Comedian and self-promoter Bob Slayer – Talking Cock and Sex With Children at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe

A ‘selfie’ by Bob Slayer at the Soho Theatre

Comedian/manager/promoter/former rock band manager Bob Slayer has his fingers in many artistic pies. I was going to say he has his fingers in many artists, but Bob thought this might be mis-read in 20 years time and he might get a knock on the door from the police.

At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, he is going to be running two venues: The Hive and his Bookshop (co-hosting it with Miss Behave in a different location from last year).

So, we were sitting in the bar of the Soho Theatre in London…

“In Scotland,” he told me, “this year is all about 2014: The Year of Independence. Last year, it was all about women at the Fringe. This year the Fringe is going to be all about the independent promoter, the independent artist – The Year of Independents at the Fringe.”

There was much more in this vein and about 10 minutes of ranting about the big Fringe venues from which I will save you, dear reader. I kept trying to get him to tell me eccentric anecdotes about his interesting travels. He kept trying to get me to print a long list of the shows on at his Edinburgh venues.

Eventually, I got him round to his recent visit to Japan for a friend’s wedding. He used to manage the Japanese rock band Electric Eel Shock.

Electric Eel Shock managed by Bob Slayer

“I’d been to Japan a bunch of times with Electric Eel Shock,” he told me, “but this was the first time I could go just for fun. And I met up with all the members of Electric Eel Shock and I’ve booked a tour for them, which is the first time I’ve done anything with them for a while. They start in Holland at the end of this month. Then London on 2nd May.

“I pretty much worked on Electric Eel Shock 24/7 for about six years. We were doing 250-300 shows a year round the world.”

“Hellfire,” I said. “That’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” said Bob. “When newspapers interviewed them, the Number One question was How do you cope with all the touring? and their answer was: That’s what we do. We cope by being absolutely ecstatic that we’re doing what we want to do. “

“300 shows a year is still going it some,” I said.

“But,” Bob pointed out, “if you look at the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s British Music Hall scene, some acts might do 500 or 600 shows a year, because they would have matinée and evening performances… You know, don’t you, that I was the first Westerner to be Karaoke Champion of Japan?”

“Is this true?” I asked.

“Of course it is,” said Bob. “Google it. It’s on a lot of websites.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I know the Wigan Evening Post and the Chortle comedy news website printed that you’re the great-nephew of George Formby.”

“Yes. It’s all true. The thing about the Big Four at the Fringe…” he started to say.

“Have you got Chris Dangerfield at the Hive during the Fringe?” I asked, trying to veer him away from The Big Four.

“Yes,” said Bob. “And the Big Four venues would never…”

Chris Dangerfield in Thailand last month

“Are you certain you have Chris Dangerfield?” I asked.

“Well,” said Bob, “you know what his show’s about…”

“His show is OK,” I said, “It’s just a case of will he be physically capable of doing it?”

“Did you say his show’s OK??” Bob almost spluttered. “What? Sex With Children is OK?”

“He might still be in a brothel in Thailand come August,” I said. “That might be a logistical problem.”

“Oh yeah yeah yeah,” agreed Bob. “But some people might think it’s a plus he might not make it to Edinburgh with a show title like that.”

“As far as I’m aware,” I said, “it’s about his own abuse as a child.”

“Yes, you asked him the question I never actually asked him,” said Bob. “He told me Right, the title is Sex With Children and I just went Erm…Right… OK and I thought Right, I’m not going to do him the dis-service of asking him if this is the right direction…”

“…for his career?” I asked.

“No, not for his career,” explained Bob. “I didn’t want to ask Are you the perpetrator or the victim? … I didn’t exactly want to HOPE he was the victim, but then I really really didn’t want to hope he was the perpetrator.”

“I almost fear what he’s going to say on stage on the first night of the show,” I said.

“There is an element of…” said Bob. “He came to me with that title… and I thought…”

“As a venue owner,” I suggested, “you can’t really say No to a title like that.”

“Well,” Bob replied, “you could if you thought it was going to be horrible bit of hate speech or… I would not not book it on the grounds that I wouldn’t like it myself; and I wouldn’t not book it on the grounds I don’t think that should be a title. Though people WILL say: That shouldn’t be a title! But he has got a responsibility in what he does with the creative freedom. And I trust him to use that responsibility well.”

Chris Dangerfield’s threatened 2014 Edinburgh Fringe show

“You are a foolish person,” I said.

“I am possibly very foolish,” said Bob.

“The Fringe have not batted an eyelid about printing the title?” I asked.

“No,” said Bob. “I think it’s a very valid subject.”

“There’s nothing objectionable as such in the title,” I said. “It could be a show about the history of sex education in schools.”

“Also the Fringe,” said Bob, “in the last couple of years has been a bit battered by being stupid. I mean, insisting on putting an exclamation mark in PR!CK instead of an ‘I’ or putting an asterisk in Richard Herring’s TALKING C*CK.”

“Especially as they had printed TALKING COCK in a previous year,” I said, “and the actual phrase itself doesn’t have a sexual origin.”

“At the end of the day,” said Bob, “the Fringe are a conservative body. They like to think they’re all liberal thinkers, but there’s a clash between doing artistic things and getting sponsors. They’re not creatively free. It’s like the Big Four, who…”

At this point, we were mercifully interrupted by a man who is going to walk to the Edinburgh Fringe from London but who has not yet planned his route.

There is a 13 second video of Chris Dangerfield on YouTube.

… and also on YouTube there is a 4’18” video of Electric Eel Shock singing My Favourite No 9.

Comedy critic Kate Copstick was in a hospital with rats, thieves and Lupus

Kate Copstick at Mama Biashara this weekend

Yesterday’s blog told how Britain’s most feared comedy critic Kate Copstick ended up a few weeks ago – with no travel insurance to cover her – at the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, having a full hip replacement operation.

“I had almost expected to be in a full body cast when I woke up after the operation,” she told me at her Mama Biashara shop in London two days ago.

“You know those movies about injured airmen, where they have to communicate with people through a sophisticated system of mirrors above their head?… But, when I woke up, it was all normal apart from this massive lump between my legs.

“I thought: They’ve given me the wrong surgery! I’m a man! Now I’m a man! – I seemed to have the world’s largest sticking plaster from waist to knee with padding in the middle.

“I asked What is this? and the doctor explained It’s to keep the pelvis aligned, because it’s very important for you to keep your legs apart.

“Luckily enough, I said, I’ve never had a problem with that. But that was where the loveliness ended. The hospital itself were… Can I say ‘cunts’ in your blog?”

“Well, it’s a term of endearment in Glasgow,” I told her.

“OK,” said Copstick. “They were cunts. I had to fight the large and quite scary nursing staff for my own medication, because I HAVE to take my lupus medication.

“Ah! The doctor has stopped it! they told me… The doctor can’t stop it,” I told them… They just didn’t have a clue.”

“Remind me about your lupus,” I said.

Wikipedia’s illustration of some effects of lupus

“Lupus,” explained Copstick, “is an auto-immune disease where my immune system is as mental and vicious as the rest of me. Instead of staying where it is supposed to be and attacking only when there is an infection to fight, it regards my own body as an infection… I know there are many comedians who would agree with that.

“But it looks on my body and my organs as infections so, at any given moment, it might go into battle against… well, for example, my lungs are a bit fucked because it attacks my lungs. So you get pleurisy and stuff like that. One time, my kidneys packed up and the doctors couldn’t figure why and it was just my own immune system attacking them. You get incredible fatigue with it. And pain and what can I say? I’m a brave and wonderful human being. I am like a non-blind, non-deaf Helen Keller.”

“How long have you had it?” I asked.

“I was diagnosed about eight or ten years ago.”

“And when does it cure itself?” I asked.

“It doesn’t. Either it stays the way it is or it gets worse and you die… But you’ve gotta die of something.”

“You’re a comedy critic,” I said. “You could die of shame.”

“I was hoping more like exhaustion from alcoholic poisoning,” said Copstick. “I could go out in a blaze of ghastliness as the climax to one of Bob Slayer’s shows.”

