The end of the UK’s Greatest Show On Legs and the naked balloon dance?

Martin Soan rubbers-up for Thriller at The Hob last night

Last night I went to see Martin Soan perform as part of The Greatest Show On Legs, the comedy troupe he created years ago. They were performing at the always interesting Hob venue in Forest Hill, South London.

In the interval, a large group of men in the audience cornered Martin in the bar.

“They asked me Have you finished painting yet?” Martin told me this morning. “They’d read your blog. They were out on a stag do. It’s the strangest stag do I’ve ever heard of: coming along to see naked men. But, there you go, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They follow your blog and they know me from my various… eh… performances.”

“It’s the irresistible attraction of The Greatest Show of Legs and the naked Balloon Dance,” I said. ”But you told me you’re not always going to be in The Greatest Show On Legs from now on.”

“No,” said Martin. “I keep trying to pass it on to other people, but they keep saying they can’t do it without me.”

“Well, they can’t,” I agreed.

“It’s perfectly feasible,” said Martin. “If I got them Paul Merton to go out as part of the Greatest Show On Legs, are you telling me people wouldn’t go see that and enjoy it?”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

“Well, not the same exactly,” agreed Martin.

“Paul Merton – nice man, but he hasn’t got your grace,” I said. “And he wouldn’t do the nude bit.”

“I just think it’s time to make The Legs more sophisticated,” said Martin.

“Sophisticated!!” I spluttered.

“Yeah,” said Martin. “Sophisticated.”

“That’d be like Fast & Furious without the cars,” I said, having just watched the trailer. “So there’s Steve Bowditch and now Dickie Ryszynski, but that’s only two people. There has to be three people… Chris Lynam was in the audience last night.”

The Balloon Dance was performed at The Hob last night

“He would be a good contender,” agreed Martin. “The first issue is there are three gigs coming  up in Switzerland.”

“You gotta go to Switzerland,” I said.

“I’d go to Switzerland,” said Martin, “but not by plane.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m not going to fly again,” explained Martin. “I’ve done all my flying. There’s a lot of comedians like me.”

“You think your luck might run out the next time you fly?” I asked.

“No. I just really do not want to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and hang around in airports and sit in a little metal tube and go up to 33,000 feet. I’ve done all that. And I don’t want to go by coach. I want to go by train or car. But the others don’t want to, because it’s more expensive.”

“Why not by coach?” I asked.

“I’ve lost people to coaches,” explained Martin. “Three people. And I was in an accident myself as a kid. Coming home after Christmas, the coach went off the road and into a ditch. No-one was killed, but it scared the living bejesus out of me as a child… and as an adult.”

The Red Sparrows took a more sophisticated turn last night

“The other issue is I said I only want to do The Legs with new material. You saw a bit of new material last night and getting the old material and doing it properly would be… Last night, for the first time with the Red Sparrows routine, we got proper vapour trails. I think that’s up to speed now.”

“And,” I said, “you now have a routine that can actually follow the naked Balloon Dance, which I would have thought was impossible… You say you don’t want to do old material, but you have to do the Balloon Dance.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right there,” agreed Martin. “I just want to do new material. I’m not saying I want to be taken seriously as an actor.”

“Oh, go on, say it,” I said.

“I want to be taken seriously as an actor,” said Martin.

“As a vagina?” I asked.

“No, but if we follow the simple rule…”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well,” said Martin, “The Number One rule is that in certain situations – not all situations – the prop is more important than you.”

“Even when you’re naked?” I asked.

“No,” said Martin, “Not when you’re naked.”

“Good,” I said.

“Rule Number Two,” said Martin. “Come in hard. Exit hard.”

“Is that just in performance or in other things?” I asked.

“Everything,” said Martin. “So it’s not as if I’m a stick-in-the-mud. It’s just that there are rules. Observe the rules and you’ll do fine.”

Audience participation Greatest Show On Legs style last night

“What’s the third rule?” I asked.

“Why should there be a third rule?” asked Martin.

“The Rule of Three,” I said.

“OK,” said Martin. “Rule Three – There is no Rule of Three.”

“But,” I said, “Just to check. The three of you are coming up to perform at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe on Friday 23rd August.”

“I’ll be coming up especially for that,” confirmed Martin. “By train.”

“You could sail up to Edinburgh,” I suggested. “You’re near the River Thames. Get a boat; take it up to Edinburgh. Although I suppose Malcolm Hardee’s not a good example of surviving on water.” (He drowned in 2005)

Despite the gloss, Martin paints this morning

“We once got a gig in Rotterdam,” said Martin. “Malcolm said Let’s go by boat. I said Yes. Steve Bowditch said No. Not in any way whatsoever.

“Then I looked it up and the English Channel into the port of Rotterdam is the biggest navigable waterway in the world. Absolutely frightening. Even Malcolm chickened out of that one. I think we would have died… Though what a brilliant death…

“You could have blogged and blogged about that one, John. Two of us dead in one go and it could then have been the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee/Martin Soan Awards. And it would have been a lot bleedin’ easier for me. I wouldn’t be here painting your woodwork with old-fashioned gloss paint.”

“Is there a new-fashioned gloss?” I asked.

“Yes there is,” said Martin.

“I like the old gloss,” I said.

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

Misha Anker sounded good at Hampstead Theatre yesterday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God knows,” laughed Misha.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How did you do that?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And the performers?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great Sexpectations – a successful stab at some 21st century divine decadence

Grace Gelder & Mat Fraser on stage last night

I remember asking the late godfather of British alternative comedy Malcolm Hardee why The Greatest Show of Legs had come up with their idea of the naked balloon dance in the 1970s.

Why naked?

“There was an awful lot of it about then,” he told me. “Nudity.” And there was. The Romans in Britain causing outrage with simulated sodomy at the National Theatre in 1980. And people were streaking at, it seemed, every public event under the… well, not under the sun… this was and is Britain.

In 1969, I saw Hair on stage in London’s West End and it seemed like you couldn’t go to any fringe play anywhere – be it Greek drama, kitchen sink or a play about Serbo-Croatian pottery of the 13th century – without people stripping off and jiggling their boobs or balls at you two feet from your face. Every naff suburban pub seemed to have lunchtime strippers. And then there was Paul Raymond.

