Last week, I blogged here about the fact that the Reuters news agency was investigating – for a second time – whether ‘President Obonjo’ (aka comedian Benjamin Bello) really is the president of an African country.
In fact, this time, the worrying suspicion was that he is actually the President of the whole of Africa and that he had threatened to invade the US in support of Donald Trump.
Reuters have today – presumably after a week of detailed research and fact-checking – come up with their conclusion… printed in full below…
Fact Check: Video of ‘African President’ American invasion is a comedy skit
By Reuters Fact Check
March 14, 2024
A video of comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello playing his character “President Obonjo of Lafta Republic” has been shared online as showing the “President of Africa” threatening to invade America over Trump’s prosecution.
The clip shared on Instagram shows Bello saying, in part, “If Biden and his people continue to prosecute Donald Trump, then I tell you this much, we will invade America.” The video is overlaid with text reading,“The President of Africa threatens to invade America over Biden’s corruption” and “Imagine Trump being so racist he had the backing of all of Africa and their President.”
Comments in response include: “But people would still say trump is racist and he’s the problem. Meanwhile you have Presidents from other countries defending the man because they know he’s still is rightfully so the COMMANDER AND CHIEF” and “He’s sending his soldiers to infiltrate via the open south border.”
The circulating clip is a snippet from a TikTok video posted by Bello on his account “presidentobonjo” on Oct. 4, 2023, after Trump appeared in court in a civil fraud case on Oct. 2.
The comedian regularly shares skits dressed as the same character on his social media profiles.
Ian Hawkins, a spokesperson for Bello, said in an email that President Obonjo is a comedy character created by the comedian and parodies world leaders. “The President often comments satirically on news events and current affairs,” Hawkins added.
Reuters has previously addressed another video of Bello’s character misrepresented online as the “African President.”
VERDICT
Satire. The video shows comedy character “President Obanjo” played by UK-based comedian Benjamin Bello.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
Robert Wringham is what Americans would call a hyphenate. He does all sorts of things. Basically he is a writer of humorous books; plus he has written two histories of alternative comedy; and he is editor of the New Escapologist magazine which “takes the stance that work has too central a position in Western life”.
We were supposed to be having a chat about Robert’s live performance at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this week. But I am not one to keep to the subject…
JOHN: The Iceman has transitioned from a performance artist with added humour to a ‘proper’ painting-type artist… He’s sort of an outsider.
ROBERT: Yes. But he refuses to see himself as an outside artist. He was just given the chance to show his art in Paris under the premise that he is one of several ‘outsider’ artists. But he wasn’t happy with that, because he sees himself as an ‘insider’ artist.
JOHN: Define an outsider artist?
ROBERT: People who are not professional artists. They’re usually mentally ill or children or animals.
JOHN: I think he qualifies on all three. Do you think you are an outsider writer?
ROBERT: No… Well, yes.
JOHN: You’re a mad, childlike animal?
ROBERT: The thing I aspire to is… well, I always look to Simon Munnery. To many comedy fans, he’s the finest comedian there is, but he is not a household name and I think that’s the way to be. To try and create something integral, something different. He used to have a mantra: We aim to fascinate, not entertain.
That’s what I like: Simon Munnery, Chris Lynam, The Iceman. People like that.
JOHN: You said ‘integral’ there. What does that mean in this context?
ROBERT: They haven’t ‘sold out’, they haven’t been chasing the Eddie Izzard market.
JOHN: You mean they’re not recognised by the average punter standing in a bus queue?
ROBERT: They have their own standards and been successful in what they want to do.
JOHN: They’ve become admirable cult successes. So what’s this show of yours: The Annotated Audiobook?
Annotated Audiobook annotated…
ROBERT: I’m doing a live show for the first time in fifteen years.
JOHN: It’s part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival and you’re performing in the Peaks Bar of the Drygate Brewery.
ROBERT: Yes, it’s literally a piss-up in a brewery So what could possibly go wrong?
JOHN: It’s happening this Wednesday – which is the 13th.
ROBERT: Like I said, what could possibly go wrong?
JOHN: Why did you stop doing live shows fifteen years ago?
ROBERT: Because really what I like to do is write. I got my start in stand-up comedy but I never considered myself a stand-up. I was basically just dabbling in something I was a fan of. I always loved stand-up comedy of the 1980s and speciality acts.
It was my start, but then I realised: Yes, I want to write funny stuff, but I don’t want the comedian’s lifestyle – I don’t want too be touring and fretting about performance all the time; I want to be writing short pieces and that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. But your real question is Why now?
JOHN: Is it? Oh… Why now?
ROBERT: Good question. People are nostalgic about the pandemic now because they’ve all had to go back to work. But, for me, the pandemic was utterly depressing – stuck in my flat, alone, without much to do. So, when we came out of the pandemic, what I wanted to do was live, real entertainment again. Collaboration with people. Going out. Engaging with real life again. Not just the internet.
I thought: How can I turn my comedy writing into performance again? And I think I’ve found a way.
The Iceman book, currently being shot as a documentary
So I’m working with other people. There’s the Iceman film Melt It!, of course, with Anthony Irvine and Mark Cartwright – YouTuber GingerBeardMark. And I have a novel in progress with an American artist called Landis Blair.
JOHN: An artist? So he’s illustrating it?
ROBERT: He is writing long-form for the first time. It’s a comedy fantasy. There will be illustrations, but it won’t be a comic book. It’s a novel.
JOHN: Lke Charles Dickens’ novels, which had illustrations?
ROBERT: Yes. If you think of those Sherlock Holmes novels where there’s occasionally an illustration.
All these works are not just me on my own; they involve other people.
JOHN: So you’re basically just being lazy and letting other people do the work?
ROBERT: (LAUGHS) I wouldn’t go that far.
I want to get my works out and actually read them in public. I’ve always wanted a theatrical premise to go with the reading. Whenever you go and see someone doing a reading, it’s fine if you know what you’ve signed up for. But, in a comedy environment, you kinda want something a bit extra. You want a premise.
So my premise is it’s an audio book recording for which I want a live audience; so the audience are coming to play a part in that. A little bit of participation from the audience and, if nothing else, I’ll capture their noises.
That’s the premise of The Annotated Audiobook and I’ll be riffing around the material. It won’t just be me reading it verbatim from the page, I’m going to be telling the story behind the story, commentating on what happens in the room and things like that.
So what do you think, John. Is it a clever idea or is it all doomed to failure?
JOHN: Everything’s doomed to failure. We’re all going to die. Eventually, the sun explodes and destroys everything.
ROBERT: I was thinking a little more short-term than that.
