If nobody can see you, it must be quite lonely and depressing. I don’t think that’s actually where the story is going now, but we were playing with that idea. We’re still trying to have characters end up miserable and alone… because that’s the Casual Violence way.”

“Are they always miserable and lonely?” I asked.

“They were last year,” said James. “Our last show was very bleak. This one is less bleak. It’s sillier, it’s like our previous one Choose Death. It’s less oppressively horrible.”

“But still weird,” I said.

“Only the dyslexia goblin part,” said James.

I am still not convinced James has not got a strong weird gene in him.

The British comedian who battled anorexia and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act – and what God said

Juliette Burton in London yesterday

“Someone recently told me,” I said to comedian/actress Juliette Burton yesterday, “about a 26-year-old female comedian who was turned down by two major agents because she was too old. They wanted younger, inexperienced comedians who could be moulded by them. My reaction was: What does an 18 year-old know about except homework and things they’ve read in books?”

“Most comedians I’ve met,” agreed Juliette, “need to have experienced the extremities of the experiences of life to have a slightly different take on things. I think anyone who’s been through some darkness in their lives… the only way you can come out the other side is to find comedy in some way. You have to have darkness to appreciate the light.

“For me, at the really dark times in my life, I discovered Monty Python and other things like The Muppets and Richard Curtis’ The Vicar of Dibley.”

On Saturday, I saw a preview of Juliette’s happy, life-enhancing Edinburgh Fringe show When I Grow Up in Stowmarket, Suffolk. Tonight, she performs the first of three previews at the Brighton Fringe.

Yesterday, I chatted to her as she passed through London on her way to Brighton.

“So you were sectioned under the Mental Health Act,” I said.

“Yes,” said Juliette. “I’d been in and out of clinics most of my teenage years. The first time I was sent to a clinic, I went in voluntarily… but, when I say voluntarily, it was because my parents wanted me to and I was very young. I was fifteen – my GCSE year. And then the next time I went into a clinic I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which was involuntary. They turned up in an ambulance and took me away.”

“I went into a mental home when I had just newly turned eighteen,” I told Juliette. “They seemed to think it was a bad idea that I had tried to commit suicide. So going into a mental home was suggested as a good idea. I had taken an overdose, which was a silly idea because I had always been very bad at chemistry in school… What did they say was wrong with you?”

“They said I was a month away from dying,” Juliette told me. “It was anorexia… To be sectioned, you have to have five people who agree you are ‘a danger unto yourself or others’. And I was a danger unto myself.”

“I’ve seen your show,” I said. “You’re a danger unto others.”

“In a positive way,” Juliette laughed, “ I hope I’m dangerously fun now!… But my mother had to agree to me being sectioned. Definitely my doctor and then some other medical people and people close to me. Then, after a couple of weeks in that clinic, I had a psychotic episode.”

“What’s a psychotic episode?” I asked.

“I’m sure you know,” said Juliette. “but it’s kind of similar to schizophrenia and it can vary for different people. For me, it wasn’t brought about by drugs or induced in any other way, it was just down to the mental and physical stress that my body was under.

“I personally feel that I was so underweight and the stress of going into hospital and losing all control over my life and the stress of that… basically my mind decided to give up and I went off into various different experiences mentally, so I wasn’t really aware I was in the place I was in.”

“You were hallucinating?” I asked.

“It was… Yes…” said Juliette. “It’s really tricky, because the people I’ve met who have had similar experiences… It’s so… It’s difficult because obviously your body is present in that room in the hospital, but mentally you are elsewhere. It’s a bit philosophical, but who’s to say what’s actually going on? I had experiences of seeing things that weren’t there.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Such as I saw God,” said Juliette. “And the Devil. And I saw angels.”

“What did God look like?” I asked.

Juliette: a bright white light from God surrounded her

“I say I saw God because language is really limited,” explained Juliette. “Mentally, the way I processed it was I saw God. What I actually experienced was an intensely bright white light enveloping me, 360 degrees around me, and an overwhelming feeling of being unconditionally loved, like I’d been searching for all my life. Being completely safe and completely held. And I was aware of a figure but not aware of a face or anything distinct.

“I’m not saying this actually happened. It could be medically explained with chemicals. But my experience was that I remember asking God what the meaning of life was. And I remember being very disappointed with his answer, because I was expecting something deep and meaningful… I only got two words back – BE NICE – but, then, I think that is what all the major religions boil down to. And it’s the best moral code to live by.”

“I remember,” I said, “in the 1960s or 1970s someone took an LSD trip and saw God and realised what the meaning of life was, but he couldn’t remember what it was when he came down from his trip. So he decided next time he’d have a notepad and pen near him. He took another trip, saw God and again realised the meaning of life and wrote it down. When he came down again, he looked at the notepad and he had written: The smell of methylated spirits permeates the air…. What was the Devil like?”

“That appeared to me in shadows,” said Juliette. “I was aware I was in the room I was actually in but, in the shadows, there was some menacing form that was coming to get me… There was a time during that psychotic episode when I felt I was God. I thought I was in charge of the world. There was also a time when I thought that everyone in the hospital was talking about me, so that was more paranoia than anything.”

