Comedian Lewis Schaffer’s strange offer of Edinburgh Fringe show sponsorship

In Soho - Peter Goddard - He’s a nice guy!

Yesterday, I blogged about problems over free shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and quoted one of the most prominent free performers, London-based American comedian Lewis Schaffer.

He crops up in quite a few of my blogs.

I like to have subsidiary characters and plot threads running through my blogs so that anyone regularly reading the blogs can – or, if I were to turn them into an annual e-book, anyone reading the chronological collected blogs could – follow these threads as they develop.

I recently encouraged Lewis Schaffer to start his own blog, which means he occasionally mentions me in his blog.

I aspire to being a subsidiary character myself.

Yesterday, in his blog, Lewis Schaffer wrote about his show the previous night (pay attention, dear reader): “My personal blogger John Fleming was there last night with the ‘un-named’ woman who makes his presence bearable – actually he is a welcome sight for anyone who wishes to be loved and accepted as an artist.”

I think this has the semi-unfortunate side-effect of making me seem a little creepy but – hey! – a little creepy gets you noticed.

The other slightly odd thing Lewis Schaffer wrote in his blog yesterday was: “Peter Goddard – the man whose hair I was stroking – he’s a nice guy – told me afterward that I had the audience laughing many times but stopped them as if I didn’t like them enjoying themselves.”

Stroking a man’s hair during a gig where the comedian tries to stop the audience laughing may seem odd enough but what, you might ponder, is with the odd sentence construction: “Peter Goddard – the man whose hair I was stroking – he’s a nice guy – told me…”??

Well, this goes back to two nights ago, when I saw Lewis Schaffer’s ongoing twice-weekly show Free Until Famous in London’s Soho.

There was a man there who laughed throughout. It turned out he was this Peter Goddard.

After the show, Peter Goddard, his female friend, Lewis Schaffer and my eternally-un-named friend had a meal in Soho and Peter Goddard decided he wanted to sponsor the publicity  costs of Lewis Schaffer’s Edinburgh Fringe show in August.

Peter Goddard had thought the whole idea through before he came to the gig.

The only thing he wanted in return was that a picture of his head and his hand giving a thumbs-up sign should appear in the corner of every flyer and every poster for Lewis Schaffer’s show with the slogan “PETER GODDARD – HE’S A NICE GUY!”

He had loved Lewis Schaffer’s show that night. So did Lewis Schaffer. They both loved the fact it had been ‘uncomfortable’.

“Being in your show tonight,” said Peter Goddard, “was like sitting INSIDE The Office as opposed to sitting at home, watching The Office on TV. If you watch The Office on TV, you can laugh. If you were actually sitting inside The Office itself for real, you wouldn’t laugh. It would be very uncomfortable. Imagine going to a comedy club and not being sure if the comedian was David Brent or Ricky Gervais.”

That was what Peter Goddard said. And that was why he had enjoyed Lewis Schaffer’s show so much.

Lewis Schaffer was – of course – this is Lewis Schaffer, after all – indecisive about the idea.

“What do you get out of it?” Lewis Schaffer asked Peter Goddard.

“Nothing,” Peter Goddard replied. “It’s just funny… and I’m a nice guy.”

“It would have to be a photo of you with a cheesy grin,” I suggested, “like you were recommending a hamburger or a washing machine in some naff 1950s ad.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Peter Goddard.

“I flyer for myself in Edinburgh,” Lewis Schaffer said. “People are going to ask me a thousand times – five thousand times – who you are and what you get out of it. It’ll drive me crazy talking about you and not talking about me. I hand out 5,000 flyers in Edinburgh.”

“You just say,” I suggested. “Peter Goddard – He’s a nice guy… That’s all I am contractually allowed to say.”

“What do you do?” Lewis Schaffer asked Peter Goddard.

“I’m a project manager for banks,” Peter Goddard replied.

Lewis Schaffer looked at me. I looked at Lewis Schaffer.

“I think it’s a great idea,” I said.

