My true, vile, anti-Semitic nature is revealed by the Twitter Trollosphere

As far as I am aware, I only have two prejudices, both totally indefensible.

One is because I really have never met a nice white South African. I think it may have been caused by the education system under apartheid trying to instil self-confidence. In my experience, they really have all been a bunch of arrogant bastards. But, of course, that is blind prejudice.

The other genuinely indefensible prejudice I am aware of is that I am unthinkingly prejudiced when it comes to Jews.

If I know I am going to meet someone called Peter Smith, I have no pre-judgments about him.

If I am going to meet someone called David Bernstein (presumably Jewish) then I assume he will be highly intelligent, highly educated, sophisticated and I will probably get on well with him.

That is blind, unthinking prejudice partly fuelled by my childhood and partly by history. And it partly (but not wholly) transfers from Jews as people to Israel as a state.

Vile, anti-Semitic Copstick & Fleming of the Grouchy Club

In my erstwhile impressionable youth, the Israeli Foreign Minister was Aba Eban (who sounded like an English public schoolboy) and the Prime Minister was Golda Meir (who had an American accent). The Palestinians and Arabs on TV always had representatives with harsh-edged ach-ach-ach accents. So the Israelis were “like us” and the Arabs were clearly foreigners “not like us”. Blind, unthinking prejudice.

As for Jews, I went to a grammar school near Gants Hill in Essex/London which had a very high percentage of Jews. I can’t really remember, but I think my year had A, B, C and D streams. Almost all the Jews were in the A stream with only a few stragglers in the B stream.

When there were Jewish holidays, a lot of lessons in the A stream were effectively replaced by general knowledge tests or similar.

I do remember that, in Latin lessons, there used to be three rows in class. But, when there was a Jewish holiday, there was only half a row,

So my impression was that Jews were intelligent.

That is blind, unthinking prejudice, just as bad as the opposite would be.

And that prejudice sort-of transfers to the Arab-Israeli/Palestinian situation. Look, don’t hassle and troll me (as if that would stop them!) but I think, if the IRA had been sitting in fields south of Dublin lobbing shells and missiles over into Liverpool, Blackpool and Macclesfield, the British Government would have done something even more active than sending the SAS into the south of Ireland to sit in fields and occasionally assassinate people.

Which brings us to this week and Kate Copstick, my Grouchy Club co-host and one of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards judges.

Copstick has never been known to mince her words or necessarily to think too long and hard before speaking. It is a good quality if you want to be a controversial journalist, TV producer and comedy critic.

We disagree on several things, including Palestine. I would say she has a bee in her bonnet about it. She would no doubt say I am an ill-informed idiot.

The offending and offensive anti-Semitic piece posted on Facebook

This week, she posted a link on Facebook to an article. I notoriously don’t much look at Facebook or Twitter but, after the link started getting mentioned, I took a look at it and gave up after 3 or 4 paragraphs and seeing the first picture. The article basically was pushing a particularly stupid conspiracy theory in which the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind ISIS. The picture was what I can only describe as a 1936-style Nazi cartoon Jew replacing Jihadi John in a pre-beheading hostage still. I am told that, later on, the conspiracy theory being pushed was that Israeli-backed ISIS was doing its dark deeds to kill off all the Catholics in Europe. Apparently Copstick, in classic style, had posted this WHY ARE ISIS NOT KILLING JEWS? piece without reading the whole thing on the basis it was an interesting concept. (My paraphrase not hers.)

And, indeed, no-one can say it is not an interesting concept!

On Wednesday (or was it yesterday? – it’s been a complicated week), I became slightly aware of this posting because @cliffordslapper was suggesting to Twitter followers: “Maybe try via her podcast co-host, @thejohnfleming”.

This led me to @TracyAnnO’s Tweet: “Maybe we should all ask John if he endorses her views?”

and

@londonette – how do u suggest contacting her? They are employed to represent her.They should at least act as a conduit

@lucyinglis – That’s true. Or through the paper? Or facebook?

@londonette – both have been attempted. Agents are there to deal with this sort of enquiry. End of.

As I was looking after a somewhat active 4-year-old at the time and don’t live on Twitter, the next time I looked, there was a positive flurry of Tweets along the lines of:

@BennettArron – I too have known John a long time. Perhaps he will respond.

@TracyAnnO – Silence as we know in all forms of bullying,are complicity

The latter was much liked and ReTweeted which, I thought, was a bit rich in the circumstances.