JOHN: It’s a one-off, isn’t it? You can’t say every time you perform that it’s for an audio recording.
ROBERT: Originally, I had no interest in actually recording it. It was just a theatrical premise. But I think next year you could see a Robert Wringham audio book come out of it.
JOHN: Will that sell as well as a printed book?
ROBERT: What I hear is a lot of people don’t read ‘old-fashioned’ books; they only want audio now.
Robert Wringham with two of his own many ‘old-fashioned’ print books
JOHN: So have you a grand tour planned?
ROBERT: No. The Glasgow show will either be the beginning of something or the end of something. Kind of a pilot. If it goes well, I’d like to do more shows like The Annotated Audiobook. I’d like to do them occasionally.
I want to bring my books to the stage and I think I’ve found a cheeky, crafty way to present that.
JOHN: …and you’ll make loads of money out of all this, like Simon Munnery and The Iceman…?
ROBERT: Of course not. No. Simon Munnery recently worked as a cleaner in a chicken processing plant.
JOHN: Is this common knowledge? Can I print that?
ROBERT: Well, he talks about it in his act. It’s all real stuff. He brought some innovation to the job. He made some sort of extended vacuum cleaner that could get into places the regular vacuum couldn’t get.
JOHN: I’ll tell you where the money is: chicken sexing. I once met a man who travelled the world chicken sexing. He was making an absolute fortune because it’s really commercially important to know whether these tiny chicks with tiny genitals are male or female.
ROBERT: You’ve told me that before.
JOHN: I am a man of few anecdotes.
ROBERT: It’s very strange, because The Iceman once worked in a chicken factory as well. It seems like that’s the social safety net for comedians who don’t make fortunes.
JOHN: There was Chic Murray… but what did The Iceman do in the chicken factory?
ROBERT: He was a security guard.
JOHN: To stop chickens escaping or cats invading?
ROBERT: He says they were worried about Animal Rights protestors getting in. But he says, as a vegetarian, that if they had broken in he would have just let them carry on.
JOHN: I may have gone off-subject.
ROBERT: Yes… The Annotated Audiobook at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this week…
With all the misinformation swirling around, it is good to know that the Reuters news agency takes its journalistic responsibilities seriously when supplying worldwide news and media sources with facts.
But a joke’s a joke.
Reuters employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide.
In August last year, Reuters fact-checked President Obonjo, a British stand-up comedy act that has been performing for over ten years.
The shtick is that President Obonjo is the leader/dictator of the Lafta Republic in Africa.
So convincing did many people (largely Americans) find this act that they believed President Obonjo was real.
Last August, Reuters’ initial fact-check was triggered when prominent right-wing commentator Melissa Tate shared a video of President Obonjo calling on America “to release Donald Trump immediately”.
Melissa Tate shared his online appeal with her 530,000 followers on Twitter as if it were real.
She captioned the clip: “African President expresses sadness of the loss of democracy in America following the Biden regime’s arrest of a former President & the disrespect of a mugshot. The world is watch[ing] the fall of America in amazement.” (I blogged about it all at the time HERE.)
When Reuters carried out a fact-check and discovered for certain last August that Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winner President Obonjo was indeed ‘just’ a comedy act – even if a very good comedy act – that seemed to be the end of it.
But, this week, Reuters was sleuthing again – double or maybe triple checking that the good President was not a real African head of state masquerading for some inexplicable reason as a UK comedian.
It takes a big stretch of the imagination, but Reuters’ experienced team was prepared to make that stretch.
This time, they were checking a TikTok video (shared on Instagram) in which President Obonjo threatened to invade the US “if Biden and his people continue to prosecute Donald Trump”. It was re-posted by humanities_truth_ with the line “The president of Africa threatens to invade America over Biden’s corruption”.
A member of President Obonjo’s fictional Ministry of Media Relations was able to reassure Reuters that such an invasion is not imminent:
“Thank you for your enquiry. I am pleased to confirm that President Obonjo is indeed a character created by the comedian Benjamin Bello and the clip you provided is of him commenting in character on the news.
“President Obonjo of Lafta Republic is a comedy character who has appeared in a British TV special on ITVX and at numerous comedy festivals in the UK. The President often comments satirically on news events and current affairs. It is a sign of the times that a comedian who parodies world leaders is hard to distinguish from a genuine politician. So long as politicians keep clowning, it’s entirely fair for President Obonjo to play them at their own game, with better jokes and less collateral damage. For more information please see www.presidentobonjo.com”
I fear (or do I mean hope?) that, in US election year, this may not be the last we hear of Obonjo-gate. Of course, if Reuters were able to uncover the truth, it would be a real coup for them.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I have an interest in Artificial Intelligence and its ability to mine facts and opinions… largely because it is interesting how misinformation spreads and how Chinese Whispers result in cumulative errors.
Last Friday (5th January) was the late comedian Malcolm Hardee’s birthday. He was born in 1950.
He died 19 years ago, in 2005.
So I asked three AIs to write me an obituary of Malcolm Hardee to see what facts they had mined.
Wreaths at Malcolm Hardee’s funeral
PERPLEXITY AI wrote…
Malcolm Hardee, a prominent figure in British comedy, passed away on January 31, 2005. He was a comedian, agent, manager, and club-owner who had a significant influence on the British comedy scene. Hardee was known for his unconventional and anarchic style, and he played a pivotal role in shaping the careers of numerous comedians, including Jo Brand, Harry Enfield, and Paul Merton. His offstage antics and larger-than-life personality made him an icon of the alternative comedy movement. Hardee’s unexpected death, as a result of drowning in Greenland Dock, marked the end of an era in British comedy. He was remembered for his loyalty, unorthodox behavior, and his lasting impact on the comedy world. Malcolm Hardee will be dearly missed by his family, friends, and the comedy community.
So far so good.
Next up…
CHAT GPT wrote…
In Memoriam: Malcolm Hardee (1950 – 2005)
The world of comedy bids a fond yet bittersweet farewell to the legendary and irrepressible Malcolm Hardee, who departed this realm on January 31, 2005, leaving behind a legacy of laughter, chaos, and an indomitable spirit. Born on January 5, 1950, in Lewisham, London, Hardee’s passing marks the end of an era in British comedy.
Malcolm Hardee was no ordinary comedian; he was a maverick, a provocateur, and a true original. With a career spanning several decades, Hardee carved out a niche for himself in the annals of stand-up, known for his audacious humor, unabashed irreverence, and a penchant for pushing boundaries that set him apart from his peers.
Beginning his comedic journey in the 1970s, Hardee quickly became a fixture on the London comedy circuit. His legendary establishment, the Tunnel Club, became a crucible for emerging talent, a place where the unconventional and the unexpected thrived. Hardee’s anarchic approach to comedy was a beacon for those who dared to defy convention.
