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.

Anne Frank with her clothes on proves offensive to UK comedy-going audience

It’s Springtime for Hitler and SE London

Sometimes it is strange what people find offensive.

Last night, my eternally-un-named friend and I went to Vivienne and Martin Soan’s monthly variety and comedy club Pull The Other One in Nunhead, South East London.

Ending the night was Frank Sanazi, the wonderful act that sounds like Frank Sinatra but looks like Hitler.

Three people walked out.

The problem was his new sidekick ‘Anne Stank’ who talked about being lonely up in the attic and sang Björk’s Ssshhhhh….It’s Oh So Quiet.

Anne and attic antics

“I don’t understand,” my eternally-un-named friend said afterwards, “why they didn’t find Frank Sanazi offensive but they did find the Anne Frank bit offensive.”

And, indeed, the three walk-outs did seem to have found Frank Sanazi’s re-versioning of Sinatra’s That’s Life as Third Reich entertaining and found the re-writing of the Strangers in the Night lyrics as Strangers On a Plane (as in the 9/11 hijacks) perfectly OK.

But Anne Frank they walked out on.

I had never seen the Anne Frank part of Frank Sanazi’s show before – his Das Vegas Night is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe this August (it got a 4-star review last year) – but ‘Anne’ told me after the show that I had blogged about her during last year’s Fringe.

“I was the one wearing a lettuce,” she told me.

“You didn’t recognise her with her clothes on,” Frank Sanazi added.

This is the reference from my blog last August:

__________________________________________________

I was walking down Niddry Street, and found comedian Bob Slayer standing in the street outside his Hive venue.

“I had to get naked in my show,” he told me. “I think it was the worst show I’ve ever done so I had to get naked. Jamie the sound guy sees my show every year and he told me: You failed on so many levels there, but it was definitely my favourite show. I had to get naked and there was a lady in the audience who turned up just wearing a lettuce.”

“Just a lettuce?” I asked.

“Just wearing a lettuce on her fanny,” said Bob.

“She had nice tits,” a female staff member added, tweaking one of Bob’s nipples. Passers-by ignored it. This is the Edinburgh Fringe.

“The lady with the lettuce was a friend of Frank Sanazi’s,” said Bob.

“That might go some way to explaining it,” I said.

__________________________________________________

Frank Sanazi’s 2012 Christmas show

The boundaries of offensiveness vary.

A girl wearing nothing but a lettuce leaf  over her frontal bits was almost normal in Edinburgh last August. But a girl with her clothes on (never referred-to as Anne Frank) in South East London last night triggered three people walking out of an always-bizarre monthly comedy show.

Personally, I thought it was slightly eerie and very funny.

But, then, I like Chinese pickled ginger with scrambled egg on toast.

How to become famous overnight on TV, according to magician Paul Daniels

An extraordinarily good London Varieties show every month

I went to see multi-talented Mat Ricardo’s monthly London Varieties at the Leicester Square Theatre last night – a show so good it could transfer straight to TV.

Every month, amid the hula-hoop acts, the cabaret singers, the juggling and the indescribably odd acts, Mat does a sit-down interview.

On previous shows, he talked in depth to Omid Djalili and Al Murray.

Last night it was magician Paul Daniels who told, among other things, how he got his first big break on British TV. People remember his Paul Daniels Magic Show which ran for 16 years on BBC TV, but his big break actually came on ITV.

Legendary Granada TV producer Johnnie Hamp followed the success of his series The Comedians (which intercut Northern club comics doing straight stand-up) with The Wheeltappers & Shunters Social Club - a series which recreated in the studio a Northern working men’s club with its whole gamut of variety acts.

The rule-of-thumb for acts on this show (and on television in general) was/is that they should run three minutes, but more was often recorded so that the producer/director could edit the best bits fast and tight.

Paul Daniels performed three magic tricks for the cameras but…

- During the first trick, he mentioned what would be in the second and third tricks.

