The censorship and re-writing of dead authors’ books in our Newspeak era…

(Photo by Freddy Kearney via UnSplash)

I was once peripherally involved in someone else’s non-fiction book – to repeat… This was a factual, non-fiction book.

The writer described a Northern bar which I guess you can best imagine as a traditional Irish bar. It was long, narrow and dark with almost no exterior windows. I actually went up to see several of the locations in the book myself – including this one – and it was an excellent description of the old-fashioned bar. 

When the high-profile publisher (we are not talking about a minor publisher here) received this part of the manuscript, he took it into his head to ‘improve’ it.

So he changed the description to an open area with tables and chairs and the sun streaming in through the windows, making the drinking glasses glint and sparkle. He was, in effect, describing the lounge bar of a modern South East English pub, not the actual Northern bar which was being described as it was in the 1960s.

A verbal fight ensued over this change and other attempted interferences in the manuscript of this factual, non-fiction book.

The major publisher’s view was that not every fact had to be correct in a non-fiction book. I am not in any way distorting that opinion as expressed to me.

When the book was eventually published, it became a bestseller and not a single word or comma had been changed from the manuscript (except for I think one change, made for legal reasons – the book was read by two separate legal eagles).

The reason the publisher could not – in the vernacular – fuck up the author’s work was that the author was still alive. 

My understanding of standard publishing contracts is that the publisher has to accept 100% of the text submitted by the commissioned author (unless they can claim the quality is not up-to-standard or there are legal reasons).

The writer owns the text. The publisher owns and can choose and change the cover and the blurb on the cover. As I understand it.

Pity the poor author, then, who dies. If the publisher can successfully bully the dead author’s estate, they can – in the vernacular – fuck up the author’s work any which way they want. Or the money-grabbing estate can try to (in their minds) maximise their sales by changing the author’s text.

Thus the furore recently over changes to Roald Dahl’s children’s books.

The Guardian reported that:

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Augustus Gloop, Charlie’s gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which originally was published in 1964, is no longer “enormously fat,” just “enormous”. In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman”.

The word “black” was removed from the description of the terrible tractors in 1970s The Fabulous Mr Fox. The machines are now simply “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”.

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Apparently Roald Dahl, when alive, threatened to never write another word if his publishers ever changed his language. The Guardian reported that, in comments made 40 years ago, he promised to send his “enormous crocodile” – the character in his eponymous novel – to gobble them up if they did so.

Now he is dead, of course, his work can be shat upon willy-nilly.

Apologies if the word “willy” is offensive.

Today, the Sunday Telegraph reports that the James Bond books are now being censored by their publishers and made more ‘acceptable’:

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Ian Fleming – Never the most PC of authors

In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”

Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated.

The original passage read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”

The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”

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Arguably, the publisher is not, in this case, wholly to blame. The Telegraph reports:

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Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the company that owns the literary rights to the author’s work, commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.

The Telegraph understands that a disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will read: 

“This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.

“A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”

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Sibling is Watching You!
(Photo by Arno Senoner via UnSplash)

Somewhat bizarrely, references to the “sweet tang of rape”, “blithering women” failing to do a “man’s work” and homosexuality being a “stubborn disability” … remain.

I look forward to all the morally dubious sex and sadistic violence being removed from the James Bond books and their re-marketing as period travel guides.

Presumably there will also be revisions to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four with ‘Big Brother’ being changed to ‘Brother’ or, as someone else suggested to me, to the more acceptable, less sexist and more Newspeak-friendly ‘Sibling’.

What UK comedy ‘Godfather’ Malcolm Hardee thought of Jerry Sadowitz…

Jerry Sadowitz’s Edinburgh Fringe show and his upcoming, now fast-selling-out UK tour…

As the Jerry Sadowitz row at the Edinburgh Fringe is still rumbling on (see my previous three blogs), below is an extract from the late Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake.

Jerry in Malcolm Hardee: 25 Years in Showbiz, a 1990 variety show I produced for Noel Gay TV/BSB

Note: This book was published in 1996 and, despite several heads-ups and complaints over the years, amazon.co.uk still has the book listed with a totally irrelevant description from someone else’s academic book page.

I imagine Malcolm would have approved.

Note also that, at the time the book was written, Jerry had a tendency to randomly bill his name as both Jerry Sadowitz and Gerry Sadowitz.

You can’t keep a good anarchic comedian down.

So, what Malcolm said in his 1996 autobiography…

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Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography

The most talented performer who never made it is probably Gerry Sadowitz, because he is a genuinely gifted magician-comedian. I recently read Alexei Sayle quoted as saying he thought Gerry was the only current comic genius.

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The first time I delved into management was with Gerry Sadowitz and, like most managers, I was also his agent, although he did get some bookings from other agents.

I first saw him when he came down to The Tunnel Palladium. His act was brilliant. A breath of fresh air. He just launched into a tirade of abuse.

This was at a time when, to be considered funny,  all an alternative comedian had to do was to say that Mrs Thatcher was horrible and Barry Manilow had a big nose – which is itself a Gerry Sadowitz line. 

Gerry came on stage at the Albany Empire in Deptford, which had an extremely ‘politically correct’ Arts Centre audience. And he started his act with: 

“Nelson Mandela. What a cunt!” 

But you had to realise he was deliberately doing it to upset that particular type of audience. And they WERE upset. He was on for two nights and, on the second night, they picketed the place. It was all water off a duck’s back to Gerry. I never knew if he really meant half of it or not. He is a very complex character, to say the least.

When he’s good he’s very, very good, but he gets black moods. A year ago, I saw him for the first time in ages in a curry house in the East End, which I’d introduced him to years ago. He came in with this woman and just didn’t speak. He looked at me and went: 

“Ugh!”

He just grunted and sat down. Another time he might go: 

“Oh! Malcolm! Hello – How are you?” 

Very strange chap. 

He doesn’t drink.

Sometimes, he’d do a really good show and come off stage in a really horrible black mood. Another time he’d have one of the worst reactions ever and he’d come off and be as happy as anything. I think he hated success, really. I had to almost pull him out of cars onto the stage sometimes. He refused to go on loads of times and his later agents Avalon had the same problem with him. 

