Adam Wilder on the importance of togetherness, empathy and compassion

Adam juggling spaghetti in Edinburgh, 2011

So I had a chat last month (I am only just catching up) with Adam Wilder (previously aka Adam Oliver, previously Adam Taffler).

We first met at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011 when he was street-performing in the Grassmarket and I asked him if he could juggle spaghetti…

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JOHN: So we haven’t seen each other for ages. When last heard of, you were organising sex parties in tall tower blocks in 2017.

ADAM: (LAUGHS) No. Last time we spoke, I was running the Togetherness Festival of Human Connection, which did involve some sexuality, John, because that is a part of human connection – even for a Scottish Presbyterian like you…

JOHN: It’s the work of The Devil.

ADAM: It wasn’t a sex party. It was a Human Connection Festival…and that was really fun and, actually, I’ve been following that thread for the last three years.

The World Spooning Record at the Wilderness Festival, 2019

Last year, since I saw you, we broke a world record at the Wilderness Festival. We had 1,547 people spooning, to promote healthy…

JOHN: …sex.

ADAM: No. (LAUGHS) It was about non-sexual touch, actually. It’s so good for you. When we met today, I tried to hug you and you gave me a Scottish hug.

JOHN: What is a Scottish hug?

ADAM: It’s not really a hug. It’s like: I feel a bit disgusted, but I feel like I should do this.

JOHN: It was hard for me to say No.

ADAM: This is what I’m into now. I’m teaching a course called Embodied Sovereignty. It’s about knowing What do I want? What do I not want? I want to say No. Why is it hard to say No?

JOHN: Why is it hard to say No?

ADAM: Because we don’t want to upset people and have a bad reaction. We have two fundamental needs – The need for authenticity and the need for attachment.

So, spooning… We had these 1,547 people spooning and why is that important, John?

JOHN: Why?

ADAM: It’s so important, John, because it makes us feel relaxed. I feel sorry for people who have had no-one to hug during this COVID thing. It’s enough to send you mental. There is this thing now called Nordic Cuddling: you can hire someone to come round and cuddle you. 

JOHN: Why Nordic? 

ADAM: (LAUGHS) It makes you think of clean, blond people.

JOHN: I rather like dirty brunette people.

ADAM: I have a friend who was a cage fighter and he is really into all this intimacy work. He told me: “Adam, you know, I now realise why I was doing all the cage fighting was because I really wanted to hug and squeeze people, but I never knew how to ask for it.”

JOHN: I’ve always thought rugby players are sexually highly suspicious.

ADAM: I used to play rugby. I loved it. I loved getting the ball and people trying to take you down. It was somewhere you could actually express the anger and the passion. Normally, you’re not allowed to. It’s like Liza Minelli in Cabaret. You have to go under a bridge and scream when the trains come over.

JOHN: Well, what use is sitting alone in a room?

ADAM: I was a very angry kid.

JOHN: Why?

ADAM: Because of life. My mum was doing all this spiritual stuff and my dad was REALLY mainstream. A professor.

JOHN: Of what?

ADAM: Finance. Oh my god. It was such a weird kind of oil and wine situation. I had zero boundaries with my mum. ZERO. And then my dad would get really pissed-off because I just had no boundaries. They divorced.

JOHN: They were happy with each other?”

ADAM: No. They divorced. They divorced. Of course they did. I was about… John, you’re not my therapist! We are not going there. But, suffice to say, I was an angry kid. How do YOU feel when someone’s being angry near you?

JOHN: Erm… I don’t think I ever really had trouble with bullies at school.

ADAM: Might not be bullies. Might be parental stuff.

I’m big into the Embodiment Movement at the moment and I’m speaking at the Embodiment Conference in October, which is going to be the biggest online conference ever – over 130,000 people have signed up for free. Over 1,000 speakers, including me.

JOHN: Define ‘embodiment’?

ADAM: It’s essentially about noting sensations and feelings in your body and becoming more aware of them. It’s a big deal in Business now. It never used to be, but now it is. In Leadership and Training and all that stuff. If you notice a bit more about what’s going on, you can respond differently in the world.

There was a brilliant psychologist last century called Carl Rogers. He developed the Person-Centred Approach.

With normal psycho-analysis, you’d say: “Ah yes, this is your problem and this is how you will fix it!”

Adam had person-centred coffee with me…

The Person-Centred Approach is: “I’m your buddy and I’m just here to support you and listen to you and, actually, the best person to work it out is you. I’m just going to be here and help you.”

I like to create an environment where people feel they can explore this kind of stuff.

JOHN: Have you seen the movie Joker?

ADAM: Oh! I loved that SO much, John! Oh my God! It’s a warning about what happens when we’re not comfortable with our anger. And I also found it a very moving and beautiful story about someone coming into themselves and their life… taking power in his own life, though in a destructive, dark way.

I think I actually burst out laughing in that scene where he stabs the guy in the head with the scissors. I think I squealed with delight.

JOHN: Why?

ADAM: I just felt really happy that he was (LAUGHS) asserting himself, instead of just being a victim… although I don’t advocate that kind of destructive behaviour.

JOHN: You don’t seem to be an angry person as an adult.

ADAM: I love expressing a bit of anger.

JOHN: Ever have a primal scream like Liza Minelli?