Afterwards, I asked Lewis Schaffer, “How long have you known him?”

“I’ve met him twice but I only remember meeting him once. Maybe more. But I don’t remember. I don’t know why he chose me.”

I opened my mouth to say something.

“I don’t know,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“It’s a great idea,” I told him. “It will get you attention and get your posters and flyers talked about, like Cockgate. Well, not quite as much as that.”

“As what?”

“Cockgate.”

“Ah…”

Lewis Schaffer pondered this for a few long seconds.

“Do I want that?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I told him. “It’s at least worth two-inch pieces in three or four newspapers or magazines during the Fringe.”

“Ah,” he said.

We said nothing for a few long seconds.

“Even saying No comment to 5,000 people would drive me crazy,” he said. “I want to be talking to them about Lewis Schaffer.”

We said nothing for a few long seconds.

“Tomorrow I could contact MegaBus,” Lewis Schaffer eventually said, “They could be my tour sponsor. Peter Goddard could sponsor my Edinburgh Fringe publicity and MegaBus could sponsor my Free Until Famous tour…  £1 Until Famous.”

“But,” I suggested, “maybe you don’t get people with disposable incomes taking the MegaBus. Are they your target audience for comedy shows where you want people to give you as much money as they can at the end of the show?”

“You’re not going to see famous people take the coach,” said Lewis Schaffer “£1 Until Famous… In New York, I got free Oliver Peoples glasses for travelling by bus. They are the glasses of choice of American psychos.”

“Have you stopped drinking?” I asked Lewis Schaffer.

“I’ve stopped drinking,” replied Lewis Schaffer.

“What about Peter Goddard?” asked my eternally-un-named friend, as the three of us walked through Soho.

“He’s a nice guy,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“It’s a start,” I said.

Day Five of Malcolm Hardee Week – the perils of publicity stunts

Well, at last night’s Malcolm Hardee Award Show, there was a change of plan when we found out we had been successfully conned by Bob Slayer who masterminded the ‘Cockgate’ publicity stunt for Kunt and the Gang – in which Kunt’s penis stickers were put on other acts’ posters throughout Edinburgh…..

Personally, I never rated the basic stunt itself. If you are trying to raise awareness of an act called Kunt… really, do not spread penis stickers all over Edinburgh, especially if they do not have the name of the act/show on and just one of those little square things which smartphones can read but which, in fact, no-one noticed. It’s like promoting 101 Dalmatians by putting blank stickers of the outline of a cat all over the place.

Then there was the racing certainty that it would annoy all the other acts, promoters and venues which had paid for and put up the posters. I was told that one promoter has spent £36,000 on Edinburgh Fringe posters for a particular act. If you deface their posters, it ain’t surprising they are going to be a tad pissed-off.

To my mind, the whole concept of ‘Cockgate’ was cock-eyed and against the basic spirit of the Fringe. The acts (who ultimately pay for everything) are having a bad enough time at the Fringe already without some plonker coming along defacing their marketing tools.

There is much truth in the idea that the posters festooning Edinburgh are promoting promoters not acts but, ultimately, they are building awareness of acts even if they are not putting extra bums on seats; and every act – even one perceived to be successful – is struggling in some way. Showbiz careers are frail facades of mirrors and smoke.

So why did Kunt and The Gang get nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for best publicity stunt promoting a performer or show at the Fringe?

Basically, because – as the nomination said – Kunt (or, rather, Bob Slayer) managed to push the basic sticky penis stunt way beyond what seemed possible. There were tales about agents, managers and promoters threatening people legally, physically and financially; there were humorous quotes from Edinburgh Council officials about seizing and pulling off cocks; there were tales of the outrage caused; and there were photocalls with comedians far more famous than Kunt sporting the iconic penis stickers.

The stunt itself was a load of balls. The handling of and the spin put on the stunt was a work of art.

There was talk among the Malcolm Hardee Award judges of awarding the Cunning Stunt trophy to Bob Slayer instead of Kunt, but the’ Cockgate’ publicity stunt was no different to PR men Mark Borkowski or Max Clifford creating a buzz about an act. Any prize or box office credit goes to the performer not the PR man/woman.