Once, in Edinburgh, he was asked to perform five minutes on the Pick of The Fringe programme on BBC TV Scotland. Michael Leggo was directing it. I hadn’t met him since we were childhood neighbours in Lewisham. When I turned up, Arnold Brown was remonstrating with Gerry, who was refusing to go on. We cajoled him and threatened him and, in the end, he agreed to do it only if he could do what he wanted because he was obviously going to be heavily censored. They filmed his act with the Cunts and Fucks and everything in, then edited it with beeps. The result was like watching Gerry Sadowitz but listening to jokes in Morse Code.

The first year I took Gerry up to Edinburgh, his advert in the Fringe Programme was something like: 

GERRY SADOWITZ – GLASWEGIAN COMIC MAGICIAN.

A MAN WHO’S HAD HIS ACT 

COMPLETELY RIPPED-OFF BY BING HITLER.

Bing Hitler was the stage name of Craig Ferguson. 

Gerry had told everyone about Bing Hitler ripping-off his act and I quite sincerely believed it. 

Craig Ferguson was up there in Edinburgh, being represented by Vivienne Clore, a big high-powered agent who later became my agent. Craig wanted to sue the Fringe Society and Gerry for libel, which meant I was going to be sued because it was me who’d put the advert in. As I dug deeper into it, I couldn’t find one example where Craig Ferguson had actually nicked any line. 

They’d started off at around the same time at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and, at the time, Craig Ferguson was doing witty songs on the guitar. Possibly Craig was influenced by Gerry’s style and started doing things where he said: I hate this… and I hate that…. but that was as near as it got. 

Craig Ferguson had a record out as Bing Hitler and there wasn’t one line of Gerry’s on it. He would have won his case but what was decided in the end was that the Fringe Society fined Gerry and he didn’t get his Fringe Club ticket money, which upset him greatly. I think it would have been about £1,500. 

I arranged a meeting between the two of them at which Craig said he didn’t do it for the money and he agreed to give the money to a charity of Gerry’s choice.

I took Gerry up to the Edinburgh Fringe twice. He’s a Glaswegian, so he hates Edinburgh because of that. Or, at least, he feels and sounds Glaswegian. 

He was actually born in America and has an American passport. His dad was an American who split up from Gerry’s Glaswegian mother. Gerry came over to Glasgow when he was very young and later said he had hardly any schooling because he had a serious medical condition which he insisted was coprophilia. He spent a lot of time in hospital, which is where he started to learn magic. He spends hours and hours perfecting magic tricks. He’s written books on it and writes for a monthly magic magazine about new tricks he’s invented. He’s a very clever bloke. 

He was very difficult to handle but I stayed with him because he was so good and everyone wanted him. There was a point where the phone didn’t stop ringing but a lot of the time he wouldn’t do the work. One day it would be because he wasn’t offered enough money; another day he’d travel the length of the country for next-to-nothing.

It didn’t make any sense. 

Once, before he’d become high-profile, I had a phone call from Sheffield University and they were offering him £300 for a show, which was good in those days. Most comics were going out for £100. He asked if it included travel or accommodation but it was an ‘all-in’ fee and he said: 

“No! I’m not doing it!” 

About two hours later, Sheffield Polytechnic rang up and offered him £200 plus travel and accommodation. In those days, travel and accommodation came to £40-£50. I phoned him and he said: 

“I’ll do it!” 

So he accepted the £240-£250 and turned down the £300. 

The amount of money wasn’t the most important thing. They could have offered him £3,000, I reckon, and he’d have turned it down if it meant he had to get on that train and fork-out money for his own ticket and sort out some accommodation. He had a syndrome where small amounts of money seemed an enormous amount, but enormous amounts didn’t mean anything. 

There was a point in his career where he was earning a lot. He earned £6,000 for one Avalon gig at the Clapham Grand, got paid in cash, was in the car with the bloke from Avalon, driving back and the car broke down. The bloke from Avalon asked Gerry if he’d lend him the £12 cab money to get home and Gerry wouldn’t lend it to him. He had £6,000 in his pocket that the bloke had just given him. But the £12 seemed like a lot of money to Gerry.

One of the unsettling things about him was he didn’t seem to know the difference between night and day and he’d ring me up at 4.00am to say someone had nicked one of his lines. 

He was also a very male-orientated comedian with much of his material being deliberately misogynistic. He once told me he wanted to play to an audience full of men and I said he probably would do if he ended up in Nick. He wanted to fill Wembley Stadium with men. It was just one of his ideas. He also wanted to do a show where the audience didn’t pay to get in: they just all brought him presents. I thought that was quite a good idea.

He was never unbookable in live venues. There were always people willing to book him. But on TV he was said to be unbookable. Eventually, he did get his own TV series, but it didn’t work. The whole thing about Gerry was the shock and the outrage, which you can’t do on TV – not to the level he did on stage.

(…SORT-OF CONTINUED HERE… What happened when I produced The Last Laugh with Jerry Sadowitz, a one-off  TV comedy special…)

President Obonjo on the Pleasance’s dangerous Edinburgh Fringe decision

Benjamin Bankole Bello, who performs comedy as President Obonjo, is rather concerned by the Pleasance venue’s banning of comedian Jerry Sadowitz’s show at the Edinburgh Fringe…

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For well over 11 years I have performed as self-exiled dictator, President Obonjo, living in the UK – bombastic, loud and terrorising the audience – a great conduit for jokes.

The press statement from the Pleasance included this:

“In a  changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged”. 

This has more implications for Character Comedy than Straight Stand Up. There is a difference and I have always believed that, when performing Character Comedy, you can get away with anything you say on stage… and I mean absolutely anything.

Displaying the characteristics of a dictator on stage has been warmly received over the years, The audience automatically assume he is a tribute act of the late Field Marshall Idi Amin. 

