My egg throwing goes into a new text book and financial provocateur Max Keiser launches his own currency

My blog yesterday was about giving a speech at comedian Chris Luby’s funeral.

An earlier choice for speaker had been juggler Steve Rawlings, who toured the UK with Chris. But it turned out he was in Berlin. He had got scouted by Cirque du Soleil, gone out to meet them and become part of their artist list.

Last night (still in Berlin) he told me:

“One of my favourite memories of Chris was when he was struggling to get gigs and I’d got him one in a club down in the South of England and had picked him up at his house and taken him to the gig.

“He did a great show, of course, and afterwards went off to the bar to celebrate while I went off to do my act.

Chris Luby recreated movie Zulu in the UK

“At the end of the night, after the gig, I found him at the bar totally drunk doing his impersonation of the songs and chants of the Zulu army – as in the movie Zulu – when they attacked Rorke’s Drift, complete with spear and shield motions.

“He was performing this to two very large and very angry-looking black guys.

“I managed to drag him away before someone killed him, but the funny thing was – being Chris – all the sounds and words of the chants would have been 100% accurate and it would never have occurred to him that sharing this knowledge with two big black guys would have caused offence.”

Steve also remembered: “Playing Trivial Pursuits with Chris was a bit pointless as he knew all the answers and would only stop going around the board when he got one wrong on purpose so you would keep playing with him”.

If you are reading this blog on the day it was posted, there is a high likelihood I will still be making my own way to Germany. I am travelling to Leipzig with comedian Nick Revell (unless something goes wrong with the trains) for the first gig at Vivienne and Martin Soan’s new Leipzig club – a sort of Pull The Other One East – at Noch Besser Leben (which translates as Still Better Living). Obviously, Nick is performing and I am not. Martin and Vivienne are not that experimental nor mental.

Going to Leipzig seemed like a good idea when it was first suggested and still seems a fairly good idea despite the fact it is a 12-hour train trip.

When this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith heard I was going to Leipzig, her reaction was: “Not Leipzig, Saskatchewan, I hope!”

“Why?” I asked. So far, there has been no response.

The wonderful world of sexist, slobbering Wilfredo

Comedian Matt Roper’s response was: “I’m in San Francisco, showering them with spittle tonight (as his character Wilfredo), then off to Los Angeles tomorrow. Nothing really much to write about here, except that I finally managed to make it coast to coast across the US without flying!”

This seemed mildly eccentric – and then I opened three bizarre e-mails one-after-the-other.

The first was from publishers Pearson Education, asking if they could use 79 words from one of my 2012 blogs about the World Egg Throwing Championships in a new educational textbook they are producing titled Skills For Writing. They said: “We would like to request permission to include the material, within the electronic components of our publication.”

I have no idea what this really means nor why they want to use 79 words from the blog, versions of which were re-published both in the UK edition of the Huffington Post and by the Indian news site WSN (We Speak News).

John Ward loses to me as he smashes an egg on his forehead

The blog’s headline was World Egg Throwing Championships: Cheaper and Funnier Than the Olympics and the words Pearson want to use are:

I triumphed in the Russian Egg Roulette heats in face-offs with two small children, who seemed to be the only children in the contest. I faced John Ward in the semi-final. I triumphed again.

In the grand final, I unfortunately faced a large man called Jerry Cullen, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses. The first four of the six eggs we smashed on our foreheads were hard-boiled, leaving only two more eggs – one for each of us…

The fact that Pearson Education wanted to use this in a textbook entitled Skills For Writing was a little surprising. But not as surprising as the next e-mail I opened, which told me that Max Keiser – whom I like to describe as an American financial provocateur who appears on Russian and Iranian TV and who has occasionally appeared in my blog… was launching his own currency last night, not totally dissimilar to Bitcoin. It is being called Maxcoin.

Max, in Paris, gives his opinions to Al Jazeera English channel

I asked Max to tell me more. He sent me an e-mail saying:

“Maxcoin is being developed at the University of Bristol which has some of the best crypto talent in the world. Anybody looking to get into a fast growing industry that pays incredibly well should look into their programs.”

This doesn’t help me much, but then he sent me an even more jaw-dropping e-mail detailing something that I am not allowed to talk about for another couple of weeks.

We live in interesting times, but then we always have.

Ashley Storrie, the daughter of my chum Janey Godley, has been nominated as Best New Scottish Comedian by Capital FM. The awards are being announced on 22nd March and you can vote here.

Four unfunny things related to the world of comedy which have happened so far this week – plus one lucky insect

The Heroes of Fringe pose on a London rooftop this week

ONE

So I went to a London photoshoot arranged by Bob Slayer to publicise the two venues he is running at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

Both come under the banner of his Heroes Of Fringe outfit so he asked people to come dressed as superheroes. We all had to wear Bawbags’ Scottish underpants over our clothing. They are sponsors.

