Cunning stunts and a Kunt apology

I complained in my blog yesterday that there were no classic Malcolm Hardee style cunning stunts around at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

And, of course, since then people have been telling me about broken bones and hospitalisation. I’m not sure these totally count as publicity stunts – more like the wrath of humourless god. But…

First of all Adrian Rox told me about comedian Jeff Mirza being physically attacked as he walked down the Royal Mile dressed as Colonel Gaddafi. The reason remains shrouded in mystery. Possibly some American tourists, famously weak on geography, thought they had accidentally wandered into Libya, got drunk and lived out their dream of being SEALS. The near-constant rain might have stoked their aquatic fantasy.

Then Kate Copstick, aka Cruella de Cowell from ITV1’s Show Me the Funny, told me about Tim Fitzhigham’s extraordinary run of bad luck while preparing for and performing his show Tim Fitzhigham: Gambler.

He has chipped and broken multiple bones. Malcolm Hardee only destroyed his body with excessive drink and occasional drugs. I think Tim may be trying too hard to win a Malcolm Hardee Award next week.

Then we have the lovely and very highly talented Miss Behave, host of the upcoming Malcolm Hardee Award Show on Friday 26th August. She has been laid low in London with potentially-fatal meningitis for the last few weeks and only a few days managed to struggle up to Edinburgh to host her extraordinary variety show The Mess at Assembly in George Square.

I wandered over to George Square to see her in the rain yesterday afternoon and found her wearing what I think was a bear costume. Well, it was quite cuddly and had bear-like ears. She was not wearing this for publicity purposes, she was not in public view and it was around six hours before her show started. She was just dressed as a bear. Perhaps I should have asked questions. I did not.

Last night, in The Mess, she recreated the Malcolm Hardee/Greatest Show on Legs’ naked balloon dance with original GSOL member (and what an appropriate word that is in the circumstances) Chris Lynam, Steve Aruni and Bob Slayer. I could not be there because I was watching Janey Godley storm Paul Provenza’s jam-packed Set List: Standup Without a Net, which has had to move from the Tron to the larger Caves to accommodate the punters.

Bob Slayer tells me that, back in George Square, after the balloon dance, he “ended up running around the Assembly area  naked – as one does – and I caused Tim Key a suitable level of confusion by hugging him and doing a poem”.

I suspect this is only a low-key start to the mayhem that Miss Behave may visit on unsuspecting, unprepared Fringe-goers who attend The Mess.

Bob Slayer – you would not think it to look at him – is keen on Kunt and the Gang and I would not be surprised if they connived on publicity. In 2009, Lewis Schaffer showed the value of apologetic press releases in garnering publicity with a press-released ‘apology’ to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards which managed to plug his own show twice – in detail.

I was never totally convinced by Kunt’s recent scam of sticking paper penises on other shows’ posters. But yesterday’s ‘apologetic’ press release manages not only to get publicity for himself but to add in what are, in effect, review quotes from other performers. I print the apology below without comment, but it possibly deserves a review of its own.

_______________

Sorry About The Cocks:

Kunt and the Gang would like to apologise to anyone who is upset about the ‘crudely drawn cock’ stickers that have been appearing all over posters in Edinburgh. When we had 5000 of the cock stickers printed in the run up to the Fringe Festival we just thought it would be a light-hearted alternative to flyers. The plan was to give them to our audience each night so they could go out and vote with their cocks by sticking them in amusing places on posters. It was intended to be one big jolly jape that everyone laughed along with. This I now know was a badly misjudged joke that horribly backfired.

Unfortunately it was brought to our attention that some comedians were extremely angry at seeing their posters adorned with an effigy of a male member. This culminated in myself being physically threatened by one irate comic who failed to see the funny side of his poster being decorated by a member of the public with a crudely drawn image of a man’s winky.

Further to this, after only four nights of the audience being handed stickers at the end of my show, I received a warning from the Fringe Police and was told that Underbelly had threatened action should any more of my stickers be handed out. I suspect the cock that broke the camel’s back was the penis that ended up in Christine Hamilton’s wine glass on their flagship poster on Bristo Square. The same night I received a visit at my venue from Edinburgh Council Environmental Dept who told us that they had spent the day pulling off over a hundred cocks. They showed us examples of cocks they had found on posters, including the one of Russell Kane with his mouth open, the one of Richard Herring lying on a bed and the one of the Spank Comedy Club with that bird bending over. I gave them my assurance to that no more cock stickers would be given out.