Bush Hall – OTT scene of last night’s Great Sexpectations

I was reminded of this last night when I went to Great Sexpectations - the semi-finals of the performance section of the annual Erotic Awards, held at the wonderfully OTT Bush Hall in London. The event was a cross between a classy Venetian masked ball and a strip club run by Paul Raymond when he was claiming he was in the business of art not tart.

Last night was a successful stab at some glamorous 21st century divine decadence, just as co-organiser Grace Gelder had promised when I chatted to her for a blog a week ago.

She organised the charity fundraising event with Lianne Coop under the banner of Juicy Productions.

During the interval at the Great Sexpectations show last night

The fundraising was for The Outsiders’ Trust and this was the event’s 25th year, but Grace & Lianne’s first after taking over event production from originator Tuppy Owens

The Erotic Awards sign on stage last night had, as its subtitle, a quote from English artist Grayson Perry who, in The Times, described Tuppy Owens and her helpers as “the good people in a gloriously mucky business”.

Last night’s performers were divided into Stripping and Performance Art. Personally, I couldn’t see the difference. There was also a high element of Mime going on too and the whole thing reminded me of the newly-added section of the Edinburgh Fringe devoted to Cabaret – though with added nudity and expensive costumes.

One former venue for the event was London’s ICA - the Institute of Contemporary Arts – and, as last night’s stonkingly excellent compere Mat Fraser said: “We are contemporary and we are artistic.”

The craft of compering is always under-recognised and Mat seamlessly brought together audience and performers into a party atmosphere… with, among delights too numerous to fully mention, Rubyyy Jones &?!’ (pronounced And What?!) singing the Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk To Fuck song and stripteaser Tiny Tim bringing up-to-date 1960s TV’s Musical Muscle Man Tony Holland’s act with added sex and back-flips off a large stage speaker.

A highly coveted Erotic Award – the Golden Flying Penis

Other highlights for me included Aurora Galore debuting a new act. She was winner of the Miss Paris Burlesque Festival 2012 and says her influences range “from Lady GaGa to Haute Couture and a wide range of dance styles”. That rather understates the act.

Then there was Mynxie Monroe with an act which only incidentally included a wig, two bras, two panties and a dog being beheaded. Now, for me, that’s top class, well-structured entertainment.

There’s a special mention for (from Norfolk) gender bending MissCairo Mascara doing a striptease as Pinocchio with creative use of the nose.

But let’s not mention or even hint at what MisSa Blue did with the lit candles.

All this was merely a ‘taster’ for the much larger Night of The Senses event in May.

If Mat Fraser’s description last night was a true reflection of what has happened at that event in previous years, it’s going to be… well, quite a lot of things are better left unsaid.

At what point does ‘being famous’ start? Take these three comedians… Please.

(This was also published by the Indian news site WSN)

Lewis Schaffer publicising his Leicester Square Theatre show

Is American comedian Lewis Schaffer famous? He has been performing his free show – Free Until Famous – for so long that it has become the longest-running solo comedy show in London.

He usually starts his shows by saying they will be free until he is famous.

In a fortnight, he begins an eight-week run of his new show – Lewis Schaffer’s American Guide to England – at the Leicester Square Theatre (every Sunday) at £10 per ticket. Does this, as mind-reader Doug Segal has suggested, mean that Lewis Schaffer is now famous because he is charging admission? And will his ongoing Free Until Famous shows affect or enhance audiences for his paid shows?

Who knows but, last night, he lost the shirt off his back.

Lewis Schaffer performing semi-naked in London last night

A woman in the audience told him she was disappointed he was wearing clothes because she had seen the publicity for his Leicester Square shows (in which he is seen, naked, under an American flag) and thought that was the show she had come to see.

So he took his shirt off and did half his show half naked,

I am not sure if this is a sign of successful publicity or fame or desperation or not.

Scór Encore with the newly respectable Aindrias de Staic (left)

Yesterday, I also got a publicity blurb from Irish broadcaster RTÉ which informed me that Aindrias de Staic is one of the judges on the new talent show Scór Encore starting on their TG4 channel this Sunday.

Just a few years ago, Aindrias was performing an autobiographical Edinburgh Fringe show called Around The World on 80 Quid. He had done exactly what it said in the title. When I contacted him yesterday, he told me: “You could say I’ve been appearing on all sides of the globe lately…

Aindrias de Staic – his more well-known, for-him-normal look

“Last Friday, I was appearing in the UK premiere of Songs for Amy at the Glasgow Film Festival. This week I’m in Toronto, appearing in the first ever Spoken Word Symposium at the Folk Alliance Conference in Toronto – don’t forget to say I’m performing my ‘unique brand of gaelic-hiphop’ – and this coming weekend I’m back on Irish screens as a judge on Scór Encore.

“Having been up before the judge myself many times, it will be an interesting turn-around for this Galway boy to sit in a judge’s chair. I’ll tell you more soon.”

But does all this big screen/stage/small screen work mean he is famous?

At a certain level, it must mean that.

But, as yet, people are not selling or buying Aindrias de Staic face masks or costumes.

Buy your own Methane costume

My chum Mr Methane – the Farter of Alternative Comedy – told me yesterday that ‘officially-licensed Mr Methane costumes’ are currently on sale at the very reasonable asking price of £14.95 – a saving of £15.04. And, for only £1.99 extra, you can also buy “a realistic-looking silver glitter microphone with a black handle” to “complete the desired look”.

Does the fact a company wants to buy a licence to sell copies of your costume to the public mean you are famous?

Mr Methane told me that it set him wondering how many other UK comics market their image via costumes. Sasha Baron Cohen’s ‘mankini’ costume seems to be out there for around £5 but, says Mr Methane, “generally people’s marketing seems to be mostly via those likelife celebrity masks as opposed to a fully-blown costume.

Alan Partridge mask as worn by Mr Methane

“I myself,” confided Mr Methane, “own an Alan Partiridge mask. It was on offer in a local charity shop, unused and still bagged for 50p, so my sister bought it for me with the idea that I could annoy everyone on Christmas Day with Alan Partridge impressions.”