ADAM: No. No. But I like to do a bit of shaking. That’s fun. Give a good shake. Shake your body from the top to the bottom for a good 10 minutes.

JOHN: What? Like Tom Cruise in Cocktail?

ADAM: No. It starts from the hips and knees and works up. Lets loose. Dancing. I love dancing.

JOHN: I never liked dancing. Couldn’t cope with strobe lights. The whole of the 1960s and 1970s were wasted on me.

ADAM: Nowadays it’s all about Hampstead Heath and wearing headphones.

JOHN: So what have you lined up?

ADAM: I’ve been trying to reconcile the various parts of my personality – this sort of wild happy-go-lucky comedian and this really grounded Yeah, I’m into Human Connection guy and I’ve finally got it… I am a Human Connection Coach and comedian. That’s what I’m putting myself out as now. I’ve done a bit of work with Google and Coca Cola and Accenture and some local governments…

JOHN: Doing what?

ADAM: Doing stuff around how to create a culture of togetherness where different people like hanging out with each other; giving people the skills to set boundaries and say No and get on better.

JOHN: This might not work in Glasgow, where they head-butt people to say hello…

ADAM: My friend is a sex therapist up in Glasgow…

JOHN: This doesn’t surprise me.

ADAM: …and he gets very few people coming to him, but they’re really sweet, apparently. Imagine you were in a culture where you can’t talk about something but it’s really important to you and someone tells you: “Oh! This is really normal.” It’s liberating. He does some cuddle parties up there.

JOHN: Celtic cuddle parties?

ADAM: That’s about… JOHN!!!! I haven’t even told you about the House of Togetherness!!!

The House of Togetherness in Covent Garden, in April 2019

JOHN: Tell me.

ADAM: Last year in January (2019) I saw this old yoga studio in Covent Garden which was available for six months and I thought: Fuck it! I’ll take it! and create The House of Togetherness!

So I created a venue in London where people could come together for things like Blindfolded Adventure Time… Spooning Hour… something called Sex Club… Speak Your Truth… People could come together and have these experiences of how to connect better with ourselves and each other.

We had some very Glaswegian journalists come in for Spooning.

JOHN: Glaswegian journalists?

ADAM: People who don’t find it normal to touch other people.

JOHN: Did you call it House Of Togetherness because the initials are quite good – HOT?

ADAM: No. House of Togetherness because it made sense. I’m doing togetherness…

JOHN: … and it’s in a house. I see…

ADAM: We started in January and had to finish in October because the building was being redeveloped. It was really really good fun, man. I totally burnt myself out as well. It was nuts. I was wasted by the end.

I’ve been rebuilding myself over the last nine months and now I’m developing into the School of Connection: the School of Togetherness, basically. I want to help people learn the skills I think are really important in culture right now. Things like listening with empathy and compassion; speaking your truth; being able to say No; being able to ask for what you want; the relationship between pleasure and direction.

I have two courses running online right now. One is on non-violent communication. It’s about how behind every conflict are un-met needs and, if we can talk about those, then we can resolve things.

As a comedian and human connection coach, I feel like it’s all coming together now.

The mass spooning event organised by Adam Wilder at the Wilderness Festival last year…

Lynn Ruth Miller finds life tough in San Francisco and meets Trump supporters

Lynn Ruth’s view

The last couple of blogs have been by the uniquely multi-talented comic, writer and occasional burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller, ruminating on her recent visit back to San Francisco, where she lived for nearly 30 years. Here she rounds off…

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I met with Mike Morgin who is my US tax consultant. His stage name is Mike Moto and he was an active part of the American comedy scene.

His heritage is part of his set. He is part Japanese, part Yugoslavian so he always opens with: “I am a Japoslav”.  

The last time I heard him, we were in a tiny theater that holds 20 people and someone in that minute group shouted: “I am, too!” You cannot make these things up.

Six years ago, Mike suffered a severe stroke and the interesting thing about this story is that for six years he has struggled with his rehabilitation and within two years he was managing to go back on stage. His balance is precarious and he walks with a cane. Although his speech is improving, he still is difficult to understand. However, he is determined to master these challenges. He is doing more shows every year. His progress is slow, but he proves the cliché “once a comedian always a comedian”. His set is still solid and, as of just this year, he has been doing longer sets not just for comedy audiences but for people recovering from a stroke.

Since comedy is not the most lucrative profession for those of us that TV has not discovered (yet), Mike is a tax consultant during the day and he has been doing my taxes for about 8 years.

On the Friday, I was booked for Samson Koletar’s room in Oakland.  Samson is from Mumbai and came to Silicon Valley because he got a high-paying job in IT. He moved into a beautiful apartment near San Francisco’s Mission District. He said that, in Mumbai, his parents, his sister and he all lived in a one bedroom flat and the isolation of living alone in his fancy new American home was almost more than he could bear.

Samson started Comedy Oakland several years ago and its growth was very slow; but he persisted.   

The city of San Francisco was the center for sophisticated entertainment. Stand up demands intelligent listening to be enjoyed. Oakland, on the other hand, has a fluctuating population and the income and cultural levels are extremely varied. 

It has some of the most gorgeous and expensive places to live near scenic Lake Merritt. It is also one of the places famous for its drive-by shootings and immense consumption of drugs.