“Anyway,” I said, “you are lying in this bed in Nairobi and you have told them they cannot stop your lupus medication…”

A walking frame… not Instagrammed

“Some of my medication was stolen,” said Copstick, “and there was a large rat running alongside my bed. The day after the operation, I was hobbling around on crutches but the nadir, I think – apart from lying in an agonised crumpled heap in the dirt when I shattered my thigh bone – the nadir was when they wheeled me down to physiotherapy. They took me to a set of parallel bars and nobody said anything.

“I hiked myself up out of the wheelchair because I’d seen it in movies – you know, Reach For The Sky about Douglas Bader… I channelled my inner Kenneth More and pulled myself along the parallel bars twice and there was a man standing there with a Zimmer (walking frame). He didn’t say anything. He just nodded. So then I had to do laps of this little gym on a Zimmer. I just hoped there was no closed-circuit TV and that I would not end up on Instagram.

“The second day I was on crutches.

“The third day they showed me the bill.

“The fourth day I discharged myself.”

“Because of the bill?” I asked.

“Too fucking right!” said Copstick. “It was £6,500 with things like 90p for 9 millilitres of water for an injection and £1.50p for a face flannel which I didn’t get.”

“Just like British private medicine,” I suggested.

“I don’t know,” said Copstick. “I’ve never gone private. I’ve never regarded myself as rich enough.”

“But even when you got out of hospital,” I said, “you couldn’t come home.”

“They said I couldn’t travel for six weeks and I said I’m terribly sorry, but… Luckily I have friends Alan Wickham and Lynita Harris who have a wonderful eco-camp with safari tents and they gave me the spare room on the ground floor of their home, so I was there for three weeks. I only went back to see the doctor once because you get charged £30 for him to say Hello, you’re looking well.

“I told him I have to get home to try and get some work – anything.

Copstick at the Mama Biashara shop in 2012

“I was on a plane four weeks to the day from the operation. I was supposed to come back on 14th March and ended up arriving back on 4th April.”

“When you were still in Kenya,” I reminded her, “you told me you were even having trouble getting a plane.”

“Well,” said Copstick, “British Airways wanted a huge amount of paperwork because they didn’t want me to die on a flight because it’s terribly bad publicity. The thing that leaves me really angry and frustrated, though, is that it was all entirely my own fault.”

“It was an Act of God,” I suggested.

“No. My own unbelievably stupid fault,” said Copstick. “It would have been better if I had been hideously mugged in the street because then I’d be a victim and Oh dear. But this was all my own fault. All my savings went. All my carefully-calculated Well, this amount will last me this length of time. And I’ve never been in this position before. Never in my life, because I’ve always saved and always worked for money until Mama Biashara.”

Copstick’s Mama Biashara charity shop in London last week

Copstick works unpaid for her Mama Biashara charity and covers none of her expenses. She now lives in Kenya for about five months each year and works unpaid in the Mama Biashara shop in London for most of the rest of the year, excluding August when, she says, she is “up at the Edinburgh Fringe treading un-softly on comics’ dreams and, obviously, being part of the increasingly-prestigious and highly-coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards and your less-coveted but hopefully increasingly-prestigious chat show.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s not happening this year because I haven’t got a venue.”

“No?” said Copstick.

“No,” I said. “And the Fringe listing is too expensive for a free show. Pay attention. How much longer are you going to be like this?”

“Well,” said Copstick, “I can walk with crutches and I can walk for very very short distances without crutches. I was here in the shop at 8 o’clock this morning shifting furniture and lifting soapstone and all kinds of things I definitely should not be doing. So it gets sore when I do that.”

“Have you got a Zimmer frame?” I asked.

“John,” said Copstick, “look into my beady blue eyes and tell me you think in any universe I would not rather die than be seen on a Zimmer. I feel quite old enough with the hip replacement without getting a Zimmer. The wheelchair is fine, because I can do my Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? impressions. I’m very good as Joan Crawford. The crutches are reasonable for the sympathy vote. But a Zimmer is a walking aid too far.”

“Have you got a ground floor flat at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?” I asked.

“No. But stairs are OK. It’s hills that are a bit of a bugger.”

“You are going to have difficulty going up and down the hills in Edinburgh on crutches,” I said. “Will you be totally mended by August?”

“I had fucking better be,” said Copstick, “otherwise I shall strap myself to a skateboard.”

“The wonderful Tanyalee Davis gave you a lift on her mobility scooter last year,” I reminded her.

Tanyalee Davis gave Copstick a thrilling ride on her mobility scooter at the Edinburgh Fringe last year

“Oh! Tanyalee!” said Copstick with enthusiasm. “I’d love a mobility scooter! Though I suppose I can’t be both the scariest critic in Edinburgh AND a figure of public ridicule as I bump and hum over the cobbles. It’s just not going to happen. I have to be OK by August. You cannot be scary with a walking aid.”

“How about a broomstick?” I suggested.

“Fantastic,” said Copstick. “Or one of those knobbly, gnarly walking sticks. It would look like I might be able to strike you dead with it. Painted black, of course… Or it could be a job opportunity for some young, strong, virile stand-up comedian who feels like earning an extra star on their review to carry me around Edinburgh on their back.”

“An extra star AND a good photo-opportunity,” I said. “Young, virile comics will be lining up to service you.”

“I can but hope,” said Copstick.”

Comedy’s future in London and what is happening in Canada, Japan and Kenya

PTOO last night – Zuma Puma as ‘The Colonel’

Last night, I got three interesting e-mails and saw the best potential TV series not yet on TV – Vivienne & Martin Soan’s monthly live comedy show Pull The Other One in South East London.

The PTOO format is bizarre acts plus one token stand-up comedian, which I think might be the next step in the future of comedy in the UK.

Call me obsessed but, with the apparent decline of straight comedy clubs and the rise of the Cabaret Section at the Edinburgh Fringe, something feels likely to change.

Lindsay Sharman did it by the book last night

Last night at PTOO, the ever-TV-friendly-faced Lindsay Sharman hosted Cheekykita, who harassed the audience in a crash-helmet, then turned into a black hole… wonderfully acerbic (OK – viciously bitter) musical comedian Kate Lucas (who, last month, was crowned Mercury Comedian of the Year at the Leicester Comedy Festival)… the always wonderfully intense Zuma Puma aka Nelly Scott as a wildly OTT Russian colonel… the Greatest Show on Legs with Martin Soan as a psychotic gay sergeant major… Simon Munnery being superbly funny as the token stand-up (You know, when Simon Munnery is the token normal comedian, everything else has to be SERIOUSLY weird!)… and Darren Walsh being extraordinarily punny (last month he won the first UK Pun Championhips) with lots of surreal visual and audio gags meaning he kept well to the bizarre variety act side of normal stand-up.

Peter Morey drew; Simon Munnery performed

While all this went on, artist Peter Morey was drawing his live visual interpretation of the show on the door of the venue as he listened to the acts perform.

The audience included Comedy Store improviser Stephen Frost and new comedy entrepreneur and showman Adam Taffler.

For once in my life, I felt trendy.

Then I went home.

This man is in Vancouver. I do not know him.

There was an unexplained e-mail from this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith. She is currently working in a bookshop in Vancouver. There was no text in the e-mail, just an attached picture. The e-mail was titled Finns and Doukabors have visited the shop. I have no idea what this means.

According to Wikipedia, the Doukabors were a Russian religious sect who emigrated to Canada in the 19th century to escape persecution by the Tsarist authorities. And, according to the 2001 census, over 131,040 Canadians claim Finnish ancestry.

I have no idea what relevance either of these facts may or may not actually have to anything else.

Then I opened an e-mail from British comedian Bob Slayer who, among many other things, used to be a horse jockey (unlikely but true) and managed Japanese rock band Electric Eel Shock (who are descending on Britain next month).

They provided some of the music for the movie Killer Bitch, in which one of them got killed by having a fish rammed down his throat. One of the movie’s online samplers uses their music. (Do not view this adult material if you can ever be offended by anything and – really – NB do not buy from the website named at the end, only from reputable retailers.)