So the nomination went to Kunt and was only slightly wobbled when Kunt sacked Bob Slayer as his PR man in this e-mail which Bob Slayer posted on his website and which I included in my blog yesterday:

Kunt has sacked me

___________________________________

Dear Bob

Sorry to have to tell you by email but I don’t want you doing anything else on the cock sticker campaign. As much as I appreciate the other comedians turning out for the photocalls that you organised, I didn’t want to be in the photos and you convinced me against my better judgement that it would be a good idea. I’ve seen the resulting photos and I look more awkward than Jade Goody’s mum on a juggling course. Also I’m getting grief off my bird after you made me put that sticker on Kate Copstick’s jumper and some cunt took that photo which is now doing the rounds that looks like I’m titting her up.

I know you were doing what you thought best but the reason I don’t do any press releases is because I know who my audience is and they find us naturally through the internet or word of mouth. They are proper people like bricklayers, carpet fitters, shop workers, central heating engineers, students and drug dealers. Since you took it upon yourself to ‘help’ with my cock sticker campaign, coverage in po-faced luvvie mags like The Stage has meant the shows have been increasingly full of pompous, middle class, chin-stroking ponces. For fuck’s sake, the poxy Culture Show have even been in!

In the last seven days since you helped ‘mastermind’ the cock campaign I have had more roll-necked twats in cuntish berets sat there with a glass of red wine and laughing ironically than in the previous seven years of gigs. Fuck knows how this has happened because I’d hardly call your act highbrow, I was there the night that bird stuck her finger up your arsehole and pulled it out leaving a rubber glove hanging out your brown eye.

I will buy you a beer when I see you to say thanks for helping us get nominated for the cunning stunt award. But I don’t want you doing anything else. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before Michael fucking MacIntyre turns up covered in cock stickers shouting ‘Where’s the party?’.

Cheers

Kunt

P.S. I seriously think you are liable for Daniel Sloss’s agent losing her sense of humour and invoicing us for 900 quid. I told you in confidence that I overheard someone saying that he didn’t have pubes yet, there was no need to go and blog it.

___________________________________

When I first read this, I thought it might be another brilliant piece of spin to keep the ‘Cockgate’ saga spinning even longer but, no, I spoke to Bob Slayer and it was genuine; he was very upset.

Except that he was not.

None of it was true.

The e-mail was a fake and was, indeed, written just to stoke the spin on ‘Cockgate’ even more.

Malcolm Hardee judge Kate Copstick and I were totally taken in. We did not realise we had been conned until we were told by Bob immediately before the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show last night.

His reason for the fake e-mail?

“We wanted to confuse Daniel Sloss’s agent so she didn’t know which one of us to sue.”

What was our reaction?

We gave Kunt his Cunning Stunt Award, but we also gave another Cunning Stunt Award to Bob Slayer for fooling us.

This is a one-off extra award and only because somehow, by accident, I had an extra Cunning Stunt Award made. I do not know how this happened. Clearly senility has hit. I cannot count. I cannot spot PR cons.

Yesterday afternoon was also the deadline for bids on eBay from anyone wanting to buy last year’s Malcolm Hardee Award from winner Robert White, who could do with some hard cash. Yesterday morning, I got an e-mail from Robert:
______________

Dear John

Malcolm came to me in a dream last night and got me to stop this obvious sham of a self-promoting non-real auction and as such the item is no longer for sale. Although I believe you can acquire one of your own by doing the Edinburgh Festival and being mental enough.

Yours with best wishes and God’s blessings,

Robert

Days 4 & 5 of Malcolm Hardee Week – Kunt Slayer shock horror

So, I got up today at 7.00am because I have a lot of arrangements, setting up and online organisation to do for tonight’s Malcolm Hardee Awards Show… only to find that my MacBook Pro laptop would not work and my iPad would not recognise the WiFi in the flat I am renting… it is going to a bad day…

Yesterday was, well, interesting…

Comic/promoter/anarchic force-of-nature Bob Slayer is a nominee for the main Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality… while Kunt and the Gang are up for the Cunning Stunt Award for what has been called ‘Cockgate’ – putting penis stickers promoting Kunt’s show on other shows’ posters.

