Iconic British comic Bernie Clifton says: “I’m just mucking about.”

Bernie Clifton rides Oswald the Ostrich

Yesterday’s blog was the first part of a chat with legendary English entertainer Bernie Clifton. It concludes here…

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JOHN: You were saying that you were inspired by Les Dawson to do a visual act.

BERNIE: Yes.

JOHN: So then there’s Peter Pullen…

BERNIE: Yes. Peter’s an absolute genius. At the time I was getting on with my props act, he was making all the puppets for the ventriloquists: people like Keith Harris & Orville and Rod Hull & Emu. And he made a huge thing called The Honey Monster for Sugar Puffs’ TV ads.

Peter made me a cat that sat on my shoulder and an inflatable diving suit. 

There was also a huge 12ft shark I bought in an auction and flew from Jersey to Shepperton film studios. I came back on the plane from Heathrow to Jersey that day and it came down the conveyor belt. No wrapping.

I was obsessed. I would do anything. I think maybe a lot of it was based on fear. There were a lot of good comics about. My act was anything that was visual. A million miles away from what most of the comics were doing at the time.

JOHN: You would dance with biscuit tins on your feet.

BERNIE: I found them at the side of a stage. They were holding raffle tickets.

It was visual. Harpo Marx used to have a big long overcoat. He had a motor horn in there and he could play a tune on his coat!

JOHN: You allegedly called your act “organised lunacy”. I used to work on the children’s TV show Tiswas and I’m very aware anarchy has to be organised if you want to guarantee it will work..

BERNIE: Exactly. My act had to be properly stage-managed. Once you got an idea that COULD work, you then had to construct and construct and construct. You needed a chain of organisation, really. You needed supplies. It was like an ironmonger’s shop on the road.

That’s where Peter Pullen was fantastic. I could go to him with a strange idea and he would actually make it happen.

JOHN: When alternative comedy came along in the 1980s, the comedy acts who played the Northern clubs were seen as ‘yesterday acts’. But you survived.

BERNIE: I was alongside a generation of very funny guys – some great comics – but I think everything had become stylised and the very fact you were wearing a smart dinner jacket, a frilly shirt and a nice bow tie stamped you and it stamped your generation. 

Suddenly, in the 1980s, the new guys came along wearing jeans and teeshirts and it made the previous generation look even more dated. I was fortunate, I suppose, that I was outside the ‘normal’ because I was doing ‘organised lunacy’ and I was visual and so escaped the noose. Everyone else was still doing mother-in-law gags.

JOHN: And you were not doing social observation or political gags.

BERNIE: (LAUGHS) It was kind of circus, in a way. 

JOHN: You hit the mainstream comedy audience but not with a mainstream ‘stand-up’ act. You played Royal Command Performances in 1979 AND in 2016…

BERNIE: I was doing regular cabaret on the QE2 liner and those audiences were from all over the world. I used to go on there with my props with my gigantic, 20ft high inflatable diving suit. I used to say to the Cruise Director: “When I’ve done the ostrich, done the cat on my shoulder, I’ve got to produce this 20ft tall diving suit…”

He would inevitably say: “Well, you can’t. There ’s no room backstage. Just the kitchen.”

“Yeah,” I’d say, “but up there, three decks up, I can see a rail.”

So I would be doing my act on stage and, three decks up, people would be inflating my diving suit. At some point, I would say: “You’ve won some furniture, madam… You’ve won a brand new divan suite…” and this diving suit would be launched from three decks up, down the atrium, BANG onto the dance floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I’d say. “it’s not a divan suite, it’s a diving suit.”

When I look back, What was going on between my ears?

But the Americans seemed to like it, because it crossed the language barriers.

The best thing was getting the (deflated) diving suit through Customs.

“What’s this, sir?… It’s a what?… Why?… Why are you taking this to America, sir?… Why are you… Why are…?… Why?”

JOHN: The cruise ship audiences must have been totally different to perform to than the Northern club audiences you learned your craft with.

BERNIE: I think we had to be so adaptable. We learned in the Northern clubs. I would go anywhere and do anything, just because it was on offer. I took whatever came up. I would jump from one venue and situation into another. Somebody once said Get it now because it might not be there tomorrow. How right they were.

Two shows a night in the clubs. The first show might be fantastic. But, two hours later, up the road, what you’d done earlier in the evening didn’t mean a thing; it was like starting from scratch again. You became so ready for that – You became match fit.

JOHN: You also seem to have done sports events all over the world… with a trombone.

BERNIE: I wasn’t playing the trombone; I was just carrying it. I was doing a midweek afternoon show on Radio Sheffield. I love radio.

The bandleader of the England football team band heard me. I always had a trombone in the studio because it was just a funny thing to have. He said: “The England band are based in Sheffield. The England Supporters’ Band. We’d like you to join the band.”

Bernie – England’s supportive non-trombone-player

I asked: “Why? I can’t actually play the trombone.”

He said: “Oh, you’ll be fine,” assuming that I could… 

Anyway, we went up to Newcastle to support England at a time when Wembley Stadium was being reconstructed. He said:

“Stand next to me and we’ll play The Great Escape.”

So we played The Great Escape – or they did – I tried. He looked at me at the end of it and says: “You really can’t bloody play it, can you?”

I said: “I’ve been telling you that for a month!”

“We didn’t believe you,” he said.

Anyway, I had some crude lessons and I can now tell you that the slide positions on The Great Escape are 4-3-1-1 … 1-1-3-1-4 … 3-3 … 1-2-1-2-4-1-4

Curiously, this took me around the world, not only as part of the England Supporters’ Band to follow England in Germany, Brazil, the Caribbean… Moscow we even did… But then, in the Beijing Olympics, we became the Ladies’ Hockey Supporters’ Band…

I actually went round the world carrying a trombone that I couldn’t play.

A trombone is a very convenient thing to carry, because you can carry it over your arm like an umbrella. Everyone should have one. Go find a trombone and see how it will change your life.

I’ve been round the world from a kid playing on a bomb site in St Helens to playing Las Vegas.

JOHN: Why did it take you 14 years to write your autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas?