A week ago, Bob Slayer flew to Japan. I had no idea why. Last night’s e-mail explained:

The reason why we are here is our friends Kaori and Jamie are getting married. Kaori was in a London-based Japanese two-piece band called Yumi Yumi. They both helped me out lots in the early days of managing Electric Eel Shock. After that band, Kaori joined Mercury Award nominated The Go Team as guitarist, keyboardist and occasional vocalist. Jamie was the bass player.

DAY 1 – We arrive in Kumamoto after 24 hours travelling. We took a flight from London to Tokyo then several bullet trains. Some of them were even the right ones. The highlight of the wedding food is a plate of raw horse meat, a local delicacy. I will never watch the Grand National in the same way again.

Day 3 – Where did day 2 disappear? A booze and a jetlag fug?

Day 5 – Today we are in Settsu-shi, near Osaka, at the house of Aki Morimoto otherwise known as front man of Electric Eel Shock. He has produced a little boy since I saw him last and Taira (3 years old) and I bond over sword fighting and cartoons of Anpanman, Japan’s most popular anime for kids, where all the characters have heads made out of different flavoured breads. I also build a 7 foot Lego tower.

Day 6 – Osaka’s speciality food is takoyaki and okonimaki – octopus batter balls and a savoury pancake made with chopped cabbage. Both are covered in mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce. It seems that, although Japan spent a lot of its history closed off from the outside world, some imports had a big influence 150 years ago. Barbershop poles are red and white and the Japanese word for suit is ‘Savillrow’.

After this, I opened an e-mail from comedy critic Kate Copstick, currently in Kenya. She told me:

Hoping to be boarding a plane to Britain this time next week, barring any intervening ghastliness.

I am on one crutch and reasonably mobile.

All in all it could be worse.

I think – unusually – she may be under-stating the case.

But that is another story.

How to start & run a successful comedy club – by Ivor Dembina (who knows)

Liam Lonergan: laughing is a serious business

In yesterday’s blog I ran an extract from a chat Liam Lonergan had with comedian and club owner Ivor Dembina for his BA (Hons) course in Creative and Media Writing at the University of Portsmouth.

In this further extract, they talk about running comedy clubs.

Ivor Dembina’s Hampstead Comedy Club in London celebrates its 20th anniversary next month.

______________________________________________

Ivor Dembina – club owner and promoter

Ivor Dembina: At the moment you have a lot of these free gigs. There’s a reason for that. Most people are not going to local live comedy clubs because they’ve been persuaded the only stuff worth seeing is the stuff that’s been on TV. And, as soon as anyone half decent turns up who has a bit of talent, they disappear off the face of the earth…

Liam Lonergan: …onto TV.

Ivor: Yeah. They get signed by an agent and you don’t see them on the club circuit anymore. So the quality of the clubs goes down. So, this is a bit of a drag. But someone goes to a landlord and says: “Look, you have got an empty room up there on a Tuesday night.”

And the landlord says “Yeah I have.”

So you go: “Would you want me to fill it?”

The landlord says: “Yeah. What you gonna do?”

“I’ll put on a free show. I’ll get fifteen comedy acts and they’ll all bring at least one mate. So that’s thirty people. Maybe another ten people will wander in. So I’ll get you forty drinkers. You give me £50 and I’ll organise it.”

So the landlord thinks: “£50… forty drinkers… I’ll ‘ave some of that”.

The landlord don’t give a fuck about the quality of the show. All he cares is that there’s forty people drinking his beer in an otherwise empty room. And that’s why you’ve got all these… There’s no quality control… And any comedian who is any good will soon get depressed by that arrangement. The most each of the fifteen acts can do is five minutes. You never develop. You never get any real critical feedback. The audience aren’t a real audience because 70% of the audience are either other comics or their friends. So no-one’s going to come up to you and say: “Actually. That wasn’t really very good mate”.

The thing about a comedy club is you have to build it.

Anyone – any cunt – you can put this in your thing – any cunt can fill a comedy room. For one night.

But can you fill it so they will come back next week? And will they still be coming back in six weeks’ time?

The answer is… That’s harder.

Not only have you got to have consistently interesting and good quality entertainment but you’ve got to the have the audience leaving thinking: I’m coming back here.

And now people have so many entertainment choices that how often do you go to the same place every week? Also the idea of local entertainment – We always go down to Ivor’s or to Andy’s or to Liam’s on a Tuesday night – that has been kind of eroded by the internet, by TV, by going abroad.

People think: “Where can we go?”

Well, they can go down to the West End or spend Saturday night in Rayleigh or Portsmouth. That, Ah, this is a bit local has gone.

Also what is interesting is that somewhere in the history of this the idea came up that you have to see comedy accompanied by alcohol. There’s now a myth that, in order to enjoy comedy, you have to have a drink. It’s bullshit.

In a way that came about because, in the early days, if you were gonna put comedy on you needed a room and the people who had lots of free rooms were the pubs. So, there was a quid pro quo. You take the money on the door, pay the acts and make a few quid for yourself and they’d sell their beer. So the association between alcohol and comedy got embedded very early on.

But it’s nonsense! You don’t need to be pissed to have a laugh. It’s absolute rubbish. Of course brewers recognised this, so then they reinforced the (mythical) link with all these sponsorship deals and of course the final apotheosis was the Fosters Award.

Liam: So you reckon, even before all the agencies and producers came in and tarnished it all – well, not tarnished it but corporatised it – you think the brewers were…

Ivor: The idea that the more you drink the funnier it will seem is just bullshit. But I’m not blaming the brewers. We collaborated in it. That was the deal. I mean at the Hampstead Comedy Club, my club, it’s still it’s the same. I get the room free because I’m gonna bring in sixty or seventy people who are gonna drink beer. That’s the deal, y’know?

Liam: I was talking to Bob Slayer about his Heroes of Fringe and the percentage of ticket prices that he shares with performers. At the Hampstead Comedy Club… You don’t actually have to answer this, if you don’t want to…

Ivor at Hampstead Comedy Club in January

Ivor: I don’t mind. I don’t care who knows. I pay guarantees. I’ll tell you exactly what the economics are. I have three acts whom I pay £80 each. There’s a compere – who I admit is usually me but if I isn’t it’d be someone else – and I pay them £100. So that’s £340. I pay a door person £60. So that’s £400. I pay the booker £30-£40 a show. So I have costs. The costs of the show are around £450. There is a £10 ticket price. So I have to sell 45 tickets to break even.

Liam: What’s the capacity?

Ivor: Well, it’s just gone down, as it happens. My capacity is now gonna be sixty five. So I’m risking £450 to make £200. So, I’m not doing it to get rich.

Liam: Lewis Schaffer told me, “It’s all still about paying off the Inland Revenue and paying off the mortgage,” but then Bob Slayer said, “If he wanted to do that he could be a salesman and he’d be a very good salesman.”

Ivor: It’s true. But you can get lucky. I mean, over the years certain people they found themselves with a room of, say, two hundred people in a location where people will go and and they’ve kept going. In the past, some promoters have made serious money but not now I don’t think.

Liam: What’s the criteria for booking acts? Or is it just people that you’ve seen and you’ve thought were…

Ivor: Well, when you’re running a club, it’s not the acts. It’s the venue. Do the punters enjoy going there? Obviously you’ve got to put on the best possible entertainment that you can but once people start going to see the acts rather than specifically coming to your venue, the club is finished. You want them to go to your club because:

Oh, Tuesday night we go down the club. They usually have something good down there. Let’s go down the club.

That was the ethos on which the comedy circuit was built.

It is now crumbling away for the various reasons that I’ve described.

… CONTINUED HERE …

Comic Devvo needs money to publish a book for a toilet to save his nan’s house

Devvo – a ‘selfie’ taken in Doncaster yesterday

“So you’re going to publish a book,” I said to Devvo yesterday via Skype. “How come? Surely you can’t read or write?”

“It’s a picture book, John,” he told me. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s a picture book.”

“For children?” I asked.

“Definitely NOT for children,” he confirmed.

“You have to paint your ceiling,” I told him. We were video Skyping. I could see a large crack in his ceiling.