They know what to expect once they attend the show. They could end up with their heads in a fridge. They are expecting to be shot for comedy effect

The audience “could end up with their heads in a fridge…”

President Obonjo will never get his knob out to the audience, do racist, sexist or homophobic material. But audiences who come to see him know what to expect.

Dictators use intimidation, terror and the suppression of fundamental civil liberties.

He is likely to bring a gun out and threaten to use it, grab a woman and ‘marry’ her in front of an audience. He may threaten to waterboard an audience if they don’t laugh.  

Audiences have continued to accept this brand of comedy.

This statement from the Pleasance opens a can of worms for character comedy.

Saying something in character that is not in alignment with the organisation’s views could get your show cancelled.

Would President Obonjo survive performing at the Pleasance, if given the opportunity to do so, using the above characteristics? 

In fact, he did perform at the Pleasance as part of a compilation show AAA produced by Bound and Gagged in August 2019.  

The act has taken a new direction since 2019. What he says now is different from what he said in 2019. 

One of the President’s confidants recently said: “I think you need to go darker with your audience. They are  expecting it. You should do it and go darker.”  

I think the West is now so confused about Freedom of Speech, it is clearly exhausted with democracy.

President Obonjo (ironically) is the man to defend freedom of speech.

Jerry Sadowitz, “freedom of speech” and The Pleasance paving the Road to Hell…

(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS AT LEAST ONE OFFENSIVE WORD; DON’T READ FURTHER IF IT IS GOING TO SCARE YOU)

Jerry Sadowitz’s 1987 album Gobshite

The aftershock of The Pleasance venue cancelling the second of Jerry Sadowitz’s two comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe rumbles on.

Yesterday’s blog was a transcript of what I said in an interview with LBC Radio yesterday morning.

As a reminder, the venue’s jaw-dropping Doublethink ‘explanation’ for cancelling Sadowitz’s show was:

“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his (Jerry Sadowitz’s) first show is not acceptable… This type of material has no place on the festival and the Pleasance will not be presenting his second and final show.”

After criticism, the venue has now issued a second carefully-worded (I emphasise carefully-worded) statement including the frankly chilling: 

“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”

I have italicised “whether performed in character or not”.

As people who have actually seen Jerry Sadowitz shows over the last 30 years know (as opposed to those who have not seen the act) his confrontational delivery sets out to affront. It is clear he is being offensive as an act, for an effect.

He used to open his shows with: “Nelson Mandela – What a cunt!” presumably just to set the tone while the esteemed Mr Mandela was alive.

The Pleasance knew that Jerry Sadowitz’s act was – and would be – confrontational and intentionally offensive. Always has been. Indeed, it was advertised by Jerry and by The Pleasance as such. And they have staged his shows before. 

The Pleasance stages theatrical performances as well as comedy.

To repeat with additional italicisation:

“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”

This means – and, yes, it can only logically mean – that character comedy such as Al Murray’s comic creation The Pub Landlord and Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge character should not be allowed to express their ‘unacceptable’ stories and views.

Both on-stage/screen characters often express views which are not the performer’s. Jerry Sadowitz’s on-stage performances – though more extreme – also include views which are equally and clearly not his own. 

First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the stories and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing. 

“…stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged…” 

Vast swathes of British drama would presumably be deemed unacceptable because to express offensiveness would itself be unacceptable, even if the offensiveness expressed was by a character. That’s the end of parody, satire and irony, then. Context becomes irrelevant.

A drama – or indeed a comedy – about Hitler would not and should not be allowed to include the character of Hitler expressing any racist views. So Hitler’s thoughts and beliefs could not be shown to be vile because the thoughts and the expression of those thoughts would be in themselves too offensive to utter.

Last night on GBNews, Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation, with comics Leo Kearse and Josh Howie, discussed The Pleasance’s first steps on the Road to Hell.

Andrew Doyle is a former writer for the comedic Jonathan Pie character.

Someone I know tells me they won’t watch this clip because they won’t watch (their words) “right wing” GBNews.

For those who won’t watch the nationally-transmitted GBNews, at one point Andrew Doyle, who is gay, says: 

“There’s always something in a Jerry Sadowitz show that makes you think: That’s too far! He couldn’t possibly have just said that!

“And that’s the point. That’s the context.

“I remember sitting there watching him do this TEN MINUTE rant about the evils of homosexuals and the disgusting things that they get up to behind closed doors and it was hilarious and (in theory) so offensive to people like me.

“He’s also incredibly anti-Semitic. He’s Jewish!

“That should give you a clue about what he’s doing there…”

Later, Doyle says:

“I heard, by the way, that the complaints mostly came from members of staff at the venue.”

I have no way of knowing if that’s true but, according to the BBC, The Pleasance said that “unacceptable abuse” was later directed towards some staff on Saturday from people phoning to criticise the cancellation.

Some members of the public complained about the show, so it was cancelled…

Some members of the public complained about the show being cancelled, so did The Pleasance bow to their individual views? No.

Presumably The Pleasance places more importance on the opinions of their temporary staff on the night and after the night than on the reportedly 600 punters who chose to pay to attend and see the show, which had up-front warnings from both The Pleasance and Sadowitz about it being offensive.

Incidentally, the show was titled: Not For Anyone…

Yesterday, Jerry Sadowitz put a video online promoting his upcoming comedy tour…

…and he also Tweeted, via @RealJSadowitz, a comment on The Pleasance’s actions.

“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his first show is not acceptable…”

“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”

First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing.

The road to Hell is paved with right-on thoughts…

Next step: the book burnings.

(…THERE IS AN ADDENDUM TO THIS BLOG HERE…)

Facebook attacks the long-established UK tradition of a ‘banger-up-the-bum’

It seems to have taken six months for Facebook to decide that sticking a banger up your bum is unacceptable. This message arrived just before 07.00am this morning (UK time). Bad news for fans of football and Chris Lynam…

The above was posted in a members-only Facebook group for fans of the late comedian Malcolm Hardee.

I think the picture of England football fans in Leicester Square during the Euro 2020 Championsip was taken from the UK newspaper Metro – owned by Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail – or possibly from the BBC News website, though I can’t quite remember. It was also published online by the Daily Mail itself.