- During the second trick, he referred back to the first trick and referred forward to the next trick.

- During the third trick, he mentioned the first two tricks.

Afterwards, Johnny Hamp came up to him and said: “I don’t know if you’re stupid or lucky… but I can’t edit that.”

As a result, instead of a 3-minute spot, Paul Daniels got a full 12 minutes on the networked peak time show.

The way Paul Daniels told it last night, he was invited back on the show and did fifteen minutes, becoming an overnight star.

Johnnie Hamp realised Paul was neither stupid nor lucky: he was very shrewd.

The extraordinarily good show I saw last night – the third of Mat Ricardo’s London Varieties’ monthly shows – will be on Vimeo in a couple of weeks. The two previous shows are already online HERE and HERE.

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

A poster for the Nell Gwynn/Gargoyle Club

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

Unfortunately, I can tell her.

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

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

“When was this? I asked.

“About 15 years ago,” Philip told me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip performed feats of skill as Randolph The Remarkable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you an attractive woman?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

…Philip The Poet…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See London West End shows for free

Diane Spencer performed at launch yesterday

I went to Soho Theatre yesterday for the London launch of this year’s Brighton Fringe. The event was unticketed but there was a guest list.

Inside the auditorium, I got into conversation with a man who had wandered in off the street randomly.

“I was passing,” he told me, “and it looked like something was happening, so I just came in. I smiled at the girls on the door. It looked like a PR thing where there might be free food and drink. I go to see a lot of plays and musicals in the West End for free.”

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“I only go to see things that have been running a while,” he told me. “so there will always be some empty seats. I guess when the interval is going to be, get there a bit earlier and wander up to the bar. They don’t check for tickets on the door. I go up to the bar and wait for the audience to come out for the interval.

“When the interval ends and the audience goes back in, I wait in the bar until they’re all seated, then go in, look for an empty seat and go sit in it.”

“But,” I asked, “Don’t the people sitting next to what had been an empty seat look a bit surprised?”

“Not really,” the man told me. “Sometimes they do a bit, but I guess they just think I’m very late.”

“Have you ever been thrown out for not having a ticket?” I asked.

“Never,” he said.

“Don’t you have trouble following the plot if you’ve missed the first half?”

“Not often,” he told me. “And, with musicals, it doesn’t matter much. I know roughly what the story is about. I check in advance. Most people go for the songs. So do I.”

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“A couple of years,” he told me.

“I’ve always thought,” I said, “that it would be a good scam to go round churches on a Saturday afternoon when there are a lot of weddings. If you go in, they just ask if you are with the bride or the groom. They will direct you to sit at one side of the church or the other and, after the wedding, you could probably get to the Reception and get free food and drink. But I could never be bothered trying it.”

“There would be no spare seat for you at the Reception,” the man told me. “And wasn’t there a film about that?”

“Could have been,” I said.

“I never saw it,” the man said.

“Nor me,” I said. “If there was one.”

There was a long pause.

“I once went with two friends to Luton Airport on a Saturday night,” I said. “People never go to airports unless they have to, so I thought it might be interesting to have a night out at Luton Airport like it was a social event. Or a holiday. A one-night holiday at Luton Airport.”

The man did not look interested.

“We had a meal there,” I persevered. “We bought Luton Airport cowboy hats – Why Luton Airport had cowboy hats I don’t know – and we went to the Arrivals area and waved at people coming back from their holidays.

“It wasn’t as interesting as I thought it might be,” I admitted. “I thought it would be interesting to go for no reason to somewhere you never normally go to unless you have a reason. I suggested we should go to a hospital the next time. People don’t go to hospitals unless they have to and you can wander anywhere you like. I thought we might just see where we could wander. My friends thought it was in slightly bad taste.”

“Oh,” said the stranger at Soho Theatre, clearly bored.

He started taking photographs of the stage show.