The Tweets continued unabated and unseen by me until later as in, for example:

@londonette – Hi John – I really do hope you’ll distance yourself from raging antisemite Kate Copstick

@TracyAnnO – Denying Holocaust isn’t good look is it @theJohnfleming  @Copstick.Even for #clickbait self promo.

@londonette – I’m shocked u didn’t challenge her more at the time – podcast is a truly horrible listen

Where on earth a podcast came into it, I had no idea. But comedian Bennett Arron very sensibly emailed me, saying:

“Hi John, You might have missed the backlash about Kate Copstick on social media. Just wanted your thoughts on what she said on the podcast. Hope all’s well.”

My reply was, by now having belatedly scrawled through seemingly endless Twitter bollocks:

“I’ve seen the Twitter stuff. Podcast I don’t know. She’s going to talk about Twitter on the Grouchy Club Podcast recorded this Friday – possibly not posted until Saturday as I’m busy. As far as I understand it, she didn’t read the whole thing she posted. I only read the start. I’m looking after a 4-year-old, which is all I care about. If anyone has any objection to anything Copstick says or posts, that’s between them and her, not me. If anyone wants to have a go at me about things I haven’t said or thought, they can go fuck themselves.”

Bennett came back with: “Fair enough. Enjoy being with the 4 year old. Great age :)”

I then read, Tweeted by @londonette: “In case you haven’t heard it. Includes antisemitic rant by The Scotsman’s Kate Copstick AUDIO: The Grouchy Club Podcast: Jewish Comedian of the Year, a man with plastic testicles, the best Holocaust joke

At this point I realised they were referring to a Grouchy Club Podcast posted on 6th December 2015 headlined JEWISH HOLOCAUST JOKES (a legendary routine by Jewish comic Lewis Schaffer) and with the description:

Kate Copstick talks to John Fleming about the Jewish Comedian of the Year, a man with plastic testicles, the best Holocaust joke, trans-gender comic Will/Sarah Franken, Lewis Schaffer, The World of Pain, British TV censorship, how BBC TV executive Alan Yentob re-cut controversial comic Jerry Sadowitz, the power of TV advertisers and Noel Gay TV.

At this point, the podcast had been online for over three months, had 258 hits and had had no complaints.

Around 11 hours later, @londonette Tweeted to me: Hi @thejohnfleming have you taken this podcast down? Is it because of this? http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/155767/anger-comedians-daesh-post

This refers to a Jewish Chronicle piece headed ANGER AT COMEDIAN’S DAESH POST mentioning, in passing: “Ms Copstick, who was a regular guest on BBC comedy show Chucklevision”.

In the only Twitter reply I have so far made to any of all this, assuming @londonette had had the podcast removed, I replied:

“No I have not taken it down. If it HAS been censored, I will repost it on multiple sites. Fuck off.”

Obviously highly sensitive, despite a Twitter profile describing herself as: Freelance Journalist & comms, after an astonishingly long time at BBC News, @londonette replied:

“No need for expletives. You posted a ragingly antisemitic rant by @copstick for public consumption. It’s now gone.”

In fact, when I checked later, it turned out she was wrong. The podcast, should you want to listen, remains online at:

http://thegrouchyclub.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-06T17_56_46-08_00

Reactions (among many) to my Tweet included:

@stephenpollard: This man posted an appalling antisemitic rant. When asked why it’s now down he says ‘Fuck off’. Nice

@brendancommins: What a tosser!

@BigotedIslamism (an account calling itself Humiliate Hamas): bigoted pig

The account Islamists Exposed @JailNaziScum simply posted my Twitter address: @thejohnfleming

Other responses included:

@TracyAnnO: Horrible  response Mr Flemming. The pressure of collusion getting to you.?

@Kaztastic: heard the one about the bearded anti Semite posing as a comedy blogger? Shame on you Fleming.

@ziegfieldstar: Why is it that these anti Semitic vermin are always physically ugly as well as psychologically.

I then got an email from my blog’s South Coast correspondent saying: “I am getting tweets from this woman, @londonette, hell bent on what I don’t know. I was going to reply telling her that no way is Copstick racist or anti Semitic. It’s OK that they want to challenge and express distaste for something. That is everyone’s right. It’s the stoking of the fire that I object to. Saying ‘Fuck off’ isn’t always the best way forward.”

I replied:

“Nah. Fuck ’em. The origin of their hatred is fair enough. But they’re now just mindless trolls. As bad as the Fascists they hate.”

That remains my view.

No doubt there will be further comments on social media. Welcome to the 21st century.

Copstick will have her say in the weekly Grouchy Club Podcast being recorded tonight and possibly at the increasingly prestigious Grouchy Club Live in London on 12th April.