Bernie Clifton – live in Las Vegas

BERNIE: It started out as a book about japes. I used to work on building sites and one of the opportunities of working on a building site and then coming into show business was that the sense of humour is…

Look, as a teenager, just post-War, mid-1950s, the workforce consisted of a lot of ex-servicemen who had survived and felt that you had better enjoy your environment… and inherent in this was the sense of humour.

JOHN: He’s a different generation, but Johnny Vegas is also from St Helens.

BERNIE: Yes, he’s written a lovely foreword for my book.

JOHN: The Guardian said you were the spiritual father of Vic Reeves, Harry Hill and Johnny Vegas.

BERNIE: I love present day comedy. I remember being in the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and I just happened to have a big reel of that parcel tape. So I hooked this parcel tape around my belt and gave this girl the end of it. 

I told her: “You stand still and I’ll walk around.” So I walked around in varying degrees of figures of eight taping maybe over 100 people together in little circles. People were so bemused they just stood there. I was just doing it for the craic. Eventually, I was running out of tape and this American guy came up to me and said: “Hey! Is this a performance?”

“No. It’s alright, mate,” I said, “I’m just mucking about.”

Bernie Clifton with his autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas…

Bernie Clifton – family entertainer and national treasure: Crackerjack to Vegas

Legendary comedy entertainer and British national treasure Bernie Clifton has just published his showbiz autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas.

He has ridden his puppet costume creation Oswald the Ostrich around the world. 

I talked to him via Zoom at his home in Derbyshire.

He was wearing a woolly RAF hat. 

In 2016, he appeared on BBC TV’s The Voice. He had originally applied anonymously, under his real name…

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JOHN:  When you appeared on The Voice, your choice of song was The Impossible Dream.

BERNIE: My version was really The Inevitable Scream. All I am, really, is a singer. I’m a pub singer who got in with the wrong people.

JOHN: Was it difficult to write your autobiography?

BERNIE: Well, it took me 14 years. I had to go and refill the ink-well and get a new quill.

I missed the first 18 years of my life out. All that failure. All that thrashing. I was a thick boy in a grammar school who obviously had no right to be there. When I was 10, I was told by my ‘inspirational’ teacher: “The day you pass your Eleven-Plus, Bernard, little pigs will fly.” 

JOHN: But you did.

BERNIE: I did. And I remember not having the courage to go up to Mrs Fairhurst and look up in the sky and say: “I can’t see any pigs.” I just didn’t have the guts.

JOHN: Why did you change your birth name? Bernie Quinn is a good strong name.

BERNIE: Because I went to a pub to do a Sunday noon gig where you had to share the stage with strippers. It was a male stag do on a Sunday lunchtime. I turned up as ‘boy singer Bernie Quinn’ and there, in coloured chalk, it said: ONE FOR THE LADS – BURMA QUEEN… I had been mistakenly booked on the phone as an ‘exotic dancer’. So I changed my name from Quinn to Clifton. My dad was  not best pleased.

JOHN: Why choose Clifton?

BERNIE: I went through the phone book. I realised I needed a two-syllable surname. So I went from Tipton (a town in Staffordshire) to Lipton (a grocer) and I think maybe there was Teabags along the line. In the end, I chose Clifton – a bridge in Bristol. And ‘Bernie Clifton’ seemed to scan.  You know – Bernie Winters – Bernie Clifton.

JOHN: You wore clogs as a kid.

BERNIE: My parents had five boys so there were seven of us all living in a two-bedroom house. I don’t understand how my parents managed to procreate.

We lived ‘cheek by jowl’ in Charles Street, St Helens in Merseyside. Everything was ‘just round the corner’ – the school, a shop, everything and, when I was four, I think Hitler must have told Goering and the Luftwaffe: “What they need is a playground”.

We lived at No 59 and one morning we woke up to find that Nos 65, 67 and 69 had disappeared in a bombing so then we had somewhere to play. I think we were too young to feel any fear. At the time, you were just grateful to survive and be fed. It made me realise in recent years how much ‘under the cosh’ we were. But happy. Because it was everyone’s lot. Everybody was having the same problems, weren’t they?

JOHN: Why did the Germans bomb St Helens?

BERNIE: It was the glass trade (Pilkington’s) in St Helens. You can’t march an army unless you’ve got glass. And, probably more importantly, we were just ten miles down the road from the Liverpool docks.

Anyway, I passed my Eleven-Plus but I was hauled out of grammar school at 15 – “There’s no point you staying here” – then I got a job as a bread lad at the Co-op and eventually ended up as an apprentice plumber for the local Corporation.

I got that because we were staunch Catholics and the Building Manager was also a staunch Catholic and it was always a good idea to be seen at 10 o’clock Mass on a Sunday. I kid you not. That was the way forward in your career. I got the job and discovered that, working in bathrooms, I got good acoustics.

I realised I had a good singing voice and got a job with the local dance band at weekends. In the interval, we used to go out and get drunk. Then, when it came to the last waltz, when I wasn’t required on stage, I used to find the doorman’s bicycle where he hid it under the stairs and ride round the dance floor on it. Me and my mates got known for doing anything. There was no vandalism in it, no violence. It was just, as the Irish might say, we were doing it for the craic. We’d do anything and that stayed with me. This is fun!

In retrospect, it got me out of a pretty grey time for this country – the early 1950s.

The RAF changed my life. To be sent to the leading edge of the Western World’s defence, training pilots and navigators how to drop a bomb on Moscow… It was absolutely ludicrous! I mean, I was a guy from St Helens who couldn’t hold down a job as a plumber!

As a plumber, I was known as The Tsunami Man… I was a disaster.

Everything I tried I failed at.

But, in the RAF, I was ultimately posted to Lindholme, near Doncaster. From a plumber, I became a radar mechanic at the sharp end of the Western Alliance. We were defending the West against the Russians and the RAF decided that this failed plumber from St Helens should be fitting radar boxes on Vulcan V-bombers at Bomber Command’s Bombing School just outside Doncaster… 

It was all a fluke.

I was very lucky. Doncaster was the hub of Northern clubland entertainment – pubs and clubs – and I just happened to have been dropped ten miles down the road. My weekends were free. So, every Sunday morning, I would borrow the flight sergeant’s bike without asking, pedal into Doncaster, park it somewhere, then get a trolleybus out to some miners’ welfare. That was how I found my way into entertainment.