I think everyone in the UK would admit Alan Partridge is famous.

But he does not exist. What about fame?

Excreta comedy + critic Kate Copstick licked by paedophile DJ Jimmy Savile

Bob Slayer without wires in Leicester last Friday (photograph by Tom Wren)

WARNING: This particular blog is not for the faint-hearted. Do not read it if you are easily (or even slightly) offended by ‘bad language’ or graphic detail. If you are offended, do not complain to me. I have, as they say, clearly printed a warning…

In yesterday morning’s blog, I mentioned comedian Bob Slayer’s naked exploits running along the balcony as part of the Greatest Show on Legs’ performance at a Leicester Comedy Festival preview last Friday.

Yesterday afternoon, Bob told me that, after Friday’s show in Leicester, he encountered a couple from the audience:

“We were chatting about the consequences of falling off the balcony. I think they would have been in the negative area of the spectrum. So I reassured the lady: You do realise I was on a wire…? 

“Oh, she says, I am so pleased to find out there was some safety as I was really worried for you. At this point, her husband started laughing and said: He was naked! Where do you think the wire was attached?!”

Me + a clothed Bob Slayer at BBC Television Centre yesterday (photograph by my eternally-un-named friend)

Yesterday, Bob and I met up to have a look round BBC Television Centre in London’s Shepherd’s Bush.’TC’ is being closed later this year. My first job in television was answering the phones at TC if anything went wrong with the plumbing, if anyone’s office radiators needed bleeding or if mice appeared (among another things).

“I’ve been in Television Centre many times,” Bob told me yesterday. “I got a bit annoyed at a Comedy Shuffle party once and just wandered round the building into other end-of-series parties. I went into the Would I Lie To You? wrap party. Somebody asked me Are you supposed to be here? and I said Yes and they believed me and I thought I should have been on the panel of that bloody show because I’m a bloody good liar! And I drank their wine and nicked a box of wine as I left. Someone asked if I’d nicked the box of wine and I said No, I was given it and they believed me.”

Later, as we walked past The Defector’s Weld pub on Shepherd’s Bush Green, on our way to see comedy critic Kate Copstick at her nearby Mama Biashara charity shop, Bob told me: “I removed Copstick’s bra in that pub!”

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“It was after some gig,” he explained vaguely.

When, a little later, we were having a meal with Copsick, I asked Bob about it again.

“It was a nice bra,” he said. “But I felt I couldn’t keep her bra, so I brought it back. Did you feel I rejected it?” he asked Copstick.

“I’m more sensitive than people give me credit for,” Copstick told him.

“I know,” said Bob. “I know. Most people are.”

Bob Slayer & Copstick exchange specs & tongues yesterday

“How did you know it was Copstick’s bra?” I asked.

“Because,” explained Bob, “it had her boobs in it when I first saw it.”

“Indeed they were,” agreed Copstick.

“And then they weren’t in it,” said Bob. “And then the bra was in my hands. So, unless she had nicked it off a tramp in the street…”

“I’ve given up bras now,” said Copstick.

“Oh yes,” said Bob, looking, “so you have… Kenyan style?”

“Yup,” said Copstick, bouncing with enthusiasm.

“What a pity I don’t do a video blog,” I said.

“Jason Rouse showed me a video once,” said Bob. “He has a routine which, to my knowledge, he’s never done on stage and I’m trying to persuade him to do it. Basically, he just fires poo out of his arse, upwards of six to twelve feet. He reckons his record is fifteen feet.”

“Are we talking fully-formed balls of poo?” asked Copstick.

“He drops his trousers…” started Bob.

“Or liquid?” asked Copstick.

“He showed me a video of it,” Bob continued, “when we were halfway to Edinburgh Highlight and I’m eating, thinking I’m not going to be put off by this. He’s trying to put me off eating and he’s shitting in the video and I’m still eating and there’s people puking on his phone and I’m thinking It’s only a video! and then, all the way to Edinburgh, he’s saying Come on, Bob, I need a shit, I need a shit!

”We get to Edinburgh and go up these stairs out of the car park into the shopping centre, can’t find how to get to Highlight and he’s going I need a shit! and I’m creasing up with laughter: Oh stop it, Jason!”

“You’ve no sympathy for the human condition,” said Copstick.

“…and he just drops his trousers in the stairwell,” Bob continued, “and he shot it out six feet. I pulled my video camera out of my pocket to take a video, leant in and it hit me… not literally hit me, but the stench of it hit me and I puked and he was so proud he had made me puke.”

“And all this,” asked Copstick, “was in the stairwell of the shopping centre?”

“…of The Omni in Edinburgh, yeah,” confirmed Bob.

“Dear God!” said Copstick. “Projectile shitting could be the future of comedy. Still, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to steal Jason’s material.”

“As far as I know,” said Bob, “his material is still there.”

“It’s not like, one of these days,” continued Copstick, “you’re gonna see Robin Williams live on stage and Jason’s going to be saying That’s my act!”

“You think the act has potential?” I asked.

Copstick raised an eyebrow.

Bob then told us a legally currently unprintable story about paedophile DJ Jimmy Savile.

“I’ve been licked by Jimmy Savile,” said Copstick. “I was doing a BBC kids’ TV show called On The Waterfront and, in it, I did this thing called Through The Sunroof - a rip-off of Through The Keyhole…. but it was Through The Sunroof – What sort of person would have a car like this?

“We were doing one of Jimmy Savile’s many cars. We should have spotted the dried semen stains on the back seat – Dried semen stains, a rattle and a cuddly toy? What sort of person would have a car like this? It must be Jimmy Savile.

“When he was introduced to me, he was just… He was the only person – apart from possibly Xxxxx Xxxxx – who I met and I just went Earghh! inside… Even I did and I’ve had some appalling sex with some truly unsavoury people. People even I find unsavoury. I once had a girl who blew paint from her arse directly onto my face.

“So it’s not that I haven’t been around…

“But I’m introduced to Jimmy Savile, I put my hand out to shake his hand and he takes my hand, turns it over and licks the palm.”

Bob said nothing, just looked at Copstick.

I said nothing, just looked at Copstick.