Beyond the stage, Malcolm Hardee was a larger-than-life personality, leaving an indelible mark on the hearts of friends and fellow comedians. His generosity, camaraderie, and willingness to embrace the absurd endeared him to a wide circle of admirers. Hardee’s influence extended not only through his performances but also through his mentorship of young comedians, shaping the landscape of British comedy in ways that continue to resonate today.
Malcolm Hardee’s comedic genius found expression not only in his live performances but also in his written works. His autobiography, “I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake”, offered a glimpse into the mischievous mind of a man who lived life on his own terms.
As we mourn the passing of this comedic icon, let us celebrate the laughter he gifted us, the chaos he reveled in, and the irrepressible spirit that defined Malcolm Hardee. Though he may have left the stage, his legacy lives on in the hearts of those who were fortunate enough to share in the joy of his unique brand of comedy. The world is a little less colorful without Malcolm Hardee, but his influence ensures that the laughter he ignited will echo through the halls of comedy for years to come.
Fair enough. Next…
CLAUDE AI wrote…
Malcolm Hardee, an eccentric and seminal figure in British alternative comedy, has died at the age of 55. Hardee passed away on January 31st, 2005 from drowning after a night of revelry.
Hardee got his start performing on the London comedy circuit in the 1980s, known for outrageous stunts and an anarchic sensibility. He became a pioneer of alternative comedy, founding The Tunnel Club which helped launch iconoclastic acts like Vic Reeves and Jerry Sadowitz.
As a performer, Hardee incorporated bizarre acts into his stand-up like the “naked balloon dance” and fire eating. Known as the “Godfather of British Alternative Comedy,” he had a larger-than-life persona and was notorious for erratic, intoxicated behavior on and off stage.
The latter years of Hardee’s life were marred by numerous arrests and run ins with authorities. However the comedian maintained a cult status among fellow artists and fans. He was a ubiquitous figure at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hardee also operated a comedy club boat, The Wibbley Wobbley, to entertain attendees of the annual festival.
Malcolm Hardee is survived by his two sons. His impact on British comedy remains unparalleled – he discovered and promoted new talent fearlessly. Hardee’s provocative humor and exhibitionist style left a legacy on alternative acts for decades. The comedy world has lost one of its most irreverent pioneers and showmen.
“Fire eating”???
Numerous arrests???
The Wibbley Wobbley in London entertained attendees of the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh???
Malcolm’s children were two sons? That’ll be news to his son and daughter.
Close. But no cigar…
So I thought I would ask AI to “Write a comedy monologue in the style of British comedian Malcolm Hardee”.
PERPLEXITY AI admirably just outright refused to do it…I’m sorry, but I can’t provide a verbatim comedy monologue in the style of a specific comedian as it would involve creating original content.
CLAUDE AI made a stab at it but was thrown by the word “comedian” and broadened the tiny specifics it knew about Malcolm into what it believes was a standard stand-up act.
Here’s an attempt at a comedy monologue inspired by the provocative, anarchic style of the late great Malcolm Hardee:
Good evening ladies and GERMS. Well isn’t this a bloody miserable crowd. You lot look more depressed than my ballsack on a cold winter morn.
I’ll be honest with ya – I almost didn’t make it here tonight as I found myself in a wee bit of trouble earlier when I got into a spot of bother trying to steal a boat down by the docks! Turns out “Grand Theft Water Transport” is more frowned upon than I reckoned it would be. The coppers these days just have no sense of humor!
Reminds me of the time I got banned from Margate for loosenin’ the bolts on the rollercoaster. They get so uppity about “public safety hazards” when all I wanted was to add some harmless thrills ‘n spills! Health and safety can sod off – bring on the danger I say!
But no worries – they can’t keep Malcolm Hardee down for long. I’ll always find a way to cause some hilarious chaos. I’m craftier than a fox doin’ taxes! Speaking of which, make sure to pay the taxman with plenty of counterfeit notes so you can afford more pints. Cheers!
Well, looks I’m gettin’ the hook already. You scared, stupid squares just can’t handle my riotous rumblings! I’ll be out back by the dumpsters if you prudes need more corruption. Until next time, remember to keep your knickers loose and spirits high!
exits with trouserless waddle
Nothing like Malcolm, though at least CLAUDE.AI tried…
ChatGPT just threw its cyber-hands up in despair and spewed out a generic cliché monologue…
Ladies and gentlemen, how are we all doing tonight? Fantastic, I hope! Now, let me tell you a bit about myself. I recently got a job as a scarecrow, but I had to quit. Turns out, I’m not cut out for it. I kept falling asleep on the job, and the crows started leaving Yelp reviews about my lackluster performance.
But enough about me, let’s talk about technology. Have you noticed how everything these days is smart? Smartphones, smart TVs, smart fridges. I bought a smartwatch, and now it won’t stop reminding me to stand up. I’m just sitting here, minding my own business, and suddenly my wrist buzzes, “Time to stand up!” I feel like I’m in a relationship with a fitness-obsessed watch.
And have you seen those self-driving cars? I don’t trust them. I tried to cross the road the other day, and a self-driving car stopped for me. I didn’t know whether to thank it or give it a driving test. I mean, if it’s going to act like a human, it should at least tailgate and honk at me for taking too long to cross.
Now, relationships. Anyone here in a relationship? Yeah? Congratulations, you’ve found someone who can tolerate you. I recently got a girlfriend, and she asked me what my five-year plan was. I said, “Survive the next five minutes without saying something stupid.” So far, I’m failing miserably.
Speaking of relationships, I recently got into an argument with my girlfriend about the toilet seat. She said, “Why can’t you put it down after using it?” I said, “Why can’t you put it up after using it?” We eventually compromised and decided to use separate bathrooms.
But let’s talk about the weather. It’s always a great British conversation starter, isn’t it? “Nice weather we’re having.” “Oh, yes, very unpredictable, just like my dating life.” And don’t get me started on British summers. We wait all year for a week of sunshine, and when it finally arrives, we complain that it’s too hot. We’re never satisfied.
Now, I know I’m not the most organized person. I tried to join a self-help group for procrastinators, but the meeting kept getting postponed. I guess even procrastinators can’t commit to their own recovery.
But hey, we’re all here to have a good time, right? So let’s raise our glasses and toast to life’s absurdities, the quirks of technology, and the never-ending quest for the perfect relationship. Cheers, everyone! And remember, if life gives you lemons, make a gin and tonic. It solves most problems!
