Kunt and the Gang with Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and the Yorkshire Ripper

I try to make these blogs fairly immediate. But, in this case, I have failed miserably.

After trying and failing two or three times to meet up online during the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, Kunt (of Kunt and The Gang – is there any other?) and I eventually chatted via FaceTime on 14th May – that’s almost a month ago now.

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JOHN: What have you got on the wall behind you?

KUNT: It’s my memorabilia… Look… Here… I got this on my final tour: it’s a signed picture of Rolf Harris, some saucy seaside postcards and…

Kunt in front of his wall of memorabilia… Saucy postcards, a famous family TV star and Kunt’s book

JOHN: Who’s in that picture on your Facebook page? The Yorkshire Ripper and Jimmy Savile and…

Kunt performs in front of the Yorkshire Ripper, Jimmy Savile and Frank Bruno… in Hitchin…

KUNT: On my final tour, at a gig in Hitchin, they said: “Have you got an image you want projected behind you?” and I said, “No. not really, but it’s a shame not to have something projected,” and so we used that one. It’s one of my favourite photos. It’s Jimmy Savile introducing Frank Bruno to the Yorkshire Ripper.

JOHN: He’s a nice man is Frank. Did he know it was the Yorkshire Ripper?

KUNT:  No. he was completely hoodwinked into it. So there’s Frank shaking hands with The Ripper and Jimmy Savile is in the background just looking all pleased with himself. The thing I like most about that photo is that it was obviously years before all the stuff came out about Savile and he’s there in I think Broadmoor with a great big cigar and, behind him, there’s a NO SMOKING sign. That says all you need to know about Jimmy Savile in that one photo, smoking, introducing the Yorkshire Ripper to Frank Bruno.

I also love the fact The Ripper is in a late-1980s/early-1990s shell suit. Savile must have just taken it in on that visit and said: “Here, Pete, just slip this on. This’ll suit ya.”

Kunt’s latest Bumface book – free to download

JOHN: It’s been so long getting to chat, I’ve forgotten what you are plugging. Is it your children’s book Bumface Poohands and the Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdown?

KUNT: No, I’m not actually plugging anything. That was weeks ago I done that.

JOHN: Look, I’m an old man; I’m sick; I’m not going to last much longer. There’s COVID-19 around. Help me out here. Make up something surreal. Are you plugging your nightly online show Kunt’s Korona Klub?

KUNT: No! I’m not plugging it because I don’t want other people tuning in to it. I like the people who are tuning into it already, because they’ve been with it for kinda 45 nights and, if you tune in now, you just won’t understand what’s going on because it’s sort of developed its own lingo.

JOHN: You don’t want my blog readers? I’m shocked and saddened.

KUNT: A couple of ‘em are alright but the majority of ‘em I wouldn’t give the time of day.

JOHN: You’ve started drinking early…

KUNT: It’s to take the edge off doing FaceTime with you. I don’t really like doing FaceTime. I don’t wanna plug anything, John. I don’t like plugging things; it’s a bit shameless, ain’t it?

JOHN: Shameless? Have you listened to any of your songs??

KUNT: Well, they’ve got their own integrity. But it’s a different type of integrity.

JOHN: What sort of integrity would this be?

KUNT: One that I sort of tell meself is alright.

JOHN: Which is?

KUNT: It’s morphed over the years.

JOHN: On whom did you base this moral code? Heinrich Himmler?

KUNT: Are you comparing me to Heinrich Himmler?

JOHN: No. He was an underling. You’re more Hitler.

KUNT: Well, I have got a moustache, so there are some similarities. Though not a very good one. It has a bit of mascara on it.

JOHN: Why have you got mascara on your moustache?

KUNT: Because it’s flecked with grey. I’m going prematurely grey.

JOHN: So the ego has landed? You have done pretty much everything. What is there left? You’ve done books, albums, stage shows, become a cult Kunt…

KUNT: I think I’m gonna fake my own death from COVID-19 to make it current and then I’m going to surruptitiously put the thousands of CDs I’ve got stored round me mum’s house on eBay, but in dribs and drabs. It’s the perfect time to hold a funeral and get away with it.

JOHN: Does it have to be a fake death? It would be better if it were real. I could get people to kill you. As a favour, obviously – mate’s rates.

“This is my actual hair. There’s rumours about it being a wig.”

KUNT: John, this is my actual hair.

JOHN: Eh?

KUNT: There’s a lot of rumours about it being a wig.

JOHN: Don’t mention hair to me. Why did you write a children’s book anyway?

KUNT: I’m not plugging it.

JOHN: So it started because…?

KUNT: I went round my mate’s house one day and, on his fridge, he had this picture pinned up of this character with an arse for his face and these poo hands. I asked: “What the fuck is that?” And he said, very matter-of-factly: “That’s Bumface Poohands.”

He said: “I just do these little drawings and leave ‘em in me daughter’s lunchbox to make her laugh.”

JOHN: Has he ever read any books on parenting?

KUNT: No. My mate told me: “He’s a down-at-heel character who ends up in all the situations.” So I said to him: “Have you ever thought of making it into a children’s book?” and I… well… Well, it was just an excuse to meet up every few weeks. We’ve got about a dozen books written now and half a dozen illustrated and we’ve put two out – Bumface Poohands: A Birthday Surprise and Bumface Poohands: A Snowy Day and now we’ve just put this Coronavirus one online as a free e-book.

JOHN: How is Bumface going?

KUNT: It’s going alright. Bumface Poohands and the Coronavirus Pandemic Lockdown seems to have landed quite well. I’m quite happy with it. It sort of tells a story of what we’re kinda stuck in at the moment… in a fairly jocular way, compared to how bleak things actually are – and it seems to kinda cross over with adults and kids.

But Bumface Poohands is like everything I do. I always think Oh! This’ll be the thing that crosses over. But it never is. The ideas I have always have a very finite amount of people who are gonna like them. I thought at one point that Bumface Poohands would be my retirement plan, but now I’m looking at alternative arrangements.

JOHN: If you have 12 new ones written and 6 illustrated, it may yet still happen. JK Rowling approached every sensible publisher in London with Harry Potter and they all turned her down – quite rightly. It’s a ridiculous idea: a boy wizard in this day and age! No-one is going to buy that. Totally uncommercial. But then she got a publisher and now everyone is drowning in dosh.

