This all started, three blogs ago, as a piece about David Hughes, who worked as a doorman/cashier/DJ at the Le Strip club in Toronto from 1982 to 1994.
It then began to divert via undercover work for the CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), neo-Nazis, a massive counterfeiting scheme, planned terrorism in the 1980s, a far right Christian Identity religious group, a Ku Klux Klan gathering and a South African apartheid regime connection to, at the end of the last blog, membership of the Rhodesian Army.
“Hold on!” I said to David Hughes. “The Rhodesian Army”?
So, I think not unreasonably, I asked him for more background…
He responded…
David serving in the York Regional Police, in the 1970s…
As far as the Rhodesian Army was concerned, I became aware of the conflict ongoing in that country while attending Police College in Alymer, Ontario as a member of York Regional Police Force in 1976.
One of my classmates, Ken, was a member of Peel Regional Police Force and had recently immigrated to Canada after spending several years in the BSAP (British South Africa Police) who were the equivalent to our RCMP in the then-country of Rhodesia.
He was about ten years older than me and I looked up to him as a mentor with his worldly experience – not only as a police officer in Rhodesia but also because of his prior service as a ‘bobby’ in the Birmingham police force in Great Britain.
Ken told me I was too young to be policeman and that I should travel the world and join either the BSAP in South Africa or the Rhodesian Army.
So, in December 1978, I took him up on his advice and quit York Regional police.
By January 1979 I had flown to Rhodesia and joined the Rhodesian Army.
David Hughes says: “The Rhodesian Army was 85% African during that era and these are some of the African soldiers served with at the time – tough, disciplined soldiers…” (Photo taken April 1979)
May 1979: David Hughes in the Rhodesian Army “in my ‘blackface’ – We called it “black is beautiful camo creme”.
Initially, I was posted as a recruit to the Rhodesian SAS regiment where I underwent three months of their recruit training and selection – but I ultimately dropped off the course and transferred into the Rhodesian Armoured Car Regiment where I served under American Major Darryl Winkler (a former US Army Vietnam veteran who had received a battlefield commission during that war).
I served in that unit throughout the remainder of the Bush War until Rhodesia ultimately became Zimbabwe in 1980.
Obtaining an early discharge from the Zimbabwe Army, I traveled to South Africa and went to the SADF (South African Defence Force) recruiting office in Pretoria and was given an offer of employment.
I was all set to join the SADF and engage in the war that was beginning in earnest in that country when I got homesick and returned to Canada.
I tried to get hired by 13 different police forces in Canada when I returned but no police force would touch me because of the ‘racist’ connotations associated with the Rhodesian conflict.
I spent the next five years working three jobs (one of which was at Le Strip) in order to make a living before I was hired by Canadian Pacific Rail in 1986 and my fortunes began to change for the better. Even then I still hung on to the the part-time job at Le Strip until 1994 because my level of seniority at the railway was such that I still needed part-time work to make ends meet.
The person who reacted to the Comment – David Hughes – had worked as doorman/cashier/DJ at Le Strip from 1982 to 1994.
In the reaction he posted, he mentioned an exotic dancer with the stage name ‘Black Magic’, a spy story, neo-Nazis and the largest counterfeit money scheme in Canadian history. He finished with “There is a lot more to the backstory that I won’t get into here but I have been giving some thought to writing a memoir about it in the future.”
So, obviously, I contacted him and said: “If you want to give the bare outline of the story/stories, without undermining any future memoir of yours, obviously I and my blog readers would be fascinated to know more…”
As I had no period photographs of David nor of ‘Black Magic’ for yesterday’s blog, I had asked Gencraft AI to come up with an imagined illustration. This was what I got:
I reckoned I would get no reply from David, but an email came back, starting: “Can I just say that Gencraft’s AI has made a remarkably accurate rendition of ‘Black Magic’ except it has made her a little heavier and doesn’t portray the black leather gear she wore that gave her the stage name ‘Black Magic’ – She wore a simple black leather outfit with motorcycle chaps and cat-of-nine tails.”
So, for this follow-up blog, I asked Gencraft to create an image of “a thin female dancer wearing a black leather outfit with motorcycle chaps and carrying a cat-of-nine tails”.
Clearly, the phrase “cat-of-nine tails” is not one that has permeated the mind of current AIs. This was the image created:
Be that as it may, David did expand a bit on the backstory he had mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Yesterday, he said that there was a “spy story” involving one of Le Strip’s DJs named Grant Bristow.
Bristow became a vital undercover CI (Confidential Informant) for CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) during a lengthy investigation into the neo-Nazi/extremist far right in the mid-1980s/mid 1990s as a result of a meeting between Bristow and Heritage Front member Max French which occurred at the Le Strip club.