JOHN: Everything’s a series of accidents but success is taking advantage of the tiny possibilities when they happen. And determination.

BERNIE: In my radar mechanics’ classroom in Wiltshire, everyone else in the class was sent out to Bomber Command stations in the middle of nowhere. But, of those 30 guys, I was the one who was sent to Doncaster. It was just a weird mish-mash of circumstances.

JOHN: But you had the nouse and the talent to take advantage of it. And then you got into the glamorous world of show business.

BERNIE: Well, I starting working in bathrooms and then getting paid to sing. I was a pub singer, And that was it. I became ‘a turn’ – a singer, but with a few choice gags that I’d picked up on the building sites.

That got me to Batley Variety Club, where I was seen by Barney Colehan who ran the BBC TV’s Good Old Days. He booked me; I had never been on television before.

I went along with me few gags and a song and Les Dawson was topping the bill. After the show, he took me to one side and gave me a proper (verbal) kicking. He said: “You’re OK, but you’re doing the same gags as another hundred comics. Why don’t you…” – his very words – “…plough your own furrow… What do you like doing?”

“I said: “I do like mucking about on stage with props”.

And he said: “Well, just go out and be a ‘prop comic’. Nobody else can be arsed to do it.” 

At the time, everyone was doing the mother-in-law gags. So I went out ‘inspired’ by Les and I did anything that was visual and just picked it up and ran with it.

(… CONTINUED HERE… )

What are we going to do about Julie Samuel, actress and much much more?

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.

Now she has written her autobiography What Are We Going To Do About Julie?

So we had a chat…

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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…)

Yesterday, I was attacked in the street by a 12-year-old… Watching violence.

Yesterday, I was attacked in the street by a 12-year-old.

Writer Ariane Sherine’s highly-intelligent daughter was telling me how, in drama classes at school, she had been taught to (stage) fight. 

She demonstrated this by repeatedly punching me in the face (but stopping short of physical contact) and delivering flying kicks to my body (but stopping short of physical contact).

Each time I was saved from physical harm by about an inch or maybe two. But I was increasingly slightly worried she might miscalculate. I feared (slightly) for the potential physical impact. The odds, I felt, would shorten the longer she demonstrated.

Which reminded me of a blog I posted here twelve years ago about writing an autobiography.

My opinion was and is that people are interested in people not in facts.

People are primarily interested in people.

Which brings us back to Ariane’s daughter’s demonstration of her stage-fighting technique.

I read an analysis when I was at college of how people watch screen violence. The study was able to use cameras to see exactly at which point in the screen the subjects’s eyes were concentrating.

Their results were not what I would have thought in advance but made sense when I thought about it.

If, for example, on screen, someone shoots or punches a person in the stomach, the victim will double over as the bullet/fist hits. If they are punched on the chin, their head will jerk backwards or sideways with the force of the punch. 

So what does the audience look at?

The viewer does not look at the victim’s stomach as the bullet or punch hits. They look at the victim’s face. They do not watch the action; they watch the re-action.

When someone is punched on the chin, they do not look at the point of impact. They do not look at the chin. They look at the eyes and facial reaction of the victim. Of course they do. It seems obvious,

The point is that they watch the re-action not the action. 

They are not primarily concentrating on the act or the fact of the action. They concentrate on the emotional and physical reaction of the person. 

Because people are primarily interested in people’s emotions and emotional reactions, not isolated, cold facts.

That’s equally important in writing autobiographies (or thrillers) as it is in filming action or even comedy films.

‘Man (or woman or other) slips on a banana skin’ is only interesting in so far as it affects a person.

They are interested in re-actions more than actions.

People are interested in people not abstract facts, except insofar as they affect  people.

It’s all about people, people.

Colin Copperfield (1st of 3) – Behind the quirky scenes of Jesus Christ Superstar

“Oozing energy… sheer delightful naughtiness”

It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Zing! is a wildly entertaining autobiography by Colin Copperfield. 

Colin started in showbiz aged 14 and has spent his life as an actor, dancer, singer and songwriter – including 25 years in the vocal group Wall Street Crash.

He spent 3 years on cruise ships, 6 years on shows in London’s West End, including Jesus Christ Superstar and The Who’s Tommy, and he appeared in over 900 TV shows in 26 countries.

He appeared in three Royal Command Performances and on five albums and eleven singles.

He told me: “I’ve recently finished composing the musical Paradise Lane, fingers and eyes crossed coming to a theatre near you soon.”

He was born in Forest Gate in the East End of London. 

“I had a bit of a tough upbringing. I’m 72 now… Now I write songs for other artists and I’m a dance teacher specialising in tap, modern and ballet. I also work as personal fitness trainer.”

Obviously I had to talk to him.

Colin in his Wall Street Crash days…

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JOHN: So… Jesus Christ Superstar in the West End.

COLIN: It was just one of those flukes of showbusiness. I was around 28. I was doing singing telegrams to pay the rent.

Superstar needed rock singers for the stage production.

They couldn’t make rock singers out of the traditional people in showbusiness – they were all My Boy Bill singers. They needed rock singers so, when they started, they auditioned people who sang in bands, like I did. But most of the people who sang in bands had no theatre discipline. They could sing on television but couldn’t do theatre.

There was a big problem getting enough good suitable singers. So we very often used to do Jesus Christ Superstar – this is a top West End show remember – with seven disciples. 

We had lots of Japanese tourists coming in and you could see them looking confused. Surely there were 12 disciples???

We – truly – sometimes used to dress the girls with short hair up as boys to sit round the Last Supper table, because you really HAD to have 12 disciples at the Last Supper.

At some points we were all round the table and we’d all link up hands and have to stretch a bit: different arm lengths.

JOHN: It must almost be relaxing performing in a successful, long-running West End show, though…

COLIN: Well, when I was in Jesus Christ Superstar, I was really busy. I was also working at the Stork Club in Piccadilly Circus – doing the midnight show and the 2 o’clock in the morning show. And I was also doing a television show at Teddington Studios with Tommy Steele.

