I don’t normally post reviews on here, but I saw a preview of Late Night With The Devil earlier this week. It opens in UK and US cinemas today and it opens up a whole can of interesting worms.
I guess the elevator pitch was something along the lines of The Exorcist meets The Blair Witch Project on a late-night US chat show – although ads are plugging it as Rosemary’s Baby meets Network.
The plotline is: In 1977 a live television broadcast goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into living rooms across the United States.
The title Late Night With The Devil explains the plot.
The idea is that you are watching a real videotape of a real late night TV chat show – Night Owls – which was broadcast live on Halloween Night, 31st October 1977. The transmitted sequences are in colour and the duration of the ad-breaks are filled with black & white documentary-like footage of what ‘actually’ went on off-screen (again in real time).
The Night Owls TV show you are watching throughout the film was supposedly in ‘also-ran’ competition with the Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
It is a good idea but I’m not really sure it is a movie movie, by which I mean it is not opened-up…
Apart from an introductory set-up putting it into the context of the 1970s – and the ending – it is set entirely within a TV studio and takes place in real time.
So wide-screen spectacular vistas and big-scale it ain’t got: it’s more suited to be a TV movie than a movie movie. In theory that is bad. But this is more than counter balanced by the fact everything happens in real time (except for the intro and the ending).
What you see is “actually happening” and “actually unfolding” as you watch it. A real time plotline is almost always going to be more involving. The ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ which you need to watch the artificiality of normal screen plots and performances is less difficult because you appear to be watching reality unfold second-by-second as it happens.
Ironically, this – in my humble opinion – buggers up the end because, as I mentioned, the movie happens in real time EXCEPT for the introductory set-up and the ending.
And we can’t, of course, talk about the ending.
Still, the rest of the ride is vivid and mind-grabbing.
The central talk show host is played by David Dastmalchian, who is very charismatic in a slightly creepy way.
David Dastmalchian in The Dark Knight
I mainly know his face as a bit-part policemen with piercing, haunted eyes in The Dark Knight Batman movie.
His face and eyes are once seen never forgotten.
He was also in The Suicide Squad, Bladerunner 2049 and the first Dune movie.
Oh and Oppenheimer, but let’s only concentrate on watchable films.
David Dastmalchian’s performance in Late Night With The Devil is easily underestimated. It’s subtle, not showy, so it ain’t gonna get an Oscar. But it could lead on to much bigger parts for him. He pretty-much carries the film, although the central ‘devil child’ (Ingrid Torelli) has mesmerisingly staring eyes to rival his.
Ingrid Torelli and David Dastmalchian both have it…
I was at a book launch in London tonight. A comedian’s first novel. A new beginning, perhaps.
So inevitably – because real life is badly plotted – about five minutes after I arrived, I found out via Facebook that Keith Martin had died.
A young Keith Martin (in the 1960s?) flanked by fellow DJs Keith Fordyce (L) and Keith Skues (R)
He was born on 2nd April 1934, so he was 89.
Keith at Anglia TV
I first met him in the 1970s, when he was an occasional continuity announcer at Anglia TV in Norwich.
Before his lengthy career in television, he had worked on various radio stations, including early pirate radio.
He wrote a fairly full (8,000 word) biography of his pirate days for the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame website
He had been ill for quite a long time. He had had various bits of his insides taken out.
Keith in the studio on pirate radio ship the Mi Amigo
He would phone me up every couple of weeks and talk to me for maybe 45-60 minutes, mostly reminiscing about his long career in television and radio. Occasionally, every few months, we might meet up for a chat over lunch, though those meetings grew fewer and further between as his ailments mounted. He was always fascinating and his memories vivid.
The last I heard from him was in a text around a week or so ago. I had failed to get hold of him by phone so I sent a message asking “Everything OK with you?”
A message came back:
Not very well its me brain send by care mary from keith …it’s my brain this time buggea the big c
I asked for updates, but that was the last I heard. He died last night.
His email address was gentlemale1, which pretty much summed him up. A gentle man.
There are various clips on YouTube of him, including:
Julie starred in the movie Ferry Cross The Mersey with Gerry and The Pacemakers. (Photograph by George Elam/ANL/Shutterstock -1355671a)
Julie Samuel has been around a bit, done most everything in showbiz.
She was an actress in well over 100 British TV shows – The Avengers, Coronation Street, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars et al… in movies including The Day The Earth Caught Fire, The Long Ships and Ferry Cross The Mersey. She has produced stage musicals and Shakespeare plays, arranged events at Eton College and Windsor Castle and produced the parade for the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday procession at Horse Guards Parade. And she has managed/promoted her daughter’s band Saint Etienne.
JULIE: I’ve been writing this book for five years – a lot during lockdown. The reason I did it was because my parents didn’t write their autobiographies and they should have because they had such fascinating lives.
My father was the son of a couple of Music Hall artists called Lawson & Odell. They were in the Charlie Chaplin troupe.
JOHN: The Fred Karno troupe?
JULIE: They travelled all over Europe.
My father could sing and do comedy and recitations. He had to give it up because he got tuberculosis when he was 40, then he worked part-time in a stables training race horses, then went to work in Foyles Bookshop, My mother was the daughter of William Foyle.
He worked in the theatrical book department. My mother married him, despite all the advice of my grandfather, because my father was a bit of a rogue. He was a womaniser, a gambler. You name it, he did it. Smoked, drank. But he was a very funny guy and he got away with terrible things by just being charming and funny.