KUNT: Yeah. I can just see Bumface Poohands becoming the new Harry Potter… It’s never gonna happen, John.

The great showman’s autobiography…

JOHN: Well, you’re a great lyricist; you write great tunes; if you drop a few of the ‘cunts’ and ‘fucks’… You are an Essex boy made good… or bad. Rags to riches story or whatever…

KUNT: But I came from a working class, aspirational middle class family. There’s no story there. It’s not rags to riches.

JOHN: What’s it been like round your way?

KUNT: It’s been strange round here. My mate’s doctor died and the landlady at one of the local pubs. But, other than that, it feels like it’s all kinda happening in London and the cities, not Essex.

It’s like it’s happening somewhere else.

JOHN: I think I have enough for a blog there.

KUNT: I don’t think so.

JOHN: I think so. I will craft it into a thing of fascinating beauty and riotous fun.

KUNT: I don’t think so, John. I read the last one you did.

JOHN: Have you ever had anyone write a brilliant, incisive piece on Kunt and the Gang?

KUNT: No. Anyway, a brilliant, incisive piece wouldn’t really be right for Kunt & the Gang.

JOHN: Then I’m the ideal person for you.

KUNT: Just make it sound better than it actually is, John, and then it’s maybe worth this awkward FaceTime.

JOHN: Do you still feel awkward?

KUNT: You haven’t put me totally at my ease… Heinrich Himmler?

JOHN: This might not get posted in the next two days. I might be sleeping.

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Exactly one week later, I was taken into hospital for seven days with low kidney function and high calcium problems. I don’t blame Kunt. Not totally. But I did think it might be a good excuse for taking so long to post this blog.

He finished his nightly Kunt’s Korona Klub shows on YouTube with Episode 58 on 31st May.

Last night, 8th June, I got an email from Kunt. It read:

“How you keeping John, not chasing you up, just seeing how you are?!”

I took this as a veiled threat – he lives in Essex – and I had run out of excuses for my laziness in transcribing our chat. I did not think the fact I currently have constipation would be justification enough.

On a cheerier note, he added: “I’m going to start a new monthly YouTube show called The New Normal in a few weeks time… 

“In one section, Down Meme-ory Lane, I turn investigative journalist and hunt down people whose image became a viral internet phenomenon…

“In another, I’ll Be The Judge of That, I adjudicate over petty Facebook disputes and make a ruling as to who has been the biggest cunt…

“And there is going to be a continuing serial drama following the inhabitants of ‘Yewtree Close’… a bit like Neighbours for sex offenders.”

The man is unstoppable.

 

The Tiger Lillies release their SECOND album about the COVID-19 pandemic

Dark Weimaresque British singing trio The Tiger Lillies celebrated their 30th birthday last year and today have released a new album COVID-19 Volume II on Bandcamp having already released COVID-19 Part 1 on BandCamp on 10th April with a semi-live launch party on YouTube on May 1st.

The Tiger Lillies won an Olivier Award in 2002 and got a Grammy nomination in 2003. Wikipedia calls them “the forefathers of Brechtian Punk Cabaret”.  I first saw them in, I guess, the mid-1990s, when incorrigible performer Tony Green insisted I go see them at the monthly London event Torture Garden. (It was a surprise to me, too.)

So I thought I would have a chat with composer/singer Martyn Jacques about the new Tiger Lillies album while maintaining a discreet coronavirus social distance of around 580 miles – He has lived for the last ten years in Berlin. We talked via FaceTime.

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JOHN: You live in Berlin and the other Tiger Lillies’ founding member Adrian Stout lives in Athens. That sounds a bit complicated.

MARTYN: Well, with this job, we’ve been travelling around for 30 years and you lose the link with the UK. In the end, you don’t have to live in only one country. We’d be doing a gig in Prague one weekend, the next weekend a little tour in Greece, the next weekend in Berlin. You don’t have to live in London, though I don’t think it would have worked if we lived in America, cos that’d be too far. But, with Europe, we could live anywhere.

JOHN: You’re planning to turn your COVID-19 song cycle into a stage show…

MARTYN: We did a show called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

and, for that, we had two screens – one in front of us and one behind, with all these projections. We had this really amazing, hot artist – Eugene Cavill from the Lebanon – he did the artwork for the new album – and he’s got all these drawings of the virus with people dying, severed limbs and stuff; it all looks sort-of psychedelic. So I thought we might use that two-screen idea again for a COVID-19 stage show.

JOHN: COVID-19 is very of-the-moment.

MARTYN: It’s what we do. We write about what’s going on. We write about unpleasant things. We’ve written songs about rape, paedophiles, pretty much everything really that’s unpleasant.

JOHN: Well, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera is unpleasant. The song Mack The Knife is appallingly nasty in the original lyrics.

MARTYN: Exactly… Even things like Punch & Judy. It’s abuse. A man kills his wife and his baby. I did an album on Punch & Judy

and did Mack the Knife.

Basically, I really like to write about very unpleasant subjects. I did an album on zoophilia, Farmyard Filth which was about having sex with different types of animals. I write about the most unpleasant things all the time. I did Cockatoo Prison – a whole album about prison inmates, but trying to sympathise with them.

I’ve spent 30 years writing about unpleasant, nasty things so, for me, it’s actually very very easy for me to write about COVID-19 now. It seems there’s no-one else writing songs and making music about it. I am perfectly suited to write horrible songs about this very unpleasant disease.

JOHN: Do you think writing about lots of sick, dark stuff is somehow cathartic for you? It gets it out of your system?

MARTYN: I suppose so. But I think what really gets it out of my system is performing it in front of an audience and taking people on a journey. Sadness and beauty and grotesqueness.

And… I’m not doing that any more because of the coronavirus lockdowns. It’s a very weird time for me. Very strange. I’ve spent the last 30 years travelling around the world making people laugh and cry in theatres and now, all of a sudden, I’m not doing it. That’s a bit of a shock to my system.

You are a writer, John, and, even though this horrible virus has occurred, you can still write and be creatively satisfied. Whereas, with me, the main thing I do is write songs but the other thing I do is go out onto a stage and perform them. That’s what I’ve done for most of the last 30 years. And I can’t do that any more. So it’s quite traumatic to suddenly have that happen.

