Becky Fury + the creepy clown sex cult

As if she had not suffered enough, Becky risked all by travelling on a rare Thameslink train

So I got an email from Malcolm Hardee Award winning comic Becky Fury. It read:

“Do you want to do a blog about this creepy clown sex cult that I narrowly avoided joining?”

Well, obviously, there is only one answer to a question like that.

I was, to an extent, however, literally laid low with a spinal problem, so the ever-plucky Becky – rather than talk to me over Skype – decided to risk the wild uncertainties of train travel by Thameslink and the physical risks posed by my coughing fits and nose sniffles to come up to my home in Borehamwood.

This is how the conversation went…

---

JOHN: A clown sex cult?

BECKY: There was a clowning course. All sex cults need a good USP.

JOHN: How did you find them?

BECKY: He found me.

JOHN: Who?

BECKY: The guru.

JOHN: There’s a guru?

BECKY: Of course. All sex cults need a guru.

JOHN: And his selling point as a Messiah is…?

BECKY: That he has a clown school in a European city.

(NOTE TO READERS – THIS IS NOT, REPEAT NOT, IN PARIS)

BECKY: It seemed to have lots of interesting teachers. But I started getting suspicious when he started offering me a very reduced fee. Also I did an interview online and he wanted to re-name me.

JOHN: To what name?

BECKY: (LAUGHS) Miss Behave.

JOHN: (LAUGHS) Did you point out there is already a well-established Miss Behave?

BECKY: I didn’t want to give him any more information.

JOHN: But you wanted to be a clown?

Becky having a happier time in Borehamwood

BECKY: No. That’s the thing. I didn’t want to be a clown and certainly not using the name of someone who was already using that name. I had wanted to learn some techniques. There are always interesting things you can learn from people who are masters of their arts. But he sent me a list of classes that would take place and they included things like ‘Oil Massage’ which I thought maybe should not be on the syllabus for a Clown Course.

JOHN: Maybe all clown courses have it… Maybe Gaulier in Paris has a…

BECKY: No, I don’t think his is a sex cult; more a hate cult.

JOHN: Well, he allegedly breaks you down to build you up. A bit like Charles Manson.

BECKY: Well, this clown cult guy kept re-using the term ‘Family’… and also the word ‘polyamory’. The guy is from the 1960s, so he’s the sort of guy that took a load of acid, ’freaked out’, then became a ‘clown’.

JOHN: I still don’t understand how you got into this. You saw an ad somewhere?

BECKY: No. he found me. He was a Facebook Friend and he contacted me and said he was interested in stuff he had seen I was doing and he thought maybe I would want to attend his course. It all seemed very innocent to start with. But I said I didn’t think I could afford £3,000 for the month’s course. So he said: “What about £1,500? It’s not about the money; it’s about who we get on the course.”

And then he dropped the cost again and I thought: Well, what’s the exchange here? What am I going to have to do? How am I going to be paying?

Becky Fury minting it – but only with chocolate coins

This was just before the Edinburgh Fringe, so I was very distracted. He kept asking me to go on the course, then I got one last message from him and then suddenly I got contacted by another woman who was a clown and it turned out she was his wife. And she was saying: “Well, actually, it’s going to be £3,000.”

So I think I had done something to piss him off. And then there were some other women he was involved with. And then there was an email from another woman basically accusing him of being exactly what I thought he was: that he was this kind of very controlling guru who basically got lots of weak women to come to what was billed as a clown course but basically it was a sex cult.

JOHN: But you are only surmising.

BECKY: Yes.

JOHN: What was the ‘sell’?

BECKY: He said he wanted to direct me in a show and then have me go round Europe saying, “I am the protégée of (HIS NAME),” and all his clown mates would think: That sexy woman? What a fucking man he is! He’s moulded this woman; she’s doing his bidding. It’s a big male ego trip and I’ve had that before. There was another older comedian – a British one. His thing was he wanted me to be his protégée and have everybody saying about him: “Oh! Wow!” 

This recent guy was wanting to change what I was doing. I said: “No. I do comedy… I don’t want to go round Europe doing ‘clowning’. I want to go on the course and learn interesting techniques that I can put into what I do… not be something that you’ve created.”

JOHN: What’s the difference between Comedy and Clowning?

BECKY: Well, you can use aspects of clowning in comedy. It’s just that heightened quality of performance… Well, it’s basically just fucking around, isn’t it?

JOHN: Can I quote that?

Becky knows a thing or two about… erm… messing about…

BECKY: Yeah. That’s all it is. That’s another reason I didn’t go. I’ve done bits of clowning before and really all it is is just fucking about. You need to get yourself in the zone of just fucking about. There are courses on how to be ‘stupid’ and how to ‘uncover your inner fool’. But all of these things are about remembering how to play. And that’s what comedians do. They play – mainly with language a lot of the time.

I’m kinda fed up with these older men wanting to use me to be some kind of extension of themselves.

JOHN: To create through you.

BECKY: Yeah.

JOHN: Those who can do and those who can’t manipulate.

BECKY: They end up using you as a vessel for their thwarted youth – and they get off on it as well, because it’s a male thing. I’ve had this before. I’ve already had that one guru. He did a lot of stuff that was very manipulative and controlling. A lot of the time with these old men that go out with younger women, the reason they do it is some inadequacy of theirs that they don’t want women of their own age to pick up on. So they’ll go for women that are young and naive who think: Oh, wow! This guy is really sorted! when, actually, he’s just a dickhead.

I’m not making any moral judgment. I think it’s just an interesting aspect of humanity.

JOHN: Randy men?

BECKY: Randy clowns.

JOHN: You could have formed a double act: Randy & Miss Behave 2.

BECKY: In a way I would like to have had time to find out what was actually going  in the clown sex cult.

JOHN: But?

BECKY: Unfortunately we only have a finite amount of time on this planet and I have a new comedy show to write for the Leicester Comedy Festival. Anyway, after all that, I never heard from him again.

JOHN: Perhaps you will. Perhaps, one day, there will be a knock on your door and standing there will be a man in a red nose wearing long floppy shoes and beeping a horn at you.

BECKY: Mmmm… Different type of clown.

Alarm in the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe

John Fleming bearded with plastic bag (Photograph by Nick Awde)

Yesterday’s penultimate live Grouchy Club involved a discussion not about comedy but about the difficulties of scripting and shooting pornographic movies – one of the comedians present had enquired about entering the profession.