The Heritage Front was a Canadian white supremacist neo-Nazi organization founded in 1989
David Hughes explained to me:
Grant Bristow’s meeting with Max French at Le Strip was arranged by me… At the time, Grant was a Confidential Informant for CSIS (which I also had a indirect role in creating) after I had told Grant about a fellow employee (Max French) who had befriended me when I was hired on to the Canadian Pacific Railway in Toronto as a trainman in September 1986.
Max French was then a Conductor at CP Rail and, when he found out about my background (ex-cop/soldier and former armored car guard), he thought I would be a perfect member of the Heritage Front in which Max was thoroughly ensconced. He was a senior member of its hierarchy and leadership.
CSA confusingly adopted the shoulder sleeve insignia of the United States Army Europe and Africa
Max also told me that he and his Canadian colleagues were going to emulate the The Order’s tactics in Canada and that he felt I would have the inside information to help conduct armored car holdups which would help to fund the Heritage Front’s efforts to stir up racial unrest in Canada and so further the groups aims.
What Max didn’t know was I was already a Confidential Informant for the Ontario Provincial Police as a result of my inside role in the counterfeit money scheme that had occurred in 1984 at Le Strip.
I refer to that as “How Le Strip saved Christmas” for Toronto merchants by preventing the laundering of $20 million US dollars during the peak Christmas sales rush and the seizure of said monies and the arrests of all the perpetrators involved which, sadly, included my ex-girlfriend ‘Black Magic’ and her husband.
In 1986 all involved were convicted and sentenced to jail terms in federal prison except for my ex-girlfriend who was found not guilty… I was the Crown’s chief witness during the trial.
When Max French told me what he had in mind for me, I immediately contacted the people in the Ontario Provincial Police (the OPP) who had handled me during the counterfeit money scheme and they in turn turned me over to OPP Security Service member Detective Sergeant Hans BrocVogel and OPP Intelligence Squad Detective Daniel Maclean.
…and so began my plunge into the fringe world of neo-Nazi and far right extremist groups… a world that I found horrendously sad and tragic.
Robert Mathews of The Order/Silent Brotherhood
During a road trip with Max French to Howell, Michigan, where I attended one of Pastor Robert E. Miles‘ Klan gatherings, I met the widow of Robert Mathews and his newly-born daughter (who never met her father because Matthews was killed in a shootout with the FBI on Whidby Island in the Pacific northwest before she was born).
It was the only time I was ever paid by the OPP for any of my activities as a Confidential Informant – they reimbursed me for the gas money I paid to make the trip with Max to Howell, Michigan and back.
When I signed for the money in BrocVogel’s notebook he and his Intelligence counterpart Daniel Maclean both wanted me to become further engaged with the Heritage Front.
I balked at the idea after discussing the matter with my wife and so it was arranged that I would set up the meeting with Max French and Grant Bristow at Le Strip… which I did in the hope that Grant would ingratiate himself with Max and I could slowly exit, stage left.
If only things were to go according to the plan!
Life for David Hughes is much quieter now – He retired from the Canadian Pacific Railway in 2019, after 33 years of service.
David Hughes in 2024, as imagined by the Gencraft AI…
Max French also retired from the Canadian Pacific Railway in 2016 or 2017.
David says: “I have no idea what he is up to now.”
French was interviewed by Vice in 2017, for a piece sub-titled: When neo-Nazis are congregating at the public library without issue, something’s amiss…
Max French interviewed in 2017 for a piece about white supremacists… (Photo by Rachel Browne)
(MORE ON ALL THIS IN THE NEXT BLOG – “The Canadian spies, white supermacists and South African secret agents affair…” HERE…)
Last Friday afternoon I flew up from London to the Edinburgh Fringe and last Saturday evening I flew back. It was the cheapest way except for a National Express coach and I had buggered my back a few days before so did not fancy spending hour upon hour in one position in a cramped seat.
I went up to see Janey Godley’s Not Dead Yet comedy show because she is the single most multi-talented creative person I have ever met. And she didn’t disappoint. She gets better and even better.
After the show, I talked to another member of the audience – someone not in any way connected to the comedy industry but a regular Fringe-goer for years and years. In other words, an ‘ordinary’ audience member who goes up to Edinburgh just to see the comedy shows.
I asked her what she thought of the post-Covid Fringe. It was certainly crowded on Friday/Saturday; it felt back to normal as far as the crowds went.
Janey, as is normal for her, had a 100% sell-out show.