JOHN: So half of how you satisfy your creative urge has been suddenly taken away…

MARTYN: More than half, probably. Writing all these songs is an outlet but the writing is not really where the outlet happens. The outlet is when I’m in front of an audience of people, actually singing the songs.

JOHN: Your lyrics tend to be about horrible things, but you tend to also include bits of humour.

“Your lyrics tend to be about horrible things… but you tend to also include bits of humour…” (Photograph (c) Daniela Matejschek-38)

MARTYN: Well, black humour is just waiting to be exploited in horrible things. I’ve used black comedy a lot through the years. I have literally had audiences weeping with laughter and then suddenly I start singing a song which is really, really sad and there is no humour in it. People are waiting to carry on laughing but then there’s nothing funny and now I’m not joking.

It’s something I’ve done through the years that has been a great source of pleasure for me. To take an audience on a journey where one minute they’re laughing and the next minute it’s sad.

JOHN: Marilyn Manson played a Tiger Lillies song at his wedding in 2005 and other fans include The Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening and Mel Brooks, who made The Producers…

MARTYN: Yes, that is one of my favourite films. 

JOHN: Sort-of bad taste, but acceptable…

MARTYN: Yes, being Jewish, he has the edge on me there. At one point, I was going to do a show called Three Hitlers. Probably about five years ago, on my Facebook page, I put up all these pictures of Hitler – but pictures of him with, like, make-up on, transgender Hitlers, make-up, lipstick. I put these up and… Oh, the hate! The hate! I got so many hate messages. It made people so angry. I pissed people off so much.

JOHN: Was annoying people enjoyable?

“It made people so angry. I pissed people off so much…” – “Was annoying people enjoyable?…”

MARTYN: It wasn’t so much enjoyable. But it was fascinating. There were about maybe ten really good pictures of Hitler in drag.

It took Facebook quite a long time – three or four weeks – to get on me. I was putting up the pictures and getting all this hate. My thing is I try to create argument and debate when I do things like this. And there were all these other people saying: “Actually, there is nothing wrong with this. It is actually taking he piss out of Hitler” – Which I was.

It was fascinating to see all these people standing-up for me. And all these people hating me.

JOHN: What did Facebook say?

MARTYN: Well, they threatened to ban me.

JOHN: Why would making fun of Hitler be against their rules?

MARTYN: Well, you know what Facebook are like. They’re a bunch of chickens. They’re sheep. Cowards.

JOHN: I think your favourite artist is Hogarth. He is in much the same vein as The Threepenny Opera.

MARTYN: Definitely. And John Gay – The Beggar’s Opera – Macheath (Mack the Knife) is in that. It’s all the same thing – Hogarth, The Beggar’s Opera, The Threepenny Opera – it’s all about the street. Nasty, unpleasant things going on.

JOHN: I think you described The Tiger Lillies as an “anarchic, Brechtian street opera trio.”

MARTYN: (LAUGHS) That was probably Ken Campbell. Did you know him?

JOHN: I met him a few times. Didn’t know him. Ken Campbell influenced everybody.

MARTYN: He directed the first show I ever did. Fungus The Bogeyman at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. He was crazy. He was always nice to me. But, God! He used to make some of the actors in Fungus The Bogeyman cry; he used to make them weep. I remember once coming round the corner at the Belgrade Theatre and there were three actors all in floods of tears with Ken Campbell.

I stopped and looked and he said: “Keep… walking… Martyn…”

I don’t think he liked actors.

JOHN: So what next?

MARTYN: I’m doing an album about Sigmund Freud at the moment.

JOHN: The man or the ideas?

MARTYN: The ideas.

JOHN: Is that sick enough for you?

MARTYN: (LAUGHS) Yes. He’s very odd. Very strange. Really weird, actually. Pretty sick. Pretty dark.

… MORE ABOUT THE TIGER LILLIES AND THE COVID ALBUM HERE …

The Tiger Lillies – COVID-19 VOL II – released today on Bandcamp

No more UK Kunt – The end of an era?

So is it a good gig when, before it starts, the sound of “Cunt! Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!” chanted by 500 voices precedes the act and, before his final song, the entire audience boos at the thought of what is to come?

Is it a good gig when the act steals an iPhone to stop a punter videoing the show, then videos the audience and throws it back at him?

Is it a good gig when, in the second half, the entire audience is joyously singing along to songs about Fred & Rose West, Jimmy Savile and sundry paedophiles?

Is it a good gig when the act rips off his penis and throws it into the audience?

Well yes it is, if the sold-out Saturday night gig at Proud Camden in London is billed as Kunt and The Gang‘s last ever performance after 13 years of touring the UK.

But what is the betting he will be back again…??

The filthiest joke in the world…

The Grouchy Club Podcast – I am incapable of telling a joke

In this week’s 27-minute Grouchy Club Podcast, comedy critic Kate Copstick and I talk about performer Matt Roper and Wilfredo being robbed in New York… Chris Dangerfield & Ricky Grover… Lewis Schaffer & Bobby Davro… How I am currently locked inside my own house… Copstick’s involvement in actual bodily harm… Taboo comedy, shaggy dog stories & bad taste jokes… And the old adage that tragedy + time = comedy. But the filthiest joke in the world also came up in conversation.

This piece is also a classic example of how I am incapable of telling a joke effectively. Because I have a shit memory. I may have mentioned that before.

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COPSTICK
…It’s like when the marvellous Paul Provenza made a documentary film called The Aristocrats.

JOHN
…about the filthiest joke ever.

COPSTICK
Well, I kept hearing about this film The Aristocrats and ‘It’s brilliant!’ and I thought: What would it be about? About posh people in comedy? Comedy about posh people? And then they did a special showing of it at the Edinburgh festival and, the minute they started, I went: Oh! It’s The Debonaires! Because, in Scotland, the joke is The Debonaires.

I think, in the UK, tagging it with The Aristocrats is just not funny, because it’s got this fantastic… Well, you tell it…

JOHN
We’re not going to tell it. The whole point about this joke is it has to last as long as possible. You can probably see it online.