My mother was the opposite: straight, honest, kind.
Opposites sometimes attract and she forgave him everything he ever did. He was really like a fifth child.
JOHN: Did you learn how to behave from your father or your mother?
JULIE: I was the youngest of four. I learned from all the mistakes my siblings made. So I learned to be very diplomatic. I knew exactly how to get round my parents. My middle sister would demand things. I learned how to get the best out of life by being diplomatic.
JOHN: You went to a Protestant Convent school, didn’t you?
JULIE: Well, I ran away from my first boarding school which was 13 or 14 miles away when I was 7 and I did it really because I was just fed up of being away from home. I took my best friend and the school dog with me. Well, the dog just followed me out. He made his own flight for freedom.
We got home and the headmaster came looking for me and the school dog ran out of the house and gave us away.
I stayed at that school for the rest of the term and then my mother took me to a very strict high church girls’ boarding school.
But, if you do something drastic like run away from school and you get away with it… what else can they do to you? From the moment I arrived at the church school, it was a horrible place. It was cold. It was miserable. It was a terrible place, but parents paid a fortune to send their girls there. The education side was OK, but I was dyslexic so the education side was actually not suiting me at all.
And they wanted to get rid of me from the very start because they said I was inciting rebellion among the other girls.
Then I… There was a new laundry building being built just outside our school. And there was this young boy there – one of the builders – who looked a bit like Elvis and he waved at me. So I waved back. And then (LAUGHS) I met him by the fence and he pushed a letter through the bushes to me saying he really liked me. So I thought I’d better write back. I wrote a letter but then thought: That’s not my best handwriting. So I screwed it up and threw it in the bin and wrote another one on pink notepaper… No, that’s not good enough either! So I threw it in the bin.
Julie knew who Pyramus and Thisbe were…
I finally got the one I thought was OK and I gave it through the fence to him like Pyramus and Thisbe… but the school found all the thrown-away copies in the bin and that was their excuse to expel me, because I was ‘having a relationship’ with a builder,. Which was rubbish. I wasn’t at all.
It was half term when they did it and I was staying with a friend whose mother was a very strict Catholic lady and they were going to expel both of us because they felt we were too friendly. But her mother remonstrated with Sister Mildred, who was the Head, and said: “I’m going to report you to the Pope.” So they let her stay. But that was it for me.
JOHN: What happened to the builder?
JULIE: God knows! (LAUGHS) All I can remember was that his name was Stanley.
JOHN: After that, you went to the Italia Conti Stage School. Was that because you were desperate to be in showbiz?
JULIE: Well, having run away from one boarding school and been expelled from my second one, there weren’t that many schools that would actually take me. One of the teachers I had at the second boarding school told my mother I should be at stage school and, of course, my father knew all about stage schools.
My parents asked me: “Would you like to go to stage school?” And I said: “Of course I would!”
Who wouldn’t? Get away from all that Arithmetic and History and everything and just go and have a lot of fun. So I auditioned and got in and they were some of the best years of my life.
Julie as the cover star on TV Times magazine
(IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ALL THE GOSSIP AND JUICY SHOWBIZ, TV AND MOVIE TALES, YOU”LL HAVE TO READ JULIE’S BOOK!)
JOHN: You moved from being an actress to being a band and theatre manager.
JULIE: Possibly because of my daughter. I also started a company called Problems Unlimited and had a little shop boutique. I’ve always worked.
When my daughter was 15, she joined a local band and started singing. They got a bit of interest from a man who managed Emerson, Lake & Palmer and other quite big bands. So someone had to look after them and, I was the only person who had any idea what show business was about, so I became their manager/driver/roadie and financer.
JOHN: Financer?
JULIE: Well, somebody had to pay for the rehearsal rooms, pay for the van, drive it.
That’s how I got into it and then I got quite interested in the business side. Very different to what I was used to. All the kind of deals that went on. I had always been in front of the camera and on stage. I never understood at first why you had to have a lawyer involved in everything, but I do understand that now!
It just grew from there and I took on other people like Janey Lee Grace, who’s now a radio presenter and author. She was in a band called Cola Boy who got into the charts on their first release.
Then there was a rock band who had great potential – Mexico 70 – but – I dunno – they weren’t quite ‘together enough’. The lead singer was wonderful: a really good-looking young man, a bit Bowie-ish, a great songwriter, a great performer. But you need much more than that if you’re going to be a rock star. You need to be really tough and really determined and, to be honest, you really need to be a bit of an arsehole. You need to be me-me-me – everything has to be about me-me-me. And he never really had that determination.
They had a record out here, but it was on a very minor, indie label called Cherry Red. And then they had records out in America because somebody from Philadelphia who had his own record label ‘discovered’ them. So we signed a deal and he ‘pushed’ them in America and we did two tours there and they were beginning to do really, really well and then everything went wrong. There was a lot of drink and drugs involved, as there often is. Some survive it; some don’t. And they didn’t.
JOHN: Did the lead singer get success elsewhere?
JULIE: No. He sadly died not very long ago of an overdose. The usual sort of thing. They had potential, but never realised what potential they had and never… I don’t know… You’ve got to be so dedicated. Somebody in the band has got to be so dedicated that they’ll just survive anything. And they didn’t have that. I did my best, but they… just… disintegrated after a while. It’s all in the book.
(…CONTINUED HERE with SAINT ETIENNE, THE SCOTTISH WITCHES AND THE FOYLES BOOKSHOP CONNECTION…)
(Photograph by Glenn Carstens-Peters via UnSplash)
In my last couple of blogs, I asked AI to explain Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics. In both cases, I think the clearest explanation was when I asked the AI to pretend it/they were an 8-year-old child.