We Are Thomasse. They are talented.

Yesterday’s blog was taken from a conversation I had over a month ago because ironically, when I stopped posting daily blogs, I still had the same or worse amount of time free. Today’s is the same.

We Are Thomasse were at the Museum of Comedy last month

Over a month ago, I saw American-based comedy sketch duo We Are Thomasse at the Museum of Comedy in London. They flew in on the Thursday, did the show on Friday, attended a wedding on Saturday (their real reason for flying over) and flew out on Sunday.

We Are Thomasse are British-born Nick Afka Thomas and US-born Sarah Ann Masse (Thomas + Masse = Thomasse).

“So,” I said to Sarah at the Museum of Comedy after the show, “You were living and working in New York and your manager was in LA And now you are moving to LA for the pitch season?”

“Yeah. Our manager had us go out. We went out to Los Angeles four times last year. We went on a whim to a sketch festival and really had a good time and decided to go back. In LA, it’s a theatre called iO West and they said any time were back in town they’d put us on their main stage, which they did.

“It’s really nice to have a place to perform every month. We had a monthly show in New York for a year at the PIT – the People’s Improv Theatre.”

“And,” I asked, “you post regular online stuff?”

“Yes. On our YouTube channel. We do the online sketches every fortnight. We filmed a lot between June and September last year and then a few in December and January and we’re now releasing them every two weeks.”

“How did the two of you meet?” I asked.

“Through a mutual friend. The only thing I knew about Nick when I met him was that he was a maths tutor and wrote books about Sudoku. He came second in the National Sudoku Championships. I had no idea he was an actor and writer.

“We just got on really well and he moved back to London; but I was in New York. So we spent the next five months typing to each other online every day. We started writing together then. Then he came back out to New York to do a play with me.”

I was talking to Sarah alone. Nick was schmoozing the rest of the room.

“He’s very well-spoken,” I said.

“Though,” said Sarah, “every now and then an Estuary sound comes out of his quaint, posh accent. He was born in Peterborough and grew up between England and Switzerland – because his dad got a job there and…”

“I thought you were going to say he went to finishing school there!” I told her.

“No, he went to Eton,” she told me.

“Well then,” I said, “he’s only one step away from getting some superhero lead in a Marvel film…”

“And later,” added Sarah, “he was back there teaching at Eton.”

Trans-Atlantic opposites attract, complement and compliment

A few days after this conversation, Nick e-mailed me:

“When I was talking to Sarah about how much you already knew about me, I realized that she hadn’t been filling you in on her own credits, so you must not have heard about what an interesting life she’s had. It’s totally different from mine, which keeps in line with our ‘opposites attract’ thing: husband-wife, British-American etc.

“Whereas I was at a fancy school and university, Sarah was home-schooled from the age of 11 and made the decision that she didn’t want to go to university at all (saving thousands and thousands in pointless debt). She began auditioning professionally at 18, did the famous (at least famous in the US) Williamstown Theater Festival two years in a row and started her own highly-acclaimed theatre company when she was 21… I didn’t even get out of drama school until I was 23! I have to be honest: Sarah is responsible for a majority of those punchlines in the show.

“It’s a shame we don’t yet do songs, since her singing voice is absolutely breathtaking – She used to be a musical theatre actress, working with some pretty big names. We haven’t figured out how to incorporate that yet, but hopefully one day we’ll begin to have a musical side.”

Now, flashing back to my chat with Sarah at the Museum of Comedy:

“Working together,” I suggested, “is often not a good idea if you are a couple.””

“Well, we started working and writing together before we started dating. In the five months that we were not dating – just talking online – we started writing characters for what would become a web series. Nick always wanted to do sketches and a sketch show.

“Eventually we got round to doing a few of our sketches in other people’s shows and then we applied to a festival in New York and got in and – Oh no! We’d better put a show together! – and, since then, for just over a year now, we’ve been doing a version of this show.”

At this point, Nick joined us.

We Are Thomasse are drawing attention to their existence

“The big thing for us at the moment,” he said, “is to draw people’s attention to the fact we even exist. There are so many YouTube channels and so many sketch people out there that how do you know what’s worth seeing?”

“Why bother with Britain at all,” I asked, “when you are doing fine based in the US?”

“We are British-American, so we want to keep that connection on both sides. We are interested in appearing in Edinburgh. I went to the Fringe a couple of times – once with the Oxford Revue and once with NewsRevue.”

“You were in NewsRevue?” I asked.