Lynn Ruth Miller alone on stage in Oakland

Sam continued to bring in good comedy to this area because it had no comedy at all and he knew eventually the shows would be accepted and be well attended. He succeeded. This time, Sam scheduled two shows back to back and the place was sold out.

Once again, I am faced with the question of what keeps us at it. Comedy is a thankless, stressful career, at best. At worst, it is the stuff of suicide. It is very stressful to get up on a stage and bare your heart to a bunch of strangers.  

I lived alone with no family and very few friends. Comedy was my lifeline and I hung on to it for dear life. I fed on the laughs no matter how sparse they were when I began.

I went for dinner with my friend, Judy Lawrence. I met her at the Park Movie Theatre when she was the manager there almost 40 years ago. We became fast friends and I saw her through some very difficult times. 

Her favorite nephew got brain cancer and died and Judy was torn apart. She went from one dead-end job to another and, between the ups and downs of her very challenging life, we would meet now and again. At one point when I was in my house in Pacifica, she had dyed her hair a bright green and pierced herself like a pin-cushion with rings everywhere – her tongue, her nose, her eyebrows, her ears. I asked her: “Why do you mutilate yourself like this?”.  

She said: ”Why did you have anorexia?” 

And the penny dropped.

I realized then that the only thing we can control is our bodies and, when life goes off the charts, we turn to our anatomy and force it to do our bidding.  

I starved and stuffed my body because it kept me from facing my many failures and inadequacies. Judy pierced hers trying to come to terms with the unfairness and cruelty of disease and loss.

Owning a house in San Francisco is beyond most of us and to my happy surprise, Judy now has her own little house in a beautiful and safe neighborhood of the city. She has a partner now and her mother lives with her as well and – surprise of all surprises – Judy works for Apple.

Apple in Silicon Valley (Photo: Carles Rabada via UnSplash)

She is now part of that top income level created by the Silicon Valley Greats that people say is destroying the city and erasing the middle class.

These very high-income professionals can pay outrageous prices for what they want and, in America, money is the only power that counts. 

Judy has a brand new car; she dresses in up-to-the-minute fashion. The rings are gone. Her hair is a conventional color. But, underneath, she is the same fun-loving and adventuresome Judy that I bonded with at the Park Theatre.  

Our circumstances change, but those basic impulses: compassion, kindness and adventure… we hang on to them. The difference is that, as we age and as our circumstances change, the way we express those tendencies becomes different, less impulsive and, perhaps, a bit more staid.

That night I had a sleep-over with my long-time friends Alan Schneider and Deidre Laiken. When I met them, they lived in San Francisco’s North Beach. They were originally from New York State and came west as so many of us did because we believed California was a magic place. And indeed it was – over ten years ago – when the two of them became part of that culture: jazz on Sunday afternoons, wild street entertainment every day and idyllic weather, never too hot or too cold.

Gradually, the ambience changed and Deidre tells the story of walking out her front door and being accosted by angry, demanding homeless people who blocked the streets with their sleeping bags and tents. The two decided to do what so many former Californians have done: move away from the city that had originally captured their hearts.  

They chose Folsom, an expanding community nearer to Sacramento than San Francisco. They found a condominium development with every amenity: a gym, a swimming pool, lovely walkways filled with foliage that encouraged birds to nest and a well-equipped clubhouse all at a cost far less than their two-bedroom flat in San Francisco. The weather is more extreme; the culture is just not there; but it is safe to walk outside at any time of the day or night.

To my surprise, both of them are ardent Trump supporters.  Alan explained that, although he has no respect for our president as a person, he believes in the things he has accomplished. Unemployment is down; the economy is up; he says minorities are prospering (?); and Donald Trump is making America greater every day.(???) 

“Donald Trump is making America greater every day (???)” (Image via Pixabay)

“The world is changing,” Alan went on to say. “Families are totally different; we live with our cell phones; we do not eat together; and young people cannot have the same dreams we had. Few of them will be able to buy a home; more of them will have to go to University if they want to earn a living; yet fewer of them can afford tuition; we meet people online instead of face to face. Children are living with their parents longer; they are more concerned about things we never even considered like abusing the environment and the artificial additives we put into food.”

I saw that change he was speaking of when I went out for dinner with another friend, Alan Kahn. This Alan is a teacher and a magician, involved now with a woman ten years his senior, who wants him to move to Oregon, a typical escape haven for people disenchanted with the Bay Area.  

Alan has had custody of his two children since his divorce many years ago. Both are in their twenties and are living at home. They are incensed that their father is charging them rent to live in his home now that they are older.  

He believes he is justified because he says they do nothing to help with the upkeep of the house and are earning enough to pay him for the cost of the utilities and huge taxes that every Californian has to pay. His daughter was so insulted that her father would charge her to live in what she feels is her home, that she has moved out and is paying twice as much rent for the privilege.

Alan is not happy with his job and would like to tour the country in a van performing at magic festivals, but his new partner is not too enthusiastic about that. And he says he cannot even consider such a move until both his son and daughter become self-supporting. Neither of the children have a partner and both of them not only have menial jobs that barely pay enough for food, but also do not have enough education to break into more lucrative professions.

