Comedy critic Kate Copstick teaches me about beautiful male and feline genitalia

Copstick in Mama Biashara after the Grouchy Club Podcast

Yesterday afternoon, with Kate Copstick newly returned to London from Kenya, we recorded our weekly Grouchy Club Podcast.

Because there was a loud African band playing live in the performance space at the back of her Mama Biashara shop in Shepherd’s Bush. we went to a nearby cafe for the recording.

A man was sitting alone at the next table. This becomes relevant later on.

As normal, we did not discuss in advance what we might talk about. I just switched my iPhone on and started recording. Seven minutes into the 25 minute podcast, we had reached this point…

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COPSTICK
I have to say…

JOHN
You don’t have to say… You don’t, you don’t.

COPSTICK
No, I do. I feel I have to say that…

JOHN
Hold yourself back for once.

COPSTICK
… I have never thought testicles… even the late, great and ever-increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee’s bollocks – They were extraordinary, but they weren’t beautiful – I’ve never seen a beautiful pair of human bollocks. I’ve seen a couple of very beautiful penises, but bollocks are not beautiful.

But my cat in Kenya. His little bollocks, they were beeauutiful!. Under his tail, obviously, there was the arse…

JOHN
Obviously.

COPSTICK
Then, under the arse, it was like a little heart-shaped pouch, a little heart-shaped furry pouch. And then, just under the little heart-shaped furry pouch, was another tiny little hole which I only noticed because, when I used to tickle his tummy, he used to get a tiny catty erection.

JOHN
Are we talking about a cat with two anuses here – two ani?

COPSTICK
No. It was just a little hole where his willy comes out. It retracts, John, when he’s not using it.

JOHN
He has a concave willy?

COPSTICK
No. There’s a little… It’s like… Oh, for God’s sake, I give up. Anyway, it was…

JOHN
I think you should continue the It’s like sentence.

COPSTICK
It was very cute.

JOHN
It’s like… Come on, I want you to carry on that sentence. It’s like…

COPSTICK
Well, men’s penises retract. Most animals’ penises retract almost totally. You’ve seen a horse. Even a horse, with its massive penis, it retracts for the sake of safety.

JOHN
It doesn’t retract. It shrinks.

COPSTICK
It retracts, also. It kind of gets hooked up. Fish. Most male animals. It gets almost totally sucked back up into the body with a little bit poking out. And my little cat has a little tiny, kind of…

JOHN
My Little Cat. There could be a toy range to be had here.

COPSTICK
…little glabial tissue.

JOHN
What’s a glabial tissue?

COPSTICK
Or glabular. What’s it called? Globulus? Glabrous? Glabrous. It means tissue with no hair. Like…

JOHN
Bald. There’s nothing wrong with being bald.

COPSTICK
Yes. Like, like, like… the tissue on your willy.

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It was around this point that the man sitting alone at the next table in the cafe moved away with his cup to another seat. It was by the window. I guess he wanted to look out at the traffic driving past Shepherd’s Bush Green. We continued talking. The full podcast is HERE.

The West 12 Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, London

There will be a live Grouchy Club meeting/show this Tuesday at 6.30pm in the performance area at the back of the Mama Biashara shop in the West 12 Shopping Centre at the south east end of Shepherd’s Bush Green. Mama Biashara is in among the shops by the back end of Morrison’s supermarket. I mention this as the Mama Biashara website is down.

As with our Grouchy Club events at the Edinburgh Fringe, anyone can come. Entry is free.

Tuesday 13th October
Tuesday 10th November
Tuesday 8th December
Tuesday 22nd December

All at 6.30pm

These are not shows where the audience sits and watches. They are aimed at people in showbiz and the media who want to chat about the business and anything else that comes up. Or, as yesterday, talk bollocks. Anyone can come along. A real chat show meeting. A chance to interact with the doyenne of British comedy critics and some fat, slaphead comedy blogger. We are open to anything including occasional live comedy performances.

Luca Cupani (bottom left) at the SYTYF Awards in Edinburgh

This Tuesday Luca Cupani, winner of this year’s So You Think You’re Funny? award at the Edinburgh Fringe will be performing new material for his Fringe show next year. But it’s mainly chat between the audience, Copstick and me. 

Or Copstick just talking bollocks.

Cats on castors, dogs on wheels and Russian amputee mail order brides

Dog wheelchair illustrated on doggiewheelchair.com

Yesterday, I blogged about my eternally-un-named friend’s desperate search for a slug-slaying hedgehog. I quoted what she said at a garden centre near St Albans. But I recorded more there.