My afternoon was then taken up by getting the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award trophies engraved and boiling eggs for the annual Scottish National Russian Egg Roulette Championships which were to take place at the increasingly prestigious two-hour Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show that night.

At the show itself, the awards were announced as:

Comic Originality – Michael Brunström
Cunning Stunt – Matt Roper
Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid – Laurence Owen

Mr Twonkey at the point of his egg triumph (Photograph by Blanche Cameron)

The Scottish National Russian Egg Roulette Championships appropriately included performer George Egg and ‘Mr Spunky’ – an anonymous member of Mensa, which allowed one member of the audience to yell out: “He’s an egg head.” Fortunately the puns ended there and the worthy, if somewhat surprised, new Scottish National Russian Egg Roulette Champion is Mr Twonkey.

Comedy critic and Malcolm Hardee Awards judge Kate Copstick presented most of last night’s show, as co-host Janey Godley had to go off and be Spanked. (It’s a show… It’s a show.)

Miss Behave, who turned up halfway through from another show had been going to co-host on her arrival, but somehow it turned into an act where she unexpectedly swallowed a giant pair of scissors and two flaming torches. As the torches produced a fair amount of upwards-drifting smoke, I was rather relieved no smoke alarm went off in the room, because I knew what was going to happen at the end of the show.

Chris Lynam with his banger last night (Photograph by Garry Platt)

This was Chris Lynam, former member of The Greatest Show on Legs, who performed his famous or possibly infamous banger-up-the-bum routine. This involves him putting a firework between his buttocks and having it lit (on this occasion by Malcolm Hardee’s sister Clare) to the strains of Ethel Merman singing There’s No Business Like Show Business.

As this is not an act which is easy to follow, it ended the show and, sure enough, just as it ended, the room’s smoke alarm did go off. It seemed a fitting end.

Critic Kate Copstick’s nightmare last night/today at the Edinburgh Fringe

The Malcolm Hardee Awards await their new 2015 owners

Tomorrow night, the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards are announced at the annual two hour variety show in his memory. He drowned ten years ago, in 2005.

Yesterday was an appropriately random day at the Edinburgh Fringe.

I got back the Malcolm Hardee Awards being held hostage by Juliette Burton.

Miss Behave – nominated by us for a Cunning Stunt Award on the basis that she has been plugging Miss Behave’s Game Show by putting up random bits of cardboard around town with nothing on them except odd sayings and #MBGS – continued to claim, even more loudly, that it was not her doing it… and a video was uploaded onto YouTube of a small elephant doing the stunt and being taken away by two men in grey suits.

Then I saw The Half Naked Chef on and off the BlundaBus – he kept getting off and accosting members of the passing public with a cucumber and much else, climaxing with an abseil down an underpass wall with audio commentary to the audience on the top deck of the Blundabus via a radio mic. It’s on YouTube.

Then there was Shaun Buswell’s Random Orchestra.

Shaun has made it his career to go round the streets of various cities asking random people carrying musical instruments to join in a one-off performance of a tune or tunes they have never heard before because he wrote them. There is a video on YouTube about it.

At about 11.00pm, on the way back to my flat for an early night, I bumped into Matt Roper and Blanche Cameron (Lewis Schaffer’s official stalker) who both berated me for eating an ice cream because it was unhealthy. They were both standing outside the Zoo venue smoking cigarettes.

I was told that Stephen Carlin, whom I blogged about three days ago after he was excommunicated by PBH’s Free Fringe but who found a new home at The Hive, had turned up at The Hive for his first gig only to find out it had been booked for a show by a DJ. But it has now sorted itself out.

Then critic Kate Copstick appeared back at our rented flat, also having an early night. She sleeps in the bedroom; I sleep in the living room.

I suggested she should see Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl because, apart from everything else (and there is a lot of everything) co-performer Norman Gosney lived in the penthouse at New York’s Chelsea Hotel for 25 years.

This sent Copstick into a tantrum of reminiscence about staying in the Chelsea Hotel around 1998.

The Chelsea Hotel, New York, in 2010

“It was like a hostel,” she said.

“But surely,” I said, “the whole reason people want to stay there is they expect it to be a shit-hole.”

“I thought,” explained Copstick, “glamorous rock star, Sid Vicious and Nancy…”

“Well, heroin and stabbing,” I said.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think they were living in squalor. It looked like a hostel, the lift smelled of sick and barely worked there was no phone in the room, no television. It was absolutely fucking freezing, bare floorboards, nothing.”

“Maybe they redecorated it so it felt like that,” I suggested. “I would be disappointed if it wasn’t like that.”

This morning, I had to wake Copstick up because she had an early meeting with Gyles Brandreth.

Dream did NOT involve Peter Michael Marino

“I’m so tired,” she said. “I think it’s the dream I had. I was trapped.”

“This,” I said, “is not a dream. This is the Fringe.”

“I was trapped in this horrific totalitarian state,” she explained.

“The Free Fringe?” I suggested.

Copstick ignored me.

“I was trying to escape. I was with someone. the punishments were horrendous.”

“It is the Free Fringe,” I said.

Copstick ignored me.

“Absolutely horrendous. You couldn’t do anything.”

“What were the punishments?” I asked.

“They put you to sleep and cut bits out of you. I eventually escaped because I was being taken off for punishment and dived off this ridiculously high cliff onto what looked like rocks but I just missed them and dived into the sea. Then, when I came back to land, they were still there.”

“The baddies?” I asked.

“Yes, the baddies. So I swallowed this pill – it was all about swallowing pills – so I swallowed this pill and I shrank down and dived into somebody’s mouth and escaped – get this – I escaped out of…”

“Out of their anus?” I suggested.

“Yes,” said Copstick, “…and came up into the sewers of the same place, except now I was tiny.”

“And,” I asked, “they didn’t notice you because you were tiny?”

“Yeah. And there was definitely an element of Edinburgh there, because there was this city where nobody knew where anything was and it was so full. But they found me again. And there was somebody I had some sort of relationship with and it was horrendous.”

“It sounds like Lewis Schaffer,” I suggested.

“It was just horrendous,” said Copstick.

“Definitely Lewis Schaffer,” I said.

“When you woke me up,” Copstick continued, “I went back to sleep and I was still in this dystopian city but I was hiding in some kind of factory. It was massive, enormous, and there were piles of shit everywhere.”

“Sounds like the Fringe,” I suggested.