COPSTICK
Yeah. Some people do it with more actions, some people do it with more swearing, some people make it last longer than others. I first heard it about a hundred years ago in Scotland done in broad Glaswegian and then when you get… Oh, so, eh, what’s it called? – Well, we call it The Debonaires!…

JOHN
… because the whole point about the joke is you have to be as filthy as possible and then, at the very end, the supposed punchline is actually an up-market, clean, sweet name. I heard the reverse of this joke at Granada TV, Manchester in – God knows – it must have been the late 1970s, early 1980s, but it was the reverse.

COPSTICK
The reverse?

JOHN
It was called Porky. It wasn’t a showbiz joke; it was a joke about a family. There was this sweet boy who was the son and you had to do sweetness and light and love and bluebirds flying and everything glorious for as long as possible and then, at the very end, the person in the joke says: What’s his name? and the answer is Porky… No… You say that at the beginning of the joke… His name is Porky and then there’s all sweetness and light…

COPSTICK
This is not going well, John, as jokes go.

JOHN
I can’t tell jokes… His name’s Porky…

COPSTICK
So we establish at the beginning of the joke that the boy’s name is Porky…

JOHN
… and, for as long as possible, you do everything sweet and light and beautiful and lovely and, at the end, the person in the joke says: And why is he called Porky? And the answer is: He fucks pigs. So you have beauty and then…

COPSTICK
Right.

JOHN
…and then there was a reverse of that and I can’t remember what the reverse was. It was similar to The Debonaires, where you have to do filth and then it’s a clean ending. And it actually wasn’t as funny as Porky, because the whole point about the joke is the skill in the telling of it. It’s not actually the joke. The joke is not funny. It’s the telling of it.

It’s quite easy to make it interesting if it’s all four-letter words and filth. It’s really difficult to make it last and last and last if it’s sweetness and light and prettiness. So there’s actually more skill in the reverse one where the punchline is He fucks pigs, but everything else before that is Sally Sunshine.

There was a bloke at Granada (Graeme Wells) who could tell it brilliantly. People just lined up to hear him tell the story.

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This week’s full 27-minute Grouchy Club Podcast is HERE.

And there is a trailer for the very highly-recommended Aristocrats movie on YouTube.

“Levity is an absolute necessity in what can be considered a very dark subject”

Yesterday’s blog revolved around a blog posted two days ago in which Kate Copstick had described the terrible plight of teenage brides in Kenya but finished with a lighthearted reference to the size of a kitten’s testicles.

Reader ‘Glenda’ had commented that “unfortunately, the witty remark about a cat’s balls is what registers on the reader’s mind and the serious issue concerning these African women is simply forgotten.”

In yesterday’s blog, I wondered if jokes in serious pieces demeaned the subject. A few of the comments on this were:

No, perception & timing & intent.  A lot like robbing a security van John. (comedian Del Strain, via Twitter)

Yes and make them affordable to the masses. (Griff, via Twitter)

Depends on the quality of the joke. (Andrew Fox, via Facebook)

I had almost completely forgotten the kitten balls. But not the women. (Anna Smith, via WordPress)

Glenda’s comment is absolute bollocks (coincidentally). The levity at the end of the blog if anything throws the serious content into relief. Why do people have to be needlessly disparaging and superior, i.e: “It’s all very worthy and honourable, Kate Copstick blogging about the plight of these African women . . .” (comedian Janet Bettesworth, via WordPress)

Actually, I think Glenda has a point and I can see both sides.

I did think, when I posted Copstick’s diary piece, about chopping off the end bit re the kitten for the very reason Glenda gives. But I did not because I thought it would misrepresent what Copstick wrote, plus it did add a bit of jollity, plus it gave a plug to Malcolm Hardee and would mean something extra to a section of the blog readership. Other responses have been:

It’s oversimplifying to say the piece ends with an “adolescent remark.” It actually ends with some quite melancholy paragraphs about the late friend’s number being changed and the consolation of symbolically “making order from chaos”. The final details of the cats provides a beautiful counterpoint to this melancholy. It’s a very well written piece and anyone who forgets the main point so easily is probably going to forget it in a few moments away. (Cy, via WordPress)

Life goes on. In the midst of difficulty and death the small humorous things still raise their heads, ask to be observed as part of our reality. To help people effectively and constructively, I assume you have to be pragmatic and matter of fact, not hand-wringing which wouldn’t help anyone but which is easy enough to do from the comfort of our armchair viewing. (comedian Charmian Hughes, via WordPress)

Levity is an absolute necessity in what can be considered a very dark subject and I agree with Katie in her opinion regarding light and shade. It does raise the question regards what subjects can humour be added to and where we, as a society, draw the line. 

Take the very dark subject of paedophilia. Many jokes have been told by comedians about the Catholic Church and their approach towards priests who have abused vulnerable youngsters for decades, yet similar jokes about such showbiz individuals as Jimmy Savile face a barrage of criticism.

Perhaps it’s related to proximity or maybe the identification of individuals makes something much more personal and intense than an organisation. It is probably a very big discussion about what subjects are taboo amongst comedians and at what point a particular subject is deemed acceptable. (Alan Gregory, via WordPress)

Once I went to see Mark Thomas and I was really impressed by the combination of sincerely-felt idealism on one hand and irony on the other. After the show, I had a brief chat with him and he explained that the secret is taking the cause seriously while never taking seriously you fighting the cause. It’s a form of dissociation. On the other hand, people who are not able to do so and cannot poke fun at their idealism often become unintentionally ridiculous. Think of Don Quixote. Or Peter Buckley Hill. (comedian Giacinto Palmieri, via email)

Do jokes cheapen serious subjects?

Yesterday’s blog was a diary piece by comedy critic Kate Copstick, basically about the very tragic plight of child brides in Kenya. At the end, she mentioned (factually) a small kitten she had encountered.

After the blog was posted, there was a comment by ‘Glenda’:

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It’s all very worthy and honourable Kate Copstick blogging about the plight of these African woman and drawing our attention to their wretched existence, but the seriousness of this situation is eclipsed by an adolescent remark at the end of the article about a cat’s balls. And unfortunately, the witty remark about a cat’s balls is what registers on the reader’s mind and the serious issue concerning these African women is simply forgotten.