The one-legged dancing bull fighter who had a golden tassel affixed to his stump

Double-legged former dancer Anna Smith in her hospital bed

The So It Goes blog’s occasional Canadian comedy correspondent Anna Smith has just been released from St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver after being admitted to their emergency department on Valentine’s Day to get a Dacron patch sewn onto her aorta… She tells me she wants “to warn healthy young people about the dangers of enduring  years in murky subterranean caves that pass as limelight”.

When in London, before her move to the Dominion of Canada, she helped Sir Gideon Vein run the now ironically-named Open Heart Cabaret. She used to dance at the Nell Gwynne club in Soho during the day, the Gargoyle Club at night and then spend her time at the old Comedy Store until the early hours.

If she had died under the surgeons’ knives in Canada, she had wanted her obituary to include the fact she had performed with Julian Clary and the much lamented late David Rappaport and that she had been forced to learn to play the accordion as a child and appeared on Canadian television with Andre the Giant.

“Now,” she tells me, “I’ve been given a heart-shaped pillow as a physiotherapy tool and it says Open Heart on it….Veins, hearts, sternums being sawn in half and wired together.”

She also tells me she was given “orientation at the hospital for the cardiac rehab program… The walls were adorned with vapid monotone posters dedicated to mind-boggling philosophical questions like WHAT IS AN AVOCADO (printed on green paper) and NUTS – WHATS IN ‘EM ? (printed on brown paper). Now that dietitians and physiotherapists can produce their own amateur pamphlets with the push of a print button, there is no longer any need for the Department of Health to waste public money on artists or copywriters. I sat though a dull PowerPoint presentation about Cardiac Health, which I made bearable by mentally substituting the word Catholic for Cardiac: WHY CATHOLIC PATIENTS NEED FIBRE… HOW CATHOLIC PATIENTS RELIEVE STRESS…”

Anna tells me that recent local Vancouver news includes the story that “Immigration Officials abetted by a local television station and the National Geographic TV channel raided a downtown building site where they chased, captured and filmed migrant construction workers from Mexico and Honduras. The workers were made to sign legal papers which they did not comprehend and which turned out to be releases so that their images can appear on a reality TV show called Border Services to be screened on the National Geographic channel.”

Anna also tells me that her sojourn in hospital has made her realise there is “hope for mutilated dancers” but it also seems to have allowed her to develop a possibly unhealthy obsession about Signor Donato, an obscure one-legged dancer who was an enormous success touring Australia in the 1870s.

She reports:

“It appears there was more than one Signor Donato. The original was a hit in Covent Garden in London in the 1850s and danced dressed as a bullfighter with a golden tassel affixed to his stump which, it was said, resembled a cushion on an old fashioned sofa, his mutilated state notwithstanding.

Lola Montez – pursued by a one-legged man?

“The second Signor Donato was an imitator of the original, who toured Australia and New Zealand several times before heading to California… possibly following the trail of Lola Montez, the Sligo-born ‘Spanish Dancer’, toppler of governments, and creator of the infamous erotic Spider Dance who ended her days performing charitable work for the fallen women of Brooklyn.”

Anna continues:

“One of the Signor Donatos (the first, I think) was said to be an immense favourite in London, Paris and Milan. He was said to have lost his leg fighting under Garibaldi when a shell burst during the Battle of Magenta in 1859. He surprised his audience with the grace and agility he displayed and danced to an introductory adagio, followed by the Jeanette Polka (accompanying himself with castanets) and concluded with the Garibaldi March.

“I first heard of him in a book I read in the 1980s: Enter the Colonies, Dancing, an Australian history of their early touring dancers. Then I read an article titled Strange Players by Dutton Cook (Belgravia). Strange Players was written in 1881 and is a documentation of famous maimed and mutilated dancers and actors working in London at that time.

“This small advert appeared in the Wellington Independent, 16 August, 1872 :

SIGNOR DONATO
Who created the great furore
at Covent Garden in 1864
will appear at the
ODD FELLOWS HALL
for
ONE NIGHT ONLY
On his way to San Francisco

“I have no idea what the great furore was…..and can’t find out if he ever arrived in San Francisco.”