Kate Copstick relaxing in her London shop

“I was found again and I was being tortured,” continued Copstick. “I just couldn’t escape. And the person I was living with – I got back and he had been shagging some girl and, because I was still trying to hide from the baddies, he popped in and asked if it was OK if he took this girl out for a date. So I said: Yes, sure.

“And then I noticed they were packing something in this factory and I was keeping tiny puppies in a box and I had to keep giving them water and that was the last thing I remember before I woke up again. I found the little box was empty. No puppies. But there were some metal things in it.”

So there you have it.

An everyday story of a comedy critic’s dreams and nightmares at the Edinburgh Fringe.

At the Edinburgh Fringe: a financial bribe to win a Malcolm Hardee Award

Shameless Norris tries to sway my principles

Yesterday, with the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award nominations announced, I bumped into performer Joz Norris in the street, who tried to persuade me it was not too late for him to win for a Cunning Stunt Award.

“What’s your cunning stunt?” I asked.

“Although the nominations have been announced and I’m not in them, you could give me the Award on Friday anyway. That would be a cunning stunt.”

“Why should I?” I asked.

“Because I can give you £10 right now.”

“Times are tough,” I said. “It is a tempting offer. Let me think about it.”

Keep your eyes out for the Awards announcement on Friday and see what my conclusion was.

This morning, I got a Facebook message about the Awards from performer Ashley Frieze. He wrote:

Is there room in the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards for the “luckiest Fringe venue company”? – It has to go to the Freestival for losing one venue, then another, then all their acts, then having their poorly-attended venue broken into and set on fire… surely… I just wanted to nominate them for something, but “biggest clusterfuck of 50 years of the Fringe” seemed unkind.

I almost regretted the Award shortlist had already been announced on Monday because of some of the shows I saw yesterday.

Not quite… If any of the judges DID see a worthy show, it COULD in theory win because, as a fitting tribute to Malcolm Hardee, the rules are whatever rules we make up along the way.

(Right-to-left) Johnny Sorrow, Richard Drake and their possibly deaf sound man yesterday

The shows I saw yesterday started with former main Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winner Johnny Sorrow, performing with a man in a balaclava who used to be known as Sir Richard Swann and who is now known as Richard Drake. the last couple of days, he has been coming in to The Grouchy Club and sitting in the corner of the room in his red knitted balaclava saying nothing. He could grow to be an elephant in the room.

He and Johnny Sorrow are performing this year as Bob Blackman’s Tray. they previously performed as The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society.

Yesterday, when I came into the Three Sisters venue, I bumped into performer Ian Fox who, last year, was helping out the Bob Blackman duo as their sound technician.

“You’re not doing it this year?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “This year, they have a deaf sound technician.”

I think this was literally true. It would be par for the brilliantly surreal course.

While waiting to go into the Bob Blackman show, I just had time for a half hour chat with Irish-born writer Ian Smith, whom I blogged about last month. He lives in Sri Lanka, has just been working in Algeria and is over in Scotland for a week. But we were interrupted. He only had time to tell me that he once opened a Cuban bar in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and that, in 2012, the current Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had his iTunes account hacked into and it turned out he was a massive fan of camp novelty group Right Said Fred. Ian wrote about it in his own blog Blood and Porridge.

“I am a big Heavy Metal fan,” Ian told me, “and you never get murderous dictators who are into Heavy Metal.”

Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl in Auld Reekie

At this point, we got interrupted by an American girl dressed as a showgirl. She was flyering for her show Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl which, annoyingly, I don’t think I can fit-in in Edinburgh (though I will see it in London).

The show sounds fascinating because it is the story of how she – Amelia Kallman –  went to Shanghai and opened China’s first burlesque nightclub. The Chinese authorities and the Triads were not amused.

Since relocating to the UK, she has lectured at Cambridge University, written a graphic novel, scripts for television and a book also called Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl.

Equally interesting was her husband Norman Gosney who was born in Bristol but lived, for 25 years, in the penthouse of the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York (where he and Amelia ran an illegal speakeasy The Blushing Diamond). It was a conversation we had no time to have, but Norman, Ian Smith and I have all been to North Korea at various points and, when you have, you always want to talk to fellow travellers about it.

There is a promo video for Diary of a Shanghai Showgirl on YouTube.

Other stand-out shows I saw yesterday included Patrick Monahan’s extraordinarily entertaining and energetic audience-thrilling romp The Disco Years. It is his first show where autobiography creeps in but, yet to come, there is still what I suspect will be a humdinger of a future autobiographical Edinburgh show.

Then I was able to catch the end of Spencer Jones’ show as The Herbert in Proper Job – wildly inventive prop-based comedy.

And, when I got back to my Edinburgh flat, there was a message from this blog’s South Coast correspondent Sandra Smith, currently roaming the streets of Edinburgh.

David Mills with a misunderstood flag behind him (Photograph by Sandra Smith)|

We are both enormous fans of gay (it becomes relevant in the next paragraph) American comic David Mills.

“During his show, “Sandra told me, “I said: Oooh look. The ISIS flag is behind you. It really did look like it.”

Actually, on closer inspection, it turned out to be a black flag with a PBH Free Fringe logo.

Equally confusing is a video that has appeared today on YouTube.

On Monday, we nominated Miss Behave for an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for putting brown cardboard signs up around town with the hashtag MBGS (tangentially promoting Miss Behave’s Game Show). She claims that it is not her putting up these signs and now this bizarre semi-hidden-camera video has appeared on YouTube.

Edinburgh Fringe. Too late for a review? When is a cunning stunt not cunning?

The fascinating yet still unquoted Lynn Ruth Miller

Getting publicity and reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe can be just a case of happenstance and luck.

Just to get mentioned in this little blog… Well, lots of conversations at the Fringe are too long or complicated to put in this blog because of the time it takes to transcribe them.

This morning, I had a fascinating chat with Lynn Ruth Miller about the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – she knew people who were sent to the camp and it is all linked up to why she became a comedian – but it will probably never see the light of blog.

What you read here – or anywhere – does not even superficially skim the surface of what is happening at the Fringe.

At the Grouchy Club yesterday afternoon, there was a discussion about the abnormally high number of performers with – and shows about – physical medical problems this year. Of course, performers with psychological problems is just taken as normal.

Yesterday, I was talking to a performer whose show I had seen and which had a full house of people adoring him/her and he/she was going on about what a terrible show it had been. “I was awful,” he/she said. He/she had not been.