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After this, another reader, ‘Sandy Mac’ commented:

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In grim situations the use of humour, whichever form it takes, reduces tension and lifts the spirits. At least I’ve always found it to be a good coping strategy. Personally, I didn’t feel that the ending detracted from the seriousness of the article, or in any way diluted the message.

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I can see both are valid viewpoints.

In Kenya, Copstick’s view of Glenda’s opinion was:

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OK. Fair comment. But it is more of a comment on her that she is so readily distracted. The diaries need light and shade… however it is a fair point. Although I really object to being deemed worthy and honourable.

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These apparently opposing opinions on adding light to shade link to Edinburgh Fringe ‘comedy’ shows where often very, very serious subjects are lightened by laughter. Does adding humour to something very serious dumb-down and demean the subject? I would be interested to hear other opinions.

(Note: I may quote and credit any comments)

Edinburgh Fringe: The trauma of a 5-star review & why I don’t like fauning

Extreme 4-star absurdism has now reached even The Times

Maybe absurdism and ‘outa left field’ comedians are starting to make inroads into mainstream media consciousness. Even if I have no idea what ‘outa left field’ actually specifically means.

This week, definitively absurd Mr Twonkey got a 4-star review and near double-page spread in The Times, which (like Martha McBrier’s 5-star review in The Scotsman) had an immediate effect on audience numbers.

Then, yesterday, Lewis Schaffer got a 5-star review in The Scotsman. This too had an immediate effect. He sent me a text saying: “Feeling bad about it.”

Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award judge Claire Smith, who wrote the review, told me: “Lewis is upset. He told me not to review him. I did it without telling him. So I said: Lewis, you’d better buy the paper. Now he’s in bits.”

5-star anguish for coffee-stealing Lewis Schaffer

I told her: “He is bound to be upset. Five stars! His reputation is in shreds!”

Critic Kate Copstick told me: “Lewis Schaffer stole my coffee today. I was sitting at the Community Centre. He came out of his show with an entourage and I told him: I’m terrible sorry. I’ve heard all about it. I don’t know what Claire Smith was thinking of. If it had been me, I would have been kinder and not have given you more than 3 stars.

“Although he was obviously emotionally devastated by the review, he managed to quickly get it up… on his mobile phone, I mean… and let everyone around him read the review. It’s a lovely review, but he was so upset he started sipping my coffee – Oh! This is delicious! Just like American coffee! – and, because he was so distraught, I let him drink it all. He was chuntering on about the star-chasers who just go and see anything that has 5-stars.”

The star system for reviews also came up as a subject at yesterday’s Grouchy Club. Co-host Kate Copstick was scathingly against it. Two members of the audience staunchly defend it, on the basis that it was just quicker than reading the reviews.

Not a compilation show – a compilation review

Abigoliah Schamaun (as mentioned in a blog last week) has taken to putting stars on her posters from fictional publications. And Peter Michael Marino, whose show precedes The Grouchy Club, yesterday started putting ‘compilation’ stars on his flyers. He proclaims a 6-star review from Fringe Guru/Broadway Baby – on the basis that Fringe Guru gave him 3 stars and Broadway Baby gave him 3 stars. The combined quote of the 6-star review is Outrageous! Hitler!

He told me Fringe Guru had used the word Outrageous! in its review. So presumably Broadway Baby reviewed him as Hitler! I thought it better not to ask for details of the full quote.

After The Grouchy Club, I bumped into my comedy chum Janey Godley on the pavement outside The Counting House. She started raving to me about the joys of Comics and Graphic Novels: the shop next to the venue.

“In the very first week of the Fringe,” she told me, “I got really sick. I went in there, didn’t know them, but they let me lie on their couch and they had a random dog called Bonnie who jumped on the couch with me – Why wouldn’t he? – Then they all went away to get drunk – they’re a wee bit hippie – and forgot I was there and locked me in.

Where do you find a comedian in Edinburgh? In a comic shop

“So I was locked in the comic shop with ten minutes to go before my show – at the window screaming – with a dog barking and folk passing by who thought it was a show – Why would it not be? It’s the Fringe. Eventually, I got out in time and did my show with Bonnie the Dog at my heels. So now I can go in to the shop whenever I want and have a nap and I have coffee and tea in the back, sandwiches in the fridge and I have a dog to stroke. Now piss off. I have people to see.”

And with that, as Kevin Spacey said in The Usual Suspects, she was gone.

So I went to see Pat Cahill’s show Panjandrum, a bizarrely endearing mix of something, something and something. Not quite sure what. I think it was probably echoes of English Music Hall, a bit of absurdism and something indefinably original. There was a metal hat and a large bomb involved along the way. He had built the bomb himself.

Then came my worst nightmare.

I had been invited to see the well-reviewed and much-touted Follow The Faun but I think, somewhere along the way, I had failed to read the small print.

Faun & games for everyone except maybe me

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate being part of anything where people do things in unison. I abhor community singing. I would have hated the Second World War. All that bleeding singing jaunty songs together. Anything where ‘bonding’ en masse is involved I loathe.

I hate dancing.

I am a fat slaphead of an unspeakable age. I am well past my prancing prime. But, even when I was in my teens and twenties, I hated dancing. I am not and never have been filled with any hint of an inkling of any desire to be joyful through moving in unison with other people and waving my arms and legs about. I would rather kneel in an orange jumpsuit for ISIS.

What I am saying is that, for me, Follow The Faun was an hour of torture. It involves going into a darkened basement room and following the dance moves of a satyr with large horns. It is a combination of 1960s/1970s hippie, trippy Glastonbury-type Acid-fuelled love-in, 1980s/1990s Ecstasy-fuelled Rave dancing and The Wicker Man with a lot of sexual miming and a bit of wannabe human sacrifice. You may think I am joking about that last bit. I am not.

I hated it. Though I am not averse to a bit of human sacrifice.

But…

I am not the target audience.

Everyone else – young, lively, outgoing people (mostly girls) in their twenties – LOVED it… They L-O-V-E-D it. Beaming faces, pogo-ing bodies, sweat pouring, occasional screams of joy.

This is not the figure of a graceful satyr used to joyful prancing

If you are an optimistic, outgoing, life-loving, youngish, Rave culture dance-loving lively person, go and take part in it.