I can’t help but feel this frown from Facebook demonstrates a cultural gap between UK (possibly European) and US sensibilities. Sticking a banger-up-your-bum is a commendably British tradition which started in the 1980s – 40 years ago.

Comedian Malcolm Hardee, in his 1996 autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake, tells how the revered banger-up-the-bum routine originated…

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One of the most popular acts with any Tunnel audience that enjoyed General De Gaulle was Chris Lynam, who had been so kind to me when Pip was ill.

He was in The Greatest Show on Legs at one point and we were all sitting round saying:

“How can we follow The Balloon Dance? We’re all naked. What can we do? We just have to walk off stage. There’s no way to finish it!”

“Well,” I said, “You might as well stick a banger up your arse!”

“Good idea!” Chris said: “You do it!”

So I was the first one to do it. But I only did it once.

You don’t actually stick the banger up your arse, you just clench it between your buttocks, then light it. I didn’t have the necessary muscle-control. It drooped a bit and set light to the hairs on my testicles. I said to Chris:

“You’d better do it”.

So now the finish to his act involves putting a firework up his bottom, then an extravagant version of There’s No Business Like Show Business starts playing on loudspeakers, the firework is lit, goes off and he exits the stage trailing glorious sparks. Sometimes it’s a three-stage Roman Candle shooting forth increasingly spectacular jets of silver sparkles. Good finish. Difficult to follow.

The first year he did it in Edinburgh, we were playing a little pub called The Comedy Boom. It wasn’t very big, but we got the Banger Up The Bum routine passed by a Fire Officer called Maurice Gibb. That’s his real name. It just is. We did the routine the first night then the landlord said he wouldn’t let us do it again. He said:

“You’re not doing that in my pub!”

I said we’d compromise. At the end of our show, we’d take the audience outside and do it in the street. So we did that the second night and it wasn’t just the audience from the show who were there: it drew a bit of a crowd. The landlord said:

“No! You’re not doing that again. It’s bringing my pub into disrepute!”

So we had to video the routine and show the audience the video and it wasn’t the same.

On the last night of our run, I decided we’d do it again for real. We’d been paid already, so fuck the landlord. I was sick of it. We’d had other rows about our act – obviously.

So Chris Lynam bought an extra-large firework.

That night – banger in the bottom – light it – No Business Like Show Business – and it set the pub alight. Just the wall. A bit of plaster. It wasn’t much damage. But some people…. moan, moan, moan.

The next year, The Greatest Show on Legs played The Assembly Rooms, the big, prestige venue at the Edinburgh Fringe. Same thing again. The Fire Officer passed it. First night went without a hitch. Lovely. On the second night, for some reason, it set off all the fire alarms in The Assembly Rooms and they had to evacuate the entire building – about 3,000 people had to evacuate, including our audience and some Russians who were doing a four-hour play and only had three minutes left to go.

We were all standing around outside The Assembly Rooms – a motley crew – when the fire engines turned up with Maurice Gibb. He was there, ready with the hose. Then he saw me naked, saw Chris Lynam, and said:

“Banger up the bum?”.

“Yes,” I said.

“Hoses away, lads!” he said.

And off they went.

The Russians – fair play to them – went back upstairs and did the last three minutes of their play.

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YouTube has a clip of Chris Lynam’s routine, as shown nationally on France’s Got Talent in 2014…

Kevin McGeary on writing satiric Chinese-language comedy songs

I talked to musical performer and writer Kevin McGeary about how and why he came to “write controversial songs in the world’s largest authoritarian state” (his own turn-of-phrase). 

He got in touch with me because he had read my blog chat last November with Kunt & The Gang.

Coronavirus conversations via Skype are becoming the norm. He was self-isolated in his flat in Manchester while I was self-isolated at my home in Borehamwood.

Kevin McGeary talked to me from Manchester via Skype

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JOHN: In the last two weeks, you’ve  released an English-language album TMItastic and a  Chinese language album 失败博物馆 (Museum of Failure), both humorous. How are they different?

KEVIN: My English comedy songs are often foul-mouthed and use a lot of swear words, though not to the extent of Kunt & The Gang. My Chinese songs tend to be offensive in a different way: they satirise Chinese culture and society. The Chinese ones are PG-friendly. They are not sweary; they are more satirical. They satirise aspects of society like wealthy men who keep mistresses. There are entire villages in China where pretty-much everybody is a ‘kept’ woman.

JOHN: Presumably you could not sing these Chinese songs in China… The authorities would take exception to them.

KEVIN: Well, my initial wave of creativity in writing Chinese songs came just before Xi Jinping took over as President. Under him, censorship of the media and the blocking of websites has got a lot stricter. But I used to busk in China; I used to perform on the streets singing my songs in Mandarin and people were very friendly.

JOHN: Are there loads of buskers in China?

KEVIN: No, not at all.

JOHN: So you must have been stopped, surely. They have Party people on every block, don’t they?

KEVIN: Urban administrators, yes. But they’re not really very powerful and they’re only there to stop violence or actual crime. I wasn’t committing a crime and I got away with it because my stuff was so off the wall. 

Kevin McGeary busking in Shenzhen (Photograph by Jesse Warren for China Daily)

JOHN: You were in China for…

KEVIN: …for eleven years. The first 3½  years, I was teaching English. I studied the language very hard, so I was conversant within a year and could read a newspaper within two years. 

The second year, I lived in a small city in the middle of the country in Hunan Province – the equivalent of living in Arkansas or Oklahoma.

The only form of entertainment, really, was karaoke: I went almost every night and that’s where my Chinese songwriting grew.

JOHN: And, after you finished teaching English…

KEVIN: I worked on a  newspaper for two years – the Shenzhen Daily. Then I left China, but I missed it, so I went back 2014-2018, working for a massive Chinese company Midea who make home appliances.

Kevin McGeary on GuangdongTelevision

JOHN: Not a creative, artistic job, then…?

KEVIN: Same as Kunt & The Gang, I don’t expect to monetise my creative work, so I need a steady job that gives me the material basis to be creative. You can’t be creative if you don’t have a roof over your head and clothes on your back.