It also reminds me of a chat I had when I was a researcher on programmes at London Weekend Television.
Another researcher and I had a casual chat about the sort of people we might be looking for on various programmes. We agreed, I think, on a couple of vague principles which might seem counter-intuitive.
The first was how to get a person who could explain a complex idea in a way that could be understood by the general viewer. Not dumbing-down in any way. Just being clear and enthusing the viewer.
We agreed that the person you did NOT necessarily want was an expert.
You did not want someone who had spent the last 30 or 40 years totally immersed in a subject to the exclusion of almost everything else. They knew too much. Their brains were clogged up with details.
What you ideally wanted was not an expert but an enthusiast – a fan.
The expert would long ago have lost the single original kernel of the enthusiasm which had started them on their long road to expertise.
What you wanted was someone who was still gloriously enthusiastic, who retained that original intellectual vigour, who wanted to make others as enthusiastic in the subject as they were and still are. They knew the key points which simply – KISS KISS – would reveal the bases of the subject.
The other type of person we talked about finding was a true eccentric.
The sort of person you wanted to find was NOT the life-and- soul of the party who made all the lads and lasses laugh down the local pub. Counter-intuitively, you do not want people who seem extrovert. Jack the Lad ‘extroverts’ just want attention; they have no depth of eccentricity.
Rather than an ‘extrovert’, you want to find an ‘introvert’ with rare or unique angles of genuine thought.
If you can find the right introvert and make them confident enough to follow their creative or mental tendencies, they will let rip and you will get real originality of thought which, really, is what is meant when you talk of someone being ‘eccentric’.
The perfect example of this was when I handled a regular item called ‘Talented Teachers’ on the anarchic children’s show Tiswas (an ATV, then a Central ITV, production).
I was told about Mr Wickers, a teacher who could roller-skate while simultaneously playing the harmonica AND the spoons. I talked to him and he was a lovely, quiet-spoken man who DID NOT have any great ambition to do this on national television. But I persuaded him.
Obviously, I had seen him perform the act to ensure he really could roller-skate while simultaneously playing the harmonica and spoons.
On the day of the live show, he turned up with his roller-skates, harmonica and two spoons.
But he also turned up wearing a bright yellow oilskin fisherman’s coat, a bright yellow oilskin sou’wester hat and a life-sized seagull which he had himself crafted out of papier-mâché.
The papier-mâché seagull sat on his bright yellow oilskin shoulder by his bright yellow sou’wester hat while Mr Wickers roller-skated round the studio set playing his harmonica and clack-clacking his two spoons together.
Mr Wickers was – and I say this with vast admiration – a true eccentric but quiet and not in any way a so-called extrovert.
The epitome of a certain type of Englishman. (I say that as a born Scot.)
In my last blog, a man with no settled name talked about his life in music, comedy and surrealism. One of his names was/is Wavis O’Shave and he became/remains a cult figure from his appearances on Channel 4 TV’s The Tube.
This is the concluding part of that chat…
WAVIS: When I used to do my stuff on The Tube – the surreal stuff – my intention was that people might not really laugh at the time but, three hours later, when they were on the toilet having a crap, they’d burst out laughing.
JOHN: Did you fit in at school?
WAVIS: The school I went to was like a male St Trinian’s. (LAUGHS) Honestly. The teachers didn’t throw pieces of chalk; they were throwing desks at you! They were all barmy with mental health problems.
I stood out because I had some promise. Normally, if that’s the case, you get bullied. I didn’t.
JOHN: The cliché is that, to avoid getting bullied at school, creative people get comedic.
WAVIS: No, I didn’t act the fool or anything; I was just me. But people loved the alleged charisma which I still have a bit left of. So I never got bullied. Bullies – rough lads – just kind-of took to me.
Fame: via an album about TV newsreader Anna Ford’s Bum.
I don’t feel I’ve ever had to act the fool to get by. But I have had to express whatever it is – the energy that comes out… It seems to come out as surrealism. When I was young I thought: Maybe something’s wrong with me.
When I was in my mid-teens, I was standing out like a sore thumb in Newcastle/South Shields. I didn’t want to work down the pit or in the shipyards or wear a flat cap or drink beer or all that. I thought: Is there something wrong with me? So I started reading psychology books.
JOHN: What was your ambition when you were at school?
WAVIS: Well, lots of them in my school wanted to be footballers or rock stars. I was never brilliant at football but I actually had a trial for Newcastle United on August 23rd 1973.
When I left school, the teachers had all these high hopes for me. “You’ll go to college… You’ll go to university… You’ll achieve…”
But, when I left school, I thought: That’s it! I’ve done my bit! I walked straight out of the system.
JOHN: You mentioned earlier in our chat that you’d been involved at the Buddhist monastery in Scotland. So your Buddhist inclinations…
WAVIS: I’ve never claimed to be a Buddhist. I’m non-religious. It just so happened that their system of Vajrayana felt natural to me, like I already had it innate.
Because of that Tibetan connection though, in 2012, there was a Tibetan lama who had found his way to Lincoln, where I was living. He didn’t have anywhere to stay. So I invited him to live with us. He had to keep going back to India for whatever reasons but, whenever he was in England, he lived with us.
This did not go down well with the missus.