“It’s the spare room,” he said. “We got a lotta work to do on our house.”

“It looks like the House of Usher,” I told him.

“Well, it’s me nan’s house,” he said. “I live in me nan’s house. It’s on the outskirts of Doncaster. It’s all falling apart.”

“Doncaster?” I asked.

“The house,” said Devvo. “She burns coal, me nan does. She burns coal. What the previous owners did was to re-arrange the walls but they did it really badly, so we need lots of money to fix all the things. It’s me nan’s falling-down house that eats all the money.”

“So what sort of book is it?” I asked.

“It’s kind of like a David Shrigley, Chris (Simpsons’ artist) type of silly book with loads of like Devvo-type stories in. There’s life tips, dating tips, there’s…”

“Filter tips?” I suggested.

“No filter tips,” said Devvo, “but I’ve made little stories with me and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ve called him Arnold Shuitzman, because I thought that sounded more fun.”

A book that may save Devvo’s nan’s house

“OK,” I said. “Look. You’re a chav from Doncaster. Writing a book is a bit above your station, isn’t it?”

“I’ve done it,” said Devvo, “because I like pictures and drawing and I want to make some money and people make money selling things. So I thought Let’s make a book to sell.”

“So it’s got photographs?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“And drawings?”

“Yeah. I’ve drawn stuff and I’ve learned how to use PhotoShop a bit and I’ve written stuff and drawn bits and found pictures and put them in PhotoShop and made really cool pictures so people will go Ah, they’re dead funny, aren’t they? Yeah, they’re dead funny!”

“Can you send me a copy of the book?” I asked.

“I can send it to you as an eBook,” said Devvo, “but you have to keep it to yourself because, if you allow these things to be freely available, it would be jeopardising everything and I know what you’re like, giving away things.”

“No, I understand,” I said. “Some of us have been trying to turn our blogs into eBooks for the last two years and I’m two months away from proofreading the first one but, my god, it’s like wading through treacle.”

“That’s why I’ve just done pictures,” explained Devvo. “It just took two weeks to do and it was really fun.”

“So you’re artistic?” I asked. “Or autistic?”

“Bit of both,” said Devvo. “No, I’m not artistic at all. That’s the thing. I’m probably the least artistic out of all the people that exist. But that’s alright. Maybe I’ve found a little talent. Maybe it’s another thing to add to my bow.”

“Your bow?” I asked.

Devvo’s Kickstarter appeal page

“My bow,” said Devvo. “When it’s done, it’s going to be a printed book as well as an eBook. The Kickstarter appeal has done really well. It’s got close to £900. We met our Kickstarter target in 24 hours and it closes on 15th March.”

The book’s estimated delivery is the end of March. If you pledge £10, you get a physical and a digital copy of the book. If you pledge £250, Devvo will perform “at your house, in your house, on your roof, in your car, at your local church. Whatever.” And you also get ten copies of the book.

“So you reached your target in one day,” I said. “What are you going to do with the extra money?”

“Well, this is it,” said Devvo. “It’s clever business with crowdfunding. You put the target at an achievable level and you really want to make more anyway. So it’s all just clever business. I really need to get about £1,000 to make good quality books.”

“So,” I said, “if you get more money than you expected, you’ll make an even better quality product?”

“Well, that’s it,” said Devvo. “That’s it. And it means I get the books cheaper in print which means I can make more of a profit, which is what everyone’s after really, innit?”

“You’re going to sell the physical copies at gigs?” I asked.

“I’m going to sell ‘em at gigs, sell ‘em online. People like to buy stuff, John. I’ve done three gigs in the past two weeks and I’ve sold about sixty T-shirts. I did one gig in Barrow-in-Furness and I got bored of selling T-shirts I was selling that many.”

“There’s nothing else to do in Barrow-in-Furness,” I pointed out. “When I was a TV researcher, I went to Barrow-in-Furness to talk to a man who was blind and wanted to parachute jump. It took forever to get there and, when I did, the weather was overcast, the houses were roughcast and the people were downcast. I think suicide may be an option people in Barrow-in-Furness take to improve their lives.”

“But they were the best people I ever met!” enthused Devvo. “It felt like I were doing a gig to loads of mates I’d just met. It were real good.”

It’s one of them Devvo books that fits in the gap in the toilet

“So who is the audience for your book?” I asked. “Where is the gap in the market?”

“It’s one of them books,” replied Devvo, “that fits in the gap where you think Ah, we don’t need a book there. Like in your toilet. You’re sat on the loo and you need a little toilet read. You’re there for five minutes and you think, Oh, I’ll have a little read of that! It’s just a dead good, dead funny book that people need to have. The main thing I’m excited about is having a copy for myself. I can have a copy of my book in my toilet and have a look at it and laugh at it. Anything else is a bonus, really.”

“Is this book,” I asked, “connected in any way to Bob Slayer’s increasing empire of books, comedy venues and drunken revels?”

“It’s published through the Heroes name,” said Devvo, “and I’m absolutely delighted to be part of Bob’s growing empire and just general, exciting stuff in life, really.

Devvo self-made poster for Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival

“This Friday, I’m playing the Leicester Comedy Festival with Bob – We’re doing Devvo’s Deal or No Dealer gameshow and Bob’s my glamorous assistant and then I think we’re doing the same show at the Bath Comedy Festival together.”

“So Devvo’s on the rise?” I asked. “What can you do after being an internet sensation, a stage sensation and potentially a publishing sensation?”

“I’m starting to become a businessman,” he replied. “When people talk of Devvo in his early years, he’s just stupid, swearing and this, that and other. People don’t allow me to get older, but Devvo’s got better at business. So my plan is to start an empire selling T-shirts and books and all the things people don’t need but need. Filling those gaps.”

A revolution at the Edinburgh Fringe. New Freestival organisers explain what to expect from them and their sponsors

The Fringe is not part of the Edinburgh International Festival

The Edinburgh Fringe is a thing of Byzantine beauty organised by no-one and, within that non-organisation are lots of people organising things. 

I organise the annual highly-coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards at the Fringe. Last year they were the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards. This year, they are the highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards and my blog has taken over the mantle of being increasingly prestigious. Say it often enough and, with luck, people will start believing it.

If I were to attempt to simplify the organisation of the Edinburgh Fringe’s non-organisation, there are venues where you pay in advance (pay venues) and there are ‘free’ venues where you pay nothing to enter but, if you want, you can donate money on the way out (a bit like indoor busking).

There were, until this year, three free organisers:

PBH’s Free Fringe started it all, organised by highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award nominee Peter Buckley Hill.

Around ten years ago, there was then a split in the Free Fringe ranks and the Free Festival began, organised by Alex Petty of Laughing Horse, in one of whose venues I stage the annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show.

Emerging from the Free Festival in the last couple of years has been the Heroes of Fringe Pay What You Want venues run by highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winner Bob Slayer. At his venues, you can either walk in for free or pay for a ticket in advance to guarantee a seat.

Then, back in December, I blogged about another rift in the Free Fringe which has now spawned the Freestival, organised by a hydra-headed committee of performers all of whom, I imagine, aspire to win a highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award.

If you need any more background, I suggest you either take counselling or settle down, take Valium and read the blog I wrote last December about the genesis of the new Freestival group.

On the Freestival website (soon to be re-designed) there are eleven members of “the current committee and helpers” listed.

Last night, four of them – Dan Adams, Sean Brightman, Al Cowie and Alex Marion – explained more to me.

Last night in London (from left) four elevenths of Freestival: Sean Brightman, Dan Adams, Alex Marion and Al Cowie

As they are part of a hydra-headed collective speaking collectively – and, frankly, because I can’t be bothered to differentiate between the four voices on my sound recording – I shall quote what the four of them individually said as coming from a mythical single beast called The Freestival.

“You had a big bust-up with Peter Buckley Hill,” I started. “You suggested ways in which you thought the Free Fringe could be improved.”

“An innocent mistake,” said the Freestival. “In hindsight, we should probably not have done that but, then, we would have ended up doing shows somewhere else.”