“Well, that’s kind of exactly what happened,” said Copstick. “There was a moment of silent stillness where you could just hear everyone think Earghhh! and I was thinking I can’t say anything. After all, this is Jimmy Savile.”

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” Copstick repeated, “because he was Jimmy fucking Savile. I just thought Earghhh! and wiped the palm of my hand on my trous.”

“Did your eyes meet?” I asked.

“Oh!” said Copstick, “his eyes were like little marbles. Horrible. But I didn’t say anything to him. He was Jimmy Savile. Which is obviously what everyone else thought when he did things to them. They thought: I can’t say he stuck his dick in my ear, because I’m only six and no-one will believe me, because he’s Jimmy Savile.”

“And that would have been aural sex,” I suggested.

There was a long silence.

Malcolm Hardee & Bob Slayer, British comedians, discovered high and naked

Last year’s poster for the annual Awards…

The Edinburgh Fringe does not start until August but has to be thought about from now.

Yesterday, I paid the fee for the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show to be listed in the Edinburgh Fringe programme.

The extract below from Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake proved to be slightly relevant yesterday. Malcolm died in 2005. The incident took place in the early 1990s and actually did happen – I talked to other comedians who were in the hotel at the time and they confirmed Malcolm got his balconies confused. They told me the policemen looked “stunned”.

* * * * *

Julia remained a flatmate but wasn’t into mating or at least not with me. We did share many things, naturally; we even co-owned a long leather coat that she had bought but which I decided looked much finer on me. And we often mooched around together. When I was asked to screen test for a part in the video recording of a live show in Newcastle of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out. Julia was keen to come along on the jaunt.

The day before we were to head North I had gone into Ladbroke’s bookmakers at Charing Cross with twenty pounds and, in a miraculous series of drink-inspired bets, had won £5,200 by the end of the afternoon. Ladbroke’s didn’t have enough cash in the office to pay me so I agreed to pick up my winnings the following day. For some reason Julia and I convinced ourselves that the most appropriate place for this vast booty was a hat box she intended to take to Newcastle. So we turned up at King’s Cross for the train, Julia manically clinging to her hat box and me feeling like the cock of the walk as I swaggered along in my favourite leather coat – though I probably looked more like a raddled Gestapo torturer.

At Newcastle we were booked into the five-star Copthorne Hotel where Vic Reeves, Simon Day, Jimmy Nail and assorted others connected with Vic’s Big Night Out were staying. Julia and I scanned our room for a hiding place for the five grand and the only thing even vaguely suitable was a tall vase on top of the television. I picked the vase up, shook it and tipped out a pack of very pornographic playing cards. There were pictures of people – mainly – doing things even I wouldn’t do. I pocketed the cards. In case the owner came back in search of them we decided not to put the cash in the vase and so it ended up divided between the pockets of the leather coat.

I failed to make it on to Vic’s video but the live show was jolly. We trooped back from it on Vic’s tour bus – a sort of mobile hotel with bedrooms and lounge area – and spent a liquid evening in the Copthorne bar. I was one of the last to leave and when I was approaching my room I realised that Simon Day, who had been chosen in preference to me for the video, was on the same landing. He had been given the presidential suite – a very grand affair with a balcony that ran along the front of the hotel. I suspected that Simon had retired early to his room because he had lured some unsuspecting female there and, all things considered, it seemed right that I should bid him a congratulatory goodnight.

Wearing only the leather coat and a pair of socks I crawled along the balcony of my room and clambered across to Simon’s. I hammered on his window intending to flash open the coat when he pulled back the curtains. Not a sound. Disappointed I eventually returned to my room to find Julia in her bed, cowering under the sheets, and two men with guns pointed at me. They were Special Branch. Anti-terrorism. And I vaguely recalled some notices pinned in the hotel about a senior politician – Michael Heseltine, I think – who was staying there and ‘would guests behave accordingly’ as the Special Branch boys handcuffed me and marched me down to a Portakabin in the car park that was both their headquarters and their prison cell.

I was asked to turn out my pockets: £5,200 in cash and a very pornographic pack of playing cards. I was asked for my address, which I gave as 1 Mell Street, Greenwich, which they ran through their computer. This told them a fact that I had known but not been unduly bothered by before: that Mell Street had been the home of Gerard Tuite, the convicted IRA bomber who had been arrested there some years before.

Things did not look good. I was facing a charge that could have resulted in life imprisonment had a jury been convinced that I intended to murder Mr Heseltine with a pack of dirty playing cards. I spent an uncomfortable few hours – what a waste of a night in a five-star hotel – until Vic Reeves’ tour manager could be found to confirm that I was there to not star in his video.

* * * * *

Bob Slayer at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe

That anecdote became relevant yesterday because I asked comedian Bob Slayer if anything interesting had happened when he performed in Leicester on Friday.

“Yes I nearly died,” he told me. “Well, almost. I was given a Health & Safety lecture after the gig because, during the show, I ran along the balcony wall (naked of course) 40 feet up.”

The moral to this story is simple.

Times change.

Comedians don’t.

The attraction of British balconies to naked comedians remains constant.

A chat about a Christmas video turns to talk of comedians in court in the 1960s

Matt Roper spends a Happy Goddam Christmas in Soho

Comedian Matt Roper is flying to India on New Year’s Eve for two months. At least, that was what he intended to do.

“I think my new principle should be Don’t book flights when you’ve had two bottles of wine and a load of Guinness and a few tequilas,” he told me over pizza in London’s Soho.

“I’d had a heavy night out and woke up in the morning. My life most mornings, if I’m being honest is… Well, if you’ve ever seen a window with condensation on it and it slowly clears away… That’s my brain in the morning… I remembered doing something about a flight, so I went and checked my emails and the Confirmation was there… Flying out on 31st December, which is perfect for me because I don’t like New Year… and coming back on June 3rd…. What?… June 3rd?!!… but the most surprising thing was I’d managed to choose my seat and decide what sort of meal I was having.

“I’ve been many, many times to India. I love it out there, but I haven’t been for about six years. I’ll go to Goa and then hopefully write my Edinburgh Fringe show in some hill station. But my point is Never book a flight when you’re hammered.”