The Tibetan lamas are very patriarchal, misogynistic and sexist. We had him living in a caravan. The missus did put up with him but in the end, after five years, I had to sack him. Things weren’t working out.
Every time I came home, it would be like: “You meditate… Meditate… Meditate…” The missus was not liking this and – fair do – there wasn’t the balance there.
The wife drives. I don’t. One day, she was driving the lama and me in our Jaguar. He’s in the front. I’m in the back. Suddenly, the wife lets go of the steering wheel and gets the lama in a headlock. They were struggling. He had never been in a headlock before. He’s not supposed to be touched by females.
JOHN: What was the outcome? I can’t help but feel a car crash may be involved.
WAVIS: Oh no, she wasn’t being irresponsible. She could be a stunt driver in a James Bond movie. Her talents are extreme.
JOHN: It was a brief headlock, then she put her hands back on the wheel?
WAVIS: Yeah.
JOHN: Somewhat surreal.
WAVIS: And it actually did happen.
JOHN: Why did she put him in a headlock?
WAVIS: I don’t know.
JOHN: You never asked?
WAVIS: I remember once, many many years ago, five of us were crammed in a car to go down to a Debbie Harry exhibition in London for the day. It was a long day. When we came back, one-by-one, everyone was going to sleep and then the driver nodded off.
We’re on the motorway.
I was sitting in the back and thought: I suppose I’d better wake him up.
JOHN: No car crash?
WAVIS: No.
JOHN: Vic & Bob took the surreal Geordie crown on UK TV. But you were about eight or so years before them.
Newspaper coverage of Wavis’ various exploits were extensive but his fame was cult not household
WAVIS: If you want to be a household name, you have to have people remember your name and identify your face. That is fame. I sabotaged both by changing my names when they were successful and masking myself in different disguises. I didn’t want to be a ‘household name’.
I actually gatecrashed the music business and television, but I didn’t want to remain in there.
I enjoyed being on the radio. I enjoyed being on the television.
But then I’d scarper.
JOHN: Why didn’t you want to be a household name?
WAVIS: Because then people want to be your manager, bleed you dry, tell you what you can do, tell you what you can’t do and stuff like that. I just wanted to be a cult cult cult. But it was always difficult to suppress commercial interests. Each time, it would snowball; it would get bigger and bigger; and I would think: I’ve got to retreat, because I don’t want to be a household name.
In 1983, Channel 4 offered me a six-part 30-minute series for my character ‘The Hard’, on the strength of my appearances on The Tube.
But I didn’t want to know, because I could have become a ‘household name’. I much prefer radio, where they don’t see you. I didn’t want to be part of ‘Celebrity’. I never set out to be a celebrity. I just shared what I could do and had a laugh with it.
People would say, “You’ve MADE IT in the record business… You’ve MADE IT in television.” They themselves would kill to be in those situations, but I didn’t want to be in either. I wanted to continue doing my sketches and songs and share them… appear for a time… then disappear.
JOHN: Under yet another of your many names – Dan Green – you were an author and researcher on the Wollaton Gnomes – In 1979, a group of children claimed to have seen about 30 small cars each with a gnome driver and passenger wearing yellow tights, blue tops and bobble hats. You researched what happened.
WAVIS: People want to put you in a shoebox. In the case of Wavis, it’s as an off-the-wall performer. But, if you say: “Oh, but I’m also a very serious writer and researcher and have had books published,” they’re kind disappointed. They always prefer the comedy. People would much prefer that I’m just this Wavis character they have seen more of.
But in my own private life – some of it possibly coming from the Tibetan mysticism – as Dan Green – I’ve written about world mysteries and tried my hand at being a bit of a British Poirot.
I – well, Dan Green – did a very controversial American DVD in 2011. I did a tour of American radio stations – I didn’t go there physically. I’ve appeared on Sky TV as Dan Green. There’s millions of Dan Greens, which is helpful for me as I just hide in among them.
Dan Green had a massive website, but I took it down last April. I was Dan Green from about 2005. I faded Dan Green out and retired him last April. He was too time-consuming.
Now I’m retiring Wavis. This chat is his last appearance.
JOHN: So what’s next?
WAVIS: What’s left of me?… I don’t know.
(AT THE MOMENT, THERE ARE CLASSIC CLIPS OF WAVIS ON YOUTUBE ON ‘THE TUBE’ )
So I have been talking to a man whose real name I do not know. He performed as Wavis O’Shave on the 1980s Channel 4 TV music series The Tube, often in bizarre comedy sketches as ‘The Hard’. But he has also appeared as Foffo Spearjig, Pan’s Person, Mustapha Dhoorinc, Mr Haggler, Howay Man and many more.
Before The Tube, in 1980, he had recorded an album called Anna Ford’s Bum referring to the TV newsreader and, in 2004, he recorded a CD single Katie Derham’s Bum referring to another TV newsreader.
In 2021, he wrote and recorded what he claimed was the world’s first palindrome song Mr Owl Ate My Metal Worm.
Nameless talked to me via FaceTime (in a theatrical wig)
JOHN: Because it was screened at an awkward time, I almost never saw The Tube, so I’m fairly unaware of your extensive fame.
WAVIS: A lot of people, if you mention my names, they say: “Oh yeah, The Tube! Oh yeah, Anna Ford’s Bum! Oh yeah, The Hard!”… and then the missing years. They think I’m either dead or in prison. They don’t realise that, sporadically, I just erupt and record a song or do something else that warrants attention, then I disappear.
JOHN: At heart, you’re basically a music person…?