My So It Goes chat show at the Fringe is in Bob’s Bookshop.

I had been given a Superman teeshirt a few months ago – but it was a rather distressed and faded one so I thought, given my age and the fact I could not be bothered to shave, I should perhaps take along a walking stick (my dead grandfather’s) and wear a piece of green Kryptonite round my neck (a USB memory stick given away as a freebie by the Gilded Balloon venue a few Fringes ago).

Dark Superman Returns

I reasoned this might turn the fact that I looked older than the other people in the photoshoot from a negative ageist thing into a semi-ironic humorous thing and perhaps give it a slight whiff of The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen.

The strange thing is I do not drink and do not take drugs.

The actual effect of the outfit was, of course, that it just made me look old.

Comic Lewis Schaffer did not turn up for the photoshoot because, he said, he was performing a benefit gig for dogs. When I suggested the dogs should, perhaps, be performing a benefit gig for him, I got no reply.

Dangerous Chris Dangerfield DID turn up, told me about the benefits of Bitcoins and of the parallel, dark internet and then left on a black bicycle saying there were too many other people. (There were twelve).

Führer Frank Sanazi – A conflict with David Cameron?

TWO

While I was coming back from the photoshoot, Frank Sanazi got in touch with me.

He said he had been booked to perform at Cornbury Music Festival in Oxfordshire at the weekend.

But it was belatedly thought by the organisers that his act might offend the festival goers of Middle England who had come to see Squeeze, Van Morrison, The Proclaimers, Alan Davies, Julie Burchill, Malcolm Hardee Award winner Stuart Goldsmith et al.

Frank Sanazi performs looking like Adolf Hitler but singing in Frank Sinatra’s voice. He was billed in the festival programme as headlining the ‘Tew Drop Inn’ Cabaret tent on Saturday night.

He told me he thought his sudden ban might be something to do with the fact the festival takes place in Prime Minister David Cameron’s constituency and the great man (Cameron, not Sanazi) was there last year and was rumoured to be there this year. The management appeared to have booked his act without wondering why he was called Frank Sanazi – a clue, surely, is in the name.

“When the organisers saw my YouTube footage,” he told me, “they decided to bar me. Having paid me already.”

So it was silver lining time for the Führer of Fun.

Anna Smith remembers a man in a box

THREE

When I got home, I found an e-mail from the So It Goes blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith. It read:

“Have you ever seen Daniel Rovai? I first saw him balancing ladders on his chin in the circus tent at Glastonbury. He is now apparently living in a small plywood box somewhere in the Netherlands and he appears to be very happy and philosophic.

“I once travelled on tubes and buses and then a long way on foot though a deserted warehouse district, to see him do a performance at a club in the middle of nowhere – Woolwich or somewhere like that. It was very disappointing because it turned out that I was the only person in the whole of London to show up. He approached me, sitting alone in the small cheap theatre, and offered to drive me home.

“But aren’t you going to do the show? I asked.

“He said, I can’t do it just for you, and so he drove me home in an old Citroën.”

This morning, I got an update from Anna:

“I just googled Daniel Rovai,” she told me. “He appears to be living in a cheerful-looking caravan now, a step up from the plywood box.”

The Tomatina Festival – people covered in tomatoes – in 2006

FOUR

I also opened an e-mail from Alex Petty, organiser of the Laughing Horse Free Festival at the Edinburgh Fringe. Sent to Free Festival participants, it said:

A unique Fringe  event run by Free Festival’s Peter Michael Marino during this year’s Fringe for your diaries on Thursday 15^th August from 3pm-4pm on the Meadows.

Critics crushed your show? Did your lack of stars make you see stars? Want to get even? Join fellow performers, producers, venues, critics and press for the first-ever Critical Mass Tomato Toss!

Inspired by Spain’s annual Tomatina Festival, this special Edinburgh Fringe event is for anyone who’s ever dreamed of letting the critics know what they think of their nasty reviews.

You’ll get your chance to toss tomatoes at the faces of the critics who’ve taken the piss, slammed your show, tarnished your name and lowered your audience attendance. Of course, it’s all in good fun… isn’t it?

“They only live for about three days. Let it live!” So it goes.

FIVE

After reading that e-mail this morning I was sitting on the toilet, as one does, and saw a daddy long-legs in the bath.

I am not good with fast-moving winged insects, especially if they suddenly brush against my face. This one brushed against my face. Normally this is rapidly followed by the death of the insect.

But, a couple of days ago, seeing me try to kill a daddy long-legs with a quick clap of my hands, my eternally-un-named friend reminded me: “They only live for about three days. Let it live.”

So, this morning, I let it live.

Life is random.