“One of the things I took from that experience,” said Nick, “was the speed of change, the pace of it. If you fly at it, even if there is a bad sketch, you are through really quickly. Sarah and I have kept our change-overs (between sketches) to about ten seconds or less. In NewsRevue, I think we were doing 4 seconds, but they had two more people to be able to do that.

“In America and in a lot of sketch shows I’ve seen in Britain, the gap between sketches can be so long that the energy that has been built up just gets dissipated. That was a big thing with us from the start, which is one of the reasons why we do all our changes on the stage.”

“So your career will be sketch shows for ever more?” I asked.

“We are talking to a director,” Nick replied, “about doing a play where the two of us play all the characters.”

Just one of many hectic months in the trippy life of Nelly Scott aka Zuma Puma

I stopped writing this blog daily at the end of last year. I thought it would give me more time to do other things. But, as is to be expected from the Third Law of Surreality, I am even more tied-up.

Nelly Scott being low-key in London a month ago

Over a month ago, I chatted to performer Nelly Scott, aka Zuma Puma. It was the day before she left London on a one-way ticket for France. She wanted me to mention her web series Grumpy Lettuce.

“We’ve got 14 episodes in all,” she told me. “We’ve got ten released. There were seven in the first season and then we waited until February and then started releasing the next batch. We might come back with a third season, but we’re also writing short films and a feature. It was a wild, really crazy, long journey. It took so long! The editing!”

The same might be said about this blog.

“You’re going to France for an indeterminate length of time?” I asked her over a month ago.

“Well, yeah,” she told me. “I just got a one-way ticket. There’s a swami staying in my house right now.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A swami.”

“Is he sitting in your house or levitating?” I asked.

“He’s pretty much levitating. He’s reading all of our palms, telling our fortunes, giving us life insights. It’s great. He came to stay the night and he’s been there for about two weeks now.”

“How does one get a swami?” I asked.

“Basically,”Nelly told me, “you make a friend who has invited a swami over to this country to stay and then, when the swami arrives, your friend’s house is in complete chaos, so he sends the swami to you and then you have a swami and it’s kind of hilarious, because there are five of us in the house and we all are kind of swami-sitters. We pass him around.

“One day, I took Swami to see Big Ben. And the other night, I accidentally took him to a hip-hop night. I thought it was a hippy night but, when we showed up, there was hip-hop in a really cool space. He thought it was hilarious. He said: Nobody is going to believe that I came! He was taking pictures. All these really beautiful women were coming over and giving him hugs and saying: Wow! You look like some spiritual guru!”

“Did he bop?” I asked.

“No. He liked lying on a couch and watched. He observed.”

“And,” I asked, “you call him Swami? You actually say: Are you hungry, Swami? Do you want a cup of tea, Swami?”

“Yeah,” replied Nelly. “We know his name, but we just call him Swami, because that’s how he was introduced to us.”

“He’s from India?” I asked.

“No, he’s from Panama, but he’s been living in India for the last many years, living in caves and…”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“In Elephant.”

“So,” I said, “ he’s moved from the caves of India to the Elephant?”

“Yes. But he’s going to Spain soon. I’m going to meet up with him there. It’s kinda like he’s my brother, my uncle and a strange caveman all in one.”

“Why France and why a one-way ticket?” I asked.

Nelly as Zuma Puma promoting the Grumpy Lettuce logo

“Because I have a crazy friend who is a muralist and she met a man who lives in France and she said: Come stay with us and we will build a puppet. I am developing a one-woman show, but I keep questioning what its purpose is.”

“What sort of puppet?” I asked.

“It’s gonna be a creepy baby.”

“A glove or a string puppet?”

“I don’t know. It might be a harness puppet. Last time I met up with this friend, she convinced me to go to San Francisco and, when I showed up, the people she was staying with were so not-cool with her inviting me because she had never told them she invited me.

“I ended up homeless, sleeping in a tent in central San Francisco. Before that, I spent my nights looking for parties. I would go into a party and, before the party ended, go to a quiet corner and fall asleep cos, at the end of a party at 3.00am, you are not going to go over to a nice young lady who is asleep in the corner and tell her to go out into the streets where it’s cold in December.

“I did that for about two weeks – crashing parties where I didn’t know anybody. I would just pretend I was part of it, then fall asleep in the corner… until I found the tent.”

“Why have I not had a life like this?” I asked.

“You still can,” said Nelly. “You can meet Swami… Swami lives like that. He has no plan ever and he just lives in caves and does fire ceremonies all over the world.”

“So,” I said, “you are going to France just for the hell of it?”

“I guess,” said Nelly. “And to find new inspiration. I am going on a quest to reconnect with my creativity. I am going to go, live it and come back with all these stories.”