I started writing Chinese-language songs in November 2008 and, in February 2012, it just suddenly struck me to start writing comedy songs.

When I started writing songs in Chinese, I had only been learning the language for 18 months, so my pronunciation was not perfect and also the novelty of having a white person singing in Chinese meant most people were just laughing at my attempts. After a while, I realised I had to turn this weakness into a strength. If people are laughing at my attempts, I might as well try to make people laugh. That’s how it started.

JOHN: Is satire a good idea in China?

KEVIN: Well, people are more open-minded than you would imagine. There was a feature in China Daily about my songwriting; I also performed and was interviewed on Chinese television.

JOHN: So being offensive is OK?

KEVIN: A lot of my stuff is beyond bad taste. It’s too silly to even be offensive.

JOHN: You don’t have any problem getting your music heard online in China?

KEVIN: I didn’t originally but, within a year of the Beijing Olympics – which was supposed to be China’s ‘coming out’ party – they blocked YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Back when blogging was big in the early 2010s I had quite a popular blog with a decent audience – tens of thousands of hits for a video – but now, with the internet being more heavily censored and pretty much all Western websites blocked in China – the New York Times, the BBC – it’s harder now to get my stuff heard. 

JOHN: So how do you get it heard? What sites do you put it on?

KEVIN: Youku and Tencent and QQ – Chinese-owned video-sharing sites which are the equivalents of YouTube. Youku is owned by Alibaba; QQ is owned by Tencent. They are not as censorious as some people might imagine. You can get almost anything on there unless it’s sexually explicit or violent.

JOHN: The Chinese love Yes Minister, don’t they? And that satirises bureaucracy. So there must be a liking for taking the piss out of your own system – though keeping low-key about it!

KEVIN: Definitely. I think Yes Minister was a vastly superior show to The Thick of It because, for a start, the characters are a lot more likeable… and there’s a lot more subtlety. When the Chinese criticise the regime, they tend to be very subtle about it.

For example, when the #MeToo movement broke in 2017, all internet posts with the Mandarin phrase for ‘Me too’ – ‘I also am’ – were censored. So the way to get any subversive message across was to use the image of a bowl of rice and the image of a rabbit. Because (in Chinese) ‘mee’ is the word for rice and ‘to’ is the word for rabbit. So ‘mee-to’ sounds very similar to the English expression. If you do that, you are not breaking the law.

JOHN: Very subtle.

KEVIN: Yes, images of Winnie the Pooh were banned because there was this paranoia he looked like Xi Jinping.

JOHN: In a sense, you must have had to change your ‘self’ to live in China. What terrible Western habits did you have to drop?

KEVIN: There is a lot more subtlety to the way people communicate in China. In a country like America or Australia, where people came from different parts of the world and they grew as a nation state in a very short time, the only way to get by was to be very direct. But, in China, a much larger percentage of communication is unspoken. So much is about context and reading between the lines. Criticising people as individuals is generally very taboo in China.

JOHN: Are you worried one night there is going to be a knock on your door and a Chinese man will be saying: “We have been reading and listening to your work in Beijing…”?

… CONTINUED HERE …

… There is a taster for Kevin’s Chinese-language album 失败博物馆 (Museum of Failure) online…

… There is a YouTube playlist for the album HERE …

… AND THERE IS A TOTALLY UNEDITED AUDIO VERSION OF MY CHAT WITH KEVIN ON THE PODBEAN WEBSITE HERE.
IT RUNS 42 MINUTES.

Ria Lina on Comedy Unleashed, non-PC audiences and the Edinburgh Fringe

Comedian Ria Lina has been about a bit. Her German father was an oil painter; her Filipino mother trained as a physicist then moved into computer programming in the 1960s.

Ria was born in England.

Aged 1, she moved to California. Aged 9, she came back to England. Aged 14, she moved to the Netherlands, where she studied at The American School of The Hague.

At 17 (note that early age), she attended St Andrews University in Scotland, where she obtained a BSc in Experimental Pathology, then got a PhD in Viral Bioinformatics at University College, London.

Oh! And then she became an IT Forensic Investigator for the Serious Fraud Office in London.

And now she’s a comedian.

She is a regular MC at the monthly Comedy Unleashed shows in East London which some see as Right Wing although it bills itself as ‘The Home of Free-Thinking Comedy’ and says the real divide is no longer between Left Wing/Right Wing but between Authoritarian and Libertarian with itself in the Libertarian camp.

Now read on…

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JOHN: I think you’re probably a Left Wing liberal…

RIA: I don’t know what that means any more.

JOHN: … yet you’re a regular MC at the monthly Comedy Unleashed shows.

RIA: I MC Comedy Unleashed because I fundamentally believe what it’s trying to achieve. I believe in giving everyone a platform.

It has ended up that the audience has skewed in a particular political direction. There have been some shows where they have been so skewed towards one political direction that I have actively said on stage: “Actually, I disagree with you all.” But when it isn’t an issue – when I don’t think that politics is the over-riding feel of the room – then it’s just a comedy show for people who want to see comedy.

JOHN: I have been to about four and they are very very good shows. The last one was a cracker. They are potentially difficult to MC but you make it look easy.

RIA: I suppose part of it is selfish. At this month’s show, I got to MC 250 people and that’s not easy. It’s like surfing or driving a chariot with horses. Surfing an 80 ft high wave takes practice. It takes skill. It’s hard enough to control one horse, but if you are trying to control 250… 

JOHN: The Comedy Unleashed slogan is NO SELF-CENSORSHIP… IF IT’S FUNNY, IT’S FUNNY. Comedy elsewhere at the moment can be very PC.

RIA: If you go on stage now and you say ‘rape’ there are people who will be triggered by your use of that word regardless of the context.

If you say: “Fracking is raping the Earth,” that is a very Left/liberal thing to say and you can go on to do a routine about it, but just the word itself can set an emotional trigger that means some people in the audience are not in a position to be comfortable laughing at what you are actually saying because, in their heads, they are thinking: She didn’t have to use that word!