I was doing the Tommy Steele show all day, which was really hard; we were tap-dancing down this staircase all day. Guys were breaking their legs going up and down. I only got the gig because of one of my friends, who was a proper dancer. I went along and it was quite a long rehearsal period – a 2-month rehearsal period –  and then we filmed at Teddington.

I was doing that during the day and Jesus Christ Superstar at night and then I was working at the Stork Club after that. So I was a bit tired. I was getting about 2 or 3 hours kip a night.

Just before the interval, they did this song called Gethsemane

Anyway, one night I’d been tap-dancing during the day in Teddington and then I got to Superstar in the West End.

It was a Saturday night performance – I was knackered.

Just before the interval, they did this song called Gethsemane – everyone’s asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus sings this very long song.

It went on for about eight minutes about how he was going to be denied and all that.

At the end of it, Jesus sings (COLIN SINGS) “…before I change my mind…” – then BLACKOUT.

So, there’s a blackout and we all clear the stage – Interval – the audience buy their ice creams. Then, at the beginning of the second half – BLACKOUT – we all come back into our sleeping positions – Jesus is standing there.

So, at the end of the first half, I had got onto the floor; it was a really warm floor; perspex squares; I’m slunk down; Jesus is singing; I’ve fallen asleep. BLACKOUT. Peter and John have gone. Jesus has gone. 

But I’m still fast asleep on the stage. 

They were about to lower the iron curtain; all the lights are up and somebody saw me lying there, more or less under the iron curtain.

“Colin! Colin! Colin!!!”… 

They had to send the stage hands on to wake me up.

All the audience have seen this. So, at the beginning of the Second Act… BLACKOUT… and, as the lights came up, the whole audience stands up and starts clapping and shouting “Bravo!” just as Jesus is about to be denied. Literally, a standing ovation.

I was in Jesus Christ Superstar for three years. I was in it three times. 

JOHN: Three times?

COLIN: I had been in Superstar for about a year, then left to do a show at the Ambassadors Theatre – Let The Good Stones Roll, about the Rolling Stones. I played Keith Richards. That was on for about 8 months.

After Heaven, an unexpected encounter

Then I went to do another show called Leave Him to Heaven at the New London Theatre with Anita Dobson. That came off and I was meeting a mate of mine in town for a drink near the Palace Theatre where Jesus Christ Superstar was still on.

As I passed the Palace Theatre, suddenly Peter Gardner, the company manager, appeared out of nowhere and rushed over: 

“Colin! Colin! You gotta come over, darling. We’ve got nobody to play Peter and Simon Zealotes!”

“Peter,” I said, “I’m going to meet my mate for a drink. I haven’t been in this show for a year.”

“Darling! You’ll remember it, darling! You’ll remember it! Come in! Come in! Go up to the wardrobe department!”

I went in. I went up. New people. Nobody I knew. 

So I go on stage. It’s the Saturday Matinee and I’m on stage with this cast of 35 people I’ve never met in my life. They are all thinking: Who is this bloke?

I was on stage, singing all the relevant songs. And, at the end of it, bless their hearts, the whole company did the Who’s Best (EXPLAINED IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW) and the whole company turned to  me. I didn’t know ANYbody.

I never ever took time off when I was in the West End but, another night, I got Hong Kong flu. Loads of people were off sick. I think some theatres even went dark. I was living in Islington (north London), lying there ‘dying’ in my bed and Peter Gardner phones up: 

“Treas, treas” – he called everybody ‘treas’ as in ‘treasure’ – “you gotta come in, darling. We’ve got nobody to play Peter, Simon or Herod and…”

I said: “Peter, I’ve got a temperature of 104, otherwise I’d be in there. You know that.”

“No, darling, you gotta come in…”

“Anyway,” I said, “I can’t play four parts, because they overlap!”

He said: “Oh, no no no. We’ll work round that, darling.”

JOHN: We’ll kill Jesus early?

COLIN: “We’ll change the story a bit… We’ll send a car for you. You’ve got to come in, darling. We’re in terrible trouble.”

So I get in this car and I really was feeling like I’m dying. 

I got to the theatre and they put me in the first costume and threw me on to the stage. Then they put me into the next costume to play Herod. Then off into the next one… And I have very little memory of the whole thing. I was nearly dead when I did it! Four roles! They had a cab waiting to take me home and I slept maybe for three days.

JOHN: They were able to change your face by putting on different wigs?

COLIN: All of that, but I don’t think it was fooling anybody: Hold on, that short bloke was just playing Herod… Why is he playing the High Priest now? I guess people thought it must have some deep theatrical meaning.

Anyway, one night I played four parts in the same play in the West End, with a temperature of 104.

…CONTINUED HERE..
with the dustman, the buskers and Dean Martin

Janey Godley’s Handstands in the Dark

The 2005 hardback bestseller…

Today is International Women’s Day.

In 2005, Ebury Press in London published Scottish comedienne and unique Force of Nature Janey Godley’s autobiography Handstands in the Dark in hardback.

It became  an immediate No 3 Bestseller in Scotland.

In 2006, it was published in paperback and became a Top Ten Bestseller in the UK. 

That same year, it was the WH Smith Book of The Month and was voted Favourite Read of 2005 by listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book series.

It has never been out of print since then.

The 2006 paperback bestseller…

But last week, on World Book Day, Penguin Books re-issued it with a new cover and with a new Introduction by Janey.

Penguin are soon to release an audiobook of Handstands in the Dark, read by Janey herself.

Personally, I think her autobiography is up there at the apex of horror writing with Edgar Allan Poe – except that Janey’s terrifying tales are real.

Just when you think the horrors of her life can get no worse, you turn over a page and they do.