My ‘ordinary’ audience member, who prefers to remain anonymous, had gone to comic Phil Kay’s show the previous night in which he roamed round the streets of Edinburgh with his audience. That was his show. She was impressed:
He had about 20 or 30 people in his audience. He stopped at various places and told us about various experiences he had had in each place. Very funny experiences. Uniquely eccentric. The eccentricity hit a very high level.
I had seen him a couple of times before. Once I was trapped on a bus with him. I used my friend as a human shield. I thought I would go and see him again this year because I thought it would be an experience and I thought, as it was a walk, I would be able to run away if I needed to.
Where has Phil Kay not been? He’ll suddenly say: “Oh, I know a man who sells Morris Marina parts in Sri Lanka.” He’s had his fingers in so many pies. I’ve never known anybody who goes so fast from one mad experience to the next. He seems to end up naked a lot in his stories.
He was great.
But there seems to be more anger at the Fringe shows this year – Anger on stage from the comedians.
I saw three other shows yesterday, back-to-back, from people I had previously enjoyed. And there was anger from the stage in all three. It was one show after the next. Anger anger anger. Three in a row. It felt like it was a genuine anger aimed at the audience.
Covid has messed things up so much. People not having been on stage for a while. People not being able to earn money and then having life experiences that were horrific and then also things like TikTok.
People were going viral with ridiculous, nasty TikTok things.
People on TikTok and other sites were getting all this money and all the attention when the comedy performers, chipping away at their craft, couldn’t work.
Has comedy come back to its full pre-Covid state? I don’t think so. I think people are still upset a bit.
One of the well-known acts I had seen before – very experienced – he’s done quite a lot of telly – was, this year, really just practising his show. It wasn’t billed as a ‘Work in Progress’.
He told the audience he would have it down pat in the future. He said he didn’t want to look at his notes. He would just recall things and then say things but…
It wasn’t really ready as a show.
And, this year, I feel a definite hatred of the English.
I was at a show performed by an Irish comedian yesterday and she called me out because I was English. She picked on me and said there was a certain English smile that denoted something and I’d just smiled at something. Big distaste for the English. I understand those things, but not everyone’s that English stereotype. She didn’t know I’m half Irish. Just because you speak with an English accent, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re English. I understand she’s in a very bad place in life – her husband had a huge stroke and now he’s in a wheelchair.
In the next show I saw, a black male comedian was angry about English women and the way they react. I’m a white English woman who has lived in the States, has been in a bikers’ gang, lived with a black retired cop. I’m highly sensitive to racism against black people, but at what point am I myself having racism used against me because I’m white or because I’m English?
The black comic, like the Irish woman, had gone through bad experiences – his dad had died.
I suppose you have to perform comedy assuming people have not travelled; but you don’t know their experiences. I think what some comedians should remember is that, if you insult people enough, they’re not going to come back to your show. If it’s constant abuse towards the members of the audience in a show, it’s going to put you off.
The third show I saw was a British-born Indian. He was just constantly talking about white people, the way they are and kind of dumbing them down. I understand that too but, if it goes on through the whole show like that and you in the audience are the dumb person – if the audience are constantly the butt of his jokes – it’s not really that funny and you’re not going to bother seeing his next show.
Again, like the other two comics, bad things had happened to him – His dad had died from cancer – his treatment was delayed because of Covid – AND his mum had died from Covid – they would not give her the jab at that time.
I do understand the anger and I do understand they’re all in bad places but I sat there after the third show and thought… Well, when people start to have a go at you for being English repeatedly or being white – three shows in a row – you’re like WHAT THE HELL??
At what point do you start to think: This is a kind of racism and it’s kind of intense.
I go to different ethnicities of comedy because there ARE so many now, which is great and I like that. But at what point do you think the acts are being over-sensitive? When it’s three in a row, you start to think…
A few years back, there was another comedian rolling about on the floor. I think he had mental health problems at the time and couldn’t cope. He was rolling about on the floor saying how difficult it was to get up and do these shows night after night and the audience had no understanding of the pressure he was under. When somebody got up to leave, he said: “Do you think my show’s shit?” and the guy said: “Well, I don’t want to sit through this.”
It was horrible, really, because the comic was mentally in a bad place and to see the way people treated him was…
I thought it was terrible what the ‘fans’ did to Janey Godley tonight.
She has cancer. She said she wasn’t meeting people afterwards because she’s on chemotherapy but someone got her off the stage to sign a jumper. Someone should have passed that jumper to her. But, because Janey seems a kind person, it set off a whole wave. To get pictures taken with her. Not one of those people thought: We could kill her by touching her and being round her.
There was a woman in the row in front of me wearing a (health) mask and she went to have her picture taken with Janey and pulled her mask down and tried to put her arm round her and Janey said No about the arm-round.