It certainly is a new world. I left home as soon as I graduated from university to take a job my education had prepared me for. After my first divorce, I returned home and it never occurred to me that my parents would charge me to live there. My plan for my future was to marry and have children. The idea that I would not do such a thing – or that I would have to go to work to support myself after I married – would have horrified me.

Today, millennials do not leave home until they have to, marriage is in a steep decline and recreational sex is taken for granted.

Who knew?

… CONTINUED IN LOS ANGELES HERE…

It’s Trump country seen through the cataract-dimmed eyes of a comedian

She’s off on her travels again!

85-year-old London-based US storytelling comic and occasional burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller.

She has just returned from a week working in New York and having meetings in Washington DC.

I have just received this from her…

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Here is my new view of Trump country seen through the cataract-dimmed eyes of the elderly…

I landed in J.F.Kennedy Airport where I was being picked up by Val, a Russian man whom I had never met.

Suddenly there he was: a zaftig Russian man with a bouquet of flowers waving at me. The trip to my hotel with him was not just eventful, it was a lesson in pessimistic politics.

Val evidently has been studying historic trends since he came to the United States thirty years ago and he alone has figured out the source of world’s problems. No one else in the universe knows the answer to all the unrest we are experiencing. But he does.

It is those damn Russians causing all the trouble.

No one dares admit this, but all these little countries that SAY they are independent, are not. They are ruled by Russia. In fact, it turns out that the Soviet Union still exists and controls us all. Every world power is in collusion with the KGB.

Angela Merkel? A Russian ally. Theresa May? A Soviet cipher.  Jeremy Corbyn? Trained by the KGB.  

“Have you seen what is happening in Venezuela?” said my omniscient driver. ”Well, thirty years ago, they swore they were a peaceful country, immune to Islamic forces and look what is happening there today. And what about Sri Lanka? Who do you think instigated that attack on that church there? Right! The KGB.”

Notre Dame? Syria? Islam itself? Even Israel! All Russian controlled.

And would I mind if he stopped and got his wife some tea?

By the time I got to my hotel I was so depressed, I thought I would have been better served to simply jump out of the moving cab and throw myself into the traffic. It is a matter of moments before the Russians invade Britain and confiscate the EU because who do you think instigated Brexit? Right. Those damn Russians. My mother would have commiserated with Val. It was back in 1957 when the Asian Flu swept American that my mother swore it was the Russians infecting us all. Nothing could convince her that the virus had no nationality.

I wandered around the streets of New York the next day trying to revive old memories of the time I lived here in 1965. I lived next door to the United Nations Building then and spent my time going to matinees in the afternoon and writing freelance stories no magazine wanted at night. The face of the city has changed since then. It is busier, louder, angrier, more crowded and far more impersonal than it was when I was here. People shove you and push you. They are on their way to somewhere important and evidently they are all late. My toes and shoulders were impediments they are determined to demolish.  

That night was my first comedy show at Dangerfield’s. The first thing I noticed when I arrived there was that everyone spoke with my accent. I now realize that I must stop blaming my inadequate hearing aids for squishing sound together into unintelligible speech. Evidently, I have not learned to decipher an English accent. It could be because there are at least twenty different dialects spoken in London, all purporting to be the King’s English, whatever that is.  

In New York, everyone talks just like I do and I understood every word. At Dangerfield’s, a man named Quentin hosted the show. I realized then how very different New York comedy is from what we do in London. First of all, the host chats with the audience in a very different way than our British MC’s do. He does not ask anyone’s name or what they do for a living.  

Instead, he asks random questions and riffs a bit before he goes into his own set. There were only three comedians besides me and the host and each had a fairly long set. Each one got up on stage and told involved stories with no set ups, no punches and very few big laughs. All three had a least ten years experience so they knew what they were doing and the audience responded to them, even though I did not.  

The format of the evening was very different from the shows I do in the UK.

There was no interval. They had a man named Joey doing a long set in the middle of the show and he was evidently the headliner because he had TV credits. His comedy reminded me a bit of Ken Dodd’s. It went on and on and on. He had lots to say about young men and the unpredictable and embarrassing reaction of their dicks. I found this fascinating. It is obviously a guy thing. I do not remember my vagina surprising me like that. Of course, now, the poor thing is dead. 

My set seemed like an encore for the show. I finished the evening with a ten minute set.  To my surprise, I did very well despite a sharp difference in my style of comedy compared to the others on the bill. Everyone stopped to chat with me and tell me how wonderful I am, which was very gratifying.  

The next evening, I was booked as the headliner at a Comedians Over Sixty event at Stand UP NY, one of the major clubs in the city. There were nine comedians on the bill, all experienced. Each one did 10+ minutes of the kind of comedy I was used to hearing when I did the clubs in California.  

They had short set-up-punchlines peppered with funny stories. Again, this MC was not anything like those in the UK. He was more in the style of the MCs at The Punchline in San Francisco. He did his own comedy set to warm us up and then reappeared throughout the show to introduce each new comedian. Once again, there was no interval and all I could think of was OMG, these people will not be drunk enough to laugh at nothing when I get up there. 

The comedians that night were sharp and funny. Most memorable for me was a guy named Joe who did brilliant comedy about his autistic son, Theo. He made us laugh and at the same time, he endeared himself to us all. I knew I could not possibly follow anything that professional and profound. Thank goodness there were three more comedians before it was my turn.  