I tend to quote people directly in these blogs. That is because I record them on my iPhone. But I always make sure they know they are being recorded.

However, I made an exception at the garden centre.

I was sitting having tea when my eternally-un-named friend said to me: “I’m just going to ask where you get hedgehogs from,” and off she went to the Information Desk.

After she had gone, I started listening to three people sitting at a neighbouring table. A middle-aged woman was talking. At the point I switched on my iPhone, this is what she was saying:

“He’s obviously shifted his centre of gravity so his leg, to compensate, is now in the middle of his bottom, instead of being on one side. It looks just like it’s a toy dog with two legs at the front and one at the back. And he goes along! It was only a week ago and he’s still wearing a collar because the stitches are all fresh, but he was shooting round the garden.

“The trouble was he hadn’t been able to use his other leg for so long, he was helpless, it was useless. That’s why it had to come off. So I suppose it’s nicer for him now. He’s not dragging this other leg around.

“It’s like he’s a toy on wheels. It’s something I’ve always wanted to see. Like a cat on castors. I suppose, at some time, someone must have amputated a dog’s legs and put wheels on them.

“Talking of which I think Karl, my cat, has got some wasting disease because he can lift his tail a the end of the day about halfway up but, in the morning, it won’t rise. He’s got quite a lot of wasting in his back. I mean, he’s not in pain, but there’s something going on.

“When you stroke him and play with the end of his tail, he’s totally unaware of it until you get about halfway up and then he’s got some sensation again. It’s like the last six inches is dead. If he trails it around, it gets dirty.

“When he walks over the chair, he arches his back a bit. He does look old. He looks tatty, but he’s very bright and bossy-eyed. No, that’s wrong.”

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” suggested one of the other people at the table.

At this exact point, my eternally-un-named friend returned from the Information Desk with news of hedgehogs.

But, frankly, I was more interested in hearing more of amputee cats and dogs.

Afterwards, I found there is a London-based website called DogsWheels.com which has pictures of and supplies accessories for – as the name implies – dogs whose legs have partly been replaced by wheels.

Their inspiration was Eddie’s Wheels in Massachusetts, who commendably supply mobile devices for paralysed dogs, cats and sheep. Their slogan is: WE TEST OUR PRODUCTS ON ANIMALS.

Finding this sub-culture was akin to, years ago, stumbling on the Russian Amputee Mail Order Bride site (which had been recommended as mildly eccentric by an article in the Daily Telegraph). Sadly, shortly afterwards, the entirely serious Russian Amputee Mail Order Bride site (it did what it said in the title) was taken over by a porn site and much spam ensued.

It seems unlikely that DogsWheels.com or Eddie’s Wheels will suffer the same fate, but non-one can tell how far human foibles will stretch.

Eddie’s Wheels has a video on YouTube HERE.

Normal for Norfolk – cat wrestling and drinking sheep

Norwich comedian Dan McKee read my recent blog about Steve Coogan’s planned film Paul Raymond’s Wonderful World of Erotica and my stories of wrestling bouts in the Raymond Revuebar entrance lounge and a cheetah which was trained to strip the underwear off girls with his teeth.

“There used to be an old wrestler up here in Norwich,” Dan tells me, “who drank in a very strange pub I frequented called the Ironmongers Arms. He was called ‘Bear’ and he once told me a story about wrestling in a strip club in what he called ‘naughtly Soho’ down in London.

“One night, when Bear was halfway through a bout with another wrestler in this club, a ‘fucking massive cat’ leapt into the ring and, not wanting to break the ‘kayfaybe’ of the moment, he ended up wrestling the beast for a few minutes before it got bored and walked off.”

This does, indeed, sound like the Raymond Revuebar, but the Ironmongers Arms in Norwich appears to be just as bizarre. For starters, Dan tells me it is the only pub in the UK with that name.

“The peculiarities of the old Ironmongers Arms knew no bounds,” Dan tells me. “The landlord had no tongue, but he did have a pet jackdaw which hopped around the bar and Friday night entertainment consisted of a young lady singing the hits of Tina Turner. She didn’t sing to karaoke tracks but actually sang over the original Tina Turner records on the juke box and she just tried to sing louder than Tina’s vocals.

“Then there was the night somebody brought a sheep in for a pint. We asked him why he had come in with a sheep and he replied: Well, I couldn’t very well leave it at home.

“As we couldn’t fault his logic, we didn’t ask any more questions. We always hoped he might come in again, but he never did.”

I worked in Norwich for two years. This sounds relatively normal.

(There is more about the sheep mentioned in this blog in a 2013 posting…)