But the woman shouldn’t have been standing next to her.
Janey’s immune system’s completely compromised. The reason you wear a mask is to stop you infecting other people. The woman wore the mask when she was sitting in the audience but pulled it down when she stood next to Janey for the photo. I thought it was an outstanding display of selfishness. People were taking advantage of her. Her kindness.
There’s anger from a lot of comedians – not Janey – but the audiences are a bit unsettled too.
With Phil Kay, there was none of that. It was an escape into a mad world which makes you laugh and makes you happy.
You go to see a comedian to escape, to be taken out of your world. There’s nothing better than a good laugh.
I had a chat with comedy performer Njambi McGrath at the Museum of Comedy in London. Her autobiographical memoir Through the Leopard’s Gaze is published today in print and as an audio book. The blurb reads:
“Beaten to pulp and left for dead, 13 year old Njambi found the courage to escape, fearing her assailant would return to finish her. She walked all night risking wild animals, robbers and murderers in the Kenyan countryside, before being picked up by two shabbily dressed men. She spent her life burying memories of that fateful day and night…”
JOHN: So you’ve written your autobiography and it’s all about your appalling family life back in Kenya.
NJAMBI: Basically, it’s a journey back into my life, triggered by the death of my father in 2014. A few things had happened before that. My brother was getting married just before, which threw things into chaos.
JOHN: In Kenya.
NJAMBI: Yes. My father and I had been estranged for a very long time. The last time I had seen him was when he beat me and left me to die… Fast forward… My brother was getting married and my father was invited and I went into complete meltdown. All I could think about was everything that happened to me when I was 13 years old.
“…and then it ended up opening a whole Pandora’s Box…”
So I wanted to talk to my father about it before the wedding, because I felt like I was going to explode – and that meeting was disastrous because he brought his entire family and I wasn’t able to speak to him.
Then, after the wedding – It had brought up all the trauma in me – I rang him and we organised a meeting. But he didn’t turn up to that meeting because he died.
I completely lost my mind. So I decided to write a book. It started off as a journey to tell the world what a horrible man my father was and then it ended up opening a whole Pandora’s Box: all the evils of the world.
So it is a journey back into my childhood and into my parents’ childhood, to try and discover why they were so messed up. And it seems like History plays a major role.
JOHN: Blame the British?
NJAMBI: I cannot do a show about my life without mentioning the British. That is an important point, because my parents grew up at a horrible, horrible time: they grew up during the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950s.
They were children then. So you can imagine my father, as a young boy, seeing women brutalised every single day of their lives… You would grow up thinking that was normal. They had grown up at a horrible time. But I didn’t know that.
When people are traumatised by a major event, once they are free from it, they tend to want to forget about it. They don’t pass it on to their children but maybe not realising they have been traumatised and can’t face up to it and, if it’s not addressed, their children will be traumatised. It’s called Generational Trauma.
JOHN: Your book is called Through the Leopard’s Gaze. Why that title?
NJAMBI: Because, when I was a child, we lived in a beautiful area called The White Highlands. When the British arrived, they took it for themselves. They kicked out my tribe – the Kikuyu farmers – and took the land for themselves. They put the Kikuyu people in ‘reservations’.
JOHN: When did you come to Britain?
NJAMBI: When I was just coming up to 19.
JOHN: I only spent the first 8 years of my life in Scotland; the rest mostly in London. But I feel Scottish not English. You spent the first 18 years of your life in Kenya…
NJAMBI: We are so confused! My husband is English. My two daughters are British. I have two sisters and two brothers. We all came over, but my brothers moved back to Kenya.
JOHN: And your mother is…
NJAMBI: She died just over a month ago – in December – on Friday the 13th.
JOHN: Your book will also be your Edinburgh Fringe show in August?
“At least you’re not black black”
NJAMBI: The show will be called Black Black because, the night before I got married, my husband’s mother said: “When I found out that David was marrying a woman from Africa, I was horrified. But at least you’re not black black.”
My mother was very black; my grandmother was very black. So it is a show where I am paying homage to the blackest people I know. It is a comparison between me and my life now and my grandmother. She lived through the Nazi era.She and I were put into institutions. I went to boarding school in Kenya; my grandmother was put in a British ‘concentration’ camp in Kenya. We were both controlled by the British.
JOHN: This is going to be billed as Comedy in Edinburgh?
NJAMBI: (LAUGHING) Yes. You can talk about something serious, but find the funny in it. In a comedy show, I would like to make people think as well as laugh.
JOHN: Politics as well?