“Maybe that should be your Fringe show title,” I suggested: “Never Book a Flight When You’re Pissed. But you shouldn’t go to India. You’re in the iTunes Comedy charts at the moment with Happy Goddam Christmas, this Christmas song of yours.”

“Well, it’s an anti-Christmas Christmassy song, really,” Matt corrected me, “like Fairytale of New York.”

“When that was released,” I said, “it was inconceivable it could become a standard festive song like White Christmas.”

“It’s a British thing,” suggested Matt. “We’re maybe not drawn to the natural sugary, positive ditties.”

“Is it the first song you’ve written?” I asked.

“No,” said Matt. “All the Wifredo stuff you hear at Edinburgh is all orginal songs, though I did one of those in collaberation with Pippa Evans.

“With Happy Goddam Christmas, I had the music for a long time – the basic structure of the song – it was about an ex I was feeling particularly, you know, bitter and jaded about. But the song isn’t iactually about me feeling bitter about an ex. I took it to Pippa Evans and she added a middle eight onto it and we worked together on the lyrics.”

Pippa Evans performs as her on-stage character Loretta Maine. Someone once described her as ‘Dolly Parton as seen through the lens of Mike Leigh’.

“Arthur Smith has a little cameo in the video,” Matt told me, “and we have Sanderson Jones and Imran Yusef – in the video, they’re in the band – Arthur’s in the toilet brandishing his Hammond organ.”

“So you wanted to make lots of money with a Christmas song?” I asked.

“Not really,” said Matt. “It was just about having a bit of fun. It’s easy to release whatever you want on iTunes. It’s quite incredible how the music industry’s changed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Edinburgh Fringe were along similar lines? If you could cut out all the middle people.”

“Well,” I said, “the Free Fringe and the Free Festival sort-of do that. Are you thinking of doing one of the two free festivals next year?”

“Possibly. I had a lot of fun with Just The Tonic this year. I would like to see the Fringe level out into an event where your established comics and TV names are on the ticketed Fringe and the less-established acts can realistically afford to do it and make at least a little bit of money by the end of it.”

Matt’s father, George Roper, was one of The Comedians on the seminal Granada TV comedy stand-up show of the 1970s.

It was a different era.

“There was a club called The New Luxor Club in Hulme, Manchester,” Matt told me.

I raised my eyebrow at the mention of a club in Hulme. I went to Hulme a few times when I worked at Granada TV in the 1980s. If you went to the Aaben Cinema there, when you came out, you might find three youths sitting on your car bonnet saying: “So how much are you gonna pay to get your car back?”

“In the 1960s,” Matt told me, “they would have ‘gentlemen’s evenings’ at some of the Manchester social clubs, working men’s clubs, cabaret clubs. It would not be uncommon to have six stand-up comics and six female strippers/exotic dancers on one bill. At this point in the 1960s, it was legal to be naked on-stage, but it was illegal to move.

“The police decided to bust The New Luxor Club and my father was one of the six comics performing there that night. The police raided the club and charged the comedians with aiding and abetting the club owner – a guy called Vincent Chilton – for running a disorderly house.

“The six strippers and the six comics were in the dock at Manchester Crown Court and the police had to stand up in the court and tell the jokes. I swear – no word of a lie.

“I don’t know the exact date, but the police had to get up and say something like On the 28th of June 1965, George Roper stood up on stage and said the following joke: ‘A policewoman and a policeman were walking ‘ome from t’station one night. Ooh, she said, I’ve left me knickers back at t’station. Ooh, don’t worry, said t’policeman. Hitch up yer skirt, let the dog ‘ave a sniff. Half an hour later, t’dog comes back with t’sergeant’s balls in its mouth’…

“Can you imagine? In the Crown Court? The public gallery had to be cleared because everyone was laughing so much.

“There was a guy called Jackie Carlton, who was the apotheosis of Manchester club comics at the time and all the younger comics like Frank Carson and Bernard Manning looked up to him. He was very camp, very flamboyant. When it was his turn in the dock, the judge asked: Was that one of your jokes? and he said, Yes, but I tell it much better than that. He was found guilty.

“My dad was the last comic up and, when it was his turn to stand in the dock, the judge asked Is that one of your stories? and he said Oh! Not heard that one before and, for some reason, he got off with it by playing the underdog, as he always did. The other five comics got fined, but my dad got off with it.

“I asked my uncle about it not long ago and he said people were queueing round the block to buy the Manchester Evening News to read the jokes that were told in court.”

* * *

Below, Jackie Carlton talks in the 1970s about camp comedy and obscenity…

At the Edinburgh Fringe: a battered face, Russian Egg Roulette and thefts

Ian Fox’s injuries at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday

The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show was held last night at the Counting House in  Edinburgh.

Before the show started, comedian-writer-photographer Ian Fox  came along to say hello.

“Will you be staying?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I am feeling a bit nauseous. It’s going to be hot in there.” He was attacked in the street a couple of nights ago, as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog,

He took his dark glasses off and showed me the damage inflicted on him and the three stitches used to sew the side of his nose up. Not a good look.

That is, perhaps, my most vivid memory of the show. That and three naked men in the same corridor.

The show lasted two hours with 24 people performing in 11 acts. I think we came in four minutes under time, but I have forgotten the exact figure. I saw more of it than I usually see of those annual shows but still not very much, as I was running around slightly. Well, at my age, tottering around. So, if anyone can tell me what happened, I would be grateful. And I don’t even drink.

Miss Behave comperes the Malcolm Hardee Award Show (Photograph by Lewis Schaffer)

I do remember the Greatest Show on Legs preparing for their Naked Balloon Dance by stripping off in the narrow corridor leading to the room, as there was a space problem backstage. This meant that a more-than-middle-aged couple who left the room to get drinks from the bar returned to find three naked men talking about balloon movements as they turned the corner. The woman looked simultaneously surprised yet pleased at the sight.

I also remember the extraordinarily superb compering of Miss Behave  in her skin-tight red costume. She head-butted a watermelon. What can I say? It exploded and was very messy.

The three Award winners were:

Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality: The Rubberbandits

Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award: Stuart Goldsmith

Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid’ Award: Trevor Noah

I remember those winners accepting their awards, of course.