So, at the moment, AI can make a decent stab at providing factual information, not always 100% correct. THREE STARS.
As for originality or even trying to duplicate original creative thinking, forget it… NO STARS.
You knew that already.
But I never claimed to be original…
I do wonder how long it will be before the (as he himself would have said) total bollocks that Malcolm was a fire-eating father of two sons who ran a floating Wibbley Wobbley comedy club in Edinburgh becomes accepted as fact through repetition, factual cannibalism and cumulative error.
Once AIs accept ‘facts’ from other AIs as facts, then AI will start to stand for Artificial Information not Artificial Intelligence…
JOHN: You were saying that you were inspired by Les Dawson to do a visual act.
BERNIE: Yes.
JOHN: So then there’s Peter Pullen…
BERNIE: Yes. Peter’s an absolute genius. At the time I was getting on with my props act, he was making all the puppets for the ventriloquists: people like Keith Harris & Orville and Rod Hull & Emu. And he made a huge thing called The Honey Monster for Sugar Puffs’ TV ads.
Peter made me a cat that sat on my shoulder and an inflatable diving suit.
There was also a huge 12ft shark I bought in an auction and flew from Jersey to Shepperton film studios. I came back on the plane from Heathrow to Jersey that day and it came down the conveyor belt. No wrapping.
I was obsessed. I would do anything. I think maybe a lot of it was based on fear. There were a lot of good comics about. My act was anything that was visual. A million miles away from what most of the comics were doing at the time.
JOHN: You would dance with biscuit tins on your feet.
BERNIE: I found them at the side of a stage. They were holding raffle tickets.
It was visual. Harpo Marx used to have a big long overcoat. He had a motor horn in there and he could play a tune on his coat!
JOHN: You allegedly called your act “organised lunacy”. I used to work on the children’s TV show Tiswas and I’m very aware anarchy has to be organised if you want to guarantee it will work..
BERNIE: Exactly. My act had to be properly stage-managed. Once you got an idea that COULD work, you then had to construct and construct and construct. You needed a chain of organisation, really. You needed supplies. It was like an ironmonger’s shop on the road.
That’s where Peter Pullen was fantastic. I could go to him with a strange idea and he would actually make it happen.
JOHN: When alternative comedy came along in the 1980s, the comedy acts who played the Northern clubs were seen as ‘yesterday acts’. But you survived.
BERNIE: I was alongside a generation of very funny guys – some great comics – but I think everything had become stylised and the very fact you were wearing a smart dinner jacket, a frilly shirt and a nice bow tie stamped you and it stamped your generation.
Suddenly, in the 1980s, the new guys came along wearing jeans and teeshirts and it made the previous generation look even more dated. I was fortunate, I suppose, that I was outside the ‘normal’ because I was doing ‘organised lunacy’ and I was visual and so escaped the noose. Everyone else was still doing mother-in-law gags.
JOHN: And you were not doing social observation or political gags.
BERNIE: (LAUGHS) It was kind of circus, in a way.
JOHN: You hit the mainstream comedy audience but not with a mainstream ‘stand-up’ act. You played Royal Command Performances in 1979 AND in 2016…
BERNIE: I was doing regular cabaret on the QE2 liner and those audiences were from all over the world. I used to go on there with my props with my gigantic, 20ft high inflatable diving suit. I used to say to the Cruise Director: “When I’ve done the ostrich, done the cat on my shoulder, I’ve got to produce this 20ft tall diving suit…”
He would inevitably say: “Well, you can’t. There ’s no room backstage. Just the kitchen.”
“Yeah,” I’d say, “but up there, three decks up, I can see a rail.”
So I would be doing my act on stage and, three decks up, people would be inflating my diving suit. At some point, I would say: “You’ve won some furniture, madam… You’ve won a brand new divan suite…” and this diving suit would be launched from three decks up, down the atrium, BANG onto the dance floor.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I’d say. “it’s not a divan suite, it’s a diving suit.”
When I look back, What was going on between my ears?
But the Americans seemed to like it, because it crossed the language barriers.
The best thing was getting the (deflated) diving suit through Customs.
“What’s this, sir?… It’s a what?… Why?… Why are you taking this to America, sir?… Why are you… Why are…?… Why?”
JOHN: The cruise ship audiences must have been totally different to perform to than the Northern club audiences you learned your craft with.
BERNIE: I think we had to be so adaptable. We learned in the Northern clubs. I would go anywhere and do anything, just because it was on offer. I took whatever came up. I would jump from one venue and situation into another. Somebody once said Get it now because it might not be there tomorrow. How right they were.
Two shows a night in the clubs. The first show might be fantastic. But, two hours later, up the road, what you’d done earlier in the evening didn’t mean a thing; it was like starting from scratch again. You became so ready for that – You became match fit.
JOHN: You also seem to have done sports events all over the world… with a trombone.
BERNIE: I wasn’t playing the trombone; I was just carrying it. I was doing a midweek afternoon show on Radio Sheffield. I love radio.
The bandleader of the England football team band heard me. I always had a trombone in the studio because it was just a funny thing to have. He said: “The England band are based in Sheffield. The England Supporters’ Band. We’d like you to join the band.”
Bernie – England’s supportive non-trombone-player
I asked: “Why? I can’t actually play the trombone.”
He said: “Oh, you’ll be fine,” assuming that I could…
Anyway, we went up to Newcastle to support England at a time when Wembley Stadium was being reconstructed. He said:
“Stand next to me and we’ll play The Great Escape.”
So we played The Great Escape – or they did – I tried. He looked at me at the end of it and says: “You really can’t bloody play it, can you?”
I said: “I’ve been telling you that for a month!”
“We didn’t believe you,” he said.
Anyway, I had some crude lessons and I can now tell you that the slide positions on The Great Escape are 4-3-1-1 … 1-1-3-1-4 … 3-3 … 1-2-1-2-4-1-4
Curiously, this took me around the world, not only as part of the England Supporters’ Band to follow England in Germany, Brazil, the Caribbean… Moscow we even did… But then, in the Beijing Olympics, we became the Ladies’ Hockey Supporters’ Band…
I actually went round the world carrying a trombone that I couldn’t play.
A trombone is a very convenient thing to carry, because you can carry it over your arm like an umbrella. Everyone should have one. Go find a trombone and see how it will change your life.
I’ve been round the world from a kid playing on a bomb site in St Helens to playing Las Vegas.
JOHN: Why did it take you 14 years to write your autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas?
Bernie Clifton – live in Las Vegas
BERNIE: It started out as a book about japes. I used to work on building sites and one of the opportunities of working on a building site and then coming into show business was that the sense of humour is…
Look, as a teenager, just post-War, mid-1950s, the workforce consisted of a lot of ex-servicemen who had survived and felt that you had better enjoy your environment… and inherent in this was the sense of humour.