NJAMBI: Like I said, I cannot do a show about my life without mentioning the British. It has led some people to say I’m racist. But how can I be racist if everything is affected by everything that the British did to us? My education. I speak English. Everything. The land that we lived in. The coffee that was introduced by the British. I cannot not talk about the British.
JOHN: Anything else on the horizon?
NJAMBI: I wrote a sitcom – I have a writing partner. We finished writing it just before the Edinburgh Fringe last year. It’s with a production house. Someone once said to me: “Write about what you know.” Well, I’m an immigrant and there are issues surrounding immigration… And we are currently writing a feature film – well, you gotta try! In it, I am a black African woman with an Austrian lesbian and a Jamaican woman.
JOHN: You are busy…
NJAMBI: And I’m writing my first novel. I’m past halfway. And, out of this one, I think I could write a children’s book – using an element of it.
I think the first time it happened I was on a Victoria Line train on the London Underground.
I was feeling quite mellow and relaxed, standing by the exit doors of the train when he talked to me.
He was a young black bloke, maybe around 19. The shrewd observer of life in London might have guessed he was a black troublemaker and/or mugger.
He got up, looked me in the eye and offered me his seat. This was maybe two years ago. It was a first.
I had got to that point in life where I look so old (and presumably appear to be so frail) that people offer me their seats in trains. And one thing always strikes me. This is, I think, a fairly accurate guesstimate of the numbers…
Around 90% or maybe even 95% of the people who offer their seats to me in trains are non-white.
It is very rare for a white person to offer me their seat.
Young men; young women; even, the other day, an older Indian guy who was maybe 50.
I think: What the fuck? How old do I look? How geriatric must I look?
But it’s almost always the same. They are non-white and (I think; I guess) are British residents. I don’t think tourists would offer their seat to me unless I looked REALLY frail and looked like I was about to drop down at any moment. Tourists would not be absolutely sure about the local protocol.
I don’t know what the social or ethnical or upbringing reason is; but it is non-white-skinned people who offer their seats to me.
And, just before Christmas, there was a more unsettling incident.
I was with a friend’s 8-year-old daughter.
An unsettling encounter on a fairly crowded London bus…
We got on a fairly crowded bus. But there was a double seat occupied by a young woman in her twenties of Chinese origin. I say that because I don’t think she was Chinese. She may have been Malaysian or similar. Mostly Chinese ethnically but not by birth.
She had a small child – presumably her daughter – standing in front of her; they were interacting. They were using one seat; the seat beside them was completely empty.
The young woman looked up and saw me approaching. I was going to let my 8-year old sit on the empty seat and stand beside her.
The Chinese woman, looking me in the eye, made to move so that I and my 8-year-old could sit down in the two seats and she and her daughter would stand, giving up their one seat. There was a look in her eye that made me think she felt I presumed I, as a white man with a white chlld, had a right to the two seats and she – a young Chinese woman with a Chinese daughter – had to defer to me.
With a look, I communicated she did not have to get up.
They had been quite reasonably and very politely only using one seat, so my 8-year-old was able to sit down in the empty seat without affecting them and I stood by the eight-year-old; there was no other empty seat nearby.
But the look in the young woman’s eye – that she had to defer to a white man – unsettled and still unsettles me.
Another incident happened just after Christmas.
I had arranged a meal with a chum in a Japanese restaurant in Soho. My chum is of Polynesian/Chinese descent. There was a queue of about four other people, mostly Japanese,outside the restaurant, including my chum; she had arrived before me.
“Did you see that man with the zimmer frame?” she asked me.
I had passed him. He had just turned round the corner.
“He told us all to get off the street and get out of the way,” she told me, “and to get back to where we came from.”
The queue was not blocking the pavement.
I went back to the corner but he was no longer there.
I can think of one reason why he had to use a zimmer frame.
The Christmas/New Year period roughly coincides with the 9-day Jewish Hanukkah holiday.
The confusing menorah at Hanukkah in Borehamwood…
I live in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, just on the NW edge of London. For reasons unknown, there is a fairly high Jewish population; and a fairly high Romanian population. We have two Romanian grocers… one generic Balkan grocer also catering for Romanians… and now a triple-fronted Romanian restaurant in the high street.
This year, in the shopping centre, to celebrate Hanukkah, there was a large menorah installed – made out of balloons – and a few tressle tables. The gents supervising it all wore skullcaps/kippahs and long beards. They looked Jewish. There were DJ disco tracks playing on a loudspeaker. The music was a mixture of Jewish music and what sounded confusingly like black Caribbean music.
When I listened to the music properly, I realised it was Rasta music and the song lyrics referred to “the Lion of Judah” (ie Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia) and “have a happy Hanukkah”.