I would like to take this opportunity to say my cocks were not meant maliciously or designed to annoy anyone and I sincerely apologise if one of my cocks got up anyone’s nose. Admittedly I didn’t think it through properly. I mistakenly thought everyone would share my enthusiasm for seeing Edinburgh covered in crudely drawn cocks for a month. In retrospect I realise I was like America selling Weapons of Mass Destruction to the Middle East without a thought for who my cock shaped missiles would be affecting. Furthermore I would also like to apologise to any of the performers who have had a cock removed and are now left where the sticker once was or a ‘ghost cock’. I’m sorry if my cock cheesed anyone off.

Kunt (Kunt and the Gang)

Notes to Editors

– Yesterday Stewart Lee, the thinking man’s comic, went to see Kunt and the Gang, the most puerile show on the fringe, for the second night in a row. Mr Lee, and his wife Bridget Christie, once again laughed like drains throughout renditions of classic Kunt songs such as: Wanking Over a Pornographic Polaroid of an Ex-girlfriend Who Died, Fucksticks and Hurry Up and Suck Me Off Before I Get Famous.

– Serial prankster Lewis Schaffer was asked what he thought about it all and he said: “Well I was thinking of going to see Russell Kane’s show but when I saw his poster I was worried that he might be a cock sucker and so have decided to give it a miss.”

– Russell Kane: “I actually found it fucking funny! Keep printing cocks and saying it too. It’s proper funny.”

How the Edinburgh Fringe came together – for comedy at least

I have probably been going to Edinburgh every year since I was an embryo.

Though I think maybe I missed one year.

I was born in Campbeltown on the west coast of Scotland and partly brought up in Aberdeen in the north east. When my parents moved down to London, we used to spend every summer holiday in south west Scotland, where my parents grew up, with a side-trip to Edinburgh to visit my father’s aunt.

I have always loved Edinburgh. I feel more at home there than anywhere else – which is a tad ironic as I have never actually had a home there.

After I left college, I started reviewing movies and used to go to the annual Edinburgh International Film Festival in August (it recently moved to June). Later, I would also sometimes go to a few Edinburgh Fringe theatre productions. At that time, it was mostly a festival where students with thespian ambitions put on plays of dodgy quality. I remember climbing up open iron stairs which felt like a fire escape to see some endless play about Hitler in a tiny upstairs venue called The Traverse.

The play seemed to last longer than the Second World War.

By 1985/1986, I was working for the Entertainment department at London Weekend Television and started going to comedy shows on the Fringe. This was around the time that Alternative Comedy was finding its legs in the UK and also the time the big venues started at the Fringe. Within a few years, a Big Three were solidly established.

Edinburgh is quite a small city but is topographically dramatic. The New Town (1700s) is separated from the Old Town (medieval) by a valley formed in the Ice Age (the railway now runs through it). The Old Town stands on a volcanic ridge and, in places, is built on two levels.

From 1980, the Assembly venue ran in the Assembly Rooms on George Street in the New Town.

From 1985, the Pleasance was in the Old Town slightly outside where the old city walls had stood.

Starting in 1986, the Gilded Balloon was in Cowgate on the lower level of the Old Town.

The Fringe, as well as being an open festival with no central body choosing who appears (you just arrange your own venue and turn up) had no single central location. The Fringe Office was in the High Street, on the upper level of the Old Town, separate from all the venues.

In 2000 (or 2001, depending on your viewpoint), the Underbelly opened, soon become the fourth Big Venue. It was along the Cowgate from the Gilded Balloon.

In 2002, the Gilded Balloon burnt down, which resulted in its relocation to Bristo Square, on the upper level of the Old Town.

The Pleasance then opened a venue called the Pleasance Dome in Bristo Square, re-naming their original location the Pleasance Courtyard.

The Underbelly then pitched their giant purple cow venue – the Udderbelly – in the middle of Bristo Square.

The Fringe Office then opened a performers’ centre – Fringe Central – literally round the corner from Bristo Square.

And, this year, the Assembly venue has moved from its old building to George Square – beside Fringe Central and a 20 second walk from Bristo Square.

So the Big Four venues are all now clustered around Bristo Square in the Old Town, with the original Underbelly, the Pleasance Courtyard and the Assembly Hall venue on the Mound all in the Old Town too.

Quite what this will do to the venues left isolated in the New Town remains to be seen.

But, at least, comedy on the Fringe now has a centre.