And fairly memorable also was the sight of comedians Arthur Smith and Richard Herring smashing eggs against their own foreheads in our Russian Egg Roulette contest supervised by Andy Dunlop, World President of the World Egg Throwing Federation.

Andy Dunlop: Russian Egg Roulette supremo

Earlier in the week, I mentioned in a blog that Andy Dunlop and World Gravy Wrestling champion Joel Hicks had recently triumphed at the Worthing Air Tattoo. In my innocence at the time, I assumed this was an air event which involved planes. But, last night, Andy told me it was actually what used to be called the Bognor Birdman Rally transferred to a new seaside home in Worthing – that’s the one where people leap off the end of the pier with wings attached in an attempt to fly.

“The soles of my feet were sore,” Andy told me, “because you hit the water at about 35 mph.

Lewis Schaffer + Egg Roulette medal

The eventual surprise winner in our knockout Russian Egg Roulette contest last night was American comic Lewis Schaffer.

Claire Smith of the Scotsman newspaper later lamented to me:

“What have you done? The award winning Lewis Schaffer – We are never going to hear the last of that…”

As the winner, according to Andy Dunlop, Lewis Schaffer automatically becomes official champion Scottish Tosser, something of which Lewis Schaffer seemed inordinately proud.

His win at the Counting House was all the more impressive because, last year, he had been banned from the Counting House because, during his shows there, he kept turning the loud air conditioner off and, when it got hot, opening the doors.

Arthur Smith was an early casualty in the Russian Egg Roulette contest and made an early exit from the show to prepare for his legendary annual Alternative Tour of the Royal Mile, which started at 2 o’clock.

I missed about the first ten minutes of this, but was in time to see Arthur try to prove the non-existence of God by standing on the entrance steps to St Giles’ Cathedral and saying, if there was a God, then would he please provide a naked woman.

Unfortunately for Arthur’s thesis, a naked woman then did appear to join him on the steps only to leave almost immediately, mumbling something about it being very cold out.

Martin Soan of the Greatest Show on Legs (currently in the spare bedroom of my rented Edinburgh flat) tells me that Arthur’s Royal Mile tours used to include genuine historical facts but, last night, this seemed to include only: “That’s some old church over there.”

Naked man stands proud in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile last night

Certain traditions were maintained, though – in particular, getting a punter to climb on top of a reasonably high object for £10, strip naked and sing Flower of Scotland and, further down the Royal Mile, Arthur getting drenched when someone threw a bucket of water over him from an upstairs window (also hitting a passing and entirely innocent cyclist).

One (I think new) addition to the tour was Karen O Novak being designated as an official kisser and comedian Shappi Khorsandi having a theatrical snog with her… and a punter saying he had to go to the loo and being persuaded that, for £10, he should instead piss on the cobbles in the middle of the High Street while the tour throng (perhaps 30 strong) stood in a circle round him with their backs to him. He said he couldn’t pee if we watched. I felt we should have watched.

There was also the appearance of a live and apparently untethered crocodile at what I think was the junction of George IV Bridge and the High Street.

Those, rather than my own two-hour show are my main memories of last night.

But, on a more sobering note, today I got a message from Lewis Schaffer which said:

Lewis Schaffer loses £600 in Edinburgh

It was a horrible day yesterday. Two brilliant shows from me and then I go to my venue to retrieve my suitcase and about £600 was missing. It was stolen from inside my bag there. I was a plonker for leaving money in the suitcase. A schmuck. 

I’m still in pain today. 

Your event was the best ever and not just cause you let me be in it. I loved the Greatest Show on Legs and Miss Behave was amazingly over the top. 

For me to beat Arfur Smith was a comfort as, on a few occasions, he’s trashed America on stage right after I’ve been on. Deliberately. So sweet revenge. 

And see what I mean about boiling Edinburgh rooms? No ventilation at all. A freezing cold evening outside and inside it’s boiling. A simple extractor fan would have cooled that room!

Lewis was not the only one whose property was stolen. I heard today of a comedian whose MacBook Pro laptop computer was stolen from inside a locked room at his venue. It contained all his scripts and the lighting cues for his shows.

Because it was an Apple computer, he had taken the precaution of activating the Find My Mac facility in the iCloud. This means that, using GPS, you can see on another device where the MacBook Pro is.

He traced it to a student accommodation block and to one of three rooms. He told the police, who said they could do nothing about it unless he gave them the IP address

Quite why (given that they had due cause to believe the stolen computer was where it was) they could not go and knock on doors to locate the stolen machine, is one of those mysteries of policing to rank alongside Is there a standard bribery rate card for the Metropolitan Police?

The increasingly prestigious critic and judge Kate Copstick

I heard about the stolen computer when I was having tea with Kate Copstick, a long-time judge for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards.

We were talking over ideas for Fringe shows next year and how best to honour Malcolm’s memory. Ideas included hosting a Biggest Bollocks competition and having famous male comics appear in full drag – the audience has to guess who they are.

It is ideas like this, I suspect which make the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show increasingly prestigious.

After that, we went our separate ways: she to have tea with a millionaire, I to see the Greatest Show on Legs strip off for their penultimate show at the Hive venue.

My life. Don’t talk to me about my life.

But things could be worse. I could be Ian Fox.

Before I went to bed tonight, I emailed him to find out how his battered face was.

“Starting to itch a bit tonight,” he e-mailed back, “and my teeth are starting to throb slightly, as the sensation is starting to return.”

This sounds at least hopeful.

How to kick women plus Bob Slayer’s Edinburgh Fringe review : 1 star, 2 balls

WARNING: This blog has language offensive to non- Glaswegians.

Bob Slayer: one of the most Marmite of performers?

I woke up at 4.00am this morning and, after listening to stories about women kicking each other, I checked my e-mails.

One of these, inevitably, was from comedian Bob Slayer. His latest Edinburgh Fringe show Bob Slayer – He’s a Very Naughty Boy – has received a one star review from The Skinny.

“I am very proud of this review,” he tells me – and I believe him.

You can read the review online here, but I think it is worth me risking copyright infringement by re-printing it, if only because it includes a link to this blog. It goes like this…

____________________

Bob Slayer appears with no jokes and no material, and ends up with no clothes. Although there’s a sound of laughter, we’re not quite sure why. Surrealism is not dead, it seems.