JOHN: He’s a different generation, but Johnny Vegas is also from St Helens.
BERNIE: Yes, he’s written a lovely foreword for my book.
JOHN: The Guardian said you were the spiritual father of Vic Reeves, Harry Hill and Johnny Vegas.
BERNIE: I love present day comedy. I remember being in the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and I just happened to have a big reel of that parcel tape. So I hooked this parcel tape around my belt and gave this girl the end of it.
I told her: “You stand still and I’ll walk around.” So I walked around in varying degrees of figures of eight taping maybe over 100 people together in little circles. People were so bemused they just stood there. I was just doing it for the craic. Eventually, I was running out of tape and this American guy came up to me and said: “Hey! Is this a performance?”
“No. It’s alright, mate,” I said, “I’m just mucking about.”
Legendary comedy entertainer and British national treasure Bernie Clifton has just published his showbiz autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas.
He has ridden his puppet costume creation Oswald the Ostrich around the world.
I talked to him via Zoom at his home in Derbyshire.
He was wearing a woolly RAF hat.
In 2016, he appeared on BBC TV’s The Voice. He had originally applied anonymously, under his real name…
JOHN: When you appeared on The Voice, your choice of song was The Impossible Dream.
BERNIE: My version was really The Inevitable Scream. All I am, really, is a singer. I’m a pub singer who got in with the wrong people.
JOHN: Was it difficult to write your autobiography?
BERNIE: Well, it took me 14 years. I had to go and refill the ink-well and get a new quill.
I missed the first 18 years of my life out. All that failure. All that thrashing. I was a thick boy in a grammar school who obviously had no right to be there. When I was 10, I was told by my ‘inspirational’ teacher: “The day you pass your Eleven-Plus, Bernard, little pigs will fly.”
JOHN: But you did.
BERNIE: I did. And I remember not having the courage to go up to Mrs Fairhurst and look up in the sky and say: “I can’t see any pigs.” I just didn’t have the guts.
JOHN: Why did you change your birth name? Bernie Quinn is a good strong name.
BERNIE: Because I went to a pub to do a Sunday noon gig where you had to share the stage with strippers. It was a male stag do on a Sunday lunchtime. I turned up as ‘boy singer Bernie Quinn’ and there, in coloured chalk, it said: ONE FOR THE LADS – BURMA QUEEN… I had been mistakenly booked on the phone as an ‘exotic dancer’. So I changed my name from Quinn to Clifton. My dad was not best pleased.
JOHN: Why choose Clifton?
BERNIE: I went through the phone book. I realised I needed a two-syllable surname. So I went from Tipton (a town in Staffordshire) to Lipton (a grocer) and I think maybe there was Teabags along the line. In the end, I chose Clifton – a bridge in Bristol. And ‘Bernie Clifton’ seemed to scan. You know – Bernie Winters – Bernie Clifton.
JOHN: You wore clogs as a kid.
BERNIE: My parents had five boys so there were seven of us all living in a two-bedroom house. I don’t understand how my parents managed to procreate.
We lived ‘cheek by jowl’ in Charles Street, St Helens in Merseyside. Everything was ‘just round the corner’ – the school, a shop, everything and, when I was four, I think Hitler must have told Goering and the Luftwaffe: “What they need is a playground”.
We lived at No 59 and one morning we woke up to find that Nos 65, 67 and 69 had disappeared in a bombing so then we had somewhere to play. I think we were too young to feel any fear. At the time, you were just grateful to survive and be fed. It made me realise in recent years how much ‘under the cosh’ we were. But happy. Because it was everyone’s lot. Everybody was having the same problems, weren’t they?
JOHN: Why did the Germans bomb St Helens?
BERNIE: It was the glass trade (Pilkington’s) in St Helens. You can’t march an army unless you’ve got glass. And, probably more importantly, we were just ten miles down the road from the Liverpool docks.
Anyway, I passed my Eleven-Plus but I was hauled out of grammar school at 15 – “There’s no point you staying here” – then I got a job as a bread lad at the Co-op and eventually ended up as an apprentice plumber for the local Corporation.
I got that because we were staunch Catholics and the Building Manager was also a staunch Catholic and it was always a good idea to be seen at 10 o’clock Mass on a Sunday. I kid you not. That was the way forward in your career. I got the job and discovered that, working in bathrooms, I got good acoustics.
I realised I had a good singing voice and got a job with the local dance band at weekends. In the interval, we used to go out and get drunk. Then, when it came to the last waltz, when I wasn’t required on stage, I used to find the doorman’s bicycle where he hid it under the stairs and ride round the dance floor on it. Me and my mates got known for doing anything. There was no vandalism in it, no violence. It was just, as the Irish might say, we were doing it for the craic. We’d do anything and that stayed with me. This is fun!
In retrospect, it got me out of a pretty grey time for this country – the early 1950s.
The RAF changed my life. To be sent to the leading edge of the Western World’s defence, training pilots and navigators how to drop a bomb on Moscow… It was absolutely ludicrous! I mean, I was a guy from St Helens who couldn’t hold down a job as a plumber!
As a plumber, I was known as The Tsunami Man… I was a disaster.
Everything I tried I failed at.
But, in the RAF, I was ultimately posted to Lindholme, near Doncaster. From a plumber, I became a radar mechanic at the sharp end of the Western Alliance. We were defending the West against the Russians and the RAF decided that this failed plumber from St Helens should be fitting radar boxes on Vulcan V-bombers at Bomber Command’s Bombing School just outside Doncaster…
It was all a fluke.
I was very lucky. Doncaster was the hub of Northern clubland entertainment – pubs and clubs – and I just happened to have been dropped ten miles down the road. My weekends were free. So, every Sunday morning, I would borrow the flight sergeant’s bike without asking, pedal into Doncaster, park it somewhere, then get a trolleybus out to some miners’ welfare. That was how I found my way into entertainment.
JOHN: Everything’s a series of accidents but success is taking advantage of the tiny possibilities when they happen. And determination.
BERNIE: In my radar mechanics’ classroom in Wiltshire, everyone else in the class was sent out to Bomber Command stations in the middle of nowhere. But, of those 30 guys, I was the one who was sent to Doncaster. It was just a weird mish-mash of circumstances.
JOHN: But you had the nouse and the talent to take advantage of it. And then you got into the glamorous world of show business.
BERNIE: Well, I starting working in bathrooms and then getting paid to sing. I was a pub singer, And that was it. I became ‘a turn’ – a singer, but with a few choice gags that I’d picked up on the building sites.