Below are excerpts from some of the reviews her book received when it was first published…

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The new 2021 Penguin reprint…

“The utterly compelling autobiography Handstands in the Dark has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon… un-putdownable… the writing is sensationally good”
(Daily Telegraph)

“Against all odds, she has turned her life story into an inspirational book”
(Daily Mail)

“From the first page… Janey Godley, a natural storyteller, has you in her grip… Hair-raising… mesmerising.”
(Glasgow Evening Times)

“A remarkably engaging and fluently written memoir of a life that makes the McCourt family look like the Von Trapps”
(Observer)

“Makes Frank McCourt’s story look like a walk in the park. This is a harrowing but really readable book.”
(‘Good Morning’ – TV New Zealand)

“A natural storyteller… For someone so refreshingly gobby, it’s hard to imagine how she ever kept the secret that she did.”
(Daily Record)

“Her enthusiasm and sheer optimism have helped her survive life’s cruellest blows where others might have crumbled.”
(The Sun)

“A life that would try the patience of a saint… it’s doubtful you’ll be able to choke back the tears.”
(Metro)

“I found myself laughing… and crying.”
(Sunday Post)

“A fantastic book. You will keep turning those pages. You do cry and you laugh and it’s raw. No punches are pulled… but it’s absolutely not a ‘poor me’ book.”
(Janice Forsyth, BBC Radio Scotland)

“Rather than a bleak cautionary tale, her story is exhilarating, uplifting and often extremely funny. Ultimately it’s a testament to the extraordinary endurance of the human spirit…. She’s brave and honest enough to reveal her innermost emotions and it’s this raw sincerity that gives her streetwise revelations such savage bite… It’s a distressing yet life-affirming read.”
(Guardian)

“Gothic biography… Amid such dark subjects it’s easy to forget that Godley is very much a limelight sort of woman. Not just courageous but mouthy and irrepressibly funny… Harrowing but life-enhancing.”
(The Scotsman)

“A disturbing but ultimately uplifting true account of overcoming a traumatic childhood in Glasgow.”
(‘Open Book’ – BBC Radio 4)

“Vividly evoked… no punches-pulled… relieved by innate good humour and unflagging optimism.”
(Choice magazine)

“She is making waves with her hard-hitting autobiography.”
(Mail on Sunday)

“Genuinely compelling… she deserves the sales.”
(Glasgow Herald)

“I just couldn’t put it down. I don’t think I’ve read many books that quickly. Her story followed me around the whole time – it was as if I was living it..”
(Nicholas Parsons – Sunday Times)

“The word ‘unique’ has been repeatedly used about her and was only strengthened by the publication of her astoundingly honest, blood-spattered autobiography.”
(Mensa New Zealand magazine ‘Menzed’)

“Written with… an astonishing generosity towards so many, this is a disturbing, moving and authentic book, which can demand to be read in one sitting.”
(The Skinny)

“This is Janey’s life story and it’s gripping stuff!”
(OK magazine – Hot Stars)

The new Penguin edition of Handstands in the Dark, 2021 – back cover

Lynn Ruth Miller, 87, says: “STOP COMPLAINING! Just go out and do it!”

Indefatigable, inspirational, genuinely unique

The indefatigable and genuinely unique American writer, comedian, raconteur and occasional burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller (she first stripped at the age of 73) is 87 today.

She has two Master’s Degrees with honours: one in Creative Arts for Children from the University of Toledo and the other a Master of Arts degree in Communications from Stanford University. She has done post-graduate work at Indiana, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and San Francisco State Universities.

When she was 27 and her ambitions turned theatrical, she starred in her own CBS television show.

She has been dubbed “the new Joan Rivers” and “the world’s oldest performing stand-up comedian”. For the last 15 years, she has been travelling the world “telling inappropriate jokes and shattering stereotypes”.

I wanted to ask about her latest book Getting The Last Laugh. We had a meal together. She insisted on paying because, she said, she wanted to have some sort of hold over me.

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JOHN: So what do you want to bring up?

LYNN RUTH: Asparagus.

JOHN: You have written another book.

LYNN RUTH: Yes. It’s the fifth that’s been published. We edited it four times and I wrote an addendum which brings it up-to-date with COVID. I have another book coming out soon called Growing Old Outrageously and Loving It – it’s just about done – to be published by my friend Nader Shabahangi. That one has pictures and more of my philosophy.

JOHN: What is your philosophy?

LYNN RUTH: Just Fuck it… So it’s a short book. (LAUGHS)

“I thought it would be a book about comedy”

JOHN: This one has pictures too.

LYNN RUTH: And everybody who was nice to me – their names are in it. Everyone who wasn’t, I just refer to them. You can figure out who they are, but I don’t name them. And there were a lot.

JOHN: And you wrote Getting The Last Laugh because…?

LYNN RUTH: I think the message of the book was not what I intended. I thought it would be a book about my doing comedy and there IS a lot about it in there…

JOHN: …but…?

LYNN RUTH: …But it’s got a lot about the walls I faced. The point of this book is Anyone can do what I’ve done. Really and truly it’s not that I am special, not that I’m talented, but I made all this happen and an awful lot of people would not have. A lot of people would have started and then said: “Ah! Too much work!”

JOHN: So why did you have the determination?

LYNN RUTH: Because I really love doing this.

JOHN: Comedy or eating?

LYNN RUTH: I love eating too and I’ve been doing it a lot longer than comedy.

JOHN: There’s a lot in the book about your early life.

Young Lynn Ruth: “I was the dreamer in the family… Hoping my mother would love me…”

LYNN RUTH: But also a lot about my philosophy of believing in yourself… This COVID pandemic has really disturbed me: because we are all so afraid of what other people think, so afraid of each other and that is wrong. The hardest thing for anyone is to believe in yourself.

People ask me “Why didn’t you just give up?” and, honest to God, I don’t know. In general, I wasn’t doing too well in Life. I had the two divorces. I have a Masters Degree in Journalism, but I couldn’t get a job in journalism. I had a TV show in the States, but I was never doing anything, really. I just kept going and then, all of a sudden, things came together. I think the story of this book is: KEEP GOING! So the message of the book is STOP COMPLAINING! Just go out there and do it!

I believe anything is possible if you’re willing to put in the work. You have to take responsibility for the things in your life.

I had a very negative upbringing. All my life, I blamed my mother, blamed my sister, blamed Toledo where I grew up.

But, when I was about 50 years old, it hit me – Oh, my God! I am the one who let those things happen. It’s MY fault! 

Until you take responsibility for your own happiness, you don’t stand a chance.

Young Lynn Ruth pictured with her parents. She had her own CBS TV show at the time.

JOHN: What were your parents like?

LYNN RUTH: My mother looked absolutely gorgeous and she smelled SO good, which is amazing as she hardly ever bathed. Daddy I thought was the most wonderful… I thought he was a great big man but actually he was quite little.