I did about 25 minutes and got a standing ovation. Both managers have invited me back. The audience all wanted pictures with me and who am I to say no?  Sadly, I am so short I came up to everyone’s waistline so all you can see in those photos is the top of my head. You cannot have everything.  

I am writing a memoir,  so I went to Washington DC to discuss it.

Diane Nine, the agent, is from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan just outside Detroit. It felt very comfortable to be with someone who talks like I do and has a Midwestern background. 

Just as people in the UK from the north have a different mind-set from those in the south and London is unique in its attitudes, so it is in the United States.  

The Southern personality is directly opposed to the rushing, killer attitude in New York City. Midwesterners are very hospitable and kind. They will bring you a casserole if you move next door and will be there to help you find the right stores and supplies. They will invite you over for backyard barbecues and treat you like family… as long as you do not want an abortion, are not gay and you are the right color.  And should you knock on their door unexpectedly, you would be shot. Guns are standard household equipment.  

Diane Nine has been involved in politics all her life. She worked for Jimmy Carter in the White House and met both Clintons. She said that Hilary Clinton was a charming, gracious woman, not at all the bitch the press painted her to be and that Jimmy Carter used to take her to church with him when she was his intern. He was and still is a very religious man. The Obamas actually live in her neighborhood now that they have left The White House. Her mother’s best friend was Helen Thomas, the Washington correspondent who was banned from that press corps because of her offensive remarks about Israel and Jews. 

For lunch the next day we met Lora who works for the Department of Agriculture. She is part of a team that monitors plant imports and plant diseases.  She was saying that they work with the EU on imports and, when Britain leaves the EU, there will have to be a whole new set of standards for agricultural products shipped between the UK and US; just one more complication caused by our Brexit upheaval. 

Life never stops, does it?

Michael Livesley: The Bonzo Dog’s Viv Stanshall & understanding masculinity

Michael Livesley has been reviving the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s Vivian Stanshall’s iconic show Sir Henry at Rawlinson’s End  for nine years with sundry Stanshall-related co-stars.

Now, he is doing two final shows – on December 7th (next Friday) at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London and on December 12th at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool.

The Daily Telegraph described the show as “a combination of Downton Abbey and Gormenghast set to music”.

We had a chat in a Wetherspoons pub in London.

Why is he doing two more shows? 

Why is he stopping?

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MICHAEL: I can’t do any more. Nine years of having someone else in yer head is enough – especially when that person is Vivian Stanshall.

Viv Stanshall: the original Sir Henry

It’s a lot of work and it has kicked open a lot of doors for me and it’s great fun but it’s enough. We did the album with Rick Wakeman and Neil Innes. We did the Bristol Old Vic with Stephen Fry. We’ve done the London Palladium, the Glastonbury Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe. We’ve done the Millenium/O2 Dome in London. A lot of other stuff. And we will be filming this one at the Bloomsbury Theatre for a Sky Arts thing.

JOHN: So why?

MICHAEL: In March this year, I was living in a village between Winchester and Andover in Hampshire – which is where we recorded the album in the shed – and it was great. But ultimately you run out of road in these places. There was nothing happening, so it was time to move back to Liverpool and I thought: Let’s put something in the work diary – and it’s the 40th anniversary of Sir Henry.

JOHN: And what happens after these two shows?

MICHAEL: There’s a Rodney Slater’s Parrots gig at the Zanzibar Club in Liverpool on 14th December. And I am doing the Edinburgh Fringe myself next year.

JOHN: Doing what?

MICHAEL: A show called Half the Man because I’ve lost five stone in three months and I intend to be half the man by the time that happens and my stand-up, when I do it, is all about my observations of being brought up by a single mother and a grandmother: the challenges of establishing your manhood within that female environment.

That’s why I hang out in Wetherspoons: so I can hang out amongst real men. These places are almost like social breweries, because they filter out the impurities in society like me and give us somewhere to reside for a while. It’s a place that’s essentially filled with wounded gazelles: divorced men, single men, who salt their wounds with warm lager. I fit right in here.

JOHN: By drinking?

Michael, in Wetherspoons, has given up drink

MICHAEL:  I am treating myself to beer today because it was my birthday last week. But, other than this, I’ve not drunk beer since August.

JOHN: And you are giving up Sir Henry too…

MICHAEL: I’m not denigrating it in any way – it’s fucking genius, but it’s not mine. It’s a bit of imposter syndrome. But, paradoxically, doing it has enabled me to find my own voice in a strange way: it gave me the vehicle to get on stage in front of people.

I sort of made a compromise when I was 16 to be a musician rather than a performer and this gave me the excuse to take it on. That’s partly what I want to explore with Half The Man. There’s a conversation to be had about what masculinity is and isn’t.

JOHN: You are gonna talk about ‘Northern folk’?

MICHAEL: Well, talk about growing up in the 1980s, growing up in the North without a dad in a very small village in Lancashire where it was all Catholic and shit… it was no picnic… Some people have a really tough life. This was NOT a really tough life.

JOHN: But…?

MICHAEL: But because me mum weren’t married, it used to rile the teachers in this Catholic school. Our side of the street were Catholic and the other side were Protestant; and we’re only talking about the 1980s. I remember standing in the front room with the curtains shut when the Protestants were on their Walk.

