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.
Malcolm Hardee Award winning British comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello has been performing as fictional African dictator President Obonjo of the LAFTA Republic for almost 12 years.
For the last five days, he has been trolled by both Trump supporters and Trump opponents on the internet.
I talked to him this morning…
JOHN: So you did your comedy show at this month’s Edinburgh Fringe…
BENJAMIN: Yes, I took my show African Zelensky up there for ten days. So many things happened. I lost my luggage; I found it again; Ukranians came to the show; one Ukranian wrote back with a 3-page document about my show; then I had Russians come to the show who said they were going to tell Putin I was supporting him and I said No No No…
I didn’t go to Edinburgh to impress or get reviews. I went there to test my show. And it went very well.
Obonjo re Trump arrest on TikTok
Then, of course, Donald Trump got arrested so one morning, in my bedroom, with two flags behind me, I did a TikTok video saying basically I’m a friend of Donald Trump. I’m very worried about the state of democracy. I pretended I didn’t know he had been released and I gave the American government an ultimatum: RELEASE HIM IMMEDIATELY! THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO SILENCE YOUR OPPONENT!
I just uploaded it to TikTok and thought that was it.
But, within a couple of days, the video had gone viral and got almost a million views.
I thought: Oh, OK…
But, a couple of days later, someone called Melissa Tate, a Right Wing Conservative blogger with about half a million followers on Twitter, blogged to say an African president supports Donald Trump.
Before I knew what was happening, there were about 60,000 reTweets – some from black Trump supporters, some from people who don’t support Trump but think MAGA supporters are stupid.
Some of the non-MAGA supporters did some fact checking on me to see if I am a real president and it is hilarious. The comments are just comedy gold! There is a debate going on between MAGA supporters who are for Trump and those who are not for Trump and people within the Republican Party who are saying: How could you have reTweeted a fictional dictator? It shows you guys are stupid.
I have had people confuse me with President Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Ali Bongo of Gabon. Some people even confused me with President Obama… They don’t even know what their ex-President looks like!
They’ve been visiting my website and yesterday Reuters got in touch to find out who was behind my video – Am I a comedian? Am I a president? They could see there’s a comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello who plays the character of President Obonjo. But can you clarify? Because people online are taking the video seriously…
Someone calling himself Ford News with around 100,000 followers posted that I “was never a voice of democracy and ran out of his country. He was a brutal dictator.”
I wrote back saying “I want you to tell me within 24 hours where you got the information that I am a brutal dictator and that I fled my country and came to the UK or I will contact my lawyers.” He deleted the Tweet.
Unbelievable! The key thing for me, John, is that, in terms of social media … I am sitting in my bedroom with two flags behind me, I am broadcasting to the world and people believe I am a real African president. It shows that social media has blurred the line between what is true and what is false.
Then there’s the racism. Confusing me with other black presidents in Africa. Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
JOHN: Do Presidents Obasanjo and Ali Bongo look anything like you?
Presidents Obasanjo of Nigeria (left) and Ali Bongo of Gabon (right) (Photos: Helene C. Stikkel/US Department of Defense + US Department of State)
BENJAMIN: They look nothing like me. Ali Bongo has been in power for years and he has had a stroke. He doesn’t want to leave office. They are both older than me and one of them has had a stroke. A stroke! (LAUGHS)
JOHN: Well, you are very convincing as President Obonjo.
BENJAMIN: There was a review of my Edinburgh Fringe show which said it was “so convincing it almost broke the walls of satire”.
Americans have been trolling me for the past five days. Including black Trump supporters. They’ve tagged Donald Trump about me. I don’t know what Donald Trump thinks. They have tagged Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker. They have tagged Tucker Carlson, the guy who used to work for Fox News. Someone told me “You have trolled the entire GOP from your bedroom in Britain”.
Despite the fact some people have said, “Oh, he is a comedian,” people have still said, “Oh, I don’t care. He’s actually speaking the truth as a President.”
JOHN: Perhaps you could be the compromise presidential candidate for the Republican Party. You could claim you were born in the US. There’s a chance no-one would check.
BENJAMIN: You’re pushing me to go to America.
JOHN: Seems reasonable. If democracy crashes there, they will need an experienced dictator. You walk the walk and talk the talk convincingly.
The day after this blog was posted, there was a coup in Gabon, overthrowing President Ali Bongo – see my blog HERE
When I went up to the Edinburgh Fringe for one night and two days last weekend, the crowds seemed to have returned post-Covid, though the flyering seemed a bit uninspired.
Mostly, the flyerers were just standing around, one arm outstretched, offering the paper leaflets with no real enthusiasm and often no sales pitch.
The exception was energetic, larger-than-life Leo Kitay who, in Bristo Square, would leap out, eyes popping, mouth open, hand outstretched, leg often in mid-air to passers-by, plugging his show How To Become Ridiculously Well-Read (in About 50 Minutes).
There was no time for me to see his show on my flying visit but, if there had been, I would have gone out-of-my-way to see it. No greater praise can there be at the Fringe. Leo is one to watch. Even if only to avoid collisions. He claimed to be at University College, Oxford, and to run a student theatre company in Oxford called Cops & Robbers.