That was over a month ago. So, yesterday, I thought I had better catch up on what has happened since. I got this reply:

“You silly, ridiculous man, hahahah! Since we spoke, I have gone to France, devised a show, made a weird music video for music we have yet to find, travelled to Spain where I stayed for 4 days on the top of a quartz crystal mountain with seven women as a tag-along, then travelled down Catalunya and filmed for ten days with my dear friend Swami – the Fire Keeper movie – returned home, did a voice-over job, started an improv intensive to refresh me and am already one third sold out for my very own clown intro workshop called Clown Life which I will be facilitating April 23rd & 24th at the Pleasance Theatre in London.

“Here’s the Facebook link: Clown Life Weekend Intensive, London and the ticket link: https://billetto.co.uk/clown-life-weekend-intensive

“Grumpy Lettuce is still happening. We have the final two episodes of Season 2 to be released in the next few weeks. They had to go on hold, obviously, because of my going away but we will start to release them again in the next few weeks.

“Here’s the link to our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF2TqFBtMiEyuU1TFaUfbsg and the last episode we released. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHLGnLWfcw4 ”

I feel exhausted just reading about what Nelly Scott has done in the last month.

I am unworthy.

I have wasted my last month.

Where can I find a cave?

What will Nelly do next?

The woman who started a fire on an ice floe to hide evidence from the police

The latest missive from this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith has arrived.

She lives on a boat in Vancouver.

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Anna Smith – a selfie in Antwerp

Where the Nechako River converges with the Fraser, a woman fleeing the police tried to escape them by jumping onto an ice floe where she lit a fire in a bid to destroy evidence. She was eventually captured by boat.

The ice floes sometimes make it all the way through Hell’s Gate canyon and down here to the Fraser delta. I have never seen any with women on them though.

One year, hundreds of icebergs the size of boxcars came down from the Thompson River. They went past single file, like a train going by… for days.

When the tide changed, it was like a two-lane highway, with the icebergs going slowly past in both directions on the currents. It was fascinating to watch.

There is still a lot of snow on the mountains. The river is still really low. In a few months the freshet will be going and it will probably look like Bangladesh by June. I made friends with a lady from there on the train and when I told her I lived on a boat she looked really upset. I told her it wasn’t that bad.

“What about the snakes?” she asked. “Aren’t you afraid of the snakes?”

“What snakes?” I asked her.

She told me that all the rivers have snakes. I told her there are no snakes in the Fraser and that reassured her a bit, but not completely.

There is a rickety old fishing boat that goes past every spring. It has a hot tub in the back and a naked lady jumping around in it… That happens later on, though.

There is a big cat who lives next door who likes to dart around. He is not the friendly sort and he looks a bit like an ocelot. His name is Bill.

There is a mast lying above the reeds on the riverbank and, in the summer, I like to watch Bill prowling along the mast as if it’s his personal walkway. I take photos of him from my boat. He is very handsome and wild-looking. I don’t know who he belongs to or why he is called Bill.

Speaking of ice floes, did I mention that I’m doing another striptease show at The Penthouse?

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There is a rather odd news report about the woman trying to escape the police on the ice floe on YouTube.

Comedy critic Kate Copstick: Kenya rant

Kate Copstick – from vomiting to spitting proverbial blood

Kate Copstick is currently in Kenya working with her Mama Biashara charity.

In a blog a week ago, she took something which appeared to be paan in Mombasa.

It turned her purple and made her vomit copiously.

Now she is back in Nairobi…

What follows is extracted from the diary which she has been posting on the Mama Biashara Facebook page.

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SATURDAY

It turns out that the chewie stuff I had in Mombasa is actually called kuber. And is quite hard hitting stuff. It packs serious quantities of THC plus a load of other psychotropic hooha. And it comes mixed with the chewing tobacco the peeps in the cafe showed me. Apparently regular chewing gives you all manner of ghastliness including oral cancer. But I assume, by that time, you are so comprehensively removed from reality that you don’t care…

SUNDAY

I talk to Monica The Dress. Her brother (59) has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. The doctor announced this to him while explaining that, if anything was to be done, he had better pay £5,000 immediately. That was just so the doc could tell him he is dying. Then another £4,000 for a CT scan … and another £5,000 for a doctor to explain the CT scan.

His family organised a fundraising to take him to India for treatment (what anyone with any money here does) but did not get enough and so he has just left for Uganda where a doctor has decreed that he will remove the man’s testicles for a fee.

MONDAY

Oh please, please, please let this week not go on as it has started.