If you are a grouchy fat male slaphead well over 35 who likes cynical endings to films and looks a bit like a bald, lightly-bearded Hattie Jacques… avoid.

More to my taste was the show I saw after that – the ever-dependable Frank Sanazi with his Iraq Pack – Saddami Davis Junior, Osama Bing Crosby and Dean Stalin. The full house at the Voodoo Rooms was packed tighter than a cattle truck and the audience was well-up for an hour of bad taste songs about mass murder and dictators in hiding – so much so that, when the subject of people on the run and in hiding came up, an audience member threw Madeleine McCann’s name into the mix.

You can’t beat a bit of continually-updated bad taste for a good Saturday night out in Edinburgh. And it is good to see ISIS and Tony Blair added in there among the Biggies of Badassness.

There is a Follow The Faun video on YouTube…

… and one of Frank Sanazi, solo, singing his signature tune.

Geezer job: Dapper Laughs, Oscar Wilde and a bit of ‘buzz word’ offensiveness

Dapper Laughs – perhaps laughing all the way to the bank…

Daniel O’Reilly in his character (Is it a character?) of Dapper Laughs is the comedian who just keeps giving to journalists. He needs better PR advice. Or does he?

His ITV2 show was cancelled after phone footage emerged of him telling a woman in a live comedy show audience that she was “gagging for a rape”. Then he went on BBC2’s Newsnight show to apologise and say he was dropping the Dapper Laughs persona. Then he revived the ‘character’.

And now, yesterday, in a Sunday Times Magazine interview, he appeared to be saying that the controversy had all been because he was not actually taught that rape was wrong: “Not once was I invited to learn more about sexual violence, rape and sexism and the problem is the attitude toward men… Instead of attacking me, why not educate me? I would happily accept it and then help and educate the millions of men who watch my stuff. I haven’t been. Instead I’m told to fuck off and stop my comedy.”

Who knows if that is what he meant to say or did say or not.

The interview might or might not be a miscalculation and might or might not be unconnected with his upcoming tour Theory of Nothing and an upcoming DVD release.

Ben Adams and Lenny Sherman are successful podcasters

I talked to comedians Lenny Sherman and Ben Adams about him.

They record a regular podcast together: We’re Not Racist and We Love Gays. And Ben runs Broken Toaster TV which produces “dark comedy sketches and shorts” for online viewers.

“We used to run gigs for Dapper Laughs,” Ben told me, “and we got friendly with him that way.”

“Ben was the one who introduced all of us lot to Vine,” Lenny explained. “He got Dapper Laughs on Vine. I used to MC a weekly gig for Dapper Laughs – he’s very good at promotion and marketing and that sort of thing.

“You get exposure from Vine and our podcast has sort-of built-up from that: a cult following. We’ve got over 20,000 followers on Vine and about 3,000 listeners for our podcast. We’ve done over 40. It’s on iTunes. We’ve got the Twitter page, got the Facebook. We done a live show at the Lost Theatre last October. It all links up. It’s all publicity. We’re doing the Camden Fringe this year – two 25-minute sets of stand-up.”

Ben and Lenny live at the Camden Fringe

“Why the Camden Fringe and not the Edinburgh Fringe?” I asked.

Ben told me: “I went to the Edinburgh Fringe once and, unless you’ve got money and the proper marketing behind you, it’s almost worthless. you go up there and almost every single poster has got 4 Stars, 5 Stars. It becomes meaningless.”

“And,” explained Lenny, “I just can’t afford it, to be honest. I would love to go. to be at a comedy festival – probably the best one in the world – I would love to. But I just can’t afford it, John. I’ve been going four years.  The first year, I didn’t go up to Edinburgh because I was in prison.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Fighting at football. Millwall. I got attacked. I was defending myself. It’s not something I’ve ever hidden. I’m not really that sort of comedian. I’m more sort-of one-liners. I’m not really a storyteller, not personal – though there’s a lot of layers to my stuff. I play on the stereotype. People stereotype me. And it’s about switching the stereotype.”

“That,” said Ben, “is what I’m trying to do at the moment. I’m trying to become more of a storyteller. I started six years ago and it was joke-joke-joke and a lot of it was edgy, shocking stuff. But now I’ve got to a point where I don’t want to do that any more. I’ve got all this material that really works, but I want to move more into storytelling.”

“Someone,” said Lenny, “described my comedy as vulgar intelligence. But it’s not vulgar. Vulgar’s the wrong word, though it’s adult. It’s not mainstream; let’s put it that way. I mix it up as well. I done a lot of improv – I mix a lot in and try to be original and different. I am what I am. I can’t go on stage and talk about lentils.”

“I have found,” said Ben,” that, since doing the podcast, I enjoy telling stories a lot more. I think that’s where my niche is.”

“People say to me,” said Lenny, “You should talk about when you was in prison and, if you done that, you would get a Perrier Award.”

“Your podcast is very successful,” I said.

Lenny Sherman knows a bit about merchandising and tattoos

“We do merchandise,” explained Lenny. “and, on the podcast, I done this story about some geezer I was banged-up with who had a Born Evil tattoo. The feedback we got from that was great. We even had merchandise with Born Evil written on it.”

“So,” I asked, “you have managed to make money out of Vine and the podcast.”

“I,” said Ben, “have made quite a bit of money out of Vine. Adverts and things. We got a free watch as well. You get e-mailed by companies. We were going to do something for Domino’s Pizza but that fell through.”

“Dominoes are always falling down,” I said.

“Dapper Laughs,” said Lenny, “will get: Will you wear our jacket? We’ll give you five grand. Or McDonalds: We’ll give you three grand. The more followers you’ve got…”

“… the more money you get,” Ben completed.

“What about Dapper Laughs losing his TV show?” I asked.

“I don’t want to pass judgment on that,” said Lenny.

“I think his show got taken out of context,” said Ben. “A lot of people never even saw it.”

Lenny Sherman & Ben Adams: maybe better PR than Dapper

Lenny added: “I felt he should not have gone on Newsnight. I thought: What the fuck you doing? Not only that, but that fucked it up for everyone else. I notice now, when I do jokes, if they hear buzz words… I’ve got a joke. This joke pretty much sums me up:

“A geezer says: What are your views on Muslims?