In Edinburgh, you may well have to make your own rainbow

I chatted to another performer who was having full houses every day but who had not yet been reviewed. Unless there is massive word-of-mouth, it is now probably too late to set reviewers’ imaginations alight to the extent that they will completely re-arrange their schedules. To be really effective, the press releases had to be sent out at the point the Fringe Programme was published and just before the Fringe started.

I am seeing around seven shows each day and, as far as I know,  publications like The Scotsman worked out which shows would be reviewed before the Fringe started (with gaps to add-in shows which unexpectedly developed strong word-of-mouth).

A third performer was complaining on Facebook that his audiences were not laughing at his material and blaming the audiences specifically and Edinburgh in general.

Once the Fringe is in full flow (and it is over the halfway point now) there is not much performers can do to change the ongoing flow. Just keep plodding on and build the word-of-mouth and pray.

Meanwhile, one agent/promoter was telling me he had a stunt to publicise one of his acts which he reckoned was going to put all the traffic in Edinburgh into gridlock and he was trying to persuade me this would be worthy of an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award nomination.

But this would be more likely to get the act thrown out of their venue, him prosecuted and the show loathed by locals rather than an award nomination. For another, if you were to bring Edinburgh traffic to a stop, with a Sky News helicopter filming it all from above, it IS a stunt, but the word ‘cunning’ might not be appropriate.

Possibly a cunning stunt in the streets? Depends who did it.

A definitive Cunning Stunt would be Malcolm Hardee writing a rave review of his own show and conning The Scotsman into publishing it because they thought it was written by their own critic….

A stunt but not a cunning stunt would be getting loads of ginger-haired people marching through Glasgow to plug a named show. It is not cunning. It is a photocall.

An interesting publicity stunt this year is the fact lots of cardboard sheets with odd slogans and the hashtag #MBGS have appeared among the general Fringe show posters.

These obviously but obliquely promote Miss Behave’s Game Show and would possibly be eligible for a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award on the basis they promote the show without, as such, saying the title of the show or where/when it is. It is a good cunning stunt to get people’s attention.

However, Miss Behave swears blind neither she nor her cohorts are putting these up – that it must be an unknown fan. If this is true (and who am I to gainsay her?) then it is not eligible for a Cunning Stunt Award because it is not a cunning publicity stunt, merely graffiti by someone who gains nothing from the show.

If someone unknown to me does a brilliant cunning stunt which promotes The Grouchy Club shows, I cannot be nominated for doing the stunt. It is nothing to do with me.

---

My three show highlights yesterday were:

Matt Price: The Boy With Cake On His Face
Matt reckons he will not get onto television regularly because he does not have the right look. I am not so sure. His personality and charisma scream pure TV ‘natural’.

Joey Page: Catastrophe Party
Former Malcolm Hardee Award nominee Joey has the cliché looks for TV and has been on Never Mind the Buzzcocks et al and there is no reason why he is not on more often except the whims of producers.

Wilfredo at the Gala

Stu Turner’s Big Charity Gala
…for Autism Initiatives Scotland. This pulled-off that rare Fringe trick of not just attracting Fringe-goers but also getting-in ordinary Edinburgh residents – I suspect readers of the Daily Record rather than the Guardian.

The fact it took place in the 400-seater New Empire Bingo Hall may have helped.

---

Oh, by the way, this blog has now managed to get over 1 million hits.

It means nothing, but it is worth a mention because the Edinburgh Fringe mantra is: It’s all about self-publicity. You have to build your own luck, build your own rainbows.

Sex with comedian Giada Garofalo. Miss Behave tries to get money for dogging.

Giada Garofalo – maybe don’t mess with her

’Tis the season for jolly comedy performers to be previewing and thinking of ways to promote their Edinburgh Fringe shows next month.

Last night, I went to Soho in London to see Edinburgh preview shows by Giada Garofalo and Oli Bettesworth.

In his very funny show about depression – Sunshine and Lollipops (and a Creeping Sense of Existential Terror) – the very English Oli is seemingly making a fair bid for the loudest show on the Fringe. I cannot see his voice lasting out beyond the first week.

The very Sicilian Giada – with Live in the Staff Room! (Sex, Fairy Tales, Serial Killers & other Stuff) – is making a strong bid for the most autobiographically sexual show on the Fringe – the sex even permeates the fairy tale section which dumps Disney for Edgar Allan Poe.

Before the two previews, I had tea with Miss Behave, who is promoting her Edinburgh shows with the help of crowdfunding via a Kickstarter appeal.

“How much did you appeal for?” I asked.

“£397 – and I made it in six hours. So, I have decided to take it bigger and better.

Miss Behave’s very successful first appeal on Kickstarter

“I did start off wanting camels, because I thought it would be a great way to launch my show(s) at the Fringe – to actually parade through a pedestrian area, flyering on camels.”

“And…?” I asked.

“Just try and get a fucking camel to Edinburgh,” said Miss Behave. “So then I thought: Donkeys.”

“You bet your ass,” I said.

Miss Behave ignored me.

“Or cows,” she continued. “But apparently cows have a tendency to charge at crowds of people, so that felt too dangerous. So then I was riffing with this person who is an animal wrangler. A Scottish animal wrangler.”

“For films?” I asked.

“Yeah. So I said: What about 50 chihuahuas? She thought about it overnight, called me back the next day and said: Right. I’ve sorted it. I’ve got a guy, who is also an animal wrangler, who has 20 chihuahua Jack Russell puppy mixes, so they’ll get on. If I just got 50 random dogs, there would be a dog fight.”

“These are,” I checked, “an interbreeding of chihuahuas and Jack Russells?”

“Yeah. Pretty cute. Chihuahuas are a bit too scary but, if you throw a bit of Jack Russell into the mix, that’s cute-tastic. It’s got a special name – a Jahuahua or JackChi or Jackhuahua or something.”

“Jacksie?” I asked.

“JackChi,” said Miss Behave.

Miss Behave under the weather in Soho yesterday afternoon

“You know,” I told her, “that there are dogs which are a cross between shih tzus and poodles?’

“What are they called?”

“Not what you’d think,” I said. “Which is a pity.”

“Anyway,” said Miss Behave, “the animal wrangler also found me a Newfoundland dog. The idea was that the Newfoundland would pull a cart with me sitting on it and all the chihuahua Jack Russell puppies would be around it and we would do a parade – again, flyering. Which was fine. But then the dude just went silent. Just dropped off the face of the earth. disappeared. I thought What am I going to do? I am not known for the ‘cute’ area, but I wanted it to be cute and silly.”