Only saying.
Walter at the entrance to his Venue 710 …
One other visually over-the-top performer I HAD pre-arranged to see for a chat was American performer Walter Michael DeForest better known, perhaps, as ‘that man who does the van Gogh shows’.
A Fringe regular since 2016, he has been performing a non-van-Gogh stage show in the New Town this year AND has been running an open-door Street Art Gallery at the temporary flat he has in the Old Town. He created it as an unofficial ‘Fringe Venue 710’.
“That works great for me,” he explained, “because 710 is big in my story that I’m telling about squatting and escaping – 7 out 10 suicides are men.”
We met at the flat/gallery he has for the duration of the Fringe.
JOHN: Have you had interesting people wandering in here?
WALTER: Yes. One guy came in and he was just wandering round listening to people. I have a Visitors’ Book. He wrote in it: “Listening is a super-power. It is the only super-power we all possess. It is a super-power because it validates the person you are listening to.” So, yeah, interesting people come in here.
JOHN: And you are also doing a show at the PBH Free Fringe, called…
Walter wearing a promotional show cap
WALTER: The Best Worst Place You Can Be. It’s the first time I haven’t done my van Gogh show here, although I did do a private performance of it the other day here in The Street Art Gallery – £40 a ticket – one person.
JOHN: You look like van Gogh but, really, to do a Van Gogh show properly, you should chop one of your ears off, shouldn’t you? You have to suffer for your art.
WALTER: I have suffered for my art. The show I’m doing – The Best Worst Place You Can Be – is what happened in the last year when I was escaping domestic violence here in Edinburgh.
Last Fringe I got locked out of my house and I had to sleep in the streets while I was performing and the violence got too much for me. I talk about this in my show but it’s not really about blame or vilifying anybody, just that this happens and, if you’re ever in a relationship where you thought you had to record the conversations just because you don’t understand and everything is confusing, you… Confusion is a big part of it and your brain shrinks from being with a toxic person and you’re always… Cortisone comes into your body at high rates and yes… it took me seven months to start creating again. I was living on the streets in London and I was squatting at the TAA (Temporary Autonomous Art).
‘The jacket’: a multicoloured dream coat…
That’s where ‘the jacket’ started. Wherever I go with this jacket, it’s like a super-power jacket because every time someone signs it they’re smiling. It’s a jacket of smiles. These are all legends of the graffiti world and the underground world. Punk Kaf: she signed it.
Even though I was in a bad place, I wasn’t with bad people. No-one was manipulating me or wanted anything from me. I was going from squat to squat – and then I got a house in January this year.
My friend – who gave me this jacket – went to Australia, so I had a place that was just quiet and I started making phone calls. That’s a labyrinth too. You make that phone call then that phone call then that phone call.
(right to left) 710… Goggles… and Form paintings…
Slowly I started to create and I started creating the 7:10 series of pictures – 7 out of 10 suicides are men. I also met the guys who do Just Stop Oil… and 710 is OIL upside-down.
After the 710 pictures, I did the Goggles, which is a percentage.
And then the Goggles just turned into the Form.
JOHN: The Form?
WALTER: The form of a skeleton.
JOHN: And you ended up living in the van Gogh House at Colfontaine in Belgium. How did that happen?
WALTER: In 2015 I was doing a show on the New York Fringe called Van Gogh Fuck Yourself (van Gogh is pronounced Van Go in American English).
JOHN: (LAUGHS) Doesn’t translate into British English!
Walter/van Gogh in among the coal mines
WALTER: And I read an article in the Washington Post about walking van Gogh’s path in the Borinage where Vincent was a preacher in the coal mines. Then in 2019, we drove from London to the Borinage in a car painted with sunflowers and then we drove to Arles and so I had connections there and then in 2020 I come to the UK and I lived here 2020-2022.
Covid happened and everything got locked down in the UK and I didn’t travel at all until this year – 2023.
JOHN: How did living in the van Gogh house in Belgium come about?
WALTER: In 1924, they put a plaque on the house, but it was dilapidated. It was falling apart until 2015, when Mons became the European Capital of Culture for UNESCO. I was the first one to be able to live in the house for 30 days as the ‘artist in residence’.
Walter at the Maison Van Gogh
JOHN: Did you have to paint copies of van Gogh paintings or something?
WALTER: No. But I did my show in local schools for the kids. I don’t really copy van Gogh at all other than tap into his spirit when I do the stage show.
JOHN: His spirit?
WALTER: Van Gogh’s favourite colour was yellow. When Vincent talked about yellow, he said There is no yellow without the blue and without the orange. Your good friends bring out the best in you. This is what the colours do. It was a workshop in colours and friendship and being around positive people. That was a big lesson for me over the last year as well. Being with positive people really helps.
Someone let me borrow their electric bike and I was riding around the village with flowers and everyone was like “Monsieur van Gogh!” and waving to me and, if I was at the shop, the guy would give me some extra food.