This extraordinarily effective piece of PR spin was, in fact, orchestrated by his chum and venue manager… Bob Slayer.

So, imagine our surprise to find this posted on Bob Slayer’s website yesterday:

Kunt has sacked me

… and the relevant e-mail from Kunt…

___________________________________

Dear Bob

Sorry to have to tell you by email but I don’t want you doing anything else on the cock sticker campaign. As much as I appreciate the other comedians turning out for the photocalls that you organised, I didn’t want to be in the photos and you convinced me against my better judgement that it would be a good idea. I’ve seen the resulting photos and I look more awkward than Jade Goody’s mum on a juggling course. Also I’m getting grief off my bird after you made me put that sticker on Kate Copstick’s jumper and some cunt took that photo which is now doing the rounds that looks like I’m titting her up.

I know you were doing what you thought best but the reason I don’t do any press releases is because I know who my audience is and they find us naturally through the internet or word of mouth. They are proper people like bricklayers, carpet fitters, shop workers, central heating engineers, students and drug dealers. Since you took it upon yourself to ‘help’ with my cock sticker campaign, coverage in po-faced luvvie mags like The Stage has meant the shows have been increasingly full of pompous, middle class, chin-stroking ponces. For fuck’s sake, the poxy Culture Show have even been in!

In the last seven days since you helped ‘mastermind’ the cock campaign I have had more roll-necked twats in cuntish berets sat there with a glass of red wine and laughing ironically than in the previous seven years of gigs. Fuck knows how this has happened because I’d hardly call your act highbrow, I was there the night that bird stuck her finger up your arsehole and pulled it out leaving a rubber glove hanging out your brown eye.

I will buy you a beer when I see you to say thanks for helping us get nominated for the cunning stunt award. But I don’t want you doing anything else. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before Michael fucking MacIntyre turns up covered in cock stickers shouting ‘Where’s the party?’.

Cheers

Kunt

P.S. I seriously think you are liable for Daniel Sloss’s agent losing her sense of humour and invoicing us for 900 quid. I told you in confidence that I overheard someone saying that he didn’t have pubes yet, there was no need to go and blog it.

___________________________________

When I first read this, I thought it might be another brilliant piece of spin to keep the ‘Cockgate’ saga spinning even longer but, no, it is apparently kosher.

So the Malcolm Hardee Award judges are obviously going to have an interesting discussion at noon today about the Cunning Stunt Award.

And the two-hour Malcolm Hardee Award Show will be equally interesting tonight, as Kunt and the Gang are booked to perform and Bob Slayer will be there too. 10.00 to midnight in the ballroom of The Counting House as part of the Free Festival.

The show will include cult comedian Charlie Chuck from The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer… Hitler crooner Frank Sanazi… an exotic sand dance from Charmian Hughes… last night’s winner of ITV’s £100,000 Show Me the Funny comedy prize Patrick Monahan… Malcolm Hardee Award nominee Johnny Sorrow… Kunt and the Gang… plus Puppetry of the Penis… and, presenting the Malcolm Hardee Awards, Show Me the Funny’s Cruella de Cowell of judges Kate Copstick. The way things are going, let’s hope the Lothian and Borders Police are not also there…

…but that my WiFi and MacBook Pro are…

Day One of Malcolm Hardee Week – and only one bit of genital exposure

The first ever Malcolm Hardee Week at the Edinburgh Fringe has started and yesterday was a strange old day.

For most of the day, things went well.

I saw the funniest show so far at the Fringe – Johnny Sorrow’s The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society, which made me laugh-out-loud – a rare thing (television production experience, luv).

Having lost two helpers who were no longer coming to Edinburgh as planned, I had offers of help from several sources.

