Cally Beaton: How to recover an award nomination by revealing another oddity

The second blog

A couple of days ago, I wrote the second of two blogs about Cally Beaton and others claiming to have won an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

On Facebook, Alex Petty of the Laughing Horse Free Festival asked: “Could you draw a flow chart of your blog? Even by Edinburgh standards it’s all a little complicated!”

And Martin Walker from the On The Mic podcast, asked: “Is this article a parody of a Stewart Lee sketch? I think it’s a parody of a Stewart Lee sketch. You know, that um, a parody of a sketch by that Stewart Lee. You know the one, it’s a parody, you know, of that Stewart Lee. The one where he, you know, keeps saying the same thing over and over again.”

Beware of what follows, Martin.

The story so far…

2016 show did win a First Minute Award

Cally Beaton’s publicity for her upcoming Edinburgh Fringe show Super Cally Fragile Lipstick claimed that she and her show Cat Call (with Catherine Bohart) had won “a Malcolm Hardee Award” last year. She/they/it had not. In fact, she/it had won an unconnected First Minute Award from TV producer Edward Hobson who gave the prize for the show with the best first minute. (He left after seeing the first minute of each show.)

So I thought: This could be worth a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award nomination, because Cally is pulling a cunning stunt to plug her show this year. There was the added irony that pretending she had won a Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award might actually get her a Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award.

But then her publicist(s) claimed that it was all a misunderstanding not a cunning publicity stunt.

This screwed Cally’s chance of being nominated for a Cunning Stunt Award – a mistake is not a stunt – although there was a slight chance that, if she had knowingly conned her publicists into the incorrect claim, that was a cunning stunt and she might still be a contender.

Yesterday, Cally seems to have re-inserted herself into the running for an increasingly prestigious nomination. Here is the correspondence.

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CALLY
I think if I were to come clean about the fact that I wasn’t on stage during the award-winning first minute of Cat Call, then the Cunning Stunt nomination and indeed potentially award is mine…

JOHN
If you really were not on stage in the first minute of Cat Call and yet won the First Minute Award, that would be glorious. Especially if you used last year’s First Minute Award win to publicise this year’s show.

CALLY
Only Catherine Bohart, Edward Hobson and I know whether I was really on stage that fateful first minute… I’m quite sure that would be Edward’s recollection… My memory is that I was in the loo.

JOHN
I suppose the idea of audience members being present is too ridiculous a supposition at the Edinburgh Fringe?

CALLY
Both audience members that day were legless.

ED HOBSON
It is true. When I went to see Cat Call, it was a double-header with Catherine Bohart doing the first half hour followed by Cally Beaton doing the second.

I went for the first minute, saw Catherine Bohart for sixty seconds, thought it was great and shortlisted the show. During the judging session, I re-listened to the recordings of the finalists’ first minutes I had recorded and decided that show was the funniest. Consequently Cally Beaton’s show won without me ever seeing her on stage.

Only after meeting them again at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards ceremony did I realise they were not a double act.

I still stand by the decision.

The First Minute Award is the premier comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe that judges a comedy show in less time than it takes Martin Soan to get his cock out.

My fiancée arrives in the UK next Wednesday

Very excited.

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Cally’s Fringe show this year. Worth a Cunning Stunt?

Whether any of this is true or not is irrelevant. To quote Malcolm Hardee: Might be good. Might be shit.

Claire Smith of the Scotsman and the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards judging panel told me that Cally was inspired to start performing comedy when Joan Rivers told her to “get her ass on stage”.

“Is this true?” I asked Cally.

“Joan Rivers? All true,” she told me. “Her lesbian assistant developed quite a crush on me too. Other Hollywood ‘A’ listers who told me to try comedy include Amy Poehler & Kevin Hart.”

My head is starting to swirl.

Truth? Reality?

I live by the guiding thought that the more unlikely something sounds the more likely it is to be true.

Cally has two children.

On Facebook, she posted:

“For last year’s show, I bribed Offspring No 1 with a Nando’s to do material about him. Later today, we are off to negotiate this year’s show… over cocktails & a three course meal at Wahaca.”

Beware of people claiming awards…?

Did I mention that I am, myself, a multi-award-winner?

When I was around 12 years old, I won a prize from Brooke Bond Tea for my handwriting.

And, in 2010, Fringe Report gave me an award as Best Awarder of Awards.

All true.

Would I lie to you?

There is a blog about how to genuinely win an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award HERE.