The preface to a 1895 German book (Fahrend Volk by Signer Saltarino, Leipzig) says:

“The one-legged dancer first came into style with Julio Donato, a Spanish bull fighter, who lost a leg in a bull fight. Through industry and practice, he was able to perform the most graceful, surprising and agreeable dances. His appearance, manner and personality were far from painful. He married the daughter of the Viennese actor Julius, herself a popular actress, who bore him a lovely daughter, Dora Donato, who became a very well known light opera singer. After Donato’s death, a number of artificial (kuenstlich) and genuine monopedic dancers and clowns sprang up, all of whom were only weak imitations of their prototype. Only the one-legged clowns who called themselves The Donatos after their famous original appeared not only to inherit the artistic ability of their predecessor but his luck.”

Anna tells me:

“The imposter Signors Donato were particularly prevalent after the Great War and some even teamed up together. One particular duo called themselves The Merry Monopedes.

Anna is recovering well from her operation but worried that she may become “the world expert on monopedic dancers”.

YouTube currently has a 1949 clip of a one-armed and one-legged dancer called Crip Heard.

Great Sexpectations next week and then socks sex shocks on Night of the Senses

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

Erotic supremo Grace Gelder yesterday

Back in January, I blogged about The Erotic Awards and The Night of the Senses, being organised in May by photographer Grace Gelder.

First though, this coming Friday, are the semi-finals of the live part of the Erotic Awards, which are taking place in London’s Shepherds Bush at an event called Great Sexpectations.

“What’s the venue?” I asked Grace yesterday.

“Bush Hall,” she told me.

“That seems appropriate,” I said. “Is there a dress code?”

“Kinky Dickens and Victorian Erotica is the suggested theme, but it’s not compulsory.”

“Kinky dick ins?” I asked.

“Kinky Dickens,” Grace corrected me. “It allows gentlemen to jazz up an outfit with nothing more than a top hat.”

“An Artful Roger?”

“Possibly. The costumes that people are dreaming up sound quite exciting. Ladies are doing corsets and frilly things. The Bush Hall is just such a gorgeous venue. It has Viennese chandeliers, deep red velvet stage. It is a beautiful room, a music hall in its first few years.”

“So,” I asked, “do you see Great Sexpectations as a return to Victorian values?”

“It is celebrating the venue and getting everyone dressed up, but with a modern twist.”

“Which is?”

A ticket for next week’s Great Sexpectations event in London

“I don’t think in the Victorian era what we’re doing would have been quite so publicly advertised. Perhaps, on the surface, Great Sexpectations is similar to a lot of other cabaret nights. But one difference is that we have strippers coming who would normally work in a strip bar; usually, in cabaret, it’s more burlesque. We have the burlesque, but we’ve also got the striptease category.”

“It’s a lot of work for you,” I said. “setting up an event like this.”

“Well,” said Grace, “we’ve had lots of support and advice from Tuppy Owens, who organised the event previously and I’m doing it with Lianne Coop, who is a radio producer. We’ve got a complementary set of skills. I’ve worked a lot in theatre and I’ve got a background in erotic photography. She worked at the BBC for a number of years and produced the New Comedy Awards for two years, so she’s got fantastic event production skills.”

“But isn’t this just trying to make nudity and lechery sound posh?” I asked.

“Well,” said Grace, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admiring people who are comfortable to be on stage with gorgeous bodies and happy to perform in a sexual fashion. I also feel that, in the world of erotica – because it’s been such a taboo area in our culture – there’s a lot of people who do really essential work and who are regularly entertaining hundreds of people every week that don’t get the respect they deserve.”

“So,” I said. “I am Fred Bloggs. Why should I go along to see Great Sexpectations next Friday?”

“It’s going to be a fantastic visual feast for the eyes,” explained Grace. “Lots of amazing performances.”