“So you would have broken away anyway?”

“We might have gone with Laughing Horse,” said the Freestival, “or Heroes of the Fringe without the hassle.

“With the Free Fringe, it’s PBH’s name on it and however much he’s set up committees in the past, it’s pretty well established it’s always him. With Laughing Horse, it’s Alex and he gets other people on board to help, but it’s him and he works very very hard. Bob Slayer, same thing: he’s keeping it very small – very wise – and he’s going great guns with it but, again, it’s just him.

“We set the Freestival up as a committee and the thing that differentiates us from any of the other free groups is we have an accountant. Plus, should any issues happen, we’ve got some flexibility in the system, because what we’ve done is looked round at who has the expertise in various different areas, so that we can call on them and genuinely use them. None of us knew about accountancy, so we’ve got in a fantastic accountant performer – Gemma Beagley.

“Essentially, we want to bring in the money from outside that will allow us to put on really good free Fringe sh…”

“You can’t use those two words together,” said the Freestival, interrupting itself.

“Free Fringe?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied the Freestival, “apparently it’s illegal for us to use the two words together.

“It’s difficult to describe without using those words,” continued the Freestival. “But essentially what we want a festival full of acts we believe in so we can promote them to the public with genuine honesty. With all due respect, all of the other free organisations are pretty much open to anyone.”

A random plug for Bob Slayer

(Before I get a complaint from Big Bob Slayer, I should point out that, keeping things small, he is very choosy about the acts he allows to perform in his venues.)

“What we have,” continued the hydra-headed Freestival, “is the manpower to select the acts we really want to put on. It’s like running a comedy club where we put on the best acts available to us on the night. So, when people go to a Freestival show, they will know it’s going to be a good show in a good venue. We want all of our venues to be a pleasure to go to. In Edinburgh, for performers and audiences, that’s not always the case. There was one in a toilet last year.”

“There seemed to be some doubt,” I said, “that you had The Tron as one of your venues.”

“We do have The Tron,” said the Freestival. “And The Cowgatehead, which is opposite the Underbelly. Last year it was called The Cowshed.”

“They were both PBH venues last year,” I said.

“Yes. The reason they’re coming with us this year,” said the Freestival, “is that they are directly linked to our sponsor. We do have a sponsor – La Favorita, a chain of Pizza restaurants, a local Edinburgh business. They’re a restaurant group (the Vittoria Group) with a small chain of pizza delivery restaurants. They had a concession outside the Tron Church at last year’s Fringe.”

The new Freestival 2014 logo from sponsors La Favorita

“How many venues have you got,” I asked, “and how many rooms within those venues?”

“We’re currently working on getting around twelve venues,” replied the Freestival.

“Each with multiple rooms?” I asked.

“There might be more spaces, but we’re working towards a 12-venue plan. We’ve got the Cowgatehead, the Tron, St James, which is a brand new venue near the Grassmarket. Inside that, we’ve got two floors with a main room for about 150 people and we’re going to put two rooms on the top floor, each of which will be 60-80. It’s going to be built to our spec.”

“Why are you different from the other free venue organisers?” I asked.

“We want people,” said the Freestival, “to be astounded by how good our venues are. And we want to publicise all of our shows. It’s not enough to just say They’re in our brochure, so that’s our responsibility to them discharged. If both the acts AND we publicise those shows, then all of us benefit.”

“Is that where the sponsor’s money is going?” I asked.

“The sponsor,” said the Freestival, “is paying for the brochures, the publicity costs, the new website and the setting-up of the venues. The acts are spending six months preparing the best show they can create and we don’t think they should have to set up the venue themselves.”

“So,” I asked, “will each of your venues have a venue manager and a sound person?”

“Yes,” said the Freestival, “though there might be a couple of venues that share sound people.”

“Are the sound people free?” I asked.

“There is a small up-front sub,” said the Freestival, “which is on our website. It is £80.”

“What was PBH charging last year?” I asked.

“£3 per each individual day’s performance,” said the Freestival, “and/or you had to organise as many benefits shows as you could for the Free Fringe. If anyone thinks they can find a venue in Edinburgh in August, fully set-up with publicity and technical support as part of the package, for less than £80 over three weeks, they’re welcome to go and take it. What the sponsor’s money allows us to provide is quality venues. And soundproofing wherever possible.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “the sponsor could soundproof the walls with pizzas. You could have the first edible Fringe venues.”

“How we have approached sponsorship,” explained the Freestival, “is How will it benefit what we want to do? NOT How will it benefit the sponsor? The sponsor gets concession stands selling pizzas at a couple of the venues and outside The Tron, exactly as they had last year. They want to get their name seen everywhere because they want to grow as a business and this does that for them.

A random pizza, like the Fringe, full of different ingredients

“Having an accountant and sponsor on board informs the decision-making process, but we have control over any artistic decision. There will be nothing about this does or does not fit the sponsor’s brand. None of that at all. What the sponsor wants is to be part of something which will be good. They have no control over the creative side of things. They are just a conduit to provide us with the ability to stage some really good shows.”

“What about the antagonism from PBH over the split?” I said.

“He wants to shout, he wants to scream at us,” said the Freestival, “but really we’re not here to undermine him. We’re just here because we think there’s another way of doing things that can achieve a better set of results.

“Every year, the Free Fringe grows, every year there’s more venues, more shows and inevitably what that means is that there’s less control over the quality of the venues. What we want to do is keep small, keep to a limited number of venues, keep to acts we believe in, that we can publicise with our whole heart, that we can inter-act with and put them in venues they are happy to play in and the public want to spend time in.

“We have made a conscious effort to make relationships with other parts of the Fringe and the comedy industry in general. Hils Jago of Amused Moose will be running Logan Murray’s comedy courses in our venues.

“Whilst we are another free entity up in Edinburgh,” said the Freestival, “I truly believe there’s room for many more free entities up there and many more different models. All of us really believe in our model but, if other people want to go with different models or to perform in our venues AND in other people’s venues, fantastic for them.”

Comic Martin Soan might be a genius. Comedian Bob Slayer could be a fool.

“I don’t know why Mercedes-Benz have never used that in an advertisement,” Martin Soan said to me yesterday.

A triple-bladed wind turbine as seen on our 12-hour train trip

We were looking at the triple blades of a wind turbine machine in a field somewhere in the former West Germany as we passed during our 12-hour rail trip back to the UK.

It is a simple idea – seeing wind turbine blades and thinking of a ‘green’ ad image for Mercedes-Benz.

But it is a simple, obvious idea which almost no-one else except Martin would ever spot.

Triple-bladed wind turbine as seen by Martin

Which is what makes his comedy ideas on stage so original – performing Michael Jackson’s Thriller wearing five rubber bands; performing the Red Arrows’ aerial acrobatics as the Red Sparrows with giant red cardboard cut-out sparrows, choreographing the Greatest Show On Legs’ naked balloon dance with a handful (and mouthful) of balloons.

Martin Soan in a pub

Martin is currently the official 2013-2014 ‘Fool’ at Muncaster Castle in the UK.

Which came to mind when I woke up this morning to three e-mails from this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith. Attached to the e-mails were three photographs of a man in a jester’s costume in Vancouver.

Arty the Jester in Vancouver, a potential Fool

“Arty would like information about Jester gigs over in the UK,” Anna told me. “Are there any dry castles coming up soon? He just needs a little break from all the men in Vancouver who won’t stop trying to wine and dine him, pick him up at work or get him to pose in the nude for artistic purposes. Here is a picture of him on Denman Street, after a chilly day of performing at the aquarium. I ought to ask him if he would also consider work as a lady lifter.”

“Well,” I replied, “Martin Soan is currently Muncaster Castle’s Fool. It’s the place where Tom Fool used to be jester and is the origin of the term ‘tomfoolery’. See my 2013 blog. Their contest to find a 2014-2015 fool held is on 29th May this year.

Another e-mail in my Inbox this morning was from comedian Bob Slayer, who is running a venue – Heroes @ Hansom Hall – as part of the current Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival.

I would not dare say he is a prime candidate for Fool.

Well, OK, I would.