As I was loitering around listening to all this with some bemusement – OK, to be honest, the scene looked like a Jewish celebration, with West Indian music playing, manned by black-bearded members of ISIS – I realised quite a lot of the passers-by were speaking to each other in an Eastern European language that was not Russian. (I sort-of learned Russian at school.) I surmised the language was Romanian.
So there was this scenario where fairly recent immigrants from Romania were walking through a typically English shopping centre at Christmastime where some Jewish festival was being celebrated (there was the large menorah made from balloons) while West Indian music was playing.
I suspect this was culturally beyond confusing to them but, somehow, I also find it very reassuring.
We have lived long enough in a world where women are constantly undermined in favour of men. For hundreds of years, women have been seen as ‘not as important’ or ‘not as good’ as men.
The fact that Stephen Fry did the job for ten years and is generally accepted as bringing prestige to the show is not a factor, any more than the fact that Paul Merton has appeared on Have I Got News For You for what seems like generations. Just because he has should not mean he gets paid any more than a one-off guest panelist. People should be paid according to the amount of wordage and length of screen time they have in each episode of each panel show.
Popularity and statistics are less important than pure equality
The fact that Sandi Toksvig currently has 158,000 Twitter followers and Stephen Fry has 12.7 million should not be a factor. This is about equality of pay for people doing the same job.
All comedians in any stage show should be paid exactly the same and there should be a statutory rate per minute no matter whether the comedy is performed in a local club or at the London Palladium. Comedy is comedy. A comedian is a comedian. A presenter is a presenter is a presenter.
There should be statutory rates for plays. All actors playing Hamlet should be paid the same amount. It is outrageous they are not. It is the same play and they are spouting the same words.
“One equal wage for all creative performers” should be the mantra for the 2020s. An actor is an actor. A comic is a comic. A TV presenter is a TV presenter.
We should ban all financial negotiations on pay and fees
NO PAY DISCRIMINATION!
Talent is a matter of opinion not a fact. We should outlaw performers’ agents and ban all financial negotiations on pay and fees because negotiating is, in itself, an inherently discriminatory endeavour.
THIS IS ABOUT EQUALITY!
But we should also positively discriminate more generally.
PC has not gone far enough.
Equality is not just a right; it is a necessity and should be – it has to be – enforced.
For years, bald men have been discriminated against and maligned. It is overdue that this is reversed and bald men like me should be paid more and given more job opportunities than more talented, experienced and suitable hirsute men after years of discrimination and ridicule aimed against us. Hairism must be rooted out. We must restore and impose equality.
As far as I am aware, no bald candidate for British Prime Ministership has ever beaten an hairy candidate in a General Election.
Churchill versus Atlee in two slaphead UK General Elections
With Atlee v Churchill in 1945 and 1951, it was the battle of two slapheads. In the General Election battle between Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock in 1987, Thatcher had the hair and, indeed, the balls.
The fact that baldism is rife in politics and in Society at large is self-evident.
And the same goes for men with beards.
For too long has Society accepted open discrimination against bearded men.
Margaret Thatcher, it is reported, would not appoint any bearded man to her Cabinet.
But this particular discrimination goes way back. It started, I believe, in Britain with the Beard Tax in 16th century England when Queen Elizabeth I introduced a tax on every (male) beard of more than two weeks’ growth.
In 1698, Peter the Great introduced a beard tax in Russia “to bring Russian Society into line with Western European countries”. The Tsarist police were empowered to forcibly shave off the beards of those who refused to pay the tax. This inevitably triggered a revolution in 1917.
But this institutionalised beardism is not just restricted to Right Wing regimes.
Even People’s champion Enver Hoxha fell prey to beardism
When, in 1979, I went to Albania (then under the benevolent leadership of Enver Hoxha) I had to have part of my beard shaved off so there was a gap of at least regulation distance between my chin beard and my sideburns.
Even under a benevolent Socialist regime, beardism can flourish and has flourished.
What all this proves is that there is deep-seated institutionalised beardism and hairism engrained in the very bedrock of society, includingBritish society.
The only way to rid our country of these pernicious prejudices is to have quotas.
There should be quotas in all jobs in all areas of society for bald men and bearded men related to their percentage of the population at large.
If a hairy-headed or shaved-chin candidate is more qualified to do a job, then he (or she) should be rejected in favour of a bald or bearded candidate, until the correct quotas are met.
Lynn Ruth Miller – an American performer now based in the UK – continues her tales of returning to the US for three weeks of gigs in and around San Francisco after four years away…
That night was going to be the big one. I was going to perform my show This Is Your Future at Beth Lemke’s A Grape in The Fog – her wine bar in Pacifica – and this was the city I lived in and loved for thirty years.