“So you’re selling it as a Las Vegas cabaret event rather than a sleazy Soho event?” I asked.

“I think it really bridges everything. It’s visually-beautiful, cheeky, saucy but filthy in places. We’re trying to cater for everybody, because this is The Erotic Awards and erotica doesn’t just mean one thing. We’re trying to cater for people who might want something more extreme. We’ve got a woman called MisSa Blue who does fantastic performances with candles.”

“She’s burning the candles at both ends?” I asked.

“All I’d say,” continued Grace is that MisSa Blue is definitely one to catch. And we’ve got some fantastic burlesque, some fantastic drag performances. One of our judges – Rubyyy Jones - has been a massive help to Lianne and me. She is all over the London cabaret scene and is also a drag performer in a troupe called ‘&?!’ (pronounced And What?!). They will be doing a special performance for us. The idea is to make the night as diverse and celebratory as possible.”

“Have you ever had the urge to dabble in burlesque dancing yourself?” I asked Grace.

“We studied Latin at my school,” she replied, “and, when I was 11, I had an amazing Latin teacher. She wrote a school play set in Pompeii. My character’s name was Ava Gropadis – Ava-Gropa-Dis – and I was a prostitute. I had to stand there in a really short skirt and fishnet tights, being a bit tarty.”

“Was your mother proud of you?”

“She came to watch the play with my dad and was pregnant with my younger sister and she thought it was good. It was a good script. The loan shark was called Callus Lenda… and Sicka Fant was some grovelling bloke.

“Later, I was in Bugsy Malone as a flapper and then, when I was 15, I was in the musical Cabaret at school, as one of the slutty dancers. I loved it. It’s not completely out of the realms of possibility that I would stand up on stage and do that one day. It’s just not where my life’s leading.”

“Where is your life leading?”

“Much more into the photography. I do a lot of work with women to help them reclaim their own sexuality.”

“Their self-esteem?” I asked.

“Definitely,” agreed Grace. “There’s such a lot of fear of the male gaze. One of the things that annoys me in discussions of pornography is that some people assume all these women couldn’t possibly have actually chosen that career.”

A highly coveted Erotic Award – the Golden Flying Penis

“So,” I asked, “you don’t see the Erotic Awards as just putting on a show for a bit of fun and entertainment, it’s more an ongoing project?”

“It’s actually turning out to be really exciting,” Grace told me. “Lianne and I have both said it’s got masses of potential. The world has changed in the last 25 years it’s been running and we think we can expand it, raise its profile…”

“Expand it,” I asked, “in what sort of way?”

“Expand it in an awareness way, so people have more knowledge about what’s going on. We chatted to Brooke Magnanti (Belle de Jour) who wrote Secret Diary of a Call Girl about her book The Sex Myth – that’s been nominated. She’s hopefully going to attend the finals at the Night of the Senses in May.”

“And that bigger event will include…”

“The finals of the Erotic Awards… The finalists in the performance categories will perform and then it’s the prize-giving ceremony up until about midnight. And then it’s an after-party with lots of different areas where you can try out lots of different things with an emphasis on it being playful, inclusive, very diverse. You can have a massage, you can get spanked, you can spank somebody, you can get tied up, you can go and do some sock wrestling, you can…”

“Whoa!” I said. “Let’s do a re-cap there… Sock wrestling?”

“You have to take the other person’s socks off,” said Grace matter-of-factly.

“I feel I am an innocent in this world,” I explained. “Is sock wrestling an acknowledged sexual pastime?”

“I think it’s been quite popular on the festival circuit in recent years,” replied Grace.

I was advised rehearsals are vital for the sock wrestling

“And the object is…”

“…to get the other person’s socks off.”

“While retaining your own socks?” I checked.

“Yes,” confirmed Grace.

“And are you wearing anything else while you do this?” I asked.

“That depends on the event you’re at,” explained Grace.

“But at this event you would not be?”

“It’s optional,” said Grace. “There will be a nudist disco at the event which, obviously, speaks for itself.”