I get into the Treasury Department. There are five elevators. One is for goods, three are for normal mortals and one is for VIPs. The VIP elevator has gold doors. Not solid, one assumes, or they would have been stolen. But shining golden doors nevertheless. I want to spit. But I don’t. I get to the twelfth floor, get directions and go to Mr Wanyambura’s office. No queues, no, nothing really. I realise very quickly that there would be no point in any queues.

I explain my presence in his office. I tell him about the irritating scrawny woman and the £50 fine / tax / scam / bribe. I tell him what scrawny woman said and what the Revenue and Customs brochure says about an exemption certificate.

“Ah,” he says, in that way that Kenya people in any position of any kind of authority have when they are about to sting you for some money or deliberately piss in your Sugar Pops just for fun. “Ah. That is where it becomes difficult.”

What passes for my hackles raised themselves.

“We no longer give exemption certificates. By order of the Government.” He leaves the room and comes back with a photocopy of a letter that does indeed state that the Government has ordered that there will be no tax exemption of charitable donations. The tax should be paid – wait for it – by the BENEFICIARIES. I explain that my beneficiaries are mainly on the street, penniless, frequently homeless. He shrugs.

He tells me how he cried when the rule came in. How his boss cried. There is, apparently, no lower limit for this tax on help. And so one tub of cod liver oil… one packet of sanitary towels… and the Kenyan Government – one of the most appallingly corrupt institutions in the world, one which is currently harbouring a woman who has presided over 271 MILLION shillings disappearing from her department and whose regional outposts in the country have squandered and stolen their way to a debt of untold BILLIONS with utter impunity – will want to get its pudgy, filthy, criminal fingers on its cut.

The depth and the breadth of the government’s crimes against their electorate are quite quite unbelievable. These politicians make our lot seem positively benign. Tony Blair would fit well with them – but, compared to the Kenyan government, Dave Cameron and his pals are schoolboys playing naughty games on the pupils from the girls’ school next door.

I am white hot with rage. And utterly impotent.

As I walk through the winding pathways of the Westlands Triangle, one of the women tells me to watch my bag. I look. Someone (no doubt in town) has taken a Stanley knife and slashed it. The idea is they slash the bag and everything drops out and you walk on unaware. But my lovely neoprene bag, bought in Age UK for £2 is too tough for them. The slash only made it to the third layer and my belongings are all safe. I love that bag though.

So, all in all, Monday is not shaping up well.

I am considering a plangent letter to the Department of Overseas Development. I am entirely unsure that people are generally aware of this new rule… Suddenly I realise why people chew kuber.

Now screening: a gay porn film with no script not written by Sir John Gielgud

Producer David McGillivray met me at Soho Theatre yesterday

“So what we are talking about here,” I said to David McGillivray in the Soho Theatre Bar yesterday afternoon, “is a script that you filmed – a sleazy, gay, hardcore porn film and you have conned some very respectable performers like Nigel Havers and Barry Cryer and Julian Clary into appearing in this filth.”

“Yes,” said David McGillivray. “Mea culpa. Up until very recently, I did maintain that this was a gay, hardcore porn film and it got us a lot of publicity, for which I’m very grateful. I have subsequently admitted that it could now be passed with a U certificate.”

“Was that always the case?” I asked. “Or have you edited it?”

“The script that I saw ,” replied David, “did not have any indication that the author wanted unsimulated sex in it and therefore we didn’t have any. The possibility is that, when the unknown author saw Peter de Rome’s films, a lot of them would also have been soft core. So this is the kind of film we think that the unknown author would have wanted to be made.”

“And can you confirm,” I asked, “that the unknown author was Sir John Gielgud?”

“Of course I can’t,” replied David. “The author is unknown.”

“Can you confirm,” I asked, “that the author was NOT Sir John Gielgud?”.

“I can’t,” said David. “No. I have to accede to the Trust’s demands not only that Sir John Gielgud, for example, did not write the script but also that the script in all likelihood does not exist.”

David and I talked about the film for a blog last October headlined:

BEING EDITED NOW – SIR JOHN GIELGUD’S GAY PORN FILM WHICH YOU MAY NEVER SEE.

Faithfully filmed word-for-word from a non-existent script

“People are perfectly at liberty,” David McGillivray said yesterday, “to conjecture who the author may be, but I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“As I understand it,” I said, “last year the John Gielgud Trust were saying that the script they saw was one you could not legally film because they owned copyright on it. But now they are saying that the script they saw did not exist.”