This Is Your Future makes them laugh in Australia and the UK.
But would I get a giggle from the Americans?
A Grape in The Fog is Beth’s baby (along with her special child, Daphne, a teeny tiny Chihuahua with a gigantic attitude).
Pacifica is a bedroom community filled with restaurants and services for people who commute to San Francisco or to Silicon Valley. The level of sophistication one needs to create a successful wine bar for the beer-drinking, hamburger-guzzling local residents does not exist.
Daphne the Chihuahua with a gigantic attitude
However, Beth is very innovative and staged events like jazz-and-wine, art-and-wine, games-and-wine, even a Yappy Hour so Daphne the Chihuahua could show off her new costumes to other less pampered pets.
It has taken Beth eight years of persistence and creativity, but she has now established a stable, niche market for her fine and very expensive gourmet wines.
To my delight, A Grape in The Fog was packed with people who knew me back in those halcyon days of walking too many dogs, writing columns for their newspaper and telling dirty jokes.
Every person who came to the show was a gift to me, but, as with all things, every good bit of news brings bad news to counter it.
I learned that my really young fifty-ish neighbors across the street had both died. Way too young. So had my neighbor to the east who was blind and very old when I lost my house. We all knew that was coming. The man of the house on the west had died too, but his harpy of a wife – a woman who reported me to the police for giving her son champagne for his high school graduation – still spreads her venom.
There is no justice or logic to those who continue and those who stop, is there?
Just one of Lynn Ruth Miller’s books
One very special guest at A Grape in The Fog was Lennon Smith who helped me formulate my very first one woman show Farewell To The Tooth Fairy – a series of stories from my book Thoughts While Walking The Dog. It was she who began me on the path that led to the Toast Award and the cabarets I do regularly in London and Edinburgh.
So there I was, my past clustered about me, drinking exquisite wine and smiling indulgently as well-meaning, kind people insisted I had not changed one whit even though I am two inches shorter and look like something someone soaked in the bath two hours too long.
They laughed at British jokes they could not understand because they cared about me.
‘Dogging’ to them is following someone too closely.
‘Bums’ live in the street.
But so what?
I was once theirs and they wanted me to know I was not forgotten.
The next day was my day with Pattie Lockard.
Pattie has been not just a fan but a promoter and a helper for years and years.
I discovered her doing PR for Menopause the Musical and now she is the founder and spirit behind Nurse Talk – a call-in and political radio series that explores nurses’ rights, health issues and adventures in the nursing profession. It is a beautiful mix of humor and information and I did several short pieces on the show.
Pattie and I met that day at The Cheesecake Factory which serves portions that would make an elephant flinch and then tops it with a slice of cheesecake that would send the slimmest among us to Weight Watchers.
Then we drove out to her new home in Napa.
Napa is the place that makes all those California wines we buy at Sainsbury’s. It is a charming place filled with vineyards and wineries, Victorian houses and boutique shops.
Pattie’s partner is a working nurse. She is directly involved in the health care system in California and sees first hand the way the insurance companies have profited at the expense of the sick. She is a strong advocate for single pay insurance, as is Pattie. But she is not fond of me.
When I had the misfortune to stay at their home years ago after I broke my heel, Pattie’s partner screamed at me: “You and your Jew ways!” and asked me to leave the house, when I was doing nothing but sitting in her living room with my leg in a cast.
When she heard I was visiting Pattie this time, she left the house to visit a relative.
I spent the night in their home and, at ten the next morning, Pattie came in to tell me I had to leave immediately because her partner was on her way home,
I have encountered many people who do not like me and I have always believed that is their right. After all, if everyone loves you, you are really nothing to anybody.
However, this time I felt a bit miffed because, as far as I know, I have done nothing offensive to this woman to ignite this level of disgust.
I am beginning to understand the insult people feel when they are discriminated against for something that has nothing to do with who they are… and I also realize nothing I can do will change that attitude.
We are all different people and that is a good thing.
I believe this was a very good experience for me to learn compassion for others.
I understand much more completely now how invasive and illogical racism is and how it feels to be hated (such a strong word) by someone you have hardly had a conversation with.
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.
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:
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.
Image for Louise’s Chinese language show It’s Only Words
Last night, I went to see the final of the Leicester Square Theatre’s New Comedian of The Year competition, rightly won by character act LJ Da Funk (aka Zak Splijt).
One of the acts was the highly esteemed Louise Reay.
In a previous So It Goes blog, about her Edinburgh Fringe show, she explained to me: “I’ve always been interested in communication. People have a real mental barrier about languages and the way we communicate.