“What happens when you get the socks off?” I asked, pursuing my research.

“You’ve won,” said Grace.

“Then what happens?”

“You probably get a prize.”

“A pair of socks?” I asked.

“Could be,” said Grace. “I think someone’s going to be running it as an area.”

“So it’s not just one couple wrestling each other for their socks, it’s an entire sock wrestling area…. Are there any other things happening I would not guess about, having been brought up a Presbyterian?”

“There’s usually a nocturnal area,” explained Grace, “where you can be blindfolded and tickled.”

“Ah” I said.

Enthusiastic UK comedy with the dead Malcolm Hardee and a new Chris Rock

Charlie Chuck backstage last night

I went to Adam Larter’s very aptly named Weirdos Comedy Club in the East End of London last night with comedian Charlie Chuck, who donned his new-ish PVC suit for the performance at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

It’s no wonder Weirdos and Bethnal Green are much talked about. Equally odd Holly Burn was on the bill (“one to watch in 2013” said the Independent) plus Lee Kern as four-letter one-man band British Pasta plus 2011 Edinburgh ‘Best Newcomer’ Daniel Simonsen and 2011 Edinburgh ‘Best Newcomer’ Thom Tuck.

“Will there be any TV talent scouts around?” a friend asked me.

“No,” I said. “Too trendy for TV people.”

Which demonstrates what I know.

Because, after the show, I bumped into Polly McGirr, TV producer for Princess Productions and Managing Director of Up The Creek Management.

People tend to assume that Malcolm Hardee, the late godfather of British Alternative Comedy, owned his Up The Creek comedy club. In fact, the money was put up by three brothers – I like to call them The Brothers – and he initially owned an equal 25% in return for handling the creative side of the club.

Up The Creek club could have been named Jools’ or Malcolm’s

I think at one early stage Jools Holland was going to invest in the club but decided not to and, at one point, the club was going to be simply called Malcolm’s but it was decided (oddly, I think) that it sounded too ‘Essex’.

Polly McGirr is the daughter of one of The Brothers and is wildly enthusiastic about comedy.

I was quite exhausted just hearing her enthusiasm.

“You remember Malcolm?” I asked.

“I remember the club that night,” she said.

“What night?”

“The night of his funeral. I remember all the acts getting on stage. I remember Jools Holland, Jo Brand and the naked balloon dance being performed and I remember when I was small Malcolm sweeping the stage. Whenever there was a shit act he…”

“You used to watch shows from the sound booth, didn’t you?” I asked, foolishly interrupting what could have been a good anecdote.

That’s what happens in snatched conversations.

“I’m so passionate about Up The Creek and I love it so much,” Polly enthused to me. “I remember being so young and my dad and my uncles allowing me to watch this comedy brilliance and seeing guys like Terry Alderton and Charlie Chuck. Brilliant, brilliant guys I adore so much now and Malcolm introducing new acts by saying Could be good. Could be shit. Fuck it! 

“On my 13th birthday, I remember going to the opening night of the Willesden club (there was briefly an Up The Creek offshoot there) and I remember Malcolm coming out and my mum screeching Noooo! He’s naked!”

“And now you’re managing director of Up The Creek Management,” I said.

“Oh,” Polly explained. “I just do the new talent stuff. I love the weekends at Up The Creek. There’s no other place like it. That spirit of Malcolm is still there.”

“And Sundays…” I prompted.

“They’re done by Will, Jane’s son (Malcolm’s stepson). It’s brilliant. I love Sundays. They’re amazing. But Thursdays is now New Talent night. It’s either established acts trying out new material or it’s brand new guys and it’s still the same thing – Could be good. Could be shit. You never know.

Polly McGirr enthuses after the Weirdos show last night

“People are always saying to me: Why don’t you vet acts before they go on stage on a Thursday? But I say No. It HAS to be open mic: the idea that a crowd will never know who’s going to come on next. Could be good, Could be shit. You just don’t know.”