“Cute?” I asked. “You started with a herd of camels!”

“Yeah, but then I’d got into puppies. So I thought: Never work with children or animals. Well, alright, how about kids? I could get a lot of kid dancers. I could have six different children’s dance companies, all with the same music, but each doing different routines. Kids are cute. I am not – and I don’t really like children. So that’s funny.

Cute or not? Miss Behave.

“I thought: I can co-ordinate it all but, with the cost of actually doing Edinburgh this year, I can’t also afford £300 worth of helium balloons and all the other stuff for the kids. So I costed it all up and I had been wanting to try a Kickstarter for a while. £397 is not a massive amount of money to ask for. Give it a go!

“And it’s been real fun. It took me six hours to raise £397 and now, at the point I’m talking to you,  it’s been just over 24 hours. I have 25 days left and I’ve got £708 already pledged. I thought: If I get more, let’s see how large a production number we can give ‘em. That could potentially mean more helium balloons, confetti cannons.”

“It could,” I suggested, “mean the return of the camels and the chihuahuas.”

“Or a drone camera,” mused Miss Behave. “With £708, I’ve got enough to buy a cheap little remote controlled helicopter, strap a GoPro camera onto it and that could be a drone. I think it’s going to be a laugh and there’s no ‘wrong’ in it. If the worst thing that happens is a bunch of kids show up dressed in cardboard boxes with a load of helium balloons, that’s fine. At the moment, I have four different dance schools and one majorette school.”

“What,” I asked, “are they actually promoting?”

Miss Behave and her lovely Gameshow assistant Harriet

“I’m taking my gameshow up to the Fringe – the large version I did in a Spiegeltent in London.”

“Are you appearing in any major Edinburgh comedy awards shows?” I asked.

“Well, I’m going to run in late and make a spectacular entrance into the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show, but don’t tell the organiser, because he thinks I’m actually hosting it with Janey Godley.”

“Chaos is always welcome,” I said. “It is good to live in interesting times.”

Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winner attacked after Edinburgh awards show

So, last night, the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show was held at the Counting House in Edinburgh as part of the Free Festival at the Edinburgh Fringe. The award winners were:

• for Comic Originality – Candy Gigi
• for best Cunning Stunt – Christian Talbot and 12 year-old daughter Kate
• for Act Most Likely To Make a Million Quid – Luisa Omielan

You can find more details about them in the blog I posted when the nominations were announced.

Miss Behave: co-host of Malcolm Hardee Awards (Photograph by Stephen O’Donnell)

Most unexpected parts of the evening for me (apart from co-compere Miss Behave dragging me on-stage and setting the top of my head on fire (true) were a whole series of random comedians doing worryingly realistic 20-second imitations of comic Lewis Schaffer’s on-stage persona. In the ensuing chaos, Lewis Schaffer appeared to award himself a fish.

And, in the Scottish national Russian Egg Roulette Championships (basically smashing eggs on your forehead), co-compere Janey Godley’s daughter Ashley Storrie (who agreed to compete a few weeks ago) withdrew because she remembered only yesterday afternoon that she is allergic to eggs… and Janey was (reluctantly and genuinely loudly protesting) forced to stand in and actually won the increasingly prestigious Scottish Egg Roulette title.

I will not mention exceptional singer Danusia Samal, Maori singer/dancer Mika with his gay haka, Doug Segal doing a Boy With Tape On His Face mind-reading act, Sharnema Nougar being almost dropped by three literally supporting comedians while she sang and played a ukelele, Lindsay Sharman as a Scottish poetess, Vladimir Putin singing gay anthem Ukrainian Men with a line about shooting planes down, Johnny Sorrow and his balaclava mystery man and Tim FitzHigham drinking a pint of lager through a bugle then playing The Last Post for Malcolm Hardee and Comedy in general.

Kate Copstick (arm in sling) with Richard Herring last night (Photograph by Stephen O’Donnell)

But I will mention that other Russian Egg Roulette contestants included Richard Herring and Juliette Burton. For the second year running, Juliette (a farmer’s daughter who reckons she can spot raw eggs from the aura round their shells) trounced Richard but came second – this year to Janey Godley.

The show probably finished around 1.30am, so lasted its normal two hours.

At 3.01am, I had a text message from worthy Cunning Stunt Award winner Christian Talbot.

Relevant to this might be the fact that, at yesterday afternoon’s Grouchy Club, critic Kate Copstick said another Edinburgh Fringe performer (surprisingly not Lewis Schaffer) had contacted her about a 3-star review she gave their show. The performer said they thought it deserved 4-stars. Her reaction was: Well, I did not and I am the reviewer. He told her bitterly: I think you took one star off me because of the content.

Well, yes, reviewers do tend to award stars and write their reviews on the basis of the perceived quality of the content. The same thing goes for giving increasingly prestigious awards.

Bear this in mind, dear reader.

Christian Talbot (centre) with his award, me & Kate Copstick

Now back to award-winning Christian Talbot’s text to me at 3.01am this morning.

One of the other nominees in the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award category had been comedian Luke McQueen.

Christian Talbot’s text read:

Had Luke McQueen’s girlfriend grab my trophy off me in Brooke’s Bar (the Pleasance Dome venue’s bar for performers) and try to smash it. It’s not too damaged. What a lovely person she is.

I texted back: Are you sure it was his girlfriend?

She was with him and drunk, Christian replied. Not positive it was his ‘girlfriend’. Could have been a friend that is a girl. I can’t remember what he called her. She was very aggressive.

How did you know it was McQueen’s girlfriend or friend? I asked.

Christian replied: She was with him talking when I came in. I went to talk to him as I kind of know him. When I did, she grabbed the trophy from me. I assumed girlfriend as she was so aggressive with me.

How did McQueen react when she tried to smash the award? I asked.

He told her: “Oh, don’t do that.” He said congratulations to me, but that honestly he felt he should have won. Then I went home.

I forwarded Christian’s first message to fellow Malcolm Hardee Award judge Kate Copstick.

She texted back: Bloody hell! We made the right choice!

Christian’s increasingly prestigious Cunning Stunt Award

I wholeheartedly agree. (Only one of the four Malcolm Hardee judges had initially voted for Luke McQueen, then changed their mind and went with Christian Talbot too.)