JOHN: Are audiences different about that in different parts of the country? A North/South divide?

RIA: I find the differences are not so much geography as density of population. The biggest difference is what you find inside cities and outside cities. You can do jokes in a central London comedy club that you can do in a central Glasgow comedy club. But, even if you go outside Glasgow (or other big cities) just 10-20 minutes in the train, THAT is where you see the different sensitivities. 

I see it in smaller communities where there is less exposure to diversity of thought and diversity of humanity. If you’re not exposed to diversity, you are not as acclimatised to it and not as open to the idea of it. 

JOHN: So you have to change your set accordingly?

Ria Lina, BSc, PhD, MC and comedian

RIA: You are going to them. Your job is to make them laugh. You want them to have a good time so, if that means rolling back your jokes five years, then that’s what it is. 

I don’t mean you should undermine your own principles but I don’t personally agree with travelling somewhere and behaving like: Well, this is what I do and if you don’t like what I do…

JOHN: So are they less PC and more racist?

RIA: I am not saying they are more racist. They are more insecure about what is acceptable. They have heard that ‘things are changing’ but they are not seeing it or feeling it themselves where they live. So, if I walk in with my Asian face and my American accent… there are times when I have told jokes and their reaction is: Ooh! We don’t know how to process this!

It is not even That’s wrong! She shouldn’t have said it! – It’s just We have no idea how to process what you have just said… You are saying it’s OK. But we only have your word to go on and you are one woman who we are never going to see again in 20 minutes.

JOHN: How do audiences react to your American accent?

RIA: Most of my set, they don’t really need to know I’m British. They don’t need to know my back story to accept my point of view and my sense of humour.

JOHN: Does it not slightly distance the audience from you if they think you are American?

RIA: The best way to over-ride that is to be funny. Bottom line. Any barrier can be overcome in a comedy setting if you’re funny. What I enjoy is making people laugh and people enjoying their evening. I’m happy to adapt to them in that instance.

JOHN: Say in a village hall in the middle of nowhere…

RIA: Yes. 

JOHN: And the audience there is different to a London audience…

RIA: Humour evolves and places like London are at the forefront of the evolution of comedy. When I first started doing comedy, the place to find the most evolved joke range was The Comedy Store. You would go there and see people with no boundaries pushing their art form to the limit. But that doesn’t mean you can go somewhere else and do the same stuff if they are not AS comedy literate, 

The evolution of comedy goes hand-in-hand with audiences who are comedy literate – comedy savvy. They have seen more of it; they understand the rules; you can experiment more with them. That is not necessarily the case for the village hall that only has comedy ten times a year.

Ria Lina’s show at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe

JOHN: The Edinburgh Fringe audiences are particularly comedy literate…

RIA: Mmmm… I dunno. I find the Fringe audiences are more theatre crowds. You DO get your avid stand-up comedy fan. But there is going to a comedy club with various acts on the bill once or twice a month and then there’s going to see a single performer who has developed an hour’s worth of thought… And those are two different art forms. Your brain can’t focus for more than 40 minutes at a time at best. That’s why they tell you to have that 40-minute pathos moment in Edinburgh shows.

JOHN: The ‘dead dad’ bit…

RIA: Yes. In Edinburgh, it’s a different skillset. You’re driving a different vehicle. Similar animals but different vehicles and you are traversing different courses. Audiences at the Fringe are so often theatre audiences because the shows are more like theatre shows and they are done in theatre settings not comedy club settings – except the Free Fringe and the Free Festival where you have more comedy club-like set-ups.

The bigger pay venues are giving you a theatre experience. Theatre-style seating, ushers, lighting. Theatre-style audiences listen differently, think differently, laugh differently.

JOHN: So are you doing the Fringe next year?

RIA: I haven’t been since 2016. I am thinking of doing a show and touring it in the UK; just skipping the Edinburgh Fringe… and I’m booked in Dubai next August.

JOHN: Dubai? How horrible! The weather! All that sun and heat!

RIA: (LAUGHING) Well, you know, the last time I went to Dubai, it rained. It hadn’t rained for two years. I show up – Suddenly it rains! The cars weren’t working. Their engines got wet. It was too cold for me to go to the beach. So Dubai owes me!

Gay comic Sam See from Singapore is Coming Out Loud at Edinburgh Fringe

Comedian Sam See will be in Edinburgh this August but here he plays the Merry Lion in Singapore.

Scots comic Scott Agnew suggested Sam See from Singapore talk to me.

So we chatted via Skype…

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Sam See at home in Singapore yesterday.

JOHN: Your show is called Coming Out Loud. Good title, because the audience knows what it’s going to get.

SAM: (LAUGHS) Dick jokes for an hour!

JOHN: Is there an elevator pitch for the show?

SAM: An openly gay comedian coming from a country where free speech and homosexuality is illegal… Expect dick jokes.

JOHN: Can you say free speech is illegal in Singapore?

SAM: No. In Singapore, I can’t say that free speech is illegal in Singapore. If you criticise the lack of free speech while you are here, you will be… erm… It’s a lovely irony.

JOHN: Is being gay totally illegal in Singapore?

SAM: Yes. It’s 100% illegal. The law itself is as vague as possible. It is basically the old-school English sodomy laws. It is illegal but…

JOHN: So how can you talk on stage about being gay if it’s illegal?

SAM: Because I am not yet popular or famous enough. On stage I always say I am gay. But, if they try to arrest me, I can say it is a character and then they would have to prove I’m gay which… well, good luck to them.

JOHN: So doing this chat with me could get you imprisoned…

SAM: It depends… They would need to prove I have done something untowards with another gentleman…

JOHN: You can say you are gay provided you’ve done nothing about it…?

SAM: Kinda. But, if you are on-stage saying it, they can still fine you or arrest you for homosexual propaganda or propagating that homosexuality is positive.

JOHN: Anyway, Coming Out Loud at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Why?

SAM: A lot of Edinburgh regulars recommended I should give it a bash – Martin Mor told me: “Come over, Sam, do the full run, go crazy and lose money.”