Edinburgh is preparing for the Fringe Festival and is stocking McCondoms

I had a day trip to Edinburgh yesterday. The Fringe Festival officially starts next Friday but actually on Wednesday.

The first street posters are already up and the venues are being constructed.

The Gilded Balloon’s turrets, which normally have food stalls beneath them which look like they have been shipped in from Glastonbury, this year appear to be going for a Robin Hood theme, with fake battlements built around the food area and the stalls having pseudo medieval roofs.

The Assembly is constructing its new home in George Square; and the Underbelly’s purple upside-down cow already dominates Bristo Square which has become the centre of the Fringe.

In Cowgate, the former church which used to be the Faith venue is now, year-round, called Sin – make of that what you will.

The grimy and pokey Holyrood Tavern, home several years ago to some great Fringe shows, has alas been smartened-up into a neat burger restaurant calling itself Holyrood 9A.

And, at one venue (which shall be nameless), as I was putting up a poster for Malcolm Hardee Week, two men were leaving. I went indoors to ask the barman something and, when I got back to the door, the poster had been removed from the wall… alright… nicked… half-inched… stolen.

I looked out of the doorway.

The two men were walking down the street looking at the poster with smiles on their faces.

Well, fair enough.

All publicity is good publicity and I think Malcolm would have approved of them stealing his poster.

Then I went to the Royal Mile.

I have not gone into one of those tartan tourist shops with bagpipe musak for years but yesterday I did (don’t ask) and beside the till were packets of McCondoms which, according to the illustration on the box, seemed to be in the shape of miniature whisky bottles. Ideal for me. I have no delusions.

I did not buy a packet although I was sorely tempted, just to see what they looked like.

When I got home, I looked up McCondom on the internet and found, alas, that they are not in the shape of miniature whisky bottles.

A customer review makes it clear that they are supposed to be whisky flavoured.

“The smell,” the reviewer says, “reminds of whisky, but I can’t say that it is exactly whisky smell. And this smell unexpectedly turned out not to be sexy at all. And unfortunately lubricant doesn’t taste like whisky, instead it’s something oily and unpleasant.”

It still gets Four Stars from the reviewer for being “really funny”.

So it is a bit like the Edinburgh Fringe. Good marketing may disguise something which gives you a good laugh but leaves you with a bad taste in the mouth. And four stars is no guarantee of a good night.

Look, I did not say this blog had any philosophical insights – nor any jokes.

The online reviewer surreally adds about the McCondom: “It can also become a good addition for a collection of condoms if anyone keeps such a collection.”

I would be very interested to hear if anyone does collect condoms… and why…

… That was going to be the last line of this blog.

Until I Googled “condom collection”.

Of course someone does collect condoms.

Of course they do.

Why would she not?

And she probably drives a small family car.

It really is like the Edinburgh Fringe.

Someone somewhere is doing something extraordinary.

It is just a case of finding her or him.

Edinburgh Fringe publicity stunts: the planned drowning of Malcolm Hardee

The Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards – there are currently three of them – are being given every August until the year 2017. This is because that’s the number of physical awards I got mad inventor John Ward to make.

Of these three prestigious annual prizes, the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award (won last year by Stewart Lee) honours the best publicity stunt for any act or show at the Edinburgh Fringe that year.

There are no rules for the Malcolm Hardee Awards. If there were, Malcolm’s ashes would turn in their urn. But one rule-of-thumb for the Cunning Stunt Award is that people do not have to apply to be considered. Because, if you have to tell the judges you have done a publicity stunt then, by definition, the stunt has failed.

I started the Cunning Stunt Awards because it seemed to me that the marketing and publicising of comedy shows on the Fringe had become too serious and what was lacking was a bit of mindless irresponsibility. The Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award aims to encourage this.

The late lamented Malcolm was a comedian, club owner, compere, manager and sometimes agent, but it was often and correctly claimed that his real comedy act was his life off-stage and, at the Fringe, he was known for his stunts – writing a review of his own show and conning The Scotsman into printing it under the byline of their own comedy critic; driving a tractor naked through American performance artist Eric Bogosian’s show; announcing at a press conference that Glenda Jackson had died then eventually adding, “No, not that Glenda Jackson.”

If it had not been his mother who phoned me up in 2005 and told me Malcolm had drowned, I would probably have thought it was a publicity stunt.

Especially as, a few years before, I had tried to persuade Malcolm to fake his own death by drowning, as a publicity stunt.