Meanwhile, outside the Fringe bubble…

Anyone who read my blog two days ago may remember a passing mention of my farting chum Mr Methane being invited (under his own name, so the sender would not have known he was Mr Methane) to a Christmas gig by Michael McIntyre at the Tower of London.

Yesterday, I received a very polite e-mail from Michael McIntyre’s agent Off The Kerb, saying: “I hope you’re well. I just wanted to drop you an email to let you know that the information posted on your blog re. Michael McIntyre performing at The Tower of London is completely false (blog post 21st August). Michael is not performing at this event.”

I have removed the reference from my previous blog.

Mr Methane at a previous Malcolm Hardee Awards Show

When I forwarded the news to Mr Methane, he was gobsmacked.

“An elaborate scam,” said Mr Methane, “that seeks to ruin the good name and reputation of Michael McIntyre with fake offers for non-existent tickets starting at £1,500 for a non-existent Christmas gig? Keep me posted!”

Mr Methane is currently on his holidays away from showbiz and continued:

“I’ve been staying at Hartington in the Peak District where I’ve been trying out different makes of electric bicycles on the Monsal, Tissington & High Peak trails, I have now moved on to the Ramada Consort budget hotel at Robin Hood Airport, Doncaster, which is ideally situated to visit the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft which houses the world’s largest collection of historic trolleybuses.

“But its not an all-electric vacation, as finally I’m moving on to stay at Adlington, Cheshire, which is where my mum used to live during the war with grandad before she got married. It is also conveniently placed for a visit on Monday to the Anson Engine museum for a bit of diesel, steam and gas-powered stationary engine action.”

I can only dream of such a life.

Critic Kate Copstick talks about S&M at the Edinburgh Fringe’s Grouchy Club

Copstick and Simon after yesterday’s Grouchy Club, her broken arm recovering in a sling

The Grouchy Club has been running at the Edinburgh Fringe for sixteen days now and we are getting regular members of the audience – both comedians and ordinary members of the public – coming back day after day. Yesterday, notable newcomers included a CNN reporter and a large man in a leather jacket.

“The gent in the back row looks vaguely ‘industry’ to me,” I said. “An ageing roadie, perhaps.”

“Well,” said my co-host, Kate Copstick, her arm in a sling after a fall the previous day. “I first worked with Simon in…”

“What does Simon do?” I asked.

“Well,” Simon said, “I used to be a TV producer and then went on to other things…”

“We did programmes on motor bikes,” said Copstick, “and then we did sex. We did porn.”

“Do we talk about this?” I asked.

“Well,” said Copstick, “he’s a happily-married man with two children; I don’t see why not.”

We were also graced with the presence of Miss Behave, co-presenter with comedian Janey Godley of next Friday’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show. Copstick is presenting the actual Awards at the show.

“You know,” I said to Miss Behave, “that Copstick has smashed her elbow in now?”

“I know,” said Miss Behave. “I think there should be a slave for Copstick on the show. I don’t care which forums we scout. It could be Fringe forums; it could be other forums. You just need someone whose idea of heaven would be to jump when Copstick blinks – goes and makes her coffee or helps her to the toilet.”

Kate Copstick used to go clubbing (not baby seals)

“I think those people might be few and far between,” said Copstick. “Though, when I used to go clubbing – to SM clubs – I went as a sub but, because of the way I dressed, everyone thought I was not. So I was constantly getting sad little men coming up wanting to be my slave and the one time I said Yes, it was just embarrassing.

“I only went there so someone would rip three kinds of shit out of me with a whip and then I had this strange little man following me around and I had to spend hours every day working out things for him to do… I’ll do that… No, let me do it!”

“This year,” I said, “the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show is lacking in nudity because we don’t have the Greatest Show On Legs.”

“We could,” suggested Miss Behave, “just cough and Bob Slayer would pop up.”

“We could run an advert,” suggested Copstick: “Someone needed to get their cock out on the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show.”

“And who better than you?” I suggested. “But the CNN lady looked particularly interested when S&M clubs were mentioned.”

“I have a friend who has a slave,” said Miss Behave, “and, in return for her walking on him with heels or whatever, he cleans her house, he cleans her shoes…”

“There’s a lot of ‘sissy mates’,” said Copstick.

“I personally would not be able to handle it,” said Miss Behave.

“I,” said Copstick, “have a friend who married her slave and he was something like a really high-up merchant banker or investment banker who comes home to run around in an apron and heels.”

“As far as I can gather,” I said, “the men who want to be submissive tend to be in positions of power at work whereas I, being only increasingly prestigious, don’t need it.”

“But,” said Copstick, “once you become truly prestigious…”

“Ah, then,” I said, “I guess I will suddenly have an urge to head for the apron, will I?”

“Have we,” asked Miss Behave, “got Russian Egg Roulette at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Have we got ponchos?” asked Miss Behave.

“If anyone wants one,” I said.

This year, Miss Behave has gone all glittery golden

“Can I play again?” asked Miss Behave.

“Of course,” I said.

“I won’t be in rubber this year,” said Miss Behave, “I will be wearing gold and I don’t want to get eggs all over it.”

This will be worth seeing.

On Friday. Be there.

Edinburgh Fringe: an audience member urinates on a bag – & other extreme acts

Thoughts of horses and fish tails perplex me

I woke at 6.10am this morning, dreaming of a horse with a fish tail.

My brain had not yet worked how the fish tail was physically connected to the horse.

It was not where the horse’s tail should be. And it was not where the horse’s legs should be.

I have no idea how this connects to events at the Edinburgh Fringe. Perhaps in its lack of any context or normal concepts of common sense. Odd things seem normal in August in Edinburgh.

Ian Fox & Spring Day shared Unsearchable laughs yesterday

Yesterday afternoon, I went to see Ian Fox’s show The Unsearchables – a ridiculously enjoyable hotch potch of bizarre photos and facts which you CANNOT find by searching on Google… in the format of an audience involvement gameshow.

It did not seem strange that someone in the audience said they knew a couple who had named all of their five sons Mark. No other forenames. All five were called Mark. And American comedian Spring Day (her real name), who lives in Japan, said that one line she wished she had never heard was when she was having an operation in a Tokyo hospital where they did not realise she understood Japanese. As the anaesthetist injected Spring just before she was about to be cut open, he said: I wonder if this will be enough?

Harriet & Miss Behave were game last night

Yesterday evening, I saw the Miss Behave Gameshow which involves a lovely male assistant called Harriet and which climaxed with the audience winner going into the street outside Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop and smashing a mobile phone to bits with a mallet.