Bob Slayer at Dave’s Leicester Festival last year

He told me that, last weekend, there was a good-sized audience at his venue waiting to see The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society featuring Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winning Johnny Sorrow.

Bob Blackman was a man who, in the 1970s, became famous for appearing on television and hitting a metal tray on his head while singing the song Mule Train.

Bob Slayer is not a man who is averse to drinking. Excessively.

A few days before last weekend’s show – due to extremely serious circumstances genuinely beyond their control – The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society had sent Bob Slayer an e-mail telling him they would not be able to make the show. Bob had forgotten this.

He had also forgotten he had replied to them in an e-mail, giving his genuine sympathies for their unfortunate reasons.

“This certainly highlights,” Bob told me in his e-mail to me this morning, “the dangers of me responding to my e-mails late at night after a long session ‘testing’ the Brewdog Beers for our bar…”

When Bob Slayer suddenly remembered, moments before the allotted show started, that the Bob Blackman Appreciation Society were not coming, he turned to absurdist comedian Adam Larter and “suggested that we had two options: We can either tell them that the Bob Blackman Appreciation Society has had to cancel and offer to entertain them ourselves OR we simply go on stage and show them what the Bob Blackman Appreciation Society would have done if they had been there… 

There is a clip of the real Bob Blackman Appreciation Society in action on YouTube.

“I picked up the back stage microphone,” Bob Slayer told me in his e-mail this morning, “and began a prolonged introduction from behind the wings, which involved asking the room to select one person to count down from 37, then announced: You may have seen him before, but never quite like this. Please welcome the one, the only, the very real and original Bob Blackman… 

“I bounded out to the closest thing Luke the sound tech could find to Mule Train – well, I think it was a Chuck Berry rock & roll song – and repeatedly banged myself over the head with a tin sign for Brewdog Beers. Adam occasionally wandered back and forth behind me in nothing but a pair of orange tights.”

Later, in what I suspect might have seemed quite a confusing show, Adam became a ventriloquist’s dummy and Bob Slayer tells me that Adam “unexpectedly pulled a bag of skittles out of his tights and ate them” (the skittles).

This seemed a bit extreme, even for Adam, until I realised Bob Slayer meant a bag of Skittles (children’s sweets) not a bag of actual skittles.

Although, on the other hand…

Anyway, Adam then announced to the audience: “I think that maybe you now all know that The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society are unfortunately not able to be here tonight…”

But, Bob Slayer told me this morning, “it seems no-one ever believes that a comedian on stage is telling the truth and the confusion continued. I fuelled the confusion further with the statement: …which is, of course, exactly what an act like The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society would say.”

There is a clip of the original Bob Blackman on YouTube. He is not to be confused with The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society.

“Adam Larter then announced: “We are Not The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society and we are not here tonight…” and, says Bob Slayer, “we continued for at least the next hour with random sound effects from Luke the sound tech.

“There was dancing, chair balancing. impersonations of the audience, complete silence and a whole host of other nonsense. I ended up dressed as a sailor while Adam monologued about the nature of comedy as a faux Jason Manford. We labelled one man The Reviewer and chastised him for his inability to understand comedy and recognise that he wasn’t even reviewing the right act. Joe Davies, Ben Target and Matt Highton joined in towards the end dressed as a builder, a cowboy and a sex god and we did a karaoke singalong of YMCA.

“I hope you will be at the next Not The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society gig, possibly next weekend at Heroes @ Hansom Hall.”

Bob Slayer. Fool? Or shrewd publicist? The jury is out. But possibly not for long.

Juliette Burton + camels. We’re definitely not in Kansas, Toto.

After reading Bob Slayer’s e-mail, I opened the next one in my Inbox. It was from Juliette Burton, en route to Australia to tour her show When I Grow Up. Attached was a photograph of Juliette apparently doing an impression of the Hunchback of Notre Dame with camels behind her. There was no explanation. I think she is in Dubai. She might be on Tatooine. She is definitely not in Kansas any more, Toto.

Has the Edinburgh Free Fringe split apart again? Is it comedy Christianity?

I once had to write an encyclopaedia entry on Christianity in (as far as I remember) 23 lines. This was a nightmare. Almost as soon as it started, Christianity started to splinter apart into sects, sub-sects and competing sub-sub-sects.

Peter Buckley Hill  started it all in Edinburgh

It is becoming a bit that way with the ‘free’ shows at the annual Edinburgh Fringe – which was, itself, an offshoot of the continuing Edinburgh International Festival.

In Fringe terms, a ‘free’ show is one at which the audience pays nothing to go in but can, if they like, donate money on the way out.

As far as organising free shows at the Edinburgh Fringe is concerned, first there was the Free Fringe conceived by Peter Buckley Hill (affectionately called PBH).

Then, splitting from that, was the Free Festival. So, for several years now, we have had the rival or complementary (depending on your viewpoint) PBH Free Fringe and the Laughing Horse Free Festival.

This year, Bob Slayer’s Heroes of Fringe operation started promoting the idea of Pay What You Want shows where you can get free entry to shows or – to guarantee a seat – you can buy a £5 ticket in advance. Bob’s Heroes venues, though separate, amicably co-existed with the Free Festival and were listed in their programme.

Then, a couple of months ago, I blogged about what seemed to be a split within the Free Fringe. PBH’s reaction to his critics from within and what he perceived to be their ‘ultimatum’ was:

Rather than have people trying to take over and change the principles, I will cancel the whole event and wind up the Free Fringe Ltd… I presume the people behind this ultimatum will now want to form their own organisation and start charging for membership so they can pay themselves for their own work, just as they propose in the ultimatum. And in order to do that they’ll capture as many Free Fringe venues as they can. If I consider it worthwhile, I may decide to continue the Free Fringe with the venues that are left to us.  But I do not have to… I’ll carry on if there’s support for the real principles of the Free Fringe. Venues may be difficult, as I already said they would be.  If there is insufficient support, then I shall wind the Company up.

On Tuesday this week, unknown to me, Ian Fox – author of the book How To Produce, Perform and Write an Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show – asked on the Facebook Comedy Forum:

What was the outcome of all the disagreement that John Fleming was writing about in October?

Peter Buckley Hill replied:

The important thing is that the Free Fringe has been accepting applications since November 1st and is going ahead at full strength, as if anybody would seriously doubt that, especially after the success of 2013. The ethos and conditions have not changed in principle.

and staunch Free Fringe supporter Kate Smurthwaite replied:

I don’t think there was an outcome. I don’t even know if anyone’s actually left (though of course many people leave and join the Free Fringe every year). And I’d hardly call it a disagreement. Free Fringe members are welcome to come and go and express opinions as they like. I don’t know why anyone bothers to write about it.

The Laughing Horse Free Festival (not to be confused with the new Freestival) broke away from the original PBH Free Fringe

As of yesterday, though, the non-disagreement appears to have given birth to yet another free show operation currently possibly called the Freestival (not to be confused with the FreeFestival).

A single page website headed Project Free has appeared, following an e-mail yesterday which was not sent to me but which I have seen. It said:

You may have heard that there has been a problem within the ranks of PBH’s Free Fringe. It is true and we have been forced to start a new organisation and we would like you to be a part of it.

Briefly, PBH’s executive board, of which I was a member, collectively wrote a private email to him suggesting changes to improve the organisation. His response was to go public and call us all cunts and black list us. The Free Fringe is a collective where everyone is expected to chip in. In reality, it has been like a building site where there are 20 people standing around drinking tea watching one guy with a shovel. We are the people with the shovels. Our group includes the man who gets all the venues, the fund raisers, the brochure designer, the venue programmers etc. 

Having been forced out of the organisation we loved we decided to start a new one. We would like you to join us. We have most of the best central venues on Cowgate, Nidry St, Blair St and will have the Tron Kirk, the big church at the corner of the Royal Mile and North/South Bridge, as our main hub.

When I saw this e-mail, I asked Peter Buckley Hill if he would like to comment in a response which would be unedited by me.

He replied:

There can be no “rival Free Fringe organisation”; the name Free Fringe belongs to The Free Fringe Ltd.  Whatever any other organisations may wish to call themselves, they are not The Free Fringe.