“How long have you been doing it now?” I asked.

“Three years. And I love it. It’s my home. Really. Seriously. It’s ridiculous, but I love the club so much.”

“So how,” I asked, “did you get an interest in comedy? Just cos you were hanging around it so much? Because The Brothers’ background is not actually showbiz. They’re – what are they? – property magnates?”

“For a long time,” explained Polly, “I wasn’t really doing much about the club, because I’d been around it for so long… But now I work in television and, because I love the club so much, I thought What I really want to see is new talent back here and being established back here and I love shuffling through all the crazy acts to find a gem that you adore. When you feel that buzz and there’s a real mix of different types of acts.”

“And it crosses over with your television work,” I said.

“Yeah,” Polly agreed. “So now I can take acts from the club and put them on TV. Recently, we’ve taken two guys who I first met at the Up The Creek open mic nights and they’re on CBBC as Britain’s first black comedy double act – Johnny Cochrane and Inel Tomlinson. I first met them at the Open Mic and thought THAT is what it’s all about! Either side of them were insane acts and you saw their brilliance.”

“But people,” I suggested, “say television doesn’t like or want original comedy; it just does the same thing over and over again.”

“We’ve got Johnny Cochrane and Inel Tomlinson on screen.” countered Polly. “It took two years to get them on telly, but it has been the most amazing time to establish them. We’re not very good at doing it in the UK – cool comedy – until now. And I really believe there’s great female comedy out there as well.

“I really love Harriet Kemsley. What I love about her is it’s really, really ballsy. When she does a really aggressive joke, it’s brilliant, so beautifully written.

Up The Creek: Dane Baptiste, a new Chris Rock?

“But the new act you HAVE to see is Dane Baptiste.

“For me, he takes every brilliant element of the urban (black) circuit and he does what acts usually can’t do in the UK which is cross over from urban comedy to mainstream comedy. He is Chris Rock to me.”

Dane Baptiste is already signed with Polly’s Up The Creek Management, but it is unusual to see even a comedy manager let alone a TV person so enthusiastic, I had to go home, lie down and recover.

A comic desperate for laughs in London – and how to lose a theatre arts grant

Malcolm Hardee: the comic who got caught short on stage (Photograph by Vincent Lewis)

I was talking to someone – let’s call her Beryl – about how things change. My eternally un-named friend was there. The subject of the late comedian Malcolm Hardee came up.

“My mum refused to laugh at Malcolm,” Beryl told me. “He would try lots and lots of things to make her laugh. She’d say to me: Don’t laugh at him. He’s as silly as a goat! And Malcolm was attention-seeking, so he’d try his hardest to make my mum laugh. He would dance silly dances.

“I had this funny old radio that I’d bought from a charity shop and Malcolm would come in and say Oh, I like the radio. Let’s put it on and then maybe Saturday Night Fever would come on and he’d dance the John Travolta dance and my mum would snore. She did laugh when he wasn’t there. He was banned from the Albany Empire, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was there the night he pissed on the stage during his act and the people who gave out the grants to keep the Albany going were in the audience that night. I think he said, Oy Oy Hold on, I’ve got caught short! and went to the back of the stage – I think he may have turned his back on the audience, which was unusual, and pissed. You could see this arc of water.”

“He didn’t like it there,” said Beryl. “He said you had to be a one-legged lesbian to be accepted there. It was all politically correct. And he wasn’t terribly politically correct, was he? It’s such a good venue but they don’t really do comedy there now, do they?

“I don’t think they do anything much there,” my eternally-un-named friend said. “There’s the odd stabbing I think I’ve heard of. At a boys’ club. Usually of someone who’s organised a boys’ club. Some poor do-gooder. Big mistake.”

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

Daphna Baram – killer comic last night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian and Daphna may be right.

Al Porter may well be very successful very fast.

But, as I say, you can never tell.

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

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

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

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

But my comic expectations are often dashed.

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