“We are getting,” said David, “into the realms of Alice in Wonderland because, when we spoke last for your blog, I assumed that the film would never be shown, because the Trust had accused me of infringing their copyright.”

“And,” I checked, “at that point, they had seen the script.”

“They saw the script in 2012,” said David.

“This is the script that they say doesn’t exist?” I asked.

“Yes. And I can prove that they saw it, because it’s all in writing. But then, after you and I spoke last year, there was a most extraordinary volte-face. After a considerable silence and having seen the film, the Trust maintained that Sir John did not write the script and that it did not exist.

“My lawyer wrote back and immediately conceded everything and told them that the film would be released unattributed. We re-edited it – we put a caption on the front, we removed all references to the author who was previously alleged to have written the script and…”

“What does the new caption at the front say?” I asked.

“It says that this film is being distributed on the condition that its screenplay is unattributed. It is now credited to ‘a gentleman’… and that is the version that will be screened in London this Sunday at NFT1 if we do not get an injunction served on us.”

“You feel,” I asked, “that you might get an injunction for illegally making a film from a script that does not exist?”

“Anything is possible, John. Every time I switch on my computer I expect another surprise.”

“Why have you not credited the script to Alan Smithee?” I asked.

“It’s probably a copyright name, isn’t it?” asked David. “There were lots of possibilities of who this film could be credited to.”

“The Sunday screening,” I asked, “is during a gay film festival at the NFT?”

Trouser Bar – gay porn – coming soon

“Yes. And I want you to be the first to say that it is so appropriate that a film called Trouser Bar is playing at a festival called Flare. We will also be screening one of (director) Peter de Rome’s shorts – one of his most beautiful, called Encounters –  and we will be showing an extract from a film I made about Peter in which he talks about the script that doesn’t exist. The film will then go on tour in the UK in the Spring and I have just had a request from San Francisco. Ultimately, it will come out on DVD.”

“Will some of the cast be at the screening on Sunday?” I asked.

“Barry Cryer has said he will come.”

“Steady,” I said. “Steady.”

“I am very grateful to the Trust,” said David. “Although they have caused me so much stress, if it had not been for them, I would have been faced with trying to sell a soft core sex film written by somebody today’s audience has never heard of. But, thanks to the Trust, thousands of people now know who the alleged author is and they want to see the film. It is what is known as the Streisand Effect.

“If the Trust had done what I wanted, which was to support me, I would have paid a substantial amount for the rights and there would have been no controversy. Now it is a scandal and I think I have been very lucky.”

Dreams and vomit and murderers in Kenya with comedy critic Kate Copstick

Kate Copstick is in Kenya

Comedy critic Kate Copstick is currently in Kenya, where her Mama Biashara charity is based. It helps impoverished, sidelined people to start up their own small businesses.

She is usually based in Nairobi but, last Saturday, she went to Mombassa.

Below is a highly cut-down version of her diary, which she posts in full on Mama Biashara’s Facebook page.

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SATURDAY 12th MARCH

We go off to the end of Mombasa where Bamburi Cement lives. It is SO quiet compared to Nairobi. Almost no traffic, no hooting and screaming. And no plague of police looking for bribes. In a little slum area north of the factory area, Vicky (of Vicky’s Cleaners fame) is waiting. We have a training session to do.

Since we first funded her, Vicky has had successes all over Kenya and into Tanzania. In keeping with what I have decided to call the Mama Biashara Model because it sounds important, Vicky has – with Mombasa now as her base – started working with older commercial sex workers (women she describes beautifully as “they have … a history”), male commercial sex workers and ex-crims who cannot ever get proper work because to be employed as anything you need a ‘certificate of good behaviour’ which you cannot get if you have been to prison.

She trains them (she is a phenomenal trainer) in all manner of skills and gives them the work when she gets new contracts (which she does all the time). Some have had enough work from Vicky alone to set themselves up in businesses. This trip, we are meeting a half dozen or so groups who have plans but need a bit of Mama Biashara luuuurve (and money, obviously).

At night, I have the most extraordinary dreams. Wonderful dreams, unlike any I can remember. They are full of people I know from all over my life and we are all in a show. I am, as well as that, invited to join Fascinating Aida and we spend a while practicing harmonies. I am so happy.

Normally all my dreams revolve around me being forced onstage (no, really) to fill in in a play – quite often Shakespeare – where I have not been to rehearsals and have only had a cursory glance at the script and no one will let me look at it again even though I know that, if I can just get the first line, the rest will come. But I have to go onstage and I can ruin everything for everyone. They are scary and stressful and guilt-ridden and horrible.