Someone loyal to (but not a spokesperson for) the PBH Free Fringe (and NB not PBH himself) suggested to me that the breakaway group from the Free Fringe did not actually have agreement to use the venues.

The new Freestival or Project Free’s ‘Mission Statement’ includes these words:

New breakaway group’s ‘Mission Statement’

We operate an open door policy to all groups and performers. We are happy to have our performers appearing on other Fringe platforms… A non-refundable show registration fee of approximately £80 may be necessary, depending on sponsorship, to pay for equipment and professional services, such as advertising and marketing. Shows will be free to enter using a bucket and/or Paypal for donations with other possible advanced paid reservation options still under review…

Sponsorship and support from local companies will pay for a quality brochure print which is distributed to every house in Edinburgh and handed out at train stations and bus stations during the fringe. Acts will be able to advertise their own shows in the brochure. A dedicated communications officer and an efficiently managed, regularly updated social media presence will both be on hand to publicise your shows and further the brand. The brand will be extensively marketed around Edinburgh and in the press before and during the Festival. We are also investigating potential partnerships with external PR companies to get performers discounts on PR management and production.

Festival Fringe – not part of Edinburgh International Festival

Some of this seems a little ambitious for a free shows promoter but it does seem likely there will now be four organisations offering free shows at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe.

This morning, I woke up to a message from PBH – sent at 3.43am – saying:

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. We have responded to our members and applicants via our Facebook page.

This message was posted on the Free Fringe’s Facebook page overnight:

The Free Fringe, popularly known as PBH’s Free Fringe, remains the largest single entity at The Edinburgh Fringe and has so far had over 200 applications from performers for 2014. We have already secured our key venues for next year, including – despite what their email states – the Tron Kirk. Our committee and programming team are looking forward to 2014 and we are looking forward to some brilliant new venues, and performers joining

As should be expected with an organisation of our size, there are those within it who think it should be run differently. They are welcome to that view, and no-one has been barred from the organisation following the ultimatum sent to us by the breakaway group, despite what they claim. If people wish to leave and start their own organisation that again is not a problem, although of course we would expect them to find new venues of their own.

We live in interesting times.

That could either be a good thing, offering more choice to punters keen to see a wide variety of shows – or it could be a Chinese curse on already confused Fringe-goers.

* * * * *

Since posting this blog, someone has asked me if I have any connection with the PBH Free Fringe.

In the past I have staged other people’s shows under the PBH Free Fringe banner. The last was in 2010.

My own annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Shows were initially staged at the Gilded Balloon pay venue but, for the last few years, have been part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival.

My 2011 chat shows were part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival.

My 2013 chat shows came under Bob Slayer’s Heroes of Fringe outfit.

As I understand it, under PBH Free Fringe rules, because I have staged shows in the Laughing Horse Free Festival (and will do so again in 2014) I am banned from staging shows at the PBH Free Fringe.

Can comedian Bob Slayer – infamously Edinburgh Fringey – turn into a cuddly grey-bearded children’s entertainer?

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that comedians often have another ‘day job’.

Around seven years ago, Bob Slayer was managing Japanese rock group Electric Eel Shock when they made a Christmas video in which he appeared as Father Christmas. It was posted on YouTube.

Now Bob has become a real Santa Claus. He started the job yesterday in a grotto under a giant Christmas tree at Whiteley’s department store in London’s Queensway and he will be donning his red-and-white robes there throughout December.

BEFORE…

AFTER…

‘Santa’ Bob with helper elves ‘Ruthy Boothy’ Sarah (left) and ‘Wilma Words’ Christine

I talked to him last night after he finished his Ho Ho Ho duties. He told me he was going to have to think up some more Christmas stories, because some children had come back a second time on this his first day in the role.

“I’d been telling them how reindeer fly and how they have to go to Tromsø in Norway,” said Bob, “and I could see some of the parents looking at me thinking I don’t know this story; this isn’t a real Santa, so I told the children You see, mummies and daddies don’t know about reindeer.”

One Happy Drunk illustration by Rich Rose

And that’s not all.

Tonight, at the Chortle Comedy Book Festival, Bob launches a children’s book he wrote, with illustrations by Rich Rose of comedy duo Ellis & Rose (last referred-to in this blog yesterday a propos their Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show).

“Rich is a brilliant illustrator,” said Bob.

“Remind me what the book is called?” I asked.

“The Happy Drunk,” confirmed Bob.

He financed it by crowdfunding and reached 169% of his target. The title was originally Calpol Is Evil but he changed it – allegedly after he received an alleged letter from solicitors representing the manufacturers of Calpol. Never forget that Bob Slayer won a much-coveted Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award in 2011 for his ‘Cockgate’ stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“What’s the premise of The Happy Drunk?” I asked.

“It’s a children’s book for adults. It’s for Big Kids.”

“Would 14-year-olds enjoy it?” I asked.

Bob’s new book is for Big Babies everywhere – but not lawyers

“I don’t know,” replied Bob. “I think they would, although whether their parents would want them to read it… I’d say it should have a PG rating.

“Actually, I should have put that on the cover!” he laughed. “I’ve only printed 50 so far – as a proof to check they’re OK – so I think I might put PG Rated on future covers.”

“Are drunks happy?” I asked.

“Drunks in comedy clubs,” explained Bob, “get a bad name due to the alcopop drunks that the Jongleurs and Highlight comedy chains get in, whereas the sort of people I like doing gigs to are genuinely happy drunks: people who know what they’re drinking.

“When I do gigs in breweries, they’re drinking nice drink. They’re lively, but they don’t get out of hand; they’re good audiences. They’re people who are in for their drink but also in for their comedy. In the comedy club chains, you get big groups of people and some of them do want to see comedy, but others had wanted to go to the cinema or go bowling; they’re not all committed to watching comedy.

“I’m going to print 1,000 copies of The Happy Drunk initially. Rich Rose is having 300, I’ll put some online and sell the rest at gigs. Writing it was a stopgap, because it’s taking me longer to write my How To Out-Drink Australia book than I thought it would. It’s taking longer to edit.”

Turning a tour into a book is complicated

“You have a problem with people’s perception of you,” I said. “People think you’re always going to be the OTT Edinburgh Fringe Bob Slayer character.”

“Well,” said Bob, “you have to respond to the audience that’s in front of you. I like to think that I can mirror whatever audience is there. If you put me in a golf club, then I’m not going to end up naked – well, unless that’s what they want. There have been occasions when it’s gone out of control and perhaps I have gone the wrong way, but they’re one-off incidents like in Norway, where I got banned from that theatre.

“But, look, the fact was that they had five members of The Cumshots band there. So I’m going to perform to my mates The Cumshots, aren’t I? And they’re a band that invite you to come onstage and ‘fuck for forests’ – I HAD to come off the balcony on a rope. Though the reason I was actually banned was because I opened a bottle of Jägermeister on stage and had a drink and I was unaware how strict the licensing laws are there.”

“Ironically,” I said, “you got a Scottish licence to run your own bar at Bob’s Bookshop during the Edinburgh Fringe. Are you going to do other comedy club bars?”

Comedian; promoter; licensed venue manager; looney?

“Well,” explained Bob, “The reason I could be Father Christmas here was because I had a mostly-free December. And that was because I was going to do a pop-up comedy venue and bar in London – like Bob’s Bookshop in Edinburgh. I looked at a couple of places in Hackney and round East London, but I just ran out of time to get the licensing sorted. So I had kept December free and, when the pop-up club didn’t happen, I put a few club gigs into my diary then this Father Christmas offer came along.”

“So you will be doing other pop-up comedy venues and bars?” I asked.

“I’m doing one at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February,” said Bob. “The programme’s out tomorrow and I’m doing three long weekends, putting on about 30 shows – people like Tom Binns, Devvo, Brian Gittins, Stuart Goldsmith, Phil Kay, Adam Larter, Doug Segal, Ben Target. We’ve got an old chapel in Leicester – Hansom Hall, named after the guy who invented the hansom cab. He designed the building.