Ever-enthusiastic science-comedy star Helen Keen of Radio 4‘s It Is Rocket Science!) may be able to help me Wednesday to Friday, as can my chum Dr Sophia Khan, formerly of NASA and Harvard and assistant professor of Astrophysics at Shanghai University (Helen’s co-star in last year’s Fringe science comedy show Starstruck!)

From Thursday, I will also have Sophia’s chum Dr Andrew Bunker, former Head of Astronomy at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Oz and now Reader in Astrophysics at Oxford University.

With help like this, surely there will be no problem keeping pasta in the air during Wednesday and Thursday’s spaghetti-juggle contests. Indeed, we should surely be able to get the cooked and aerodynamic strands into low Earth orbit.

On Friday, at the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show – really a two-hour anarchic variety show – I have also been offered help by comic Gill Smith who inspired the original Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award with a cracking Fringe publicity stunt in 2008 – she sent me an e-mail nominating herself for the main Malcolm Hardee Award and saying that, by doing so, she would be justified in putting Malcolm Hardee Award Nominee on her posters.

OCD is a wonderful thing.

Last night’s first Malcolm Hardee Week event went well: it was allegedly a debate on the proposition that “Comedians are psychopathic masochists with a death wish”. I think it went well, anyway. It was due to run from 6.15 to 7.00pm but over-ran by an hour to 8.00pm with no walk-outs when panelist Bob Slayer (whose show followed ours) decided that everyone was enjoying themselves so much, we should just carry on and the continuation of our show would become his hour-long show for the night.

That is what large amounts of drinking can lead to.

As I said, I do not think there were any walk-outs; in fact, of course, the audience swelled.

There was, surprisingly, only one incident of genital exposure during the show – when Paul Provenza did a Malcolm Hardee impression – and there were some interesting, if unprintable stories told in the over-run.

Scotsman critic and ITV Show Me The Funny judge Kate Copstick told a story I can’t possibly repeat about the origin of the Mrs Merton character – and a story about one promoter’s reaction to Kunt and the Gang’s current ‘Cockgate’ stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was more Godfather anecdote than comedy story.

And comedienne Janey Godley told a true tale about Jerry Sadowitz performing in her pub in the East End of Glasgow to an audience which included real-life (now dead) Glasgow godfather Arthur Thompson. The largely-English audience I think missed a detail about Arthur Thompson which Janey mentioned in passing and which I do not think is generally known. Though true, I am most certainly not going to repeat it.

Thompson died in 1993, but I think waking up to a severed horse’s head might still be a possibility.

So yesterday – apart from the distant possibilities of horses’ heads and crucifixion on a wooden tenement floor – was good.

With Miss Behave now very sadly unable to compere Friday night’s two-hour Malcolm Hardee Awards Show at The Counting House because of her meningitis, Scott Capurro and New Comedy Act of the Year 2011 winner David Mills have stepped in to the breach by agreeing to be co-comperes. Scott even cancelled a party on Friday night so he could do the gig.

He told me that, after the first gig he played for Malcolm Hardee, as an American new to the London circuit, he was given his money in a brown envelope. When he got home, he found there was £20 less in the envelope than Malcolm had promised.

“Well, of course there was,” his comedian friends told him. “It’s Malcolm.”

It is extraordinary but true that Malcolm was always – and remains – held in such high esteem by his fellow comedians.

How often was the sentence uttered, “Well, it’s just Malcolm being Malcolm, isn’t it…” ?

But the one bad bit of news yesterday late afternoon was that Rab C.Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison cannot be on the panel of tonight’s 6.15pm Malcolm Hardee comedy debate at The Hive – allegedly on the proposition “Racist or sexist jokes? It doesn’t matter if they’re funny!” – because Ian has injured his back in Glasgow and cannot get to Edinburgh.

So, at the moment, the panel are Viz magazine creator Simon Donald, BBC TV One Show presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli and Laughing Cows‘ international compere Maureen Younger plus A.N.Other.