“I say: Pretty good. I’ve got a penthouse overlooking a mosque.

“When the audience hear the word Muslims from a geezer like me – working class Cockney – they think Ooh-ooh-ooh. But then I switch it to a harmless joke. I switch it.

“When Dapper Laughs did Newsnight, I thought: What the fuck are you doing? I don’t agree with everything he done – don’t get me wrong – but… I’ve got very strong opinions on edgy comedy. My comedy is what’s natural to me. I sort-of get both sides. I like all sorts of different comedy. But I don’t like this edgy comedy when they’re just talking about rude stuff for the sake of it. Come on, you’re a grown man or woman! Why are you acting like a schoolkid?

“What we do is natural. Everything we do is natural to us. There’s no false anything. We tell it like it is. Then you get people on the other side who react to buzz words too much. There’s this culture of Oh no, you can’t talk about that! Why not? You can talk about whatever you like, provided you’re not being an arsehole about it.”

Ben Adams – slightly offensive?

“If I do a joke that might be slightly offensive,” said Ben, “people never look past the offensiveness or that one buzz word. Because they don’t appreciate what kind of joke it is. They stop at the first hurdle and think: Hang on! I don’t like this!

“Someone described my comedy as Treading the line between offensiveness and playfulness expertly – which I thought was perfect. Frankie Boyle might say a joke and be a bit harsh., whereas I will be a cheeky little boy about it.

“I lost a lot of my love for stand-up recently. I wanted to change direction and it took a while to get the balls to do that. If you go one way, you might end up on TV on 8 Out of 10 Cats, then you might go on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, then you might get your DVD Ben Adams Live! But I don’t want any of that. It all seems unappealing. It sounds awful. I want to make my own way, which is why I film comedy sketches and we have the podcast and do our own shows. I like the idea of finding and playing to your own audience.”

“This is what we’re all about, really, really.,” said Lenny. “I’m not saying I don’t want to be on those TV programmes. I’ll do anything. If it’s right, I’ll do it. But I think the way forward is getting your own audience. With Dapper Laughs, I thought there was a lot of irony in that. People said: Oh! He shouldn’t do that! He’s going backwards! but a lot of what he done was very progressive and he’s shown people: Look! You can do it! You don’t need ‘them’. You can just do it yourself. That was really groundbreaking, if you take away the sexism and the other stuff. What he done was like really monumental.”

“You contacted me for a chat,” I said.

“The reason we asked to see you,” said Lenny, “is we wanna try and make a bit of noise now. We’ve been under the radar a little bit.”

“Well,” I said,  “Oscar did say: There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Frank Sanazi, hijab stripping and Jesus Christ flying in for Hitler’s birthday gig

Pete covers up a nasty or potentially Nazi spot on his neck

This blog was supposed to be posted on 1st April, until I realised there might be a credibility problem if I posted it on that date.

I had a chat with Pete Perke aka Pete Sinclair aka Pete Cunningham aka Tom Mones aka Frank Sanazi. Frank Sanazi sings like Frank Sinatra but looks like Adolf Hitler.

“So,” I said to Pete,  “you are going over to Austria as Frank Sanazi to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.”

“Well,” he said, “Kulture Banane,  the Austrian boylesque troupe, have become massive in Austria and have asked me to go over and do my show Das Vegas Nights (Zis Time We Win) on 18th April, two days before Hitler’s birthday. Actually, I only recently realised that Hitler was born on 20th April, which is Aries. That would make him a genuine Arian.”

“They’re just boylesque?” I asked. “Not Nazi boylesque in short trousers?”

“Well,” said Pete, “one of the guys – he could be a woman for all I know – performs a hijab act which is basically strip burlesque.”

“You’ve played Frank Sanazi in Berlin, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Five or six times.”

“How do they react?”

“The first time I did it, the crowd were a bit…”

“Stunned?” I suggested.

“Well, I was told they loved it, but you can never tell with German audiences. There’s not laugh-out-loud vocal appreciation. When I play to an older crowd in Germany, they can be uncomfortable-squirmy a bit, but the young crowd just find it hilarious. Time has moved on so much they don’t feel part of anything their forefathers did.”

Frank Sanazi at the 2014 Malcolm Hardee Awards Show

“I suppose Hitler will never die,” I said. “Malcolm Hardee and I booked The Rockin’ Gorbachev on a couple of TV shows and, of course, his career died when Gorbachev got ousted. But you’re not just a one character act.”

“Yes, I’ve diversified,” said Pete. “I do a lot of straight singing and I have Frank Sanazi and Tom Mones (an old Tom Jones).”

“How is your Vladimir Putin act doing?” I asked.

“I’m not sure if he has legs,” said Pete. “Putin is still very ‘in’ at the moment. As long as he keeps in the spotlight, I’m OK. At the moment, I sing Ukranian Men (to the tune It’s Raining Men) But Crimea River (Cry Me a River) is an obvious follow-up. And then there’s Putin on The Blitz (Putting On The Ritz).”

“Are you doing him at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?” I asked.

“No,” said Pete. “This year I’ve got the Voodoo Rooms to take my whole Iraq Pack show. I’ve got Pete Storm playing Dean Stalin (Stalin singing like Dean Martin) and I’ve written a great song for George who’s going to play Osama Bing Crosby and Saddami Davis Jnr is singing Arranged Marriage to the tune of Love and Marriage:

Ar-ranged marriage
Ar-ranged marriage
To a woman called Fatima Mohammed
This I’ll tell you mother
She looks just like her brother

“I wrote a new song recently for Osama Bing Crosby. He said he needed a song on his own because we were just doing a duet:

I have heard to the Taliban
You are now a forgotten man
Well, dead Jew ever
What a swell party this is

“So I wrote him:

How unlucky can one guy be
They shot her, then they shot me
Like the New York Times said
Ain’t that a shot in the head?

“I’ve never,” I said, “heard you ever talk about getting bad reactions from audiences.”

A singing Hitler – apparently less offensive than a dead Elvis

“I used to do an act called Dead Elvis,” Pete told me. “I used to come out of this coffin in a mask with worm holes cut out and I did send-up songs: Are You Hungry Tonight? (Are You Lonesome Tonight)… and The Burgers Went Straight To My Heart… those sort of songs. And I got more stick for doing that than I ever have for Frank Sanazi. Because people love Elvis so much they treat him like Jesus. I stopped doing that act because I was getting so much grief for it.”