WAVIS: Well, Wikipedia says I’m a comedian and a musician. People always ask: “What are you? Performance artist? This, that, whatever?” And I say: “I’m a Wavis O’Shave.”
JOHN: In 2004, Chris Donald of Viz magazine said you’re not a musician, you’re not a comedian, you’re “a sort of cross between Howard Hughes,Tiny Tim and David Icke”.
WAVIS: Well, Malcolm Gerrie, the producer of The Tube, said I’m a mixture of Arthur Askey, Charlie Chaplin and Lee Evans. That’s a bit more credible, isn’t it? And he knew me quite well. But, really, I’m a fat, skinny nowt, if that’s helpful.
JOHN: Nowt? Sounds like a plug for your own alleged autobiography I Felt Nowt. I typed that title into Amazon and it came up with ‘felt roll’ which was, indeed, a page for a roll of felt.
WAVIS: Yeah. I’m quite happy with that. It only goes up to 2013, I think, and I’ve had some amazing adventures since then.
JOHN: You think?
WAVIS: I haven’t read it for ages…
JOHN: You have read your autobiography?
WAVIS: I have. It starts at the beginning of my illustrious media ‘career’ – around 1975.
People wanted me to get it in book form but I thought I couldn’t justify it. The thing is, John, people wouldn’t believe it past Page 10. They would think it was made up. A fiction, because my life has been so ‘alternative’.
JOHN: You were very matey with Simon and Chris Donald of Viz…
WAVIS: Yes. I had quite a lot of interaction with Viz at the time and was their Patron Saint. They visited me at my mothers’ ‘bit of shanty’ once and she told them all about her visits from the god Pan whom I’d summoned. I can’t recall what he was being summoned for, maybe for not having a portable sheep pen licence.
JOHN: You have been called a “forgotten hero of the North East”.
WAVIS: I’m not forgotten!!! Those people! I’m not kidding. The name Foffo Spearjig has been nicked and used by so many people. There’s two Wavis O’Shaves on Facebook who are not me. It’s all out of control. Always has been.
JOHN: You have done ‘Celebrity Ambusahes’. You harried Debbie Harry. There’s a photo.
WAVIS: I’m living in the North East at the time and friends are watching their heroes and heroines on telly and I tell them: “Why don’t you go and meet them? You can!” And they didn’t.
It started for me with Debbie Harry; then it was Britt Ekland and so on.
At the time, Debbie Harry was the hottest pop act on the planet and you weren’t allowed to take photographs because they had their own photographer. So I asked Chris Stein: “Any chance?” And he went and asked her and he came back and said: Well, yeah. It’s fine so long as you promise you won’t sell ‘em.
So I was lucky to get those photographs, but I didn’t just want to stand next to her so, out of my back pocket I got something like a 5’9” polystyrene nose and we took the picture.
JOHN: You had a very big back pocket.
WAVIS: I do.
At the time, I’d released some vinyl and both theNME and Sounds picked up on it and were praising me and normally the NME and Sounds were deadly enemies like Celtic/Rangers. But they both loved Wavis, so I was getting lots of good press regularly and, when I took these pictures from what I called Celebrity Ambushes, they would appear.
Anna Ford’s Bum led to the Sunday People…
I ended up on the front page of the Sunday People with Anna Ford, which was quite a big thing. She was the gentleman’s top totty at the time and here’s this ragamuffin from Up North singing about her bum in a national newspaper.
My last celebrity ambush was only a couple of months ago – Harry Hill. I mentioned our mutual friend Gary Bushell and told him: “Gary said many years ago that Wavis was Harry Hill before Harry Hill was Harry Hill, but, mind you, you’re not a bad Harry Hill anyway.”
That was the last one. The next-to last one was Tyson Fury, the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. I laughed all the way home after that. What had I been doing? I’d been in the middle of all these really massive blokes, sense of humour not that prominent, and I’m wanting him to sign a poster of The Hard.
JOHN: How did Tyson react?
WAVIS: My success rate has always been 99.9%, catching people one-to-one. But he was surrounded by his bouncer folks and one of them just took one look at me with me ‘Hard’ poster and said: “He doesn’t do autographs”.
Then, as he went into the building, we exchanged glances… I have stared him out, technically… he went into the building and signed autographs for these VIP people who paid £320 to get them! That’s Showbusiness, folks!
JOHN: So you didn’t get one.
WAVIS: Well, I didn’t really want it. I just wanted to be there because it was ridiculous. What was I doing there?
Locally, up North, the first celebrity I ever mixed with was Spike Milligan around 1975/1976.
“The idea was to play anything that wasn’t music.”
I had a group I called the Borestiffers. We did a ‘world tour’ of two dates at our local hall in Southshields. I had to fill in a form. I said it was for ‘poetry recitals’. All the rival gangs came – they’d kill each other on sight – and the hall was quartered by all these rival gangs who had come to see what on earth was going on. They didn’t know what to expect.
I came out with an illuminated Subbuteo floodlight strapped on my head with my wacky little band and I’m doing my songs and I just managed to finish it before the chairs started getting thrown at each other from the rival gangs.
The idea of the Borestiffers was to play anything that wasn’t music. We had empty suitcases for drums, Bullworkers and we genuinely had a kitchen sink, because someone was having their kitchen done. We had everything and we freaked everybody out so much that they didn’t know how to react.
I thought: Right! I like this reaction!
JOHN: …and so you decided to do comedy?
WAVIS: People want me to be a comedy/haha person. But nobody’s one person.