“Sounds more like what most performers hope for at the Edinburgh Fringe,” I said.

“I was hearing voices,” continued Juliette, “telling me what to do. And that was also part of the psychosis. It only lasted three weeks, but I had an amazing adventure…”

“Definitely like the Edinburgh Fringe,” I said.

“I thought I was time travelling,” said Juliette. “I went back to the Victorian age, I was a little girl and I was aware of a father not being there and I was crying. Then I was in another time when women ruled the world. I could see very bright flowers and it was lush and green and I was a High Priestess and I remember lots of people turning to me for advice, which was lovely. Then another part of it was when I saw aliens, which was exciting.”

“And they looked like…?” I asked.

“Again, it’s the limitations of language,” said Juliette. “I saw blackness and there was a red laser and it was trying to communicate with me and I understood that to mean that an alien communicated with me. But all of that sounds completely mad and it was over ten years ago…”

“When I was in the mental home,” I said, “they gave me happy drugs. Did they drug you every night?”

“Every day when they could get me to take them.”

“Did they not force you?” I asked.

“I think they must have had to sometimes. But I wasn’t fully aware of what was happening.”

“They gave me drugs,” I said. “The drugs made me feel happy without wanting to be happy.”

“I was put on Prozac when I was sixteen,” said Juliette. “It was really too heavy for me. I felt like a zombie. Yes, you don’t have any major lows; but you also don’t have any highs whatsoever. So what’s the point of being alive if that’s all there is?

“Lots of the anti-anxiety medication that I’ve been given over the years I’ve found actually made me more anxious. The drugs I had at the time I was having the psychosis I think did bring me back down to earth but there were a few weeks where, although I knew who I was and where I was, the paranoia was still strong.

“I remember once being out in Marks & Spencer’s in Chelmsford and I suddenly had an attack where it was like picking up on frequencies and thinking everything everyone was saying was about me and about what I was doing and they were judging me.”

“The Edinburgh Fringe again,” I said.

Never watch if having a psychotic attack

“Never watch the movie Vanilla Sky if you are in the middle of a psychotic episode,” advised Juliette, “On one of my weekends out of the clinic when I was past the worst of it but not quite fully grounded, I was allowed back to my parents and we watched Vanilla Sky, which really screwed me up and set me two steps back.”

“Chinese medicine,” I said, “tries to cure the cause, whereas Western medicine tries to hide the symptoms, like papering over the top of the cracks but not filling them in. Giving people drugs just papers over the cracks, doesn’t it? So have you just papered over the cracks?”

“I’m not on any medication at the moment,” said Juliette. “I think the NHS has improved a lot but, for me, the answer is almost never medication. You have to deal with the root cause which, for me, is anxiety and being able to accept the things I can’t change.

“When I was fifteen, I was under-eating, at seventeen, I was very under-eating. At nineteen, something changed. Within three months of my 19th birthday, I doubled my body weight and, within six months, I’d gone from a size 4 to a size 20.”

“What are you now?” I asked.

“I’m a size 8 so, if anyone would like to send me any dresses, particularly any French Connection dresses…

“Back then, it went from food being, in my mind, something I wasn’t allowed to touch to being something I over-indulged in. And that was all about control. Anorexia for me was about trying to retain control. And the compulsive over-eating was about me trying to avoid taking responsibility for life by losing control.”

“How old were you when you were sectioned?” I asked.

“I was seventeen. I spent my eighteenth birthday in the clinic.”

“And with you, why was your anxiety all about eating disorders?” I asked.

“Food is one of the few things in your life,” explained Juliette, “that you can have total autonomy over. For a long time, I used food as a solution – because, if you focus on the details of life, then you avoid the bigger picture. For me, at that time, I wasn’t ready to deal with the bigger picture. Over-eating and under-eating are just flip sides of the same coin. Different symptoms of the same core problem. All the psychological problems I’ve had have stemmed from anxiety.”

“And yet your show When I Grow Up” I said. “is jolly and enthusiastic and life-celebrating.”

Juliette Burton: happy & positive show

“Well,” said Juliette, “I hope it’s a positive, fun, uplifting show about me trying to be all the things I wanted to be when I was a child. So, in the last year, I’ve gone off and tried to be all the things I wanted to be when I was a kid – ballerina, baker, princess, pop star, artist, farmer and Muppet.

“I would really love people to see the show and feel positive. A lot of the stuff I’ve just spoken to you about is really dark and I have spent a long time turning into who I am now, but who I am now is somebody who desperately wants to make other people feel happy and connected and not alone. The only way I feel I can do that is though comedy and storytelling and taking people on a little escapist journey and come out the other side feeling Wow! I feel better about life.”

“And people will go out with a smile on their face,” I said.

“Did you go out with a smile on your face, John?” asked Juliette.

“I did.”

“Awesome,” said Juliette.

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

Owners of fine petrol stations across UK

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

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

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

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

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

Then they left.