This is a perfectly acceptable and normal thing to see on an Edinburgh street in August.

But are there any limits to what anyone can say or do at the Fringe?

At yesterday afternoon’s increasingly prestigious Grouchy Club, doyenne of comedy reviewers Kate Copstick told Billy Watson (the former Nob Stewart) and surreal act Mr Twonkey:

Billy Watson (left) & Mr Twonkey (right) at The Grouchy Club (Photograph by Kate Copstick, courtesy of Billy Watson)

“My boundaries for what is unacceptable in comedy are pretty low. I didn’t even know I had any. The only time I have ever felt like walking out when someone told a joke that I felt was totally unacceptable was maybe 20 years ago, when I was working with Bobby Davro and I was trapped in a studio with him. One of his jokes was What turns fruit into vegetables?… AIDs.”

“That’s a great joke,” I said.

“I think it was because,” Copstick replied, “at the time, I had quite a lot of friends who were nearing the vegetative state. But, since then, I’ve not seen anything at all where I thought: Mmm. That’s not really on.”

Rumour has it some thought a line was crossed at Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop a couple of nights ago when, during the late night (00.20am) show, a member of the public came in with a Just For Laughs bag and (the details I have heard are a bit hazy, depending on who tells me) somehow this eventually ended (after encouragement from Bob Slayer) with the lady urinating on her own bag on the floor.

As a result, there was a philosophical falling-out between a couple of the other hosts and Bob Slayer about what was acceptable and unacceptable.

I bumped into comedian Alexander Bennett in the street yesterday. He knew someone who was there during the incident.

“I think pretty much anything is acceptable,” I said.

Alexander Bennett: the face of a self fire starter…

“I remember,” said Alexander, “seeing Adam Riches‘ show years ago and one of the best bits was when he got an audience member to spit in his mouth. The thing about that is it’s all on the performer. Nobody is risking any harm apart from the performer. Venue staff don’t have to worry about it; the audience doesn’t have to worry about it. It’s all down to the performer. The audience reaction when that happened was priceless.

“I’m all for gross-out stuff. I like the reaction. The Euuaaaghhh! reaction is very close to Ha-ha-ha… But pissing on the floor at the Bookshop… Who is suffering there? It’s kind of the venue.”

“It is Bob’s venue, though,” I said. “His gaff; his rules. He’s the one who has to clean up afterwards.”

Alexander replied: “I remember Sean Lock telling a story years ago about Johnny Vegas vomiting while he was doing his pottery and making a vase out of the vomit and puke. I think you can make anything work if the circumstances are right. The only thing to consider is Who is the victim?”

“You could get a lot of money now for a Johnny Vegas puke vase,” I suggested. “Last night comedy harpist Ursula Burns told me her local church was trying to sell her scrapings from St Someone’s bones.”

Could grains of the Real Malcolm inspire young comedians?

“Well,” said Alexander, “there’s a massive relic industry all over the world selling shavings of the saints.”

“The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee was cremated,” I said. “Perhaps we should start selling Grains of Malcolm Hardee to up-and-coming comedians.”

“Malcolm Hardee was burned?” asked Alexander. “I bet he went up fucking quickly. All that alcohol. I have always wanted to set myself on fire on stage. I want to sing Sweet Caroline and set myself on fire. There’s a bit in the lyrics about getting warm.”

“What about singing The Doors’ Light My Fire?” I asked.

“There is no art,” said Alexander, “in setting yourself on fire to a song that contains fire in the lyrics. There’s no art to that. I want to build up some romantic thing with an audience member and then have them set me on fire. I would then sing Sweet Caroline and fall backwards into a swimming pool. I like the idea of stunts being part of comedy shows. It’s that improv thing. I could set myself on fire, then get Bob Slayer to piss on me to put out the flames.”

“Too much alcohol in his blood, too,” I said. “It would be like a reverse flame thrower.”

Later, in the basement of Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop, I heard why the audience member had been encouraged to piss on her Just For Laughs bag a couple of nights ago.

One of the wonderful acts at Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop is Stompy aka The Half Naked Chef aka Richard Stamp. (There is a video of him on YouTube)

Last night, Stompy told me:

The entrance to Stompy’s amazing maze

“Two years ago, my company DotComedy took our maze Get Lost! to Montreal (where the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival is held). It’s an outdoor show with a 20 metre square maze with 13 performers in it. Interactive. Comedy. Fairy tale like. We did well – there were 2,000 people a day coming through the show.

“We talked about bringing the show back the next year. Just For Laughs said they couldn’t afford it. Fair enough. But then they said: We’re going to make our own one.

“I said: Well…That’s not really on, is it?

“They said: It’s not going to be anything like your maze. In fact, its just going to be an App on a phone. It won’t be a physical thing you go into.

“So I said: OK. That sounds fair enough.

“Last year, I didn’t have any friends who went to Just For Laughs, so I heard nothing more.

A pensive Stompy by the Bookshop’s toilets

“This year, friends of mine started sending me pictures of this maze that’s been made. The copy is very similar. Obviously, I haven’t got the copyright on mazes. That was probably a feller in Crete. But the thing is the content of their maze is really similar to mine.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Well,” said Stumpy, “they use a sort of card game to go round the maze. They have this spider web area. So I got in touch with them about it. I was pretty upset. I put stuff on Facebook and it got around and lots of people joined in.

“I was very annoyed with them. So then Just For Laughs got very annoyed with me and they have lots and lots of lawyers. So, a couple of weeks ago, they sent a letter to me saying they are going to sue me for Defamation of Character.”

“Can a company have a character?” I asked. “Maybe in Canada.”

“In Quebec,” said Stumpy. “Montreal. I just don’t want to go through the legal… About ten years ago, they ripped-off one of my other shows called The Misinformation Tent. They should call themselves Just For Lawyers.””

“I suggested: “The publicity you get and the bad publicity they would get… They would be damaging their own reputation far more than you ever could.”

Of such things, are Edinburgh Fringe incidents made. Like a woman pissing on a Just For Laughs bag in Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop in a late-night show.

Just some of the many oddities I tripped over at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday

Joz N doing a passable impression of Hunter S Thompson

Publicity is difficult at the Edinburgh Fringe. Acts hand out flyers to people in the street. And try to get articles and photos in the press.

Two days ago, I went to a photoshoot for clowns performing at the Fringe. Apart from the clowns, I was the only person there.