WAVIS: He can’t stop laughing… Anyway, I studied there and had a lama teacher – a celebrated rinpoche – Akong Rinpoche. He was murdered in China in 2013. I had Akong as a teacher in 1977 and I seemed to already know the stuff. What I got into was a thing called Vajrayana – you may have heard of the ‘crazy wisdom’ of Vajrayana.
It kind of frees outrageous behaviour.
I thought: This is the way I seem to be. Polar opposites. I’m up here at the apex, sitting with the emptiness of the Vajra diamond and the supreme oblivion where you can really bamboozle people with your behaviour.
And this was the formulation of Wavis.
When I left the Community, that’s when I got into recording the vinyl.
The reason I ended up doing sketches on music shows is… They said “Come on in and sing your Don’t Crush Bees With the End of Your Walking Stick or You Think You’re a Woman Because You Don’t Eat Fishcakes… Come on and do one of your songs.”
And I thought: No. I don’t work like that. If you want me to do songs, I won’t do songs… “Can I do a comedy sketch instead?”… I kinda wrote one on the spot for them. Sketches and characters pass though my brain. It never dries up.
So I ended up doing sketches on The Tube. A national audience. Four million people a week.
JOHN: And it all goes back to the Samye Ling Temple? You wanted to bamboozle people with surreality?
WAVIS: Well, the crazy wisdom of the Tibetan teachings do allow for… Well, you gotta end up talking about the unconscious mind. Surrealism is like a bubble rising up from the bottom of the lake.
The origin of comedy interests me, John. I’m very into neurology.
My wife – we’ve been married 38 years – has very high-functioning Asperger’s Syndrome. She worked for the Ministry of Defence. She has had to put up with me for 38 years. She says it’s like living with Zelig.
I know quite a few serious researchers into neurology. Simon Baron-Cohen is a friend.
I live with two people who have Asperger’s – my wife and her son – and there are other immediate family members on the spectrum as well. All quite clever. Cambridge University have studied the family. They actually came here and did DNA swab testing. That’s how I met Simon Baron-Cohen in 2013 or so.
Researchers have pointed out that when serious people like Oliver Sacks take psychedelics, they report back that – ooh – you see UFOs, you see fairies… BUT lots and lots and lots of people have also reported seeing circus clowns.
JOHN: And the conclusion is that they see clowns because…?
WAVIS: Well, yes, why should they see circus clowns? Is it indicating … Is it possible… that the origin of comedy resides somewhere in the unconscious mind? Or, certainly, on another level of consciousness? Very serious stuff this, isn’t it?
JOHN: A lot of people find clowns very frightening…
WAVIS: That’s true.
JOHN: You must have had a career before the surreal stuff. You mentioned Zeus to me in an email. Everyone knows Zeus, but you also mentioned Hera. Now that’s relatively obscure.
WAVIS: Hera? Is she obscure? When I was a child, one of the first movies I saw was Jason and The Argonauts and that has got a lot to answer for. Life can be dull, mundane and boring. But I wanna be off! The other movie I saw that inspired me was Ursula Andress as She.
I went to the movies when I was ten. I wanted to walk into the screen. A search for the ultimate female. Ayesha (She). I have studied all that (Greek) stuff, but not as an academic.
JOHN: Ayesha and Jason: that’s all fantasy stuff. You were interested in fantasy?
WAVIS: Ah!… Ah!… Well, Wavis is a fantasy figure. How many times have I had to say to people that Wavis is just a fig roll ment of your imagination? I have no end of names. I was called Callum Jensen when I went on Stars in Their Eyes. Well, Steve Harley had been a friend, you see…He sent his own guitar to use on the show and let me keep it…
About a month ago, Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award designer John Ward got in touch with me about cult TV series The Prisoner. He thought he might have the original ‘No 6’ badge which star Patrick McGoohan wore in the series. I wrote a blog about it.
John Ward wearing The Prisoner’s No 6 badge from MGM
Rick writes:
I found the blog piece delightful and fascinating. What a story, and what a wonderful set of items to now own! Not heard of MGM sending actual artefacts before. Photos yes, artefacts no!
I personally think this is unlikely to be an original badge, and agree with one of your conclusions that this may have been something reproduced and sent to various folk who wrote to Patrick McGoohan / MGM. The reasons I believe it may not be genuine are as follows (and I’m not saying this to annoy or depress, but to help John Ward build an overall picture for these wonderful items):
a) Number Six only wore/used his badge for around 5 seconds, in a scene from the episode Arrival, where he is handed the badge outside of the Hospital in The Village (in reality, Castell Daedraeth in Portmeirion). He immediately tears off the badge and tosses it into a Village taxi. At no other point in the episode, or series, does he wear the badge (you may recall he defiantly states “I am Not a Number!” at the start of each episode). Because of this, the badge will not have been used in any beach scenes and therefore any ‘sand’ is likely to be coincidental.
b) The series’ propsman Mickey O’Toole, who was in charge of creating and organising the badges, when interviewed about the series, spoke at length regarding the re-use of the Number 6 badge. As extras from the series who appeared in Portmeirion when they shot the series from September 1966 were keeping their own numbered badges as souvenirs, the production crew found themselves short of numbered badges, so re-used the Number 6 badge by adding other digits, so there are 3 different Number 66 background characters in the first episode Arrival, for example, produced by simply stenciling another ‘6’ onto the existing ‘6’. Therefore, the original ‘6’ badge probably didn’t last beyond those first two weeks of filming, as it was modified to become a different number.