It was a bit of a downer when I heard that Ian cannot join us.

But yesterday ended well when I was told that the wonderful Doktor CocaColaMcDonalds has had a son called Oscar… the first Malcolm Hardee Award winner to have an Oscar…

‘Cockgate’ orchestrator replaces Rupert Murdoch pie-man at Edinburgh Fringe

As Jonnie Marbles (the Rupert Murdoch pie-attacker) is now stuck down South in the heathen wastes of England on Monday (he was a possibility), the last person on the panel for the first Malcolm Hardee Comedy Punch-Up Debate on Monday is now confirmed as comedian and promoter Bob Slayer, orchestrator of Kunt and the Gang’s current ‘Cockgate’ publicity stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe – much blogged about here in the last few days.

He joins ITV1’s Show Me the Funny judge Kate Copstick aka Cruella de Cowell plus the “godmother of Scottish comedy” Janey Godley and American film director Paul Provenza (The Aristocrats).

The proposition is that “Comedians are psychopathic masochists with a death wish”. The debate should be… erm… lively… and funny at The Hive in Edinburgh – on Monday (22nd August) at 6.15pm. No tickets; free entry as part of the Free Festival; contributions to the Mama Biashara charity welcome at the end.

The next day (Tuesday 23rd August) at 6.15, the proposition is “Racist or sexist jokes? It doesn’t matter if they’re funny!”

Debating that are Viz creator Simon Donald, BBC1’s controversial One Show presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli, Rab C.Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison and Laughing Cows compere Maureen Younger.

It should be a lively start to Malcolm Hardee Week at the Fringe.

How one comic broke his own bones for an Edinburgh Fringe comedy show

Kunt and the Gang’s ‘cockgate’ saga is not the only Edinburgh Fringe publicity stunt which might be considered for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award next week – the judges meet on Tuesday to decide a shortlist.

Tim FitzHigham might be in there for unintentionally getting attention with bone-breaking. The fact that a publicity stunt is unintentional does not necessarily disqualify it from winning a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award – as Stewart Lee proved last year.

For his Fringe show Tim Fitzhigham: Gambler, Tim tried to recreate the ten weirdest wagers and strangest bets in history. He says:

“Some of them we don’t know who won and some we don’t even know if they’re possible so I wanted to find out.

“Early on,” he tells me, “while doing this, I broke a finger. It was actually in an unrelated cricketing accident (playing for a comedians 11 in a charity match). The doctor re-set it but, it being a finger, after a couple of drinks one night I knocked it and broke it again on a table. They re-set it again and, by accident, I broke it again – this time while training for one of my bets. They re-set it again (by this time the doctor was getting a little less happy to see me). Again it broke and, this time, he decided to re-set it using large amounts of metal – a sort of mini-Barry Sheene approach! We thought there was no chance it could break again with a load of metal in it. So, after four breaks, all seemed well.

“Unfortunately, the metal poked out of the end of my finger and caused one of the most undignified scenes I have ever been involved in. While attempting to wash myself, I somehow managed to get my finger hook attached to my testicles.

“I went into the bedroom where my wife was trying to get out of her dress and she asked Could you un-hook me? I replied I’ll unhook you if you unhook me first. She turned and gazed at me with a look I can only imagine a fisherman gives to a catch he knows he’s never going to eat… It is a very testing time in a marriage, looking down to see the woman you love unhooking your hand from your plums.

“Then, while training to take-on a race horse in a 100 yard dash, I slipped and fell down a slope impaling myself on a fence post. It could have been quite bad but, luckily for me, I only fractured a rib. I tried to postpone it but the horse was adamant so I had to enter the race against the horse with a broken finger and fractured rib.

“I mention this to the audience in my show to give them a fair indication of the form.

“All these attempts had involved bets so, at this stage, my gambling losses were getting crippling so there was no chance of taking time off to recuperate.

“I had also entered into a bet to roll a cheese board over four miles. It is a very old cheese board and quite heavy and you have to throw it 60 metres per go to stand any chance of winning the bet. Needless to say, with my broken finger and fractured rib not helping… I sprained a wrist.