I guess I have to. It’s the Hajj. It’s the Mecca for comics: we all have to do it once in our life. But I don’t understand how people can do it for 10 or 20 years: a whole month!

JOHN: It’s addictive.

Sam is gearing up for Edinburgh with a tour of South East Asia

SAM: I am doing a whole run shows around Asia before it. I am gearing up to play outside my comfort zone.

JOHN: You started performing comedy in 2012…

SAM: Yes. The comedy scene is Asia is less than ten years old.

JOHN: I presume, if you are gay, you can’t play China?

SAM: I can, actually. I have played Brunei, if you can believe that!

JOHN: Did they reverse the law about stoning people to death if they are gay?

SAM: It’s on hold. The law is technically not in effect but it has not been repealed. In very heavy Moslem areas like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, I have to be really careful. If I play there, I try to play in embassies like the British or American so I have that clemency of being on international soil.

JOHN: Remembering this is going online, is it just a problem with Islam?

SAM: No. Myanmar is heavily Buddhist and they set people on fire. In China, they put people in re-education camps. There are heavy beliefs in this part of the world: whether religious or atheistic.

There was a chief from the UN who came down to Myanmar to investigate the Rohingya crisis and the chief Buddhist monk of Myanmer called her a slut and threatened to have her raped… Remember this is a man of peace.

JOHN: How do your audiences react to a gay comic?

SAM: They have changed over time. They don’t mind hearing about it; but not too much. When I first started, it was a combination of me not knowing how to tailor the material for the audiences and the audiences not being ready to receive such information. But I have become a more competent performer with time and they have grown with time.

Sam See or Woody Harrelson? You decide.

JOHN: People get pigeonholed. Who do people compare you with?

SAM: I see myself as a much longer-form Joan Rivers, more into storytelling and less insults. 

JOHN: Joan Rivers? So acid-tongued. 

SAM: Yes, acid-tongued, hopefully fast on my feet. But I’ve had comparisons to John Oliver; I’ve had Trevor Noah. For some reason, Woody Harrelson once.

JOHN: What???

SAM: I have no idea why. He is not known for his stand-up comedy!

JOHN: Are there many gay comics in Singapore and surrounds?

SAM: No. I am the one openly gay comedian. There are two who are closeted and one bisexual, but she is more into poetry than stand-up.

JOHN: I presume no-one is admitting to being lesbian?

SAM: None of the locals. There are some expats who come to Asia, do stand-up and say: “I’m proud to be a lesbian.” But then they move on.

JOHN: Things must be getting better. You have been on TV in a weekly Singapore panel show OK Chope!

SAM: No-one had really done the panel show format in the region before. There are variety show formats but not the traditional UK-style panel show. Host, regular panellists and rotating guest panellists.

JOHN: Did it work?

SAM: It was a mess, because it was a topical news show where we were not allowed to talk about news because… well… it’s Singapore.

It was a one-hour show transmitted live, with a zero second delay.

JOHN: Jesus! A zero second delay?

SAM: Yes. I am not kidding.

JOHN: This was actually transmitted? It wasn’t just a pilot?

SAM: Yes, a full season… 7.30pm prime time, before the watershed.

JOHN: Double Jesus!

SAM: We all managed to drink in the afternoon before we shot it.

JOHN: Did the TV company get nervous after Episode One?

SAM: Oh yes. Every week, we would have one of the government censors watching us from a booth. He would give us a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

JOHN: But, if it’s live, it’s too late…

SAM: Well, too late for the show but not too late to put us in jail.

JOHN: And it ended because…

SAM: We made fun of the then Prime Minister of Malaysia who had been accused of being a thief and we made jokes about it and somehow he watched that episode.

JOHN: And the result was…?

SAM: He called our Prime Minister who took us off the air.

JOHN: So the series ended before it was due to end.

SAM: It happened on the last episode at the end of the season.

JOHN: So was someone being intentionally provocative?

Sam See addresses his audience

SAM: No, that whole segment had actually cleared the censors. It was just that, at the time, Malaysia was having an election, so they needed a scapegoat and a way to look strong. If they can get the neighbouring country to formally apologise to them, it makes them look powerful and in control.

JOHN: Do you have a 5-year career plan that starts in Edinburgh and ends in Las Vegas?

SAM: Well, it starts in Edinburgh and then I am in talks with some folks over in the United States for representation. 

JOHN: Presumably, like performers everywhere, you want to move to the US.

SAM: I don’t know. I think I would like to move to one of the other countries, but I would still make Singapore my home base because (a) it is my home and (b) the tax rates are better. (LAUGHS)

JOHN: I suspect Donald Trump thinks Singapore is somewhere in South America.

SAM: No. He knows where we are, because he started the North Korean treaties here.

JOHN: (LAUGHS) You should play North Korea!

SAM: You joke, but some of us have been thinking about it for a while. You just have to find an embassy that’s crazy enough to go along with the idea and just play it on embassy soil and don’t make jokes about the North Korean government or mention South Korea.

JOHN: Getting in might be a problem. And let’s not even fantasise about getting out. Singapore doesn’t have an embassy there, does it?

SAM: We can enter North Korea visa-free.

JOHN: Really???

SAM: Yes, we can just walk in on a holiday.

JOHN: Bloody hell!

 

Are the Facebook PC police about to ban me because of my sexually risqué name?

I have a Facebook account in my own name – John Thomas Fleming.

On it I post links to articles which I think are interesting and/or funny.

The Daily Mash is a satirical British website.

Today I tried to post a link on my Facebook page to one of the Daily Mash articles.

The Daily Mash’s satiric article was headlined:

MUSEUM OF 1970s SEX EUPHEMISM TO OPEN IN LEEDS

My comment accompanying the link was… “Surely it should open in Bristol?”

A reference to a jolly British euphemism for a lady’s breast.

My post was blanked-out by Facebook because:

“This post goes against our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity”

and I was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours.