JOHN: This book is about your life AND your comedy career…

LYNN RUTH: It’s valuable for comedians, I think. In it I have a complete comedy set and, in it, I tell you what I do to make the joke work, why I put it in the order it’s in and what I do if it’s not working. Also in there I have two tours with all the names of the contacts.

JOHN: What’s the difference between this book and your next book?

LYNN RUTH: The next book is stories of people who achieved what looked like the impossible but they just got on with it. People think they can’t have the dream that they want but they can.

First wedding, aged 22, in September 1956…

I have a friend called Glenn. He didn’t go to college; he was just educated up to 18 and he got a job with the Recreation Dept in San Francisco – a low-level, shit job. But he loves theatre. He loves classical theatre. He was absolutely sure he could direct a Shakespeare play. No education. And he talked the Recreation Dept into letting him do three shows.

JOHN: Were they good?

LYNN RUTH: They were really shitty productions. And then the Recreation Dept fired him. But now he has founded his own company and it’s very successful. Or it was until COVID happened.

JOHN: So what now?

LYNN RUTH: (SHRUGS) We keep going…

David McGillivray’s autobiography: if you are in it, be afraid… be very afraid

David McGillivray has been described as “the Truffaut of smut” and (by Jonathan Ross) as “a comedy legend”.

He has appeared in this blog at various times – in 2015 touting Trouser Bar, his film of an allegedly hard-core alleged script by the late Sir John Gielgud… alleged, that is, by everyone except the worried guardians of the estate of Sir John Gielgud.

Lawyers’ letters, threats and phrases ensued.

In 2017, he was in this blog touting Doing Rude Things, a reissue of his book on dodgy soft-core porn films.

He has a bit of previous in touting.

When not anguished, people enjoyed the book launch party

When I arrived for this week’s launch of his autobiography Little Did You Know: The Confessions of David McGillivray, people who had already bought copies were feverishly skimming through the index to see if they were mentioned. 

“A huge amount of those people,” David told me, “will have wanted to check for libel. Some sighing with relief when they found they weren’t included.”

Comedian Julian Clary’s approved cover quote for the book is that it is “a meticulous account of a life so sordid I think each copy should come with a complimentary sanitary wipe”.

The book’s press-release says David McG’s autobiography was “eagerly-awaited”. I think it might equally be said its publication was “desperately feared”. I can do no better than quote from the possibly understated PR blurb:

McGillivray (left) and Clary in Chase Me Up Farndale Avenue, s’il vous plait in 1982 (Photograph from Little Did You Know)

“The grandson of an acrobat and briefly the UK’s youngest film critic, McGillivray wrote his first film when he was 23, then moved on to a succession of cheap shockers and skin flicks. After Prime Minister Thatcher dealt killer blows to the UK’s independent film industry, McGillivray found alternative employment in radio, TV and theatre, becoming Julian Clary’s long-serving scriptwriter. Around the year 2000 he put these careers temporarily on hold to dabble in another form of exploitation, but one closely associated with the more secretive side of show business.

“In this sensational memoir, McGillivray takes us through the cocaine-lined world of London’s media industry, the tragic heights of the AIDS epidemic and the sinful celluloid backstreets of Soho… McGillivray hosted London’s wildest parties at his home. They were attended by some of the biggest names of stage, screen, music and fashion. The revelations of what went on under the figurative noses of law enforcement agencies and the literal noses of McG and his high-flying guests are not for the faint-hearted.”

Julian Clary introduced David at the book launch thus:

“It makes my love life seem like an afternoon at the W.I…”

“I thought I put it about a bit in my youth, but this makes my love life seem like an afternoon at the Women’s Institute… McG has said on several occasions that he will never work again once this book has been published, but I don’t think we should get our hopes up. I suspect some seedy project will catch his eye soon…. (maybe) a long-lost lesbian porn script allegedly written by Mother Teresa… You will know and understand David better after you have read this book, but you may cross the road when you see him coming.”

The next day, David and I had a chat in the sinful celluloid backstreets of Soho – well, in the pleasant environs of the Soho Theatre Bar in Dean Street.

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McGillivray talked in the sinful celluloid backstreets of Soho

JOHN: You had trouble getting this book published.

DAVID: Oh yes. 

JOHN: When did you start it?

DAVID: 2000. So many re-writes; so many lawyers. Libel was a huge problem in the early editions. It was very stressful. I got very fed up with the process and put the idea on the shelf in 2015, but then I met the publisher Harvey Fenton of FAB Press and I thought maybe it was his cup of tea, because he is the man who gave us Cinema Sewer and Satanic Panic.

It has taken another 2 or 3 years. Now the book comes out officially in the shops on 1st August but, if you pre-order, you will get signed copies sent to you from 1st June. After so many versions and God knows how many lawyers, apparently it will now leave me legally in the clear. There is a disclaimer at the front to tidy up any loose ends:

DISCLAIMER

The inclusion of a person’s name or likeness in this book does not imply that the person has at any time bought, traded or accepted as a gift an illegal drug from the author or has used an illegal drug from any source. Some names and identifying features have been changed.

“It will leave me legally in the clear…”

JOHN: People in the film business? The theatrical business?

DAVID: (LAUGHS) Oh yes… all media. It’s been a colourful life and I’ve indulged in all manner of things in my 71 years.

JOHN: Knowing a lot of it was unrepeatable for legal reasons, why did you start it?

DAVID: I thought there was a story about what was going on at the turn of the century and, while everyone seemed almost supernaturally obsessed with the end of 1000 years and convinced that planes were going to fall out of the sky, I thought there was something else going on. I knew there was something else going on, because it was going on in my living room every Friday night for five years. So I wrote about my own life, particularly around that period, 1998-2003. But the lifestyle I was indulging in those five years stretched back to my teenage years, so I thought I might as well write about my entire life.

JOHN: You said: “…going on in my living room”.

DAVID: That is the essence of what the book is about.

JOHN: Your living room?

DAVID: Yes… Well, it was mostly in my basement. It was a four-storey house in a very charming crescent in Kings Cross.

JOHN: At the time when it was gentrifying…

McGillivray: a life of unbridled glamour

DAVID: When I moved there in 1995, it was still very rough indeed. By the time I left two years ago, it was completely unrecognisable. The old community I knew had completely gone and the rest of the street was virtually rented out for Airbnb. I didn’t like that.