“The next bet involved pulling a 1 pound weight on a mile of rope. It was not entirely pain-free.

“Then we come to the wheelbarrow incident.

“I had taken on a wheelbarrow bet – it was originally done in  1789 by a man called Goliath Shadbolt (not a promising name to attempt to beat at anything).

“You have to push a wheelbarrow from Ware in Hertfordshire to Shoreditch in London in under 6 hours – that is just shy of a marathon distance, so it is quite a competitive time. On the way, I hurt my big toe on the wheelbarrow. It hurt a lot. We thought I had split it.

“The good news was that I had not split it… Hurrah!

“The bad news was that it was fractured… Bother!

“That covers the breakages…

“Then, of course, the metal fell out of my hand.

“I tried to pop it back in and got it most of the way back in but could not manage that last bit. So I arrived back at the hospital to see the same now grim-faced doctor who, after various x-rays etc, decided that the metal had not fallen out but that my body had rejected it as being infected and, as a result, I had now contracted an infection in my bone marrow!

“On 1st August, he said I should not travel more than one hour away from the hospital where he practices in East Anglia so, naturally, I came up to Edinburgh and started the run of my show. My losses were now running so high there was really no other choice – Where else could I find so many other people losing so much money?

“I accept that, medically, it was a bit of a gamble doing this but luckily it seems to have paid off in so much as the infection has not flared up again and hopefully I will keep my bone marrow and not turn to jelly by the end of the month.

“I would wager few have ever chased a punchline this hard – and none have found it less consistently!

“PS… Then, of course, there was a death in the family.

“What a month!”

‘Cockgate’ – the cunning stunt from Kunt and the Gang gathers momentum

It seems some people will do anything in an attempt to get a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. Who knows, in the swirling maelstrom of orgasmic lust for an award in Malcolm Hardee Week next week, exactly what may or not be true and the lengths to which people may or may not go to win one of the glittering prizes?

According to Bob Slayer, unofficial Kunt spokesman, it is day 3.5 in the ‘Cockgate’ saga in which Kunt and The Gang (who are one person) got sticky paper penises plastered on other people’s posters all over the Edinburgh Fringe.

Mild-mannered Kunt, as a result, has been issued with a £3,000 fine.

Last night, according to Bob – over beers in the Gilded Balloon’s exclusive Loft Bar and in front of witnesses – Tommy Sheppard, owner of the Stand comedy club, offered to pay for the defence of Kunt in any prosecution and/or pay the £3,000 fine.

Sheppard’s paraphrased reasoning, according to Bob, was: “The poster sites are an eyesore around Edinburgh. If I got my way they would all be removed. They are a rip-off for the shows that fund them and only exist to inflate promoter egos… Cocks are funny full stop and I would be happy to welcome them on any Stand posters…”

This may not be altogether altruistic as, of course, if the other venues’ posters were removed, it would be less competition for the Stand’s all-year-round profile in Edinburgh.

However, as I believe there are around 4,500 sticky paper penises left, it will be interesting to see if they do, indeed, appear on any Stand posters.

Kunt of Kunt and the Gang had this to say:

“I thought I was going to have to go back to Basildon and do something horrible on a building site in order to raise that kind of cash… But thanks to the support from nice Mr Tommy I can continue to pedal my filthy ditties to packed audiences every night…”

According to Bob Slayer – a Malcolm Hardee Award nominee last year who is clearly also trying to suck up to the judges this year – comic Stewart Lee (last year’s winner of the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award) has already reserved the front row for the remainder Kunt’s Fringe free shows at The Hive and (according to Bob) “is very interested in picking up stage and TV rights to Shannon Matthews: The Musical penned by Kunt.”

Bob asks: “What can you do to support the Basildon One and in turn uphold the very spirit of the Fringe?”

I think he’s doing very well on his own.

At least someone is trying to uphold the Malcolm Hardee legacy of cunning stunts…