The Assembly Rooms venue (now re-branded as simply Assembly) were paying him that year to do a show for the duration of the Edinburgh Fringe but he had also somehow managed to double-book himself on a mini-tour of South Africa.

“My kids have never been to South Africa,” he told me dolefully. This was after he had already started his Fringe run at the Assembly Rooms. “I think I’ll just do a runner.”

“How will the Assembly Rooms react?” I asked.

Malcolm shrugged his shoulders, blinked a bit and mumbled something inaudible, as he often did.

“Rather than pissing-off the Assembly,” I suggested, “why don’t you fake your own death?”

Malcolm had once been in prison with disgraced MP John Stonehouse, who had faked his own death by drowning then been found living with his mistress in Australia.

“You could hire a car in Edinburgh,” I suggested, “and drive it to North Berwick. Leave it near the beach with your clothes in a bundle nearby and something in the clothes which has your identity on it – a letter addressed to you, maybe. Then piss off to South Africa.”

“Mmmmm…” Malcolm mumbled.

“You go off to South Africa for two weeks,” I continued, “When you come back, you can read your own obituaries, with luck you can go to your own funeral and everyone including the Assembly will think it’s a great joke that’s in character. It’s a triple whammy. You get to go to South Africa for two weeks, you get publicity and you don’t piss-off the Assembly too much.”

Malcolm thought about it for a bit.

“I can’t do it,” he eventually said to me. “The only way it would work is if I didn’t tell Jane (his then wife) or my mum.”

Malcolm was a surprisingly sensitive man:

“They’d get hurt,” he said. “It wouldn’t work unless I didn’t tell them and I couldn’t not tell them.”

So that particular publicity stunt was never pulled.

One day, he just never turned up for his show at the Assembly Rooms. He had gone to South Africa. I don’t think, under the circumstances, the Assembly Rooms took it too badly.

I guess they just shrugged their shoulders and thought:

“Fuck it! It’s just Malcolm.”

(This year’s Malcolm Hardee Awards, including the Cunning Stunt Award, will be announced on the evening of Friday 26th August during a two-hour comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe.)

How a German hamster almost because a peaktime Saturday night television star in the United Kingdom

I had tea yesterday with the extraordinarily energetic and charismatic Miss Behave aka Amy Misbehaving, who was telling me all about the Edinburgh Fringe show(s) she will be staging in August at the new Assembly venue in George Square.

That’s an extraordinarily anarchic mind she has there and, as they say, staging anarchy takes a lot of organisation.

Something she said reminded me of Vier gegen Willi (Four Against Willi) – a legendary German TV light entertainment series of the late 1980s which was co-presented by a hamster. Willi helped to make decisions throughout the show and, at the climax, he was put in a maze with three exits and, depending on which exit the co-presenting hamster took, the winning family won their prize-money in either German marks or Italian lira or Austrian schillings. Ah! The glorious pre-Euro days!

At one time, the UK ITV contractor London Weekend Television showed interest in buying UK rights to either some of the Vier gegen Willi games or the entire format itself. When I was at LWT, much joy was certainly had by many, looking at tapes of the part-hamster-presented German TV series. However, there was a big drawback to production of the show.

It was that, under the very hot TV studio lights, the furry creature had a tendency to overheat excessively so, for each show, the producers had to have several lookalike hamsters on standby because it was not at all uncommon for the hirsute co-presenter to die in mid-show.

The great German viewing public, as far as I know, was never made aware of this, but it was thought unlikely that the British tabloid press could have been kept in the dark if ITV had run a Saturday peaktime entertainment series co-presented by a hamster in which the hamster often died and had to be replaced by lookalikes.

So, alas, the UK version was never made.

Myths, dangers and curses of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

(This blog appeared on Chortle, the UK comedy industry website)

I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Roadshow in London on Saturday and a couple of people asked my advice because they have decided to perform on the Fringe for the first time this year. Then, on Monday morning, a non-performer who appeared briefly as a guest at last year’s Fringe e-mailed me about the possibility of staging a full show throughout this year’s Fringe in August. On Tuesday morning, an established comedy act phoned me about returning to the Fringe after a gap of several years. And, yesterday afternoon, I got Skyped by someone who lives in mainland Europe about coming to the UK and playing the Fringe for the first time.

On Saturday, I asked about the long-and-widely-quoted statistics that the average Fringe show audience comprises six people and the average Fringe-goer is only in the city for three days. The Fringe Office told me both were urban myths.