Diamonds from coal is what we’re after as he focuses on a few members of the audience to try to coax something into the gig. A suitcase of props is used to re-enact a children’s story, the lead character a good sport from the small crowd.  It’s shambolic, usually awkward and frequently painful, yet there’s a split in the crowd as some lap it up.

Interaction with the audience should lead to more chuckles, but there’s little flow to proceedings. The show becomes something of an open mic night, individuals cajoled to the spotlight, and it is at all times entirely unpredictable.

Slayer leaves the stage to give way to a perplexing straight soliloquy from one, unabashed nudity to another, and an a capella rendition of Our House by yet one more. It’s madness indeed and the sight of a nude Slayer at its death, balls bouncing as he jogs on the spot, seems, strangely, to be the only possible conclusion.

Footnote: Bob Slayer has written his own very amusing review of this performance on John Fleming’s blog

____________________

I feel I should point out that Bob Slayer will be naked again when he performs as part of the Greatest Show on Legs at my two-hour Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show in Edinburgh on Friday 24th August.

Now back to women kicking each other.

Janey Godley demonstrates how to kick people

My Glaswegian comedy chum Janey Godley has descended on my rented flat in Edinburgh for a couple of nights while she does various Fringe shows. I now know what Iraq felt like when the Americans arrived.

As I only had three hours sleep the previous night – Paul Provenza’s late Set List show was to blame – I had a half hour doze on the living room floor at 10.00pm last night… except I did not wake up until 4.00am this morning, when Janey arrived back at the flat with a clatter of sausage rolls and beef sandwiches. How does anyone make bread clatter? It was like a juggler throwing a tantrum in a kitchen.

When I had gone to sleep on the floor, Janey had been asleep in the spare bedroom. While I was in the land of nod, she had woken up, gone out, probably attacked people in the street, then certainly performed at the late-night Spank! show and she had just come back, I suspect, with the sole purpose of waking me up by recreating the Battle of El Alamein in the kitchen.

“The Sunday Herald phoned me up yesterday and asked for my best memories of the Olympics,” she told me.

“What’s the uncensored version?” I asked.

“The gymnastics men,” she said, “on that big padded horse thing like in the war film. The fake horse with the two handles. They hold on to the handles, then swing their legs round and try to not catch their balls on it. That’s an amazing sport. Men swinging their big long legs round a fake horse trying not to catch their cock on it. And then Jade Jones was great.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“She’s a wee Welsh taekwondo girl who won a gold medal for Britain. Never heard of her before. All we ever got on the news for four fucking years was that wee Tom Daley boy in his pants. Tom Daley the diver. He was constantly on the news for four years, sitting in his swimming trunks and then he didn’t win a gold medal.

“But Jade Jones, who we’d never seen, is a wee chick who is only 19 and taekwondo is a sport where you can kick in the body, you can do a roundhouse to the head, but what they quite favour is a quick kick to the cunt. And she won a gold doing it. I was never good at much, she said, but then they found I could kick quite high and they made me do this sport. Now she just goes around kicking women in the fanny.”

“A roundhouse?” I asked.

“You’ve seen it in all the Steven Seagal movies,” Janey explained, “where he turns his body round like a windmill with his leg out and cracks somebody in the head.”

“Would you like to demonstrate?” I asked.

“I WILL kick you in the fucking head,” said Janey. “Taekwondo  is great. They go tippy-toes… tippy-toes… tippy-toes… kick… tippy-toes… kick… tippy-toes… kick. I thought This is fucking fantastic! Why did I not know this existed? I think every single angry, violent, public fight should be sorted by women outside pubs not stabbing or screaming and bitching, just going tippy-toes… tippy-toes… tippy-toes… and then trying to kick each other in the fanny. Arguments would get resolved and people would get to watch it.”

“Not for posh folk, then,” I said.

“For them, there’s dressage,” said Janey. “Dressage is like Mrs Poshingtons riding horses that look like they’re having a very slow nervous breakdown doing tippy-toes… tippy-toes… Who the fuck makes horses do that? Really bored, rich people, that’s who. You don’t have people from Castlemilk in Glasgow saying Ma wee Tanya-Marie’s into dressage! and then getting a pony to go tippy-toes into the city centre.

“Someone must have said: You know what I like? I like a horse galloping as Nature intended with its big flanks sweating and running. And some other posh person’s gone: No, I want to see a horse walk like it’s got big elastic bands round its legs. What the fuck is that about?”

“Was it a good idea to have a sleep before the gig or a bad idea?” I asked her.

“When I was out yesterday,” she told me, “I started to get cold and that made me sleepy. I had on flip-flops and bare feet and pyjama bottoms and a top.”

“In the street?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “It’s called fashion. So I came back and went to bed and was absolutely soaked in sweat when I woke up, but it’s not the onset of the menopause. It would be brilliant if it was: I was promised a menopause and it’s not happened. I was told my womb would dry up, I was told I’d get quite cranky and shouty…”

“GET quite cranky and shouty?” I interrupted. “GET?”

“That’s what my husband said too,” admitted Janey. “He said: So this is where the barrier’s set already and it’s about to go UP a crank? I told him he had to be prepared for me to get judgmental, sweaty, hot and angry. I might throw my wobblies for no good reason and there might be times when I’m highly emotional.

“My husband just looked at me and said: You’re already all o’ they things and you have been since you were seventeen. So I have all this to look forward to and then my vagina dries up. Great. But it hasn’t happened yet. I was promised a menopause, but my ovaries are saying No, we’re still quite healthy and releasing eggs like a fucking battery hen. I’ve been told my ovaries will dry up like walnuts and my nipples will fall off and my skin will go flakey and I’ll start shouting at people.”

I feel I should point out – publicity is everything at the Fringe – that Janey Godley will be appearing on my two-hour Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show in Edinburgh on Friday 24th August.

She may kick. She will shout.

BBC Radio women + a woman wearing only a lettuce at the Edinburgh Fringe

The BBC are giving away plastic pints

I woke up this morning to two things. One was the sound of comedian Janey Godley trying but failing to vomit in my toilet. I fear, dear reader, that you and I may hear more of this in the days to come.