“But just one look can mean so much. We communicate all the time. Look at my hands. I can’t stop them moving. There’s so much more than language going on. That’s what my show’s all about. There was a very spurious 1960s experiment which proved that only 7% of communication was verbal. So my whole show is an experiment in the 93%. If I did it in French, it wouldn’t work, because most people maybe understand enough.”
Today, one review of last night’s show said: “Louise Reay was the first oddball of the night, coming on speaking Chinese and then explaining, via placards, that her whole act would be in Chinese. It could easily have been seen as racist, but Reay was more of an absurdist. I didn’t think it was offensive, maybe if I was Chinese – and very sensitive – I might have felt differently.”
Italian comedian Giacinto Palmieri is currently conducting a three-year PhD research project for the University of Surrey at Guildford. It is on the self-translation of stand-up comedy – comedians who translate and adapt their own material from one language to another.
On Facebook, his response to the review was “I don’t understand why the possibility of considering Louise Reay’s act racist is even entertained (although, fortunately, rejected). She does not even pretend to be Chinese; she just plays on the absurdity of using a language the majority of the audience cannot understand.”
The reviewer (alright, it was the admirable Bruce Dessau) came back to Giacinto with: “As you say, I did consider it before rejecting it. But I still wonder if a Chinese person would be OK with it, though I don’t like the idea of being offended on other people’s behalf so I won’t be offended on behalf of the entire Chinese population!”
Giacinto, responded: “Indeed. But I think we need to go a step further: even if they were offended, they wouldn’t be justified in being so. Offence, even when real and not hypothetical, cannot be its own justification.”
A warm welcome for Louise in Nanjing during filming for her BBC2 documentary series The School That Turned Chinese
At this point, Louise pointed out: “My Edinburgh show was sponsored by the Confucius Institute at the University of Edinburgh, which is funded by the Hanban, the culture department of the Chinese government. This would appear to indicate that my act is generally supported by both the Chinese and the academic community of Chinese speakers. I would add as a general point that it is not remotely racist (for a white English person) to speak real Chinese. A Chinese person speaking English is never questioned on the matter. The Independentwrote an article about it all in case of interest.”
Interestingly, by a quirk of scheduling at last night’s show, Louise Reay’s act (an English woman performing in Chinese) was immediately followed by Japanese comic Yuriko Kotani speaking English with a Japanese accent. She won the BBC Radio New Comedy Award last week.
There has never been any suggestion that her act could, in any way, at any time, be considered racist.
Louise Reay is currently working on her next solo show, titled Que Sera, 些拉
Not that I would like you to think I am obsessed with blogging, but…
… occasionally, I hear things which sound like they might fit into a blog…
… and they almost never do.
I do not write them down. I text them to myself.
It is a mild obsession. I can control it.
It does not control me.
At least, I do not think it does.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in a train near Hendon, going to St Pancras in London, and, in the next set of seats, four very dull-looking people were talking about their upcoming holidays and other equally (to me) uninteresting things. I was not really listening, but then my ears told my brain that one of their voices had said, in a casual, conversational way:
“That’s really the wrong question. The question is Has God found YOU?”
By the time my brain adjusted to listening to them properly, they were talking about hotels.
How did God get into that conversation?
Yesterday, I was waiting at a Watford bus stop (don’t ask) when an ageing hippy type turned up with two Sainsburys shopping bags. I thought he was possibly homeless. He had a long light-brown coat, long greying hair, a long grey beard and a dark grey woollen cap. He looked like some cut-price Gandalf.
Shortly afterwards, a middle-aged black man arrived. They knew each other and started talking.
I reconsidered the first man’s status. He probably was not a tramp, just some left-over hippy from the early 1970s. The black guy looked like he had just come from work.
Again, I was not really listening to them until my ears heard the black man say:
“I was working like a bloody nigger.”
Whaaaat??? my brain told my ears.
Again, by the time my brain had adjusted to listening to the conversation, it was inconsequential. It had just been a casual phrase in a casual conversation.
You can’t really say it was racist: the guy was black and was talking to a white guy. You can’t really say it was offensive: the guy could only offend himself.
But Whaaaat??? my brain thought.
Whaaaat???
It was much like Boxing Day last week.
I was in the shopping centre in Borehamwood on Boxing Day. I had just bought myself two pints of milk. I like milk.
Two men passed me. One said to the other:
“Your best bet is to put the guy’s body in a freezer and then cut him up later.”
Whaaaat???
That is exactly what he said:
“Your best bet is to put the guy’s body in a freezer and then cut him up later.”
The fascination of other people’s lives, partly overheard.
It is like reading only one paragraph on one page of a 500-page novel.
JOHN: Your book is called Through the Leopard’s Gaze. Why that title?
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 