JOHN: The Catholics had a walk too?

MICHAEL: It was kind of like a Virgin Mary thing with a cart with stuff on it.

The teachers at my school had also taught me mum and all me uncles and aunties. I would get a school book and there would be me auntie’s name in it from 30 years back. The teachers were all long past retirement. There was a guy who taught me in the 1980s and he had been in the First World War! Fuck knows how old he was! He had a yellow streak in his hair because he always had a fag in his mouth. He reeked of whisky and had yellow teeth and used to beat the shit out of us.

I saw him take a little girl who sat next to me out to the front of the class and he pulled her knickers down and bare-bottomed smacked her. She was a 5-year-old! Real men don’t beat children. That ain’t masculine! That’s just complete and utter barbarism.

There is a whole confusion about what masculinity really is. The sort-of imposition of masculinity in those communities was completely at odds with what I believe masculinity is.

There was one murder in the village where I grew up. 

JOHN: How many people in the village?

MICHAEL: About 300 or 400. It was a mining village.

JOHN: What was the murder?

MICHAEL: This guy – Mulligan – murdered his girlfriend in the local woods. His dad was the village wife-beater. This sounds like bullshit but there WAS a village wife-beater. Everyone knew he did it. He was the guy whose wife had a black eye going for the bread on a Sunday morning. Everybody knew it and everybody tolerated it.

My mum used to say that men love women but they don’t like them. That ain’t true in general but in that village – that little place – I think it was.

Anyway, so when Mulligan stood up in court and they asked him why he’d murdered his girlfriend, he said: “I thought that’s what you did.”

That is true.

And you can buy into that, because all he had seen all his life was his dad knocking bloody hell out of his mum.

And that is quite incongruous because, in the world I grew up in, the women were in charge. Everyone colluded in the illusion that men were in charge but they were not and I don’t think that’s a peculiarly Northern industrial thing. I think that goes across the animal kingdom. And the frustration and anger that that situation brings about with the section of the population that are physically stronger is… Well, that’s the kind of world I grew up in. 

When I was 16, I started working in a pub and, on a Sunday morning, they would put trays on the bar with black pudding and tripe and cheese – a peculiarly Northern Catholic thing which I had not been aware of at home, because alcohol played no part in my upbringing. 

Until I started work, I was not aware of 50% of life, because I was brought up in a 100% female household. It was a male thing. On a Sunday, men went to the pub, ate meat and left the women at home.

In my home, we had a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label whisky that me grandad won in the Catholic club in the 1970s that remained untouched until me mum met the man they called Barry and then it went within a week. 

JOHN: The man they called Barry?

MICHAEL: Her boyfriend. My mam met the man they called Barry when I was 13. He was just a fucking alcoholic wanker. 

JOHN: Is he still alive?

MICHAEL: No. Everyone’s dead. That’s the crazy thing about the North. Within about 20 years, every fucker’s dead. There’s no longevity.

JOHN: So this is your next year’s Edinburgh Fringe show – with a few laughs thrown in.

MICHAEL: In one of your blogs, you said every successful Edinburgh comedy show needs a dead dad story!

JOHN: Yes, at about 40 minutes into the hour…

MICHAEL: I’ve got nothing BUT dead dads, not that I’ve ever met me dad.

JOHN: I saw a show the other day and the comic wasn’t good enough to sustain 60 minutes. The show sagged at about 32 minutes and I thought: You need a dead dad story in there…

MICHAEL:  After nine years of doing someone else’s work, you end up with this big backlog of things you wanna say yourself.

JOHN: And you now have nine years’ experience of how to say things.

MICHAEL: Yes. I had no father figure to explain where I should fit in… it’s all that stuff I want to explore… and doing Sir Henry has given me the legs to realise how to do that.

The Angry Brigade, British anarchists – the real bombers were never arrested?

London’s Post Office Tower – bombed by The Angry Brigade

Tonight, the new play about 1970s anarchist bombers The Angry Brigade is being premiered at the Bush Theatre in London.

I have always thought it odd that The Angry Brigade are seldom mentioned in social histories of the 1960s and 1970s. They were active around 1969-1972 and the Bomb Squad (now called SO13) was specifically formed to track down The Angry Brigade.

Their targets included banks, embassies, factories, the 1970 Miss World contest (a BBC Outside Broadcast van was bombed) and the homes of judges, police chiefs and government MPs. In 1971, a bomb exploded in the Post Office Tower (now renamed the BT Tower) and two bombs exploded outside Employment Secretary Robert Carr’s house.

Some of the alleged Angry Brigade’s arms found by the police

I have a friend called Sam Taylor. Well, no, I don’t. I have no friend called Sam Taylor. But let us pretend that is his real name. It is not.

When I mentioned the new play at the Bush Theatre to Sam Taylor, he told me he did not think the play should have been written.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because,” he told me, “I thought the Angry Brigade were meaningless. I thought they were just a sad little collection of young people who were doing something which was very wrong. They were making the facts fit the plot. They wanted to do something. They were caught up in their own propaganda. These days, the propaganda is political correctness. Back then, it was anarchism. I can only remember being in the same room as them once.”

“With who?” I asked.