JOHN: So, parties in your basement on Friday nights for five years… Details?

DAVID: I don’t know where to begin… I was a party animal and all that that entails.

JOHN: What does it entail?

DAVID: An enormous amount of activity every Friday night.

JOHN: Activity? Only Fridays? What happened on Thursdays in your basement?

DAVID: Nothing.

JOHN: You are a tease.

DAVID: I’m a wicked tease. Well, I used to be in the exploitation movie business. I want people to buy the book and be surprised.

JOHN: “Used to be”?

DAVID: Well, I haven’t done any of those sort of films since 1977.

David McGillivray & Nigel Havers at the Trouser Bar location

JOHN: What about Trouser Bar – the one allegedly – ooh, err – definitely not written by John Gielgud?

DAVID: I think it is a work of ar…

JOHN: Arse?

DAVID: Art. It’s not an exploitation film.

JOHN: What happened in your house on Saturday mornings?

DAVID: Hangovers and Oh God! Why did I do it? conversations.

JOHN: You are being reticent, but the book is over the top.

DAVID: It’s excessive, yes.

JOHN: But detailed and true. You kept diaries.

DAVID: From the age of 12. I have diaries from 1960 to today and haven’t missed a day.

JOHN: Can worried participants in your life expect a sequel?

DAVID: Almost certainly, yes, because a lot has happened since 2015 and you have blogged about some of those incidents. 

“…and the film WILL be made.”

JOHN: Regrets?

DAVID: I don’t regret anything I’ve done at all. One should only regret the things one hasn’t done.

JOHN: Any other films on the horizon?

DAVID: I’m still trying to find a director for The Wrong People – based on the novel by Robin Maugham. It’s a quite expensive feature film; one I can’t finance myself. I bought the film rights. More controversy: “It’s unfilmable” and all that. At the moment, nobody will touch it with a bargepole. But I WILL get a director for it and the film WILL be made.

JOHN: That sounds like a threat.

Comedy legend John Dowie: changed by Spike Milligan’s Bed-Sitting Room

John Dowie talked to me near Euston, London

John Dowie is difficult to describe. Wikipedia’s current attempt is: “a British comedian, musician and writer. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969.”

His own website describes him as: “Not working. Not writing. Not performing. Not Twittering. Not on Facebook. Not on Radio. Not on TV. Not doing game shows, chat shows, list shows, grumpy-old whatever shows. Not doing quiz shows. Not doing adverts. Not doing voice-overs for insurance companies/banks/supermarkets/dodgy yogurts.”

The synopsis of his up-coming autobiography starts: “If you’re thinking of becoming a stand-up comedian (and who isn’t?) then here’s some advice: don’t start doing it in 1972. I did, and it was a mistake.”

I know John Dowie because he contributed to Sit-Down Comedy, the 2003 anthology of comedians’ (often dark) short stories which I edited with the late Malcolm Hardee.

A foul mouth, a foul mind and a bomb

John’s was the story of a Northern comedian who has a foul mouth, a foul mind and a bomb. The Daily Mirror called it: “a wrist-slashingly brutal account of a Bernard Manning-esque comic who plans blood-thirsty revenge. Disturbing? Very.” The Chortle website called it a “breathlessly entertaining yarn”.

Now he is crowdfunding his new book The Freewheeling John Dowie.

“How long are you crowdfunding for?” I asked him.

“They reckon the average book takes about six weeks or two months.”

“Have you started writing it?”

“I’ve already written it!”

“So the crowdfunding is just for the physical creation of it?”

“Yes, you have to reach a funding target for the printing process to begin.”

“So what have you been doing,” I asked, “since the triumph that was Sit-Down Comedy?”

“I have been riding my bicycle.”

“Where?”

“France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Ireland which is horrible, Wales, up and down England.”

“I like Ireland,” I said.

“Bad roads,” said John Dowie.

“And you are publishing your autobiography by crowdfunding…?”

The Freewheeling John Dowie, crowdfunding and bicycling

“Well, it’s not actually an autobiography,” John corrected me. “It’s like an autobiography, but with the boring bits cut out. There is no stuff like Birmingham is an industrial town in the heart of the Midlands. It’s got autobiographical elements. But, if you are a nobody such as I, then the only way you can tell a story about yourself is if it is a story that stands in its own right.”

“So how do you want The Freewheeling John Dowie described?” I asked. “A bicycling autobiography?”

“Yeah,” said John. “Well, if you ride a bike and you’re in a quiet piece of the world, what do you do? Your mind is free to wander and, as it wanders, you find yourself going from place to place in your mind that you were not expecting to go.”

“So why,” I asked, “did you decide to write your autobiography now?”

“I’m 65 and I’ve been retired for 15 years,” explained John. “And, if you’re 65, you’re fucked. So I thought: If I’m fucked, I’d better spend my time working because I’m of more use as a fucked-up performer than I am as a fucked-up retiree.”

“You were born in 1950?” I asked.

“Yes. Just in time to miss Elvis Presley and just in time to get the Beatles.”

“Did you approach a ‘proper’ publisher for the book?” I asked.

“No… Well, I think Unbound are more proper than publishers, because they care about the things they make. A friend of mine has a client who’s a comedian who went to a voice-over studio to record her book and was regaled by the engineers with all the comedians who came in to read the books they ‘wrote’ but had never even read yet – and finding mistakes in their own books – Ooh! My mother isn’t called Dorothy! Those are books done by ‘proper’ publishers.”

John Dowie – a living legend from the early alternate days

“Is there what they call a ‘narrative arc’ in your cycling autobiography?” I asked.

“Well, it begins and ends with a Spike Milligan story.”

“I met him once,” I said. “I think he must have got out of the wrong side of the bed that day.”

“I think,” John said, “that he got more crotchety as he got older. When I met him, he was very decent to me. I was hanging around backstage after one of his shows. He was touring a play which he wrote with John Antrobus – The Bed-Sitting Room. People talk about taking LSD for the first time and how it changed their life. Watching The Bed-Sitting Room changed my life. It was like a door had opened.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I had not experienced anything like it before. Live comedy. I was 15 or 16.”