However, that’s not to say that other Number Six badges were created and not used – such items were not catalogued, so you’d be justified in arguing that other 6 badges could have been produced. However, filming and production on the series was completed in February 1968 and, as such, it’s highly unlikely that any aspect of the series’ production remained at the studio for 12+ months after that.
By mid-1968 the props were broken up (with a few taken home by members of the production crew earlier that year (See https://www.theunmutual.co.uk/propscostumes.htm for some examples) and the costume store at MGM moved to nearby ABPC Studios (now known as Elstree Film Studios) for use in other series. By the time your letter was sent from MGM in 1969, it’s therefore incredibly unlikely that any aspect of the series remained at MGM to be mailed to you as it had all moved a year or so before.
But there certainly cannot be any proof that this is NOT an original 6 badge used in production, as the design certainly 100% matches those used in the finished episodes.
Patrick McGoohan made The Prisoner down the road from you at MGM Borehamwood in 1966-1967.
Patrick McGoohan, the Prisoner badge, the MGM envelope
I wrote to him when it was screened to say I thought the series was a cracker and a few weeks later a signed photo plus a Number 6 penny farthing badge came in the post…
Could this be THE badge that was used in the show? – Or just one of them?
I suspect that a few were made in case of cock-ups during filming – or to send out to fans. But, on the back of the badge I was sent – in the pin attachment – are visible grains of sand.
Some of the location stuff was filmed along the beach area at Portmeirion in Wales.
Years ago I did try to find out how many badges were made, but no joy.
In the 1980s, I ‘loaned’ my badge to the Six of One fan club for a Channel 4 programme Six Into One – The Prisoner File. I saw an article in the TV Times asking for anybody with any memories relating the original showing – 1967-1968.
So I wrote in.
Next thing I knew I had a ‘highly educated’ man calling me on the phone to say how wonderful it was that I had this ‘memento’ from the show.
The more he asked, the more he seemed to be drooling over it.
Could I send it, together with the envelope with the MGM logo, by recorded delivery, to him?
I duly did his bidding and got back a pile of their Six of One promo stuff about membership etc… and then… nothing, really.
I was never told when the programme was going out. By chance, I spotted it in the telly listings.
And then it took so much hassle getting it back from them!
I got the impression they thought I was going to give it them.
They eventually succumbed to sending the badge back to me in a registered envelope after loads of phone calls from me to them.
However…
MGM envelope franked
…the MGM envelope they had requested “to prove its authenticity” that I had sent together with the badge was not there – So back to the phone I went and told him in no uncertain terms I was not best pleased.
The MGM envelope appeared about a week later in a Royal Mail Registered envelope, with no apology or anything else, hence I have no time for the Six of One clique in any shape or form.
And, despite all this aggro the badge was not actually used in any context in the programme.
What is interesting is I cannot find any reference to the badge I have.
Okay, there are loads of shit copies on eBay, yes – But no mention of anybody saying they have the original badge at all.
Years ago our local newspaper – the Northants Evening Telegraph – ran an article on it but no joy. One idiot said he had bought ‘the badge’ while on holiday and he paid 50p for it in… well… in Margate..
He came round to see me, but it was a simple button type badge with a pin about the size of a 50 pence piece.
I may well take my badge along to an Antiques Roadshow at some point as I think, with the original MGM logo envelope, it has provenance, as they say.
John Ward in a photograph where it is probably best if you supply your own caption…
I first worked with mad inventor John Ward – designer of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards – on the TVS/ITV series Prove It! for which he supplied bizarre weekly inventions. That was back in 1988. We paid him a fee, put him up in a local hotel and covered his travel costs. He presented his inventions in a sort-of double act with the show’s presenter Chris Tarrant.
For one show in the series, he conceived and built a ‘TV Dining Machine’:
A couple of blogs ago, John Ward shared the quirkiness of one recent BBC approach to him about his frequently ‘unusual’ inventions.
The posting of that blog reminded John of another incident, back in 2007. He told me: “The crass silliness of clueless staff was/is not restricted to just the Beeb.”
Back in 2007, he received this email (which I have edited) from the member of an ITV production team:
We are currently producing a new entertainment show hosted by (two famous UK personalities).
The show has been an instant success. It features celebrity chat, the hottest music acts and the presenters’ ‘take’ on the week’s events.
Each week we like to feature new inventions and gadgets and I have seen online your various inventions and was hoping that I might be able to speak with you about the possibility of featuring some of them on our show.
I think it would be fantastic for our show.
I would be really keen to discuss this opportunity further.
Kind regards,
John Ward explains what happened next…
The ITV guy duly rang me up and, after a lot of patronising twaddle, he explained, once we finally got round to it, what my ‘involvement’ would be:
I was not to be appearing on the actual programme – quite why he didn’t say.
What he/they wanted was for me to send to them – at my cost! – assorted inventions I had made so that one could be displayed and talked about (i.e. taken the piss out of) each week during a filler moment on said show.
I was also to source the boxes/containers etc. to pack them up in and then pay to send them – quote: ‘by courier would be nice’ (!)
I did pose the question as to how I would get them back afterwards, but this query seemed to fall on rather stony ground. I got the overall impression that I would be ‘donating’ them to the programme.
Finally, he asked… Could I supply a list of suitable small inventions that would not take up too much space in the studio?
He then explained there was no fee, but I would be ‘rewarded’ by having my name in the end credits along the lines of: ‘Inventions supplied by John Ward’.