“And you’re trend-proof,” I said. “because you play the comedy circuit, the cabaret circuit and the fetish circuit.”

“Yes,” said Pete. “There’s a Festival of Sins show this Saturday, a new fetish night. It ran before, five years ago. It was always overshadowed by the Torture Garden but Festival of Sins was possibly the second biggest in London – run by a guy called David de Vynél and he’s re-kickstarting it. It went tits-up when he married the woman he ran it with.”

There is a clip on Vimeo from the Festival of Sins show in 2010.

“I performed at his wedding and the wedding cake was an entire woman just covered in cake: you had to eat the cake off the top of her. It was very well-presented. This guy turned up – the best man – completely stark bollock naked. All he wore were a couple of little bits of tinsel round his penis and a couple of baubles for balls. And he had a massive dong – I think that’s why he went round naked.”

“Just to annoy people?” I asked.

“Mmmmm….,” said Pete.

“I went to one Torture Garden years ago,” I said. “I blogged about it.”

“I remember one Torture Garden,” said Pete, “where there was a guy in a cage and he had a Superman-style cape on and nothing else and he was peeing on people as they walked past. The other thing they had was like an iron lung from Barbarella with perspex over it, so you could put your hands in the gloves and feel whoever it was inside.

“And you know those things they have in Post Offices? Big thick latex things that hang down. I think they do it for health & hygiene. They have them in abattoirs – almost see-through plastic that you can push our way through…”

“Your local Post Office,” I said, “is more interesting than mine.”

“Well,” said Pete, “they had these people just chopping meat up. They had carcasses of sheep. I don’t know how they got away with that, because blood was spattering over everybody as they were going through.

“A couple came in when I was performing- I only knew they were a man and woman because of their size and shape. They had full Nazi outfits on and full gimps masks with zips so you could just see their eyes. They sat right in front of the stage when I performed, watched me for about 25 minutes, then stood up, clapped their gloves together and walked out. It was the most surreal thing.”

“Who else is on the bill with you for the Hitler birthday gig?” I asked.

“Jesus Christ is flying over from Glasgow,” said Pete.

There is a clip on YouTube of Frank Sanazi singing Strangers On My Flight.

Is Alexander Bennett a cock, the Devil or “witty, weird and dark” (Harry Hill)

“Dark” Alexander Bennett at King’s Cross station yesterday

Alexander Bennett runs a regular first-Tuesday-of the-month comedy show in London – This Is Not a Cult in Camden.

Yesterday, I met him at King’s Cross station. I do not know why. We had thirteen minutes to talk.

“This chat is for quoting in my blog,” I told him, “so I have to ask if you have had any nervous breakdowns, long periods of heroin addiction, run-ins with prostitutes and gangsters, visits to Thailand or recent experiences with enemas?”

“For your blog,” Alexander told me, “everything except Thailand, because I can’t afford to go on holiday.”

“What are you doing at the moment?” I asked.

“I’m preparing for the Edinburgh Fringe in August – I’m possibly doing two shows. One will be my stand-up comedy show and the second one is a gameshow set in Hell where I play the Devil.”

“Type-casting?” I suggested.

“Possibly,” admitted Alexander. “Two audience members have to play to keep their soul. Each rounds in the gameshow will be hosted by a different historical character – Watercolour Challenge hosted by Adolf Hitler; What’s My Organ? hosted by Jeffrey Dahmer…”

“I had forgotten about your fascination with serial killers and mass-murderers,” I said.

“…and so on and so forth,” concluded Alexander. “I wanted to do something with lots and lots of other comics.”

“What happens,” I asked, “if the two members of the audience lose in their attempt to keep their souls?”

“Something unexpected,” said Alexander. “Nobody at the moment is doing…”

“Hellish shows?” I asked. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

“… fun bad taste shows,” concluded Alexander. “You get your brutal Frankie Boyles or Andrew Lawrences, but nobody’s doing stuff that’s bad taste but fun – as in the specific meaning of bad taste – taking the subject too lightly.”

“Are gameshows with the Devil really bad taste?” I asked.

“Well, if you put Jeffrey Dahmer and Hitler in them, yeah. And a few others.”

“And your other Fringe show?” I asked. “The stand-up comedy one – the non-bad-taste one. That is…?”

“Alexander Bennett – I Can Make you a Moron, which is making people stupid for their own sake.”

“Do you think people might avoid sitting in the front row for that one?” I asked.

“I’ll make them. The idea is the world is too complicated and the only way to be happy is to be stupid.”

“You are still developing that?” I asked.

“Well, I’m doing a show – Your Beloved Alexander Bennett – at the Leicester Comedy Festival this Saturday. It’s sort-of halfway between last year’s Edinburgh Fringe show and this year’s one. So I get to try out new material without massively pissing-off anyone in Leicester.”

“That’s for them to judge,” I suggested.

“I’ve got quotes from Chortle and Harry Hill and the Guardian on my publicity,” said Alexander, “so I hope that will lure them in.”

For the record, the Harry Hill quote is: Witty, weird and dark, the one to watch out for: at the spearhead of a wave of great new comics. All hail Alexander Bennett!

Your beloved Alexander Bennett likes to be hailed.

And quite right too.

“Anything bizarre happen to you on the way here?” I asked him.

“I think you’re clutching at straws for your blog,” he told me.

“You’re a comedian,” I said. “Things always happen to comedians on the way to anywhere.”

The beloved and clothed Alexander Bennett

“I was in Chester at the weekend,” he told me, “performing to a hen party.”

“Did you keep your clothes on?” I asked.

“Yes. But, during the show, one of the hens just started shouting out the word Cock!”

“Was that,” I asked, “because she thought you were one or she wanted to see one?”

“These were details,” admitted Alexander, “that needed clarification. She just shouted out the word Cock! at regular intervals. Then, after the show, a slightly older woman came up to me and said: I’m really sorry that my daughter kept shouting out the word Cock! during your performance. She is really drunk. I wouldn’t mind, but she’s a fucking lesbian.”

“That will do,” I told him.