The Bush Theatre stage production tonight

“With the four who were convicted. The men I can’t remember at all. I remember one of the girls. They were very unprepossessing young people. I only remember them being in the corner of a room, probably at some meeting about what time we were going to arrive at Covent Garden Market in the morning to pick up the fruit and veg.

“London had had the Vietnam protests and there were a lot of Americans in London at the time. So, from that protest movement grew this anarchist movement and it had its roots in things which are quite acceptable now.”

“You were living in a squat at that time?” I asked.

“No,” said Sam. “The squatting movement was pretty much starting up around then, but we are not squatting. We were renting. We were a collective. It was a very loose group of anarchists, all having different aims. The other collectives were quite well-off. We were probably the poorest. The other collectives were not short of money. We were the only working class people I ever met. In one collective, one of the members was very much into women’s refuges. I remember there was a Food Co-op but also there was an Adventure Playground group. Adventure Playgrounds were thought to be quite revolutionary in their day.

The Angry Brigade logo – whoever they really all were

“These were not mainstream things in those times and that was the link. That was how I got to be on the fringes of these collectives. We only ever knew them as the name of where they lived. It was a very small, loosely-connected group of collectives and one of them was the Amhurst Road Collective.”

“Which,” I said, “was partly the Angry Brigade.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “But I didn’t know that at the time. The extraordinary thing about the whole of that anarchist movement is how nobody has spoken about it. The big story is the extraordinary loyalty. As far as I know, I never heard that anyone had shopped anyone else. Everyone was being arrested, followed, searched, intimidated, beaten-up…”

“I think,” I said, “that beating-up suspects was standard practice at the time.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “The words you did not want to hear were: Come along with me to Barnet police station.”

“Barnet?” I asked.

Time Out magazine’s offices were raided in the police search

“For some reason it was always Barnet police station. We were just hearing: Such-and-such a collective were all taken to Barnet. They were trying to say these people were loosely affiliated but, after people were arrested and released and their names were in the frame, the bombings were still continuing. As far as I know, nobody has ever come clean about what was actually going on and who was running it.

“There was clearly, from what I could see, a lot of coming-and-going between France, Germany and London and the people I met had clearly been very involved in the student revolt in Paris in 1968. I never knew the back story except I knew there were foreign links. The people in these other collectives had links with foreigners and they were going off abroad.

“The other thing I remember is someone called Petra turning up and I was told I had to leave the house I was staying in because Petra was arriving. When I asked about her, everyone closed down and I was even told there were two Petras. I wondered if that was to throw me off the scent. I always wondered if was Petra from the Baader-Meinhof group.”

Petra Schelm of Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang

(In May 1970, Petra Schelm travelled with other members of Baader-Meinhof to Jordan where they were trained by the Palestine Liberation Organisation in urban guerrilla warfare. On 15 July 1971, after a car chase in Hamburg, Petra fired a handgun at police. The police returned fire, allegedly with a submachine gun. However, a closeup photograph of her body taken at the scene immediately after her death shows a single gunshot wound through the eye.)

“I don’t know if there was a link with the Baader-Meinhof group,” Sam told me, “because nobody has ever come out and spoken about any links between all those groups. There were lots and lots of raids going on and the one thing they were always after was address books.

“At the time, my collective were simply paranoid about smoking dope. We knew we were being watched, but we thought it was the Drugs Squad. I took it all with a pinch of salt. But then we heard Amhurst Road mentioned in the news and we saw the names and we realised it was that collective. And all these people were being arrested and taken to Barnet police station. We were surprised and shocked and moved out very quickly.

“I went to stay on people’s floors within London. They were regarded as safe houses; I don’t know why. I don’t know why they were safe when everyone else was being picked up. Then I worked under another name in London and then I left London to work in the West Country.

Angry Brigade trial jury was vetted for their political beliefs

“It seemed to me from what I read and heard that they were framed by the police, that the evidence was planted on them. Clearly they were involved in it – but it may simply have been that they were the printing press.”

“Supposedly,” I said, “the Rolling Stones’ arrest involved drugs being planted on them. They were guilty as hell, but the police planted the drugs to get an arrest.”

“Exactly,” said Sam. “That seemed to be accepted at the time. What came out at the trial was that they seemed to have believed the… I don’t know much about the others. I only know about the four. I didn’t really follow it at the time… But, as far as I know, no-one was ever arrested successfully for placing the bombs. They were charged with conspiracy. No people – because it seemed there were many more than just one person – were actually successfully arrested or prosecuted for planting the bombs.”

“There were an awful lot of bombs going off,” I said to Sam.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And the press were not printing them all. There were a great many more bombs than were publicised. I found that out retrospectively. And what happened has stayed with me. Even now, I instinctively don’t like having my picture taken.”

---

For a follow-up on this, see my 2019 blog HERE.

There is a trailer on YouTube for the Bush Theatre play.

and there is a 72-minute documentary about The Angry Brigade on YouTube. I can’t guarantee the facts are true.

Other people’s lives partly overheard

Two men talk by a Watford bus stop yesterday

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.

Comedy taboos + How British women react differently in comedy audiences

Lewis Schaffer on stage in London last night

All through my adult life, I have had an irritating dry cough. My father had the same cough. Eventually, he had to have polyps on the inside of his throat scraped off. His voice was higher afterwards.

For the last week or so, though, I have had a harder, hacking cough. It happens occasionally when I pick up the tail end of other people’s colds.