This dream was joyful. I was, again, asked to fill in in the play. But this time I was playing a corpse and so I could do nothing wrong. People would pick me up when I had to be moved and everything would just happen round about me. There was the small matter of a killer on the loose but he was caught before I went onstage.

Doris warns the ferry trip to the south side is fraught with peril

SUNDAY

I have realised that Mombasa for humans is like water for sharks: you have to keep moving or you die. Movement creates a small breeze (or large breeze if you are bobbling along in a tuktuk.

We get a matatu from town to the ferry over to the south side. Doris has rather given me the impression that The Ferry is an impressive trip, fraught with peril. Turns out it is a voyage of some four minutes. On weekdays, about 3,000 people cram on but today we are few. Yes there has been a capsizing. Once. But the thing seems to be managed with a quite un-Kenyan efficiency.

We go down to the public part of Diani Beach. Like Pirates Bay (where we were yesterday), there are hawkers and renters of rubber rings. But this is much posher. There are some (but surprisingly few) white people here. Mainly large older men with slim young local girls. And the price of the jelly coconuts has suddenly doubled.

We are having no luck getting together our recycling training group and we still do not know if we will be allowed into the village where widows are sent to be used as sex toys for rich Swahili men, so we make out way back to the ferry, stopping for phone charging and food at a place where the owner makes an immediate play for Doris. Having said which, “You are well filled-out” is not necessarily a universally acceptable chat-up line.

Doris (left) with Vicky of Vicky’s Cleaners

MONDAY

We go back out to Bamburi and find Vicky with the last of the funding groups – six women who want to make viazi karai (a Swahili delicacy) and a group of twenty young guys who want to rent out beach kit at Pirates Beach. The guys are a mix of ex rent boys and ex cons – not as iffy as it sounds. Loads of people get swept up – almost literally – in the frequent ‘street clean up’ campaigns put together by City Councils. Homeless, beggars, thieves and the rest all get collected and dumped in prison where they more or less disappear).

These guys want to get up and out and their progress at the beach will be monitored by police and City Council. They just need the capital to get started. As we talk, I realise that there is, even amongst serious hardmen like this. a real taboo about revealing that some of the guys are gay. It is extraordinary to see their spokesman almost blush to say the word.

Doris takes me to Old Mombasa Town. We dive off into the warren of streets that is the old town: a little like Marrakesh and a little like Venice. This place is home to a myriad street snacks, all delicious. We find a hole in the wall where an old beardy bloke is drinking what is definitely coffee. We ask if we can come in. We can. We drink superb coffee. We watch the Old Town world go by. It is a very other world. Doris observes that the place smells like an Indian Paan House.

“It is,” nods beardy man.

“I love paan,” I pipe up – having chewed it in London after meals as a fennel-heavy breath freshener.

“These ones are very good,” offers beardy man.

It doesn’t taste like the London paan. It tastes like chewing incense. I swallow the juice. Then suddenly I feel slightly numb.

I spit it out into a napkin. The ‘buzz’ intensifies and it feels like the top of my head has come off. I find I can neither speak properly nor do anything much. Like move. Which is unfortunate as what I know without shadow of a doubt is that I am about to vomit.

Doris says that what happens is I turn purple.

I can see my arms and they have certainly changed colour. And purple is not far off it. Luckily I have been sitting right at the door – watching the world go by – and so, powerless to do anything else, I vomit. My puke almost hits the middle of the road. I try to say sorry but my mouth won’t work. The old men in the shop are very helpful.

“Water,” they say, “and milk. Gargle and spit.”

I cannot even hold a mug of water. Doris holds it and I drink. And puke again. The owner of the shop (no, it transpires, beardy welcoming man was not the owner, merely a regular and he has now left) has come back and is creating hell that the old lady would have let me try the chewwie stuff.

Doris explains that I wanted to try it. She herself was about to try it. I am still retching into the bucket but try to back her up. Doris helpfully takes a photo. Now all the people in the shop are helping. Buckets of water swirl away the puke from the front of the shop. A tuktuk is summoned. I cannot stand to get into it for another five minutes. By then I can mumble apologies to all and clamber into the seat. We get back to the hotel where I explode in the other direction.

Kate Copstick has wonderful dreams in Kenya

TUESDAY

I have more wonderful dreams and yet again sleep like a baby. I am insistent that we return to the Paan Shop with gifts for the old lady and her husband as an apology for yesterday.

The training group for recycling is still nowhere to be found and it transpires that the widows’ village is out of bounds as it is under lockdown (along with the rest of the area) as a couple of people have been stabbed on the beach and the murderers have not been found.