Fringe Chief Executive Kath Mainland, in fact, told me that 50% of Fringe audiences come from Edinburgh (ie the EH postcodes). And that does not include the large numbers of Glaswegians who commute to Edinburgh Fringe shows. If true, it would mean that over half the audience is coming from lowland Scotland and performers should perhaps tailor their shows more towards Scots audiences if they want to get bums on seats.

Like all Fringe statistics, of course, even that one should be treated with a pinch of salt. The only way of knowing who goes to the Fringe is if punters buy tickets in advance and give their postcodes. The vast numbers who buy tickets with cash at the venue on the day don’t do that. And all Fringe statistics are mightily skewed by the fact no-one does nor can know how many punters attend the increasing number of free shows – let alone where they come from.

So, as always, performing at the Fringe is like juggling spaghetti in the dark and, when you get there, like standing in a cold shower tearing up £50 notes. This year, the uncertainties are even greater – not because of the recession but because of the rapidly changing nature of the Fringe – especially the crumbling of the box office for middle-ranking comedy shows. It happened last year and is likely to happen even moreso this year.

There are two types of show at the Fringe.

There are the traditional shows where audiences pay for tickets. And the free shows put on by the original PBH Free Fringe and the separate Laughing Horse Free Festival.

On Saturday, the gloriously entertaining Peter Buckley Hill of the PBH Free Fringe (a notable former Malcolm Hardee Award nominee) said he has had an 85% increase in applications for the PBH Free Fringe this year.

This is not surprising.

Paid-for show tickets are usually around £10 each – that means £20 if you are a couple and, if you see three shows in one day (which is not uncommon), that is going to set you back £60. For that amount of money and with limited time and vast numbers of shows on offer, you want to make sure you are not throwing your money away. So you pay to see ‘safe’ acts you have seen on TV or, at least, very long-established Biggish Name acts with a known track record.

People used to go to the Fringe and ‘take a punt’ on a show which sounded like it might be good… though it might be shit. That was what the Fringe was about. The excitement of the unexpected and the chance of stumbling on future stars.

What is increasingly happening now is that audiences are prepared to pay for the TV names they know. And they are prepared to take a risk by visiting several free shows. But excellent, experienced comedy acts playing paid-for venues who have not had TV exposure are seeing their audiences fall year-on-year. I know of at least three top-notch comedians who are not going to the Fringe this year because the potential on the paid-for Fringe in major venues is increasingly risky – they will still make a profit but the profit-to-hassle ratio has changed – and they cannot be seen to play free shows because it would lower their professional reputation with reviewers and the media.

It can cost £7,500+ to stage a good comedy show in a major venue at the Fringe.

The Fringe is alive and well for Fringe-goers who want to take a free punt with a high risk of seeing shit… and for Fringe-goers who want to pay to see re-heated TV acts of known quality. But the Fringe is increasingly difficult to financially justify for excellent, experienced live comedians with no TV exposure.

Another factor this year will be the death of the Fringe in the new town.

Edinburgh is two cities – the ‘new town’ (Georgian) and the ‘old town’ (medieval).

With the move this year (for at least three years) of the major Assembly venue from George Street in the new town to George Square in the old town, all the Big Four venues will now be clustered around Bristo Square, George Square and the Cowgate.

People may decide to go to a specific show in the new town, but the four places where punters will come to vaguely sit down and only then decide which show to see will be the Pleasance Courtyard, the Udderbelly Pasture in Bristo Square, the Pleasance Dome in Bristo Square and the George Square gardens which will have, I understand, two new Assembly venues in them. So street flyerers will get more passing trade and bums-on-seats potential in or near Bristo Square/George Square/Cowgate (as well as in the traditional maelstrom of the High Street on the Royal Mile). If someone flyers in the new town near a venue, they will be flyering in isolation and not picking up other shows’ punters.

This August will be particularly interesting to see and particularly uncertain for performers, yet the lure of the Fringe is still almost irresistible. There is that 85% increase in people applying to perform at PBH Free Fringe venues.

Uncertainty is almost an aphrodisiac for performers, but the financial repercussions are incalculable and go on and on.

What will happen next year when the end of the London Olympics overlaps with the beginning of the Edinburgh Fringe? Who knows?

For years, I have tried to find someone who can juggle cooked spaghetti for one minute and have always been unable to find anyone. But I have blind faith success may be possible. In that respect, I suppose I am much like Fringe performers going to Edinburgh.

The Fringe is an ongoing Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

(NOTE TO READERS IN THE USA: The British English phrase “bums-on-seats” means something more financially sustainable than it does in American English)