I went along with me few gags and a song and Les Dawson was topping the bill. After the show, he took me to one side and gave me a proper (verbal) kicking. He said: “You’re OK, but you’re doing the same gags as another hundred comics. Why don’t you…” – his very words – “…plough your own furrow… What do you like doing?”
“I said: “I do like mucking about on stage with props”.
And he said: “Well, just go out and be a ‘prop comic’. Nobody else can be arsed to do it.”
At the time, everyone was doing the mother-in-law gags. So I went out ‘inspired’ by Les and I did anything that was visual and just picked it up and ran with it.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am interested in the creative potential of AI. Yesterday, Google posted online a test of their ‘Gemini’ – an AI “capable of reasoning across text, images, audio, video and code” – and, within 24 hours, it got around 1.2 million views.
I asked OpenAI’s now arguably slighted dated ChatGPT (which allegedly/reportedly has around 60% of the AI market) to write a stand-up comedy routine about something fairly mundane but with some potential, so I told it:
“Write a stand up comedy routine about cheese…”
It came up with this which sounds, to me, highly influenced by New York Jewish comedians of maybe the 1950s… I can imagine it playing the Borscht Belt back then (with the actors’ names changed)…
(Image by Jezael Melgoza via UnSplash)
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk about cheese. I love cheese. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s like the Meryl Streep of the food world. It can play so many different roles—grilled cheese, mac and cheese, cheese and crackers. It’s the Daniel Day-Lewis of your refrigerator.
But have you ever noticed how many types of cheese there are? I walked into a cheese shop the other day, and I felt like I needed a PhD in dairy just to order something. The guy behind the counter starts throwing out names like he’s reciting the cast of a French film. “Would you like some Roquefort, Brie, Camembert, Gouda, or maybe some Chèvre?” I’m like, “Just give me the one that tastes good on a cracker!”
And don’t get me started on blue cheese. Who looked at regular cheese and thought, “You know what this needs? Mold. Yeah, let’s let it age with some funky-looking veins running through it.” I don’t want my cheese to look like a science experiment gone wrong. I want it to look like a slice of heaven.
Cheese is also deceptive. It looks so innocent in the grocery store, just sitting there in the dairy aisle. You bring it home, and suddenly it’s playing hide-and-seek in the back of your fridge. You’re like, “I know I bought some cheddar. Where did it go?” It’s like cheese has a secret life when you’re not looking.
And let’s talk about the lactose-intolerant folks. I mean, who hurt you, cheese? Why do you have to betray some of us? It’s like cheese has a personal vendetta against lactose-intolerant people. “Oh, you want to enjoy a nice cheese platter? Here’s a side of stomach-ache for you.” Cheese is like that friend who’s all fun and games until they eat too much and turn into a party pooper.
But despite all the cheese drama, we keep coming back for more. It’s like a bad relationship. You know it’s not good for you, but it just tastes so darn good. I can imagine sitting down with my doctor, and he’s like, “You need to cut down on the cheese.” And I’m like, “Doc, do you want to live in a world where people don’t eat cheese? Because that sounds like a terrible place.”
In conclusion, cheese is like the comedian of the food world. It’s sharp, it’s versatile, and it knows how to leave a lasting impression. So, next time you’re enjoying a cheese platter, just remember: you’re not indulging in dairy; you’re savoring a culinary performance. Thank you, and may your cheese always be melty and your crackers never stale!
I’m not sure this would necessarily play well at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles or in London today, nor at the Edinburgh Fringe but – hey! – we are less than a year into this AI frenzy.
Tony Allen with the cast of the film Plan B, including Becky Fury and Tony Green…
Following on from the last blog – a tribute to the late performer Tony Allen by his friend Becky Fury – performer Tony Green was sharing some memories of Tony Allen with me…
At the end, he said: “Oh, I didn’t mention the film we did… Plan B by Jerri Hart, one of Tony’s workshop pupils. Tony’s impatience regarding continued re-takes – “Fuck! Another car’s just come round the corner! We’ll have to go again!” – made his performance one to cherish.”
But before we got to that, Tony Green said of Tony Allen…
Tony Green (right) with Tony Allen in the film Plan B
Many people referred to Tony Allen as ‘Lofty Tone’ – he was 6’4″ and a half.
I first met him back in 1981 and, like many others, could hardly fail to be impressed.
This was at London’s first Comedy Store in Meard Street, Soho. Pete Supply (one of the ‘Demolition Decorators’) told John Hegley and myself about the place. All it said in Time Out was “…with Alexei Sayle and the Gong”.
John and I were gonged off like most on our first night. Tony Allen was then one of the regular performers and always, as far as I can recollect, survived the dreaded gong with comparative ease – his was a finely honed act.
By that time, he and Alexei Sayle had started ‘Alternative Cabaret’ and the next week I saw Tony at The Green Man (in the cellar) in Great Portland Street.
This was in many respects a revelation for me especially in view of what we had passing for comedy on our TV sets at that time, which I found incredibly boring, tedious and offensive – on the whole. Even now we never get ‘Alternative’ Comedy on TV – just some severely watered-down version with little bite or content.
Alexei Sayle (left) and Tony Allen with ‘Alternative Cabaret’ in 1979
Somehow, I seemed to bond with Tony. Not that we were ever really great friends – It was an ego thing and Tony could be difficult (he may have said the same about me).
What Tony was saying was relevant.
Any aspiring comic could learn a great deal from watching Tony and I am sure many did. It was an experience in itself witnessing him at his best which probably would have been between 1980-1995.
He had a great friend in the sharp and talented Max Handley, who sadly died in a hang-gliding accident in 199o. I always felt that, like Sherlock Holmes going over Reichenbach Falls, Tony’s act was never quite the same afterwards.
Max would work with Tony on his act almost as a conductor and I believe another person was involved – possibly Paul Durden; at best it was a finely orchestrated piece.
Tony Allen arrested at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, 1979. (Photo: Philip Wolmuth)
Tony had read Heathcote Williams’ (who was also a good friend, fellow Notting Hill squatter and writing partner) seminal The Speakers, published in 1964 when he was a mere 22.
The book is four biographies of stand-out Speakers’ Corner orators. Tony was to become, himself, one of the leading lights at that particular venue for many years. Oration was a natural thing for him and I enjoyed many an afternoon watching Tone at Speaker’s Corner taking part in a heated debate.
Tony Allen’s advice on comedy, Attitude
Of course, there was much more to Tone than just this. He was also a gifted writer himself (submitting work for TV and radio shows) and I can without hesitation recommend his books Attitude – Wanna Make Something of It?(him on stand-up) and A Summer in the Park (him on Speakers’ Corner).