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

Two negotiation tools often used to settle disputes in Glasgow

5th MAY 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5th MAY 2000

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

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

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

Portrait of a pitiless kitty killer with a track record

5th MAY 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tashkent earthquake memorial in 1985

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

Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crowdfunding Edinburgh Fringe shows seems to be on the increase this year

Poster for show may not live up to its title

A couple of days ago, I posted a blog titled: £500 Ticket Price To See One Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show This August, about a show being (with luck) crowdfunded via Kickstarter.

I got several responses from this. One was a Tweet from Sheepish Productions saying: “We’ll set our play up at someone’s house for £750!”

I replied: “You can set it up in my garage in London if you pay me £1,500 per show… If you crank up the bullshit a bit, you might get a blog out of it…”

Their response was: “Many thanks, much obliged. I’m currently feeding a 4 month old (baby) so will send some things across to you tomorrow.”

Sadly, no cranking up of the bullshit on the garage performance front ensued. But this, I discovered when I actually looked at their Sponsume page, was because they actually ARE prepared to put a show on in your home for £750.

Well, to be frank, I suppose I would be prepared to sing an hour of 28 consecutive national anthems in your home for £750.

It turned out that Sheepish Productions’ show was actually a play called Shadow On Their Wall about (their pitch says) “an impulsive man who battles with his inner demons. The play lasts an intense and spine tingling 40 minutes and is firmly within the genre of horror but also deals with issues of mental health and, therefore, by taking it to Edinburgh we hope to raise awareness of such issues.”

Sheepish Productions are Edinburgh Fringe virgins, something exposed by what the pitch then says:

“Unfortunately, as we have discovered in the last few months, taking a play to the Edinburgh Fringe is far from inexpensive. If we reach our target sum of just over £1,250 it should cover the cost of hiring the venue, registering with the Edinburgh Fringe Society and the majority of our publicity materials (i.e. flyers, posters and some very natty polo shirts). We’ve already had some great reviews and a Buxton Fringe award nomination for New Writing, so please help us on the road to Edinburgh and, in turn, help us raise awareness!”

If they can cover all the costs of staging a play at the Edinburgh Fringe for only £1,250, they should be running the country.

Jeremy Fletcher, aka Sheepish Productions, tells me: “Our crowdfunding attempts are making slow progress at present, but it is still early days. Hopefully, we’ve priced things reasonably given what is on offer.”

What is on offer are rewards for pledges which range from £10 – for which you get a credit in the programme and “a super stylish signed poster of the show” – to the £750 Hank Marvin option. This got me quite excited at the thought that the legendary guitarist had been got on board, but it turned out to be the rather more prosaic pitch:

You too could have this in your home…

“How large is your living room? For the divine sum of £750 we’ll come and perform the entire play (complete with our own lighting and sound system and the chaps that come with them) at a mutually convenient time and date. Although you have to live within a reasonable travelling distance (i.e. a couple of hours) of Sheffield or be willing to attend a venue that we hire!”

Jeremy Fletcher told me yesterday: “I have Tweeted Richard Branson to see if he fancied this, but I guess he must have been otherwise engaged.

“Our theatre company was formed last year ahead of the Buxton Fringe,” he continued. “It followed a Belgian beer induced conversation between Gareth Watkins and me about him having a life-long ambition to act and, coincidentally, me having a life-long ambition to write for theatre. Amongst other things, Gareth has been a Deputy District Judge and a long term resident of Cressbrook in Derbyshire.

“I wrote the play with Gareth in mind. It was originally supposed to be 40 – 45 minutes of horror but, having been seen by a couple of reviewers in Buxton, they seemed to consider there was more to it. With hindsight, I’m not surprised that the reviewers took more from the play than I had originally anticipated. Whilst the play is far from being autobiographical, it appears that I did draw on some very dark times and feelings that I’d experienced in the past.

“I suspect this bit won’t be the stuff of blogs…” he continued, perhaps revealing he has not read many of my blogs…

“… but the dark times related to a wave of mainly cancer-related deaths of seven members of my immediate family – aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents – over a five year period from 1998 to 2003. Being an only child, the most brutal part was that my mum was diagnosed with cancer in 1998, aged 49, survived for five years (until her death in July 2002) with my dad being diagnosed with lung cancer six months later, dying in November of 2003 (aged 55).

“Hopefully, I’ve stopped short of self-pity, suffice to say that I’ve found writing to be enormously therapeutic and enjoyable.”

That, to be honest, had me hooked as the background for writing a play. I might go see Shadow On Their Wall at the Fringe this year.

To repeat, yet again, the late Malcolm Hardee’s oft-used and eternally-wise intro to unknown open spot acts at his clubs: “Might be shit. Might be good. Who knows?”

Nigel Farage in The Times today after UKIP’s big election wins yesterday

But “Might be worth watching” is good enough for me.

Talking of which…

This morning, I woke up to a message saying that someone billing himself as ‘Assistant to Nigel Farage MEP’ – the leader of the UK Independence Party – would like to connect with me on LinkedIn. Of course, I immediately did.

I always enjoy encountering interesting people.

The Chinese saying “May you live in interesting times” is not always a curse.