Having a hard, hacking cough which occasionally drifts into uncontrollable coughing fits is not ideal if you go to see a live comedy show in a small club. But, last night, I went to London’s West End to see Lewis Schaffer’s Free Until Famous show anyway.

Instead of cough sweets, I took a packet of Werther’s Original butterscotch to suck. They are cheaper. I am a Scot who was brought up among Jews. Remember the Werther’s. They become relevant later.

Lewis Schaffer has performed Free Until Famous at the same venue at least twice a week for who knows how long? Maybe three years. He currently performs it every Tuesday and Wednesday. And now he is also performing a £10 show at the Leicester Square Theatre every Sunday.

He tells me that, bizarrely, the twice-a-week free shows do not seem to be affecting audience figures at his Leicester Square pay show. In fact, numbers at his free shows are down and numbers at his Leicester Square show were high from the start and have not dropped. The Leicester Square show was due to end on April 21st but has now been extended to July 28th.

Lewis Schaffer is also being stalked by a sociologist. He introduced her to his audience last night.

“That’s her in the front row,” he said. “She’s following me around. She got the highest grade you can get for a paper she wrote about me. She got a First. She was looking for something to write. She came to my show and she came to a lot of my shows and I thought she was just obsessed by me – it happens. I’m 56, but I’m in great shape. But she wasn’t obsessed by me; she was writing this paper.”

“What was the paper about?” I asked the girl afterwards.

“Comedy taboos,” she told me.

“Why is Lewis Schaffer a taboo?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “I was looking at taboo material first of all and the real taboo he breaks is that he is not really a comedian. The taboo isn’t in the material, it’s in his performance. The idea that he’s performing but it looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I wrote in my paper that he can say anything he wants because he tells his audiences how shit he is, so no-one really takes his comedy seriously.”

“And your sociology degree was in comedy?” I asked.

“No,” she corrected me. “This is an ethnographic study. The study of people-watching.”

“And now you’re planning to do another one?”

Open mouthed male laughter – demonstrated by Wikipedia

“On audience participation. I’m focussing mainly on the audience patterns: what they’re doing. I’m not looking at comedy; I’m looking at people’s interactions. Like Lewis said in tonight’s show that people cover their mouths when they laugh. I’ve noticed more women do that than men. I want to find out why that is. It’s a socially-constructed idea.”

“Women do it and men don’t?” I asked.

“Both genders do it, but women do it a hell of a lot more.”

“Is it because an open mouth is sexual in some way?” I asked.

“I think because an open mouth is unattractive,” she replied. “I wonder if it’s the same idea as covering your mouth when you yawn, because we know certain people do that and certain people don’t.”

“But,” I said, “people open their mouths when they smile, which I’ve never understood. You would think baring their teeth would be an aggressive gesture, but smiling is a friendly gesture.”

“I don’t bare mine,” she told me, “because they’re fucking awful.”

“So…” I said, “what’s the most unexpected thing you’ve found about audiences?”

“In couples,” she told me, “if it’s a man and a woman couple together, the woman will look at her partner for the approval of the laughter.”

“She’ll look before she laughs?”

“Yes. She’ll quickly just glance then start laughing. I’ve only seen this reversed in gender once.”

“What happens if it’s a gay couple?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve not seen many gay couples at Lewis’ shows.”

The sociologist doesn’t want me to name her or her college in case someone steals her idea.

The legs of an anonymous sociologist in Soho

“Someone’s going to nick my idea; I know they are,” she told me last night.

“Well,” I said, “all the more reason you should have your name, university’s name and photo in my blog, so you can prove your idea pre-existed on a specific date.”

“No,” she told me. “You can photograph my leg instead. I don’t even want people to know I’m in a blog. I don’t have Facebook, I don’t have Twitter, I don’t have anything. I only have email, which I give to people I know. I don’t want anyone on the internet knowing anything about me unnecessarily. I think the whole thing is fucking weird. The whole idea that something about me can be seen by anyone freaks me the fuck out.”

At this point, I had a coughing fit and took a Werther’s Original.

“Have one,” I offered.

“No,” she said. “My dad’s allergic to them, so I don’t eat them.”

“Not allergic to other butterscotch? Just Werther’s?”

“Just Werther’s.”

“And you don’t eat them either?” I asked.

“If I ate those,” she said, “and I kissed my dad when I see him tomorrow, his face would swell up. He ate one when he was in his thirties. We were in the car and my mum said Have one of these to suck on. First of all his lips swelled up. Then his face swelled up and then his throat closed up. It came on over a period of about two hours.”

“Any other food problems in the family?”

“My aunt used to be so afraid of tomatoes that she would rather have seen a dead animal carcass in her fridge than a half-eaten tomato.”

“Did some traumatic event involving tomatoes happen to her when she was a kid?”

“It just built up. She used to just not eat them and then, gradually, she got more and more scared of them to the point where, if someone was eating a tomato, she would have to leave the room.”

“And she’s still afraid of tomatoes?”

“No. Because once, when she was sunbathing in the garden, lying out flat, my dad sliced up some tomatoes and put them all over her body. So, when she woke up, she was covered in slices of tomatoes. She screamed the place down and shit herself but was absolutely fine about tomatoes after that.”