I was very happy to have been part of Tony’s ‘Performance Club’ which he had started back in the late 1990s at Smiffy’s Wine Bar in King’s Cross. Although he didn’t do to much stand up in the later years he continued to do comedy workshops which I sometimes went along to and, of course, he was doing a first rate job of imparting valuable knowledge and technique to the would be stand-up.
He had a plethora of first rate one liners. In particular I remember: “Life should be more than a scented aerosol in the shithouse of existence”. Indeed Tony…indeed.
Tony was something special and I feel privileged to have witnessed a talent like his at his best. If there is such a thing as an afterlife I would like to think that he is now playing snooker with his idol Joseph Grimaldi and perhaps Lenny Bruce is around there somewhere as well – along with Max and Heathcote.
Tony Allen looking slightly impatient in Plan B
Oh, I didn’t mention the film we did – Plan B by Jerri Hart, one of Tony’s workshop pupils. Plan B included virtually all the Performance Club members at the time. Jerry was a well-known Exeter trumpet-playing busker. Tony’s impatience regarding continued re-takes – “Fuck! Another car’s just come round the corner!- We’ll have to go again!” – made his performance one to cherish.
The scene where I smash the derelict car window (this HAD to be one take) went for quite a lot of takes – ‘hair in the gate’, I think, was a term that Tony was getting increasingly annoyed with.
As you know, with filming, patience is a great virtue. You may think you’ve delivered your lines really well but then….And you have to do it all over again. This was an area Tony wasn’t totally familiar with – although he’d done guest spots with The Comic Strip gang.
The thing is it worked, I felt, beautifully – almost by default… as the more annoyed Tony got – “’Oh Christ, not again!” – the better he came over.Quite clever, perhaps, on Jerri’s part.
On the whole it was quite an enjoyable experience.
Becky Fury also appeared in Plan B, so I asked her what she remembered of the filming…
Becky Fury in character in Plan B
We shot it – a low budget film – in Devon
It was a fairly unremarkable experience, except for one incident of high drama right at the beginning of shooting…
One of the cast members was in the process of getting sent home in disgrace for getting far too drunk on the night we arrived – thankfully before filming started.
Being sent home for having too much to drink was quite a feat considering the amount of big drinkers involved in that particular production. Myself, at that time, included.
I remember standing next to Tony (Allen), who was shaming the actor who will remain un-named and un-shamed, for several reasons… the main one being that Tony shamed him quite enough.
Anyway, this all took place outside and Tony was just at the end of dressing the guy down when a goose came over out of nowhere and pecked the guy in the balls.
It was im-peck-able timing.
The actor was then banned from the set.
As if being told off by Tony and then goosed by a goose wasn’t punishment enough…
THERE IS A 40” TRAILER FOR PLAN B ON VIMEO…
…AND AN 8-minute BEHIND-THE-SCENES SORT-OF DOCUMENTARY featuring Tony Allen, Tony Green and, in brief snippets, Becky Fury.
THE FULL 15-MINUTE FILM IS HERE, THOUGH WITH SOME BUFFERING PROBLEMS…
Last year, comic/photographer Steve Best published Comedians, an extraordinarily classy collection of his photos of, you guessed it, comedians.
Now he is about to publish a sequel – Comedians 2.
Steve Best’s classy book Comedians…
STEVE: What I wanted to do with the first book was to get a lovely product out and to not lose money. It has made a bit of profit.
But the print cost of the new one has gone up because the cost of the paper has increased. It has gone up massively, like everything else.
But I want to publish it.
JOHN: Why?
STEVE: You want to leave something behind after you’ve gone. I want the book to be the best possible book I can do. It’s printed at EBS in Italy (Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei), the best fine art printers in the world.
JOHN: So what’s the difference between the first and second books?
STEVE: Well the first one got my name out there as a photographer and I got a lot of work on the back of it. There’s this big project that might be coming up soon.
JOHN: You have an ‘in’ with comedians because you are one of them. You are a comic AND a photographer.
STEVE: Yes, it gives me access and also I’ve grown in confidence. Now I’ve got to position myself – not to be aloof but – to be seen as a photographer rather than a comedian with a camera.
JOHN: The National Portrait Gallery has just re-opened…
STEVE: The Art world is really difficult to understand and break into. And there’s a difference between fine art photography and documentary photography. My biggest hurdle now is to convince the Art world that what I do is of some artistic merit.
Some of the photographic galleries are now saying to me These are great photos rather than Oh, you’re just a comedian who does a bit of photography.
JOHN: I love your photo of Johnny Vegas sitting in the middle, with Michael Redmond on the left and Dave Johns on the right. Three totally different characters in one shot.
Comics Michael Redmond, Johnny Vegas and Dave Johns in Comedians
STEVE: That was one of the first photos I took (2015) and it started me thinking There’s something in this.
JOHN: If photography became suddenly very, very financially successful, would you give up comedy performing?
STEVE: Until about six or seven years ago, I… well I… well, there’s another article to be written about what happened to the comedy circuit…
JOHN: What happened to the comedy circuit?
STEVE: Twenty years ago, the money was even better than it is now and you could earn a pretty good living by just being a good stand-up.
JOHN: So what happened six or seven years ago?
STEVE: Well, you know, Jongleurs fell apart, but the money hadn’t really gone up much anyway. Jongleurs had been paying just as well seven years before that. They were paying you to perform and they were also paying a hotel in advance and then it started slowly changing – you had to stomp up the money in advance and they’d pay you back and then they stopped paying. I wasn’t owed any money when Jongleurs went down.
I had a really strong 20-25 minute set I used to take round then but I feel I’m much more creative now with what I’m doing with the photography… because everything IS so different each time.
The very visual Steve Best: “What am I doing it for?”
You think… If I do a gig for £150 down in Sussex, I could instead do a shoot in my little studio – a portrait – and be at home… So what am I doing going down to Sussex and performing much the same material again? What am I doing it for?
JOHN: Surely every comedy gig is different because of the punters?
STEVE: Well, unless you are a really, really prolific writer, the act kind of stays the same. I’m not learning. Why would I carry on doing that? I’m not an observational comic; my act is one-liner jokes and visual routines. It doesn’t interest me as much as it used to.
JOHN: Are you getting into a niche of only photographing comedians, though?
STEVE: Well, it’s documentary photography. Because of my website and that first Comedians book, I was flown out to Zurich last week for a big pharmaceutical company – I was going up and down glaciers documenting the width and doing various photoshoots of people. Hopefully that sort of thing is the future.
JOHN: People say glaciers have a limited future.