“I’m working with a new brewery – BrewDog who are Aberdeen-based. They’re the fastest-growing food and drink company in the UK in the last three years. A really interesting independent brewer. They’re funding themselves by crowdfunding: you can invest in BrewDog. The moment they heard about Cockgate at the Edinburgh Fringe, they said We want to work with you.”

“And then?” I asked.

“I’m trying to be quiet in January to finish writing my Australian book. I’ve got to get the book done for the next Edinburgh Fringe.”

What???

Bob Slayer “trying to be quiet”?

This does not compute.

GORDON’S ALIVE! – Brian Blessed from “Doctor Who” to “Flash Gordon” to taking a real life rocket into space

Tomorrow, BBC TV celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first transmission of Doctor Who.

The real Brian Blessed – an OTT character

Last night, at a special University of Hertfordshire event, the actor Brian Blessed revealed: “I was once asked to be Doctor Who – after (the first Doctor) William Hartnell – but I wasn’t available.”

Yesterday’s event was not a celebration of Doctor Who, but a celebration of the 1980 film Flash Gordon, one of a series of events leading up to next year’s celebrations of one hundred years of film-making at Elstree and Borehamwood where, coincidentally, I live.

Comedian Bob Slayer once told me a story about Brian Blessed.

“I was outside a pub in Soho,” Bob told me. “The Toucan, next to Soho Square. It’s a small pub and a lot of people drink outside of it in the evening. I was on the phone to a friend when who should walk by but Brian Blessed.

“I mentioned this to my friend on the other end of the phone and he immediately suggested that I should shout out Gordon’s alive! like it would be the funniest thing in the world and no-one else had ever shouted that at Brian Blessed.

“I declined, but my friend double-dared me and so, just as Brian disappeared around the corner, I bellowed: Gordon’s alive!

“Brian then reappeared from around the corner and boomed one word back at me at a volume and resonance that made my effort sound like a choirboy whose voice has not broken. The single word he boomed out was a beautifully simple upward-inflecting CUNT!! – and then he was gone again.”

Brian Blessed’s notoriously booming line Gordon’s alive! comes from the 1980 Flash Gordon film.

Flash Gordon (1980) Is it kitsch, cult or cinematic perfection?

He has an overwhelming OTT charm which could persuade anyone that the inside of an active volcano is a suitable place to use as a refrigerator. Last night, he was talking-up Flash Gordon as great art:

“I’ve got a feeling,” he said, “that Flash Gordon is almost perfection. There is such a great style about it and it’s becoming more and more of a… and then, of course, there is the cry Gordon’s alive!

“There were 70,000 people at the O2 Arena the other week for the Metal Hammer Awards for rock bands and I shouted Gordon’s alive! and I had to shout it about fifty times. It is much requested.

“I was at Buckingham Palace last year at the Christmas Concert – because I’m famous – and the Queen came up and said: You know, we watch Flash Gordon all the time, me and the grandchildren, It’s a wonderful film. Would you mind saying ‘Gordon’s alive’?

“So I shouted Gordon’s alive!!!! for her…

“Thankyou so much, she said, very politely.

Brian Blessed grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire and, in the next village was future Star Trek/X-Men star Patrick Stewart.

Brian’s father was a coalminer; Patrick’s was a milkman. Brian says they have been friends since they were nine years old.

Brian Blessed stood on a perch & flew with embarrassing wire

In Flash Gordon, Brian played Vultan, prince of the Hawkmen, sporting a large pair of wings.

“Those wings took half an hour to put on,” he explained last night. “I had dark-skinned make-up with very black hair, black beard and they wanted my teeth very white, like in the 1930s serial. I couldn’t sit in a chair because of my wings, so they built me a perch and all the cameramen and carpenters said Pretty Polly… Pretty Polly as they passed.

“Before you ‘flew’, you couldn’t have breakfast, you couldn’t have lunch – you’d be vomiting. Speaking is really difficult with all these wires on you. I had an extra one on my bollocks. We all had to be lowered down when one person fainted.

“When I was cast as Vultan, I thought of the original comic strip and then I thought of Charlie Chaplin. In some of his films, he had a great big guy who bent lamp posts and beat people up if they didn’t pay their bills and he had big black lines under his eyes and a black beard and a great smile. I based Vultan on that character.

“Then, of course, when I saw the old black & white Flash Gordon serial again, I realised he actually plays Vultan in that and he has a grizzly bear with him all the time. So I said to Dino De Laurentiis  (Italian producer of the 1980 Flash Gordon):

Can I have a grizzly bear?  

But he said Fuck off.

“De Laurentiis was a tough guy, quite a terrifying guy – a bit Mafia. When he came on set, we never got much done because the director Mike Hodges got nervous and the cast and wardrobe and make-up got nervous. When I was doing these flying sequences and Dino came in with his henchmen – you could see their guns – you could see the guns they had under their coats – and the money in sachels… Dino was a very imposing figure. Nobody dared say a word but, when I was hung up on the wires for these flying sequence, I told him:

“Dino! We can’t get anything fucking done! Every time you come in, everybody gets fucking nervous, it’s costing fucking millions. Dino – fuck off!

“Dino laughed and said: He tells me to fuck off!

“I was the only one who could tell him to fuck off.”

The cast was equally colourful.

Ted Carroll as Biro – from England rugby player to pub owner

“The guy with the broken nose – Ted Carroll, who plays Biro – I befriended him,” Brian said last night. “He wasn’t an actor: he used to play wing half for England’s rugby side. He wanted to be seen, so I told him: Keep with me, because they’ve got to put the camera on me. Just keep alongside me.

Now he has a pub in Ilkley in Yorkshire and his pub’s full of photographs of Flash Gordon; you press a button and the film appears.

“We would have done a second Flash Gordon film, but Sam Jones, who played him, was injured in a car crash. The second film was going to be set on Mars and had the Clay Men in it, like the original Flash Gordon serial. And giant lizards. I would be flying around and he would be wounded and I’d be carrying him across the Martian volcanoes, but it never got made.”

Brian is, I guess, a luvvie at heart: lavishing praise on everyone he works with.

Sam Jones: a perfect on-screen bubble of innocence & purity

“Flash Gordon is a very hard part to cast,” he claimed last night. “Like d’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers is a very hard part to cast. You could get lots of handsome actors and put them in as Flash, but he has to have a kind of bubble of innocence, a purity. With Sam, you could put him anywhere and shoot him with the camera from any angle and he was pure, he was heroic. He was the perfect Flash. Just as good as Buster Crabbe in the original 1930s serial.

“And Max von Sydow was wonderful as the villain Ming The Merciless. He told me: I don’t know what to do, Brian, and I told him Use your hands. Use your hands, because you’re a magician and you’re sexual: use your hands. So he used his hands quite beautifully.”

Brian is known for being a larger-than-life, totally OTT character but says: “In my sixty years as an actor, I think I’ve only ever played three or four characters that are over-the-top – in Blackadder, Flash Gordon and Blackbeard. Now, 50% of my life now is exploration and 50% is acting.

“Hamlet says acting is holding a mirror up to Nature, holding a mirror up to life. But, of course, climbing Mount Everest or going to Mongolia or the North Pole IS life – and there is a huge difference. Acting is a great art, but you are pretending.

“I had Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi and Ken Branagh in front of me and I said this and they said Yes, Brian. You have to pretend. You’re not real. But going up Mount Everest and going into space and going on adventures IS real.

Brian Blessed, adventurer, climbed Everest without oxygen

People say: “Isn’t it dangerous, Brian, going to the North Pole? Isn’t it dangerous going up Mount Everest without oxygen?

“Yes yes yes. But I think the greatest danger in life is not taking the adventure. You’ve gotta go for it.

“I am fucking bored shitless with all this crap about age. Forty is very young. It’s not how old you are – it’s how you are old.

“I’m 77 and next year I’m going back to Everest. In Moscow, I’ve just completed 800 hours in the centrifuge, in the hydra, in MiG-29s… and I am now a completely, fully-trained cosmonaut and I’m going to the International Space Station…”