The other thing was an e-mail which started:

Hi John,

 Just writing to say how much I enjoy reading your site. We at Lifeinsurancequotes.org recently published an article “8 Ways Funeral Homes Will Try To Rip You Off”, that we think is tailor-made for your readers.

Either their computerised spam system is totally out-of-control (surely not!) or I must be mis-targeting this blog.

I have little good advice on funeral homes.

Janey Godley once told me that, if you are going to murder someone, the best hiding place for the body is in a graveyard – the police will not look in a graveyard for a dead body and, if they are tipped-off, they will be wary of causing a public outcry by potentially digging up a body which may not be the missing victim.

That is my only funeral tip for today, but it may prove useful for Israeli comic Daphna Baram.

Whoever killed Jesus, it wasn’t Daphna

Yesterday, she told me: “There was a very drunken guy in the audience at my Frenemies show (it’s only on until Saturday) – Yuri from the Czech Republic. At some point during my set, the idea that I was Jewish – at least nominally – penetrated through the layers of beer in Yuri’s mind and he started heckling: You killed Jesus! You killed Jesus!

“I remembered I had a routine from my first Christmas as a comedian. Clearly this was a good moment for resurrection.

“In my most authoritative voice (I do authoritative well) and with, I regret to say, a certain degree of c-word usage, I informed Yuri that the whole 30 shekel story is highly non-credible as no Jew I’ve ever heard of would sell a hippy to the italian mafia for the equivalent of a fiver…

“He kept silent for a while but, in a later section about my military training in Israel, he started heckling again. I told the audience. I saw Yuri outside and invited him to the gig and thought Great! I’ve pulled!… But now all I can think about is where I am going to hide his body…“

Well Daphna now knows, courtesy of Janey Godley, she can actually do this with little comeback.

But back to the Edinburgh Fringe proper…

Three Weeks – on the streets of Edinburgh now

In my first weekly column for Fringe magazine Three Weeks today, Mervyn Stutter criticises the BBC for putting on too many free shows at this year’s Fringe, to the detriment of hard-working performers who are already having a bad enough time with the big TV names and the Recession. You can read the Three Weeks piece by picking it up in Edinburgh or clicking here or you can download the whole issue here. I will post my golden words here on this blog in one week’s time (when the paper is no longer on the streets of Edinburgh).

I had another BBC-bashing angle punted to me last night, when I got chatting to someone who had better remain nameless. He works for a radio production company and has a lot of dealings with the BBC.

“It’s an odd thing,” he told me, “because, in America at the moment, there’s a huge flowering of female-driven comedy. You’ve got 30 Rock, Girls, the Mindy Kaling Project - loads and loads of female driven comedy – and people say part of the reason for this is the influx of women into US TV production. But, in Britain, we are not having that same increase in female-driven comedy.”

“Maybe because most producers here are male,” I suggested.

“Not now,” he corrected me. “Not in radio. Most of the level entry producers at the Beeb – the ones who comics new to radio would be working with – are female.

“At the BBC, there’s actually a big influx of women into radio production but, as yet, that doesn’t seem to be translating into a flowering of female comedy – certainly not at Radio 4 which has traditionally been a proving ground for comics before they get onto television. Radio 4 does not have many female-led, female-driven, female-written, female-fronted shows.

“That’s a generalisation, of course,” he said, “Jane Berthoud is top dog there and she’s tremendously supportive of women, but the increased number of female producers has not helped women in comedy.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “All I’m saying is it’s an interesting area. There are now lots of female producers, which is good. Maybe the heterosexual ones are more interested in and more physically attracted to the male acts and therefore female comics are getting an even bummer deal that they were before.”

“You mean the female producers want to screw the male acts?” I said. “Now there’s a dangerous idea to say out loud. But surely, traditionally, there were more male producers and they would have wanted to cop off with female acts so there should have been lots of female shows around in the past. In theory, female comics should have always done better than men because there were more male producers. But that’s not the case.”

Possibly realising he was on dangerously non-PC ground, he continued: “It’s very difficult to un-pick because, statistically, if you looked at the number of shows made by men over all… Maybe there are more shows made with male stars because there are more men pushing to get in. Maybe sometimes there’s a lot of schmoozing and, rather than being about talent, it’s about who gets on with people and who people want to sit in a pub and chat and get drunk with.”

It is certainly an interesting idea and there must be something psychological going on beyond my fathoming.

Checkley & Bush’s Comedy Riot is just that

Last night, I was at a party thrown to celebrate ten years of the Funny Women organisation. Very hard-working. Very effective in raising the profile of female comedy, But still British TV and radio shows are generally skewed-away from female performers.

I left the party to see excellent character comedy from Checkley & Bush. They’re better than a lot of the under-experienced new male comics who pop up on TV and in radio.

And, earlier in the day, I had attended a ‘knittathon’ – a publicity stunt organised by Charmian Hughes at which the audience was invited to knit throughout her show to create something she could use in her climactic and erotic ‘Dance of the Seven Cardigans’… Charmian was listed at No 7 in the Chortle comedy website’s Ten Most Underrated Comics - the only woman in the list.

Lewis Schaffer, a masterclass in offending

No 8 in the list is American comic Lewis Schaffer, whom I had been chatting to even earlier in the day. There was a lot of chatting yesterday.

As I came out of Checkley & Bush’s show, I got a text message from Lewis which said simply:

I had 65 punters at tonight’s show. There were 40 walkouts.

I texted back:

Tell me more and I may blog about it.

He later told me what he had said.

“I can’t put that in my blog,” I told him. “You will get lynched.”

Perhaps being truly offensive is one thing women comics cannot get away with. As if to prove this, later 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.

Bob Slayer has his nipples tweaked

“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.

“Well,” said Bob, “Frank came and then that happened and then I had to get naked. It depends how you rate a show. It was the most avant-garde show I’ve ever managed to do. Apparently there was a reviewer for The Skinny in there, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they made of it. I hope it was the guy who refused to get on stage. There’s no way I’m going to get a good review but I hope it was that guy because he HATED it.”

At the Fringe, being loved or being hated are good. Being ignored is bad. Oscar Wilde was born before his time.