Robin Askwith in Confessions From A Holiday Camp (1977) (Photo by Columbia/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (5871814a)

I am not sure if Facebook objected to my use of the word ‘Bristol’ or the Daily Mash‘s somewhat risqué picture which was a still from one of the 1970s series of Confessions of… films… These were ‘naughty yet acceptable’ films in the genre of the Carry On… movies.

Britain has a long tradition of family filth Stretching back to Shakespeare and Chaucer and certainly including – perhaps most surprising to Americans – the traditional (ideally utterly filthy) British Christmas pantomimes for children.

The Confessions of… films were more permissive than the more innocent Carry On… films. But were still considered middle-of-the-road even then.

Obviously Facebook’s image-searching computers and more puritan-minded American tendencies need a re-tweak.

The worrying thing is that I was given the name John Thomas Fleming by my innocent parents. I was named after my two grandfathers. I believe the origin of the phrase ‘John Thomas’ is Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel which I nor I am certain my parents never read.

I now fear for the good citizens of Bristol city, who face a potential blanket ban from Facebook for living where they do: a conurbation which shares its name with an example of Cockney rhyming slang.

This is all a bit reminiscent of the early days of censorship on the internet when farmers found that innocent references to their common farmyard creatures were getting them banned as pornographers… in particular, any reference to their cocks.

Oh, alright… the bloody Facebook image-searching computers actually took exception to the photo… But, really, do me a favour.

Comedian Louise Reay is being sued over a Fringe show about free speech

Louise Reay, has come up against a brick wall, not in China

Last year, comic Louise Reay previewed her then-upcoming Edinburgh Fringe comedy show Hard Mode at critic Kate Copstick’s increasingly prestigious London charity emporium Mama Biashara.

It was the first time I knew Louise had separated from her husband.

Beyond that fact and a lot of rather arty Chinese references, I discovered no details of why they had separated. That is relevant to what follows.

The  blurb for Hard Mode read:

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“Based on a dialogue with Ai Weiwei and featuring a team of masked police, this provocative show explores censorship”

Imagine how you’d act if you were always being watched? Imagine if you couldn’t speak freely? Imagine if the Chinese government bought the BBC?

An immersive comedy show where the audience experiences life in an authoritarian regime. Yay!

Based on a dialogue with Ai Weiwei and featuring a team of masked police, this provocative show explores censorship and surveillance.

Hard Mode is the latest show from multi award-winning comedian and journalist, Louise Reay.

‘Reay can legitimately claim to be unique’ (Independent)

‘Truly fantastic, utterly out there’ (Al Murray)

**** (Skinny)

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“I am being sued. It’s really happening”

Last night, I got an email from Louise. She is currently in Australia, performing at the Adelaide Fringe. Her email read:

Dear John – I am being sued. It’s really happening. 

She is being sued by her estranged husband because he objected to what he claims was in her Hard Mode show.

I can only assume her estranged husband has not heard of The Streisand Effect.

Louise has started a GoFundMe crowdfunding page. It reads:

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Hi! I am Louise Beamont, my stage name is Louise Reay.

I hope you’ll forgive me – but I need to ask you something.

You see, I am being sued over one of my stand-up shows.

Not just by anyone. By my husband (now separated of course).

He has a lot more money than me and he says that I accused him of abusing me in my show. And so he’s suing me, which in my opinion is simply an attempt to silence me.

As standup comedians, I believe it’s the very definition of our job to talk about our lives and social issues.

So this has become a free speech issue – and free speech means everything to me. As a Chinese speaker, I’ve spent many years in China and experienced the social impact when people do not have this freedom. I’ve also spent many years making documentaries for the BBC with vulnerable people whose voices are rarely heard.

And, I cannot begin to tell you how difficult an experience it has been to have my Edinburgh show censored.

I think therefore it’s really important for me to defend myself in this case.

And I’m afraid I need your help please because. I need to pay lawyers you see.

Here’s a bit more detail ….

I am a stand up comedian and documentary-maker, with a particular interest in speaking out for oppressed people.  On Tuesday 30 January 2018, I was served with defamation, privacy and data protection proceedings by my husband from whom I am separated. I cannot tell you how oppressive that feels.

The claim is in relation to a comedy show that I performed last year. a few times last year. It was a 50 minute show about censorship and authoritarianism, asking the audience to imagine that the BBC had come into the control of the Chinese government.

During that show, I referred to my husband a couple of times – perhaps 2 minutes’ worth of reference in a 50 minute show. The main gist of those references was to tell the audience how sad I was that my marriage had broken down recently. He has complained about 2 performances of my show in London, and my shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

He is seeking £30,000 damages, his legal costs (which I can only assume will be massive) and an injunction stopping me from publishing statements about him. This is despite the fact that I gave him an undertaking (a sort of legal promise – without admitting liability of course) not to mention him in any further performances of the show, as soon as his lawyers complained. Indeed, all further performances of the show at the Edinburgh Fringe were without reference to him.

Defamation and privacy cases like this can be very expensive to defend. At present, I do not have the funds to defend this case. Therefore, I’d be very grateful for any assistance with costs. I have struggled greatly to pay all of my costs to date but and cannot afford to pay a barrister to prepare my defence.

I am confident I can defend the claim. However, these sorts of cases are fraught with uncertainty. It will depend on what the judge finds the words mean and possibly on whose testimony the judge prefers.

I am therefore seeking to raise an initial fund of at least £10,000. I might need to raise more as the case goes on.

If I am successful in defending this case, I hope to secure the recovery of some of my legal expenses from him (around 70% is typical I’m told). If I am able to recover some of my legal expenses, I will reimburse all those who have contributed to my defence fund in proportion to what each party has contributed.

Funds raised in this crowdfunder shall be used solely for my legal expenses. If I lose the case and damages and costs are awarded to my husband, I shall be personally liable for those. I’m told that, if this happens, it could be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and I will be bankrupt.

In any responses to this message can I please ask that you don’t post any negative comments about my husband. I’m not trying to embarrass him with this plea. I’m desperate. I need help. It’s about free speech … just like my show was.

Thank you very much for reading.

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The link to the GoFundMe crowdfunding page is HERE

MORE ON THIS STORY HERE