I pointed out that this supposed ‘reward’ would be meaningless at the end of the programme because, within seconds of the end credits rolling, they were then either squeezed to one side or reduced in size – or both – to promote the next programme.
He then went into autopilot mode and waffled on about ‘the prestige’ of being ‘connected’ with this series featuring such ‘iconic personalities’ and that I should be ‘grateful for being considered’ for a part in the production.
I think my response was fairly straightforward.
I posed the question:
“Are there still two ‘L’s in bollocks?”
He put the phone down rather swiftly after that intellectual exchange.
That poor 2007 ITV man missed-out on showcasing John’s originality – as we did on ITV’s 1988 series Prove It!
For the episode below, he had invented some very adaptable shoes:
A couple of days ago, I was asked to appear on GBNews’ today to give my opinion on the future of comedy.
And, sure enough, last night I appeared briefly on the Mark Dolan Tonight show. That will teach them never to invite me on a TV show again! I can be quite fluent verbally – in writing – but I am in no way vocally fluent. I’m not a fluent speaker. I gibber.
Anyway, I was one of three comedy ‘experts’ on Mark Dolan’s show, the others being US podcaster and author Drew Allen and the wonderful British showbiz legend that is Christopher Biggins.
I think GBNews may have mistaken me for someone else, as I was called a “highly-respected comedy journalist”.
Anyway… because this is MY blog, it’s all about Me, Me Me… so here are the excerpted bits with me. Spot the inconsistencies…
Mark Dolan Tonight with (L-R) Mark Dolan, me, Drew Allen and Christopher Biggins
MARK: You’ve written extensively for many years on the subject of comedy. Do you think it’s dying?
JOHN: I don’t think it’s dying. I think it’ll probably change. I mean, it goes through periods, doesn’t it. Hello Biggins! I used to work with him on Surprise! Surprise!…
I think television has changed now. In the days of Surprise! Surprise!, what producers did was they made programmes that they themselves liked which appealed to viewers.
Alan Boyd at London Weekend TV produced Surprise! Surprise! because he liked the sort of programmes that people wanted to watch. Nowadays, I think people are producing the sort of programmes they THINK the ‘lower classes’ want to watch.
So all these Oxbridge people are making programmes for people in Essex they don’t really know.
MARK: John, do you think Brexit has been a problem for British comedy? That sort of dividing live between Remainers and Brexiteers has been a really divisive aspect in comedy. Because I do know of comedians, John, who have been cancelled for being pro-Brexit.
JOHN: Well, I think it’s a problem in Society, isn’t it? I think by-and-large – a gross exaggeration but – by-and-large comedians tend to be Left Wing because they possibly rail against authority and that’s a good thing for comedy. So most comedians are Left Wing and, if you’re Left Wing, you take certain views. And, by-and-large – by-and-large – Brexit was a Left/Right divide.
MARK: What about shows like The Mash Report which seem to be one long attack on the Conservative Party and Brexit.
JOHN: I think again, that’s because television producers nowadays make programmes for themselves and their mates who have lunch in Soho wineries. They don’t make programmes for the punters.
In my glorious days when I was young in the late 17th Century, comedy television programmes were on in peaktime. They were on at 7.30/8 o’clock at night. Nowadays comedy tends to be either on minority channels like BBC Three or very late night or at 9 or at10.30.
In my day, comedies were populist. Nowadays, in a strange way, it’s elitist, because it’s made by people for their chums not for the people who are actually watching the programme.
MARK: We’ve seen, haven’t we, some comedies being given a trigger warning at the start of the show… We saw an episode of Fawlty Towers which was actually removed from its platform for a while, even though the episode contained a message of anti-racism which the Woke Warriors didn’t seem to get the memo on. That one.
And then you’ve got shows like Little Britain which have been Cancelled by the organisation that made them – the BBC. I mean, Little Britain – OK, it was hit and miss – but at times it was wildly offensive and wildly hilarious, John.
JOHN: Yes, I think you have to be offensive to be… I think the key thing is the word ‘PUNCHline’.
At the end of a joke there’s a punchline and you laugh at the punchline. The reason you laugh, you lose control of your body, is because you’re getting a release because there’s a surprise – something you don’t expect. It’s a release. I gibbered there, but a punchline triggers a release.
MARK: John, last word goes to you. You’ve been writing about comedy for a long, long time, who are the greatest British comedians of all time in your view?
JOHN: Oh, you and Leo Kerse, obviously. (THEY HAD TAKEN PART IN THE PRECEDING SHOW ON GBNews)
MARK: (LAUGHS) God bless you. Have you been drinking again, John?
JOHN: (LAUGHS) I don’t drink.
It depends what you mean by ‘greatest British comedians’. Michael McIntyre is a great comedian, but I wouldn’t go and see his show because it’s gonna be the same every night. It’s a very slick show, I prefer to see very uneven shows – rollercoasters – so… I wrote Malcolm Hardee – a great comedian – ’s autobiography. So I’d like to put in a plug for Malcolm Hardee as being an anarchic comedian who should be better known.
MARK: A wonderful comedian. I was doing a show at Up The Creek, his legendary comedy club in Greenwich, and towards the end of the set I said to the audience: “I’ll be back.”
And he shouted from the side of the stage: “No you won’t!”
There you go. Comedy’s always got a victim and on that occasion it was me…
(THE ENTIRE EDITION OF THIS MARK DOLAN TONIGHT SHOW IS CURRENTLY ON YOUTUBE)
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 