STEVE: But then there’s that big project I was telling you about that will hopefully happen. I would be part of a new music school in London. I would be a creative director with a proper studio to kit out so I can take portraits of all the musicians and tour with them when they get good.
It could be the next step for me because I could still do my other comedy projects but also get into the music world as well. It could be really exciting.
JOHN: Have your children shown any interest in performing?
STEVE: My daughter is REALLY good on the violin. My son is on the piano; he’s a funny guy but quite shy, like me. I don’t think either of them will go into being performers. Their mum is a proper scientist so would want them to get a ‘proper’ job. She is Associate Professor of Linguistics at University College London.
JOHN: Your father was a mathematician.
Steve Best in Leicester Square, London
STEVE: Strangely, he was also into Amateur Dramatics. He was quite strait-laced. My mum was the ‘mad artist’. I was really good at maths in school. I did my O Level a year early and got an A grade. I was going to go on to do Maths at A level, but then I got obsessed by performing magic… In the end, my A Levels were Music, Art and French. I really loved Maths. But I went to a real rough comprehensive school and they weren’t really pushing me. Nor my parents.
My parents sort of said: “Well, if you want to do magic, go and do magic.”
And before going to school, I used to practise juggling.
JOHN: More than three items?
STEVE: Five.
JOHN: For how long?
STEVE: About a minute.
JOHN: Bloody hell. I’m impressed. Someone explained to me that juggling five items is three times as difficult as juggling three.
STEVE: Y-e-e-e-s…
JOHN: I don’t understand how your maths brain links up with comedy performance and photography.
STEVE: I think maths helps with everything else: art and everything.
JOHN: I was useless at science: anything where you had to remember X = Y.
STEVE: I was fascinated by that. I loved the idea of memorising. I tried to memorise a pack of cards in a certain stack. Pictures and numbers; there are ways of doing it. I loved the Rubik’s Cube. I learnt the Rubik’s Cube when I was young.
JOHN: Malcolm Hardee used to say he was never impressed by juggling or mime because they were skills. With enough practice, almost anybody can become good. Whereas comedy is a talent. You can get better with practice but only to a certain extent; to be superb, you need to have some innate talent.
With photography, too, you have to learn certain technical aspects, but you also maybe need some form of innate talent?
STEVE: Yes, I think with comedy and photography you do have to have something innately – and also it’s about timing. There are all these comedy courses and you can teach comedy and you can learn technique, but it doesn’t mean you are going to be funny.
JOHN: Do you absolutely need to know the technicalities in photography? Is it like movies? Objectively, The Blair Witch Project (which I have not seen) is technically bad but works emotionally. Is it possible to take a technically bad photograph that works?
STEVE: I think technically you do have to learn – how the shutter works; how the aperture works; how to control the light that comes into the sensor. But there’s a photograph of Julian Clary and Paul Thorne passing each other in my first Comedians book. Technically, it’s not brilliant because it’s a bit out of focus but the actual timing is brilliant because they are looking at each other for that split second. So it’s a good photo.
Eye eye – Paul Thorne and Julian Clary in Comedians
JOHN: That’s it. We’re finished. 38 minutes. I have to transcribe all this.
STEVE: Where are you off to now?
JOHN: I’m meeting the Fabulous Flying Haidrani Twins… Identical twins.
STEVE: You know I’m a twin? Not identical.
JOHN: Now you tell me! After 38 minutes! What does your twin do?
STEVE: He’s a teacher down in Portishead, near Bristol. He teaches Art, including Photography, up to A-Level. Though he doesn’t really take photos. He is into Art. And he’s also a karate teacher. He’s very funny off-stage but never took it onstage. Whereas I was very quiet off-stage but went on-stage.
JOHN: Not identical twins, then…
STEVE: What do the Fabulous Flying Haidrani Twins do?
JOHN: Well, separately, they each used to be multi-award-winning journalists. Now they go on extraordinarily exotic and almost incredibly gossip-worthy holidays. But they never write about them. It’s a great loss. However successful your photography becomes, you should never give up your live comedy performances.
If I write about and chat to stand-up comedians or any other creatives then, by-and-large, the various blogs I post here are intended to publicise them or their work.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, I have found that pure writers – as opposed to performers or writer-performers – can be slightly more difficult to interview because they are slightly more reticent.
They are more aware of what their spoken words will look like to a stranger in cold (cyber) print online.
If I think someone has said anything which is clear when spoken but which could be misunderstood when read on a screen or on a page, I warn them and check that they really do want – are happy – to be quoted saying that.
I can think of one interview (and one only) where the person I was talking to strongly criticised an organisation they worked with and were beholden to… alright, OK, they slagged-off the organisation providing them with a venue at the Edinburgh Fringe…
I asked them three times – because they kept doing it – if they really, really wanted to be quoted saying that. Yes. Yes. Yes. I even quoted my warning to them (once) in the published blog.
Ultimately, they kept their venue, but the organisation they criticised (who heard about it after a print publication picked up on my blog) were not well pleased.
I was not asked to remove the blog because the mini-maelstrom had already and inevitably happened. And because the person with the loose tongue was a pro.
Which brings me to this…
In January and June 2018, I posted a couple of interview-based blogs publicising a newish UK stand-up comic. That was over five years ago.
In August and September this year, I got two emails from the onetime comic asking that both blogs be removed.
He said he was now “pursuing a career in counselling” and wanted the two blogs removed because he was “trying to limit what potential future clients can find out about me”.
Call me innocent, but I thought one main thing counsellors/therapists did was to encourage clients to come to terms with – not try to hide – events from their past.
There is no real point taking 5-year-old (or any) blog down any more than trying to delete a past printed newspaper interview as the online blogs will be archived all over the place. Who even knows where?
You can’t really fully hide online blog posts or online anything by erasing them. Plus each of my blogs would have been emailed in their entirety to over 700 of my host site’s followers and there could well be re-posts of which I know nowt.
If people find a counsellor/psychotherapist is actually trying to hide his own past while telling them to come to terms with their own back story, I would think it’s staggeringly counterproductive. Far better to be open and honest. Just saying.
These two blogs were, I think, interesting but not especially revealing although, in one, Christianity was mentioned. Hardly shocking.
According to the UK’s National Health Service website, “Counsellors work with people experiencing a wide range of emotional and psychological problems to help them bring about effective change and/or enhance their wellbeing.”
For the avoidance of doubt if, in the next five years or more, anyone else wants their willingly-expressed opinions in any of my happily-published blogs hidden, they are in for a very loud “No”.
Anyone who tries to hide their past should find a counsellor or a therapist.
With all the misinformation swirling around, it is good to know that the 
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 