“So you didn’t know what you wanted to be?”

“No.”

“And you decided to be Spike Milligan?”

“Yeah. That’s more or less it, yeah. I became Spike Milligan for a period. Apart from the talented bits, obviously.”

“What happened when you stopped being Spike Milligan?”

“I got my friends back.”

“Why? Because you were rude as Spike Milligan?”

“No. Just not funny.”

Naked Noolies and I Don’t Want To Be Your Amputee

“And then, I said, “you became one of the living legends of the original Alternative Comedy circuit.”

“Well,” said John, “I’m living. That’s halfway there.”

“But you are,” I said, “one of the originators of Alternative Comedy.”

“I don’t think so,” said John. “I don’t think I’m one of them and it’s not as if it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been there. I was coincidental more than anything. It wasn’t as if anybody saw me and thought: Oh, let’s start a movement. I considered myself to be in the same field as Ivor Cutler and Ron Geesin.”

“Wow!” I said. “Ron Geesin! I had forgotten him!”

“Yes,” said John. “He was great. He was a John Peel discovery. Ron played Mother’s Club in Birmingham where John Peel’s Birmingham audience used to go religiously to see the acts John Peel played on the radio. Ron Geesin came on and did his first number on the piano and the place went fucking barmy and Ron Geesin said to the audience: Listen, nobody is THAT good.”

AOK Factory Records’ first release: FAC-2

At this point, farteur Mr Methane, who was sitting with us, piped up: “Weren’t you involved with Tony Wilson years ago?” he asked. “On Factory Records.”

“Yeah,” said John. “The first one. The first Factory Records release. FAC- 2… FAC- 1 was the poster. I was on the same record as Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and the Durutti Column. It was a double EP.”

“Ah!” I said.

Then he said to me: “It’s all very good if you know everything about comedy, John, but, if you don’t know about pop music…”

“Why should people crowdfund your autobiography?” I asked.

“Because I’m fuckin’ fantastic,” he replied.

I tend to agree.

If you want to crowd fund the book: https://unbound.co.uk/books/the-freewheeling-john-dowie

Malcolm Hardee, The Tunnel Club, the tap-dancing Swede and Madame Poulet

With co-host Kate Copstick’s internet links in Kenya still problematic, this week’s Grouchy Club podcast is an 8-minute audio clip of me talking in 1995 to the late comedian Malcolm Hardee.

At the time, we were writing his 1996 autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake by recording our chats.

This one was about how he started his legendary – some might say infamous – comedy club The Tunnel. The full 8-minute audio extract is online. This is a short extract from that audio extract.

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Malcolm Hardee on stage at The Tunnel Club in the 1980s (Photograph by Bill Alford)

Malcolm
The Tunnel became known – but I don’t know why – for its hard audience. It was like the Glasgow Empire of the South. I think possibly for where it was in South East London – who don’t suffer fools gladly to say the least. It got known for its heckling. At which point I can just put down my heckling stories, which we can just mention on the tape as Jim Tavare, Noel James, Jo Brand, tropical fish…

John
Tropical fish?

Malcolm
Tropical fish. That was a good heckle.

John
What’s tropical fish?

Malcolm
This double act whose names have got lost in the mists of time. Part of their act was wearing Red Indian headdresses. They started up and put their headdresses on and were about to beat the bongos and then one of the regular hecklers in the audience shouted out: Oy, Malcolm! You’ve got a couple of tropical fish on stage!

John
There’s a quote on one of the posters at Up The Creek – HOW LONG WOULD HITLER SURVIVE THE TUNNEL? (RADIO 4) – Is that true?

Malcolm
It was. That was on some Kaleidoscope nonsense.

John
So what did they say?

Malcolm
They’d been to this famous Open Spot. It was where people were trying out material or perhaps had not been on stage before. It always amazed me how many people were keen to do this. I still get – to this day – at least ten calls a week from people. There was Madame Poulet. I’ll just say that and it’ll all link up (in the book).

Malcolm Hardee’s 1996 autobiography

John
What was the best Open Spot at The Tunnel?

Malcolm
Best or worst?

John
Both.

Malcolm
The best Open Spot was Phil Cool.

John
That was his first time?

Malcolm
He must have done the clubs, but that was his first ‘alternative’ London gig and it was from there that he got discovered and got his TV series and went on to where he is today. The worst, I think was the tap-dancing Swede.

John
What was that act?

Malcolm
He was Swedish and he had the most piercing blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He decided he had a tap-dancing act but, unfortunately, the stage at The Tunnel was fully carpeted; it was about the only place that was.

So he’s come on and he has the tails on and the whole thing and he’s immaculate and he’s got this backing tape and he started tap-dancing but, of course, no-one could hear him and he’s doing all the smiling things and, in the end, they just shouted out Cab for the Swede! and he went off.

And, to this day, people shout out – when another act is going down particularly badly – Bring back the Swede!

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Malcolm Hardee at The Tunnel Club in the 1980s… (Photograph by Steve Taylor)

Malcolm expanded on his reference to the open spot Madame Poulet and Her Singing Chicken in his book I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake. He says:

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I booked Madame Poulet over the phone and, when she arrived, she tried to convince me she was Madame Edith and that Madame Poulet would arrive later. She left the ‘chicken’ under a cloth in my office. I lifted the cloth when Madame Edith wasn’t there and it was a fake chicken made out of chicken feathers, some of which were painted pink for no apparent reason. It was like the Barbara Cartland of the Chicken World.

When she did her act, she had a little triangular screen about waist height on stage, so she could kneel down behind it.

That night, I announced:

“Ladies and gentlemen. Will you please welcome Madame Poulet and her Singing Chicken……”

And Madame Edith walked on having disguised herself as Madame Poulet by wearing a hat with a black veil over her face. She went and knelt behind the screen, the chicken appeared over the top and Madame Poulet started singing Je Ne Regret Rien completely straight in her own voice with the chicken miming to it.

This went on for about five minutes and then about ten blokes at the back of the audience, as one, all went:

“Cluck-Cluck…..Cluck-Cluck…..Cluck off!”

Madame Poulet got up, almost flew off the stage, left the club without saying a word, and I’ve never seen her since.