Yesterday, on my way to the Grouchy Club, I had a chat with ever jolly japester Joz Norris who told me about a photoshoot held two days ago for clowns performing at the Fringe.

These were two separate photoshoots. Clowns should talk to each other more.

The one I went to involved clowns sitting on a taxi and running through it as if they were all coming of it.

“What was the one you went to like?” I asked Joz.

“The idea,” he told me, “was to see how many clowns we could fit in a car. There was supposed to be loads of press interest with loads of photographers but, when we turned up, there was nobody. Only about four of us bothered to turn up, so the answer to the question How many clowns can you fit into a car? was The normal number – four. We grabbed some random flyerers in beekeepers’ outfits and got a man in dressed as a tent and pressed our faces against the glass.”

“I went to the other one,” I said, “and I think I was the only non-clown there. People just looked at me as being a bit under-dressed.”

“Did you wear one of your bright shirts?” asked Joz.

“I was still out-coloured,” I admitted.

There is a video on YouTube of Joz’s clown video shoot

At the Grouchy Club yesterday, extraordinarily OTT New Zealand Maori cabaret act Mika was reunited with Scotsman critic Kate Copstick, who saw and raved about his show around a decade ago and has emotionally never been the same since.

Copstick & Mika at Edinburgh’s Grouchy Club show yesterday (Photograph by Garry Platt)

Mika told her: “I’ve brought a show here this year – Salon Mika – because I’m going to make it into a feature film.”

Bizarrely, the New Zealand Arts Council did not fund his trip to Edinburgh. All the acts they funded were white non-Maoris. But Mika’s show has already got a 5-star review and – surely only by coincidence – Mika told us: “The entire Arts Council of New Zealand and the Minister are meeting me a 5 o’clock tonight, here in Edinburgh.”

Mika was strangely not really complaining; he was more bemused.

Bemusement is not something common in Scotland. But protesting is. Though badly.

Copstick pointed out: “Scotland doesn’t do protesting very well. We have all-purpose Scottish Labour Party moaners. You get the feeling they’re just professionally disgruntled moany Scottish people waiting for the next protest to come along.

Looking on with interest from Grouchy Club Towers yesterday

“On one of the first days of the Fringe, there was a big group of them outside the Gilded Balloon protesting about an Israeli play that wasn’t even on there. It was on at the Underbelly.

“I went and said to them: Do you know you’re outside the wrong venue? Plus, if you’re really smart, you would stop with the moaning and the shouting that nobody can make out because you’re all broad Glaswegians and most of the people walking past have no idea what you’re saying. Play nice, get near the upside-down inflatable cow, get somebody with a knife and puncture it. I did not think that would escalate anything.”

At this point, Miss Behave walked in and took her shirt off.

You had to be there to understand.

She is co-running nearby venue Bob and Miss Behave’s Bookshop as well as putting on her own show.

Miss Behave and Mika compare tongues at the Grouchy Club (Photograph by Garry Platt)

“I have,” she told us, “been Mrs Cabaret for a really long time, wandering round being very slick, so this year I’m doing a very silly game show – Miss Behave Gameshow – involving mobile phones.

“I have a wonderful assistant – Harriet – and he is becoming the star of the show. He is wonderful. It’s very silly and fun. I’m starting with an idea, it’s evolving and, by the end of this month, it will be absolutely amazing. At the moment, it is an exciting, fun work in progress, very entertaining.”

At this point, multi-award-winning Adrienne Truscott arrived. As well as winning the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award for her solo show last year (and some lesser Edinburgh prizes), she is half of the Wau Wau Sisters.

Adrienne Truscott not standing on head (Photograph by Garry Platt)

“Stand on your head!” I said.

“No,” said Miss Behave. “You have to leave her alone. She’s got a bad back.”

“I,” said Copstick, “have been dangled upside-down on a trapeze by the Wau Wau Sisters.”

“What are you doing this year?” I asked.

“The Wau Wau Sisters’ Death Threats (and Other Forms of Flattery),” said Adrienne, “about doing a show that got death threats from religious fundamentalists. They sent us three letters and we had to do our whole show with armed guards in the house.”

“Moslems?” someone asked.

“No,” said Adrienne, “We had done a show which was a very cheap re-interpretation of the Last Supper.”

The Grouchy Club did not live up to its name yesterday. Everyone seemed to be laughing rather than being grouchy.

Blanche Cameron, Lewis Schaffer and Heather

But then I went over to Niddry Street, home of what seems like a hundred free venues, and I bumped into Lewis Schaffer and two of his entourage. I occasionally get text messages from Lewis Schaffer saying simply: Mood black.

I tried sending him a text message once saying: Mood black – to see what his reaction was. He never replied.

His main entourage – Heather Stevens – continues to spend most of her time with her face in her hands. This is understandable.

Lewis Schaffer has branded Blanche’s bosoms

But he seems to have rebranded another of his entourage – Blanche Cameron – as his personal stalker with a naked picture of himself across her bosoms.

To cheer myself up, I chatted to Chris Dangerfield, who was out on the cobbles promoting his show Sex With Children to innocent passers-by.

“I got here yesterday,” he told me. “My posters had gone missing. No posters, no flyers. Ten minutes before my first show, I was about to cancel it. Suddenly, sixty people turned up. I took £120.”

At this point a happy-looking couple approached.

Chris Dangerfield demonstrates with finger

“When you’ve finished with the show you wanna see,” Chris told them, “come and see Sex With Children.”

They looked slightly startled.

“Look!” he told them. “You can put a little penis on the flyer!”

He has flyers with a full-length photo of a man. They have a hole at groin level just big enough to put through and wiggle your little finger.

“There you are,” he told the couple. “Nine o’clock – in there – Sex With Children. You’ll love it.”

At this point – and this is true – I noticed the anonymous flyerer about whom I blogged two days ago.

At that point, he was handing out strips of blank paper to publicise Ben Target’s show.

The Anonymous Flyerer for ACMS yesterday

Yesterday, he told me: “I’m flyering for ACMS (the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society). It involves me standing with a cardboard box over my head and holding up a sign that says FLYER so people can take their own flyers. I do it for two hours every day and can’t see anyone who takes the flyers because I have my head in a box. But I am sure they’re the right people for the show.

“With ACMS, we also exit flyer them. As they leave, we give them flyers for the show they’re just.seen.”

“I admire originality,” I said.