JOHN: How’s the non-van-Gogh stage show going at the Fringe this year?
WALTER: In Edinburgh, if I walk down the street, everybody knows me as van Gogh but, in The Best Worst Place You Can Be, I decided to talk about what happened to me in the last year. With this show, it’s all the way down in the New Town so it’s a bit far off centre. I had six shows where nobody came, but it didn’t bother me. I also set up the gallery here in the Old Town, so I can sit and relax and have a safe space.
At the Fringe, the great thing is I’m surrounded by artists and I feel like I’m home again. You’re always meeting people from around the world and making friends for life. People who choose to live in this apartment, who choose to live with van Gogh are up for an adventure and a different way of seeing the Fringe.
Walter points to a Maison Van Gogh leaflet in his Edinburgh Fringe apartment
JOHN: What are you doing when the Fringe and your stay in this flat finishes at the end of August?
WALTER: I’ll be trying to find another place to live. I think I’m going back to Belgium for a festival in September. Ghent. The people are wonderful. They were really wonderful to me and kind.
But I want to stay here in the UK. I’ve got a Leave To Remain visa. I’m trying to set up a home in Edinburgh because I want to stay here for my daughter.
I’m definitely going to do something because I’ve been through hell and back.
The ten ‘best’ jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe (according to the Dave TV channel) were announced today. So I asked Claude.AI – a rival of ChatGPT – if he/she/they/it thought the jokes were funny.
These are Dave’s “funniest” jokes at the Fringe:
I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah. Lorna Rose Treen
The most British thing I’ve ever heard? A lady who said ‘Well I’m sorry, but I don’t apologise.’ Liz Guterbock
Last year I had a great joke about inflation. But it’s hardly worth it now. Amos Gill
When women gossip we get called bitchy; but when men do it’s called a podcast. Sikisa
I thought I’d start off with a joke about The Titanic – just to break the ice. Masai Graham
How do coeliac Germans greet each other? Gluten tag. Frank Lavender
My friend got locked in a coffee place overnight. Now he only ever goes into Starbucks, not the rivals. He’s Costa-phobic. Roger Swift
I entered the ‘How not to surrender’ competition and I won hands down. Bennett Arron
Nationwide must have looked pretty silly when they opened their first branch. William Stone
My grandma describes herself as being in her ‘twilight years’ which I love because they’re great films. Daniel Foxx
…and this is Claude.AI’s opinion of them:
I analyzed those 10 jokes and here is my assessment of how funny they are:
Jokes 1, 2, and 3 play on common phrases or concepts in amusing and unexpected ways. They give a fun twist to familiar things.
Jokes 4 and 5 offer funny commentary by subverting common sayings or cultural references. They shed humorous light on everyday situations.
Joke 6 contains a clever pun, playing with a gluten greeting and the German word “gluten tag.” Puns can be polarizing in humor but this one seems well-constructed.
Jokes 7, 8, and 9 involve funny imagery or scenarios, evoking an amusing mental picture in the reader. Absurdity and wordplay are used effectively here.
Joke 10 contains endearing wordplay relating to a grandmother and popular vampire films. The juxtaposition is charming.
Overall, I’d say these are reasonably funny jokes that provoke smiles, chuckles, or laughter to various degrees, depending on one’s sense of humor. The wordplay, absurdity, irony, and subversion of expectations make them effective.
Of course, some jokes may land better than others for different people. But the list seems to offer broad appeal for fans of punny, clever, and playful humor. Let me know if you have any other thoughts on these jokes! I’m interested in better understanding human responses to humor.
I then asked Claude.AI to tell me “the funniest joke ever”.
He/she/they/it replied:
There is no singular “funniest joke ever,” since humor is highly subjective and dependent on individual tastes. However, some jokes that are widely considered to be classics and fan favorites include:
“A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Why the long face?'” This simple play on words takes a common phrase and twists it in an unexpected way.
“I just flew in from [local city] and boy are my arms tired.” This joke pokes fun at the corniness of certain comedy tropes.
“Knock knock. Who’s there? To. To who? To whom.” The unexpected grammatical correction subverts the typical knock-knock joke structure.
“Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine.” This joke amusingly anthropomorphizes numbers.
“There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.” This joke plays with binary numbers in a clever way.
Of course, there are many other hilarious jokes out there across all different styles and tastes! When it comes to comedy, everyone has their own “funniest joke ever.” The great thing about humor is how diverse, creative, and open to interpretation it can be.
Last Friday afternoon I flew up from London to the Edinburgh Fringe and last Saturday evening I flew back. It was the cheapest way except for a National Express coach and I had buggered my back a few days before so did not fancy spending hour upon hour in one position in a cramped seat.
I went up to see Janey Godley’s Not Dead Yet comedy show because she is the single most multi-talented creative person I have ever met. And she didn’t disappoint. She gets better and even better.
After the show, I talked to another member of the audience – someone not in any way connected to the comedy industry but a regular Fringe-goer for years and years. In other words, an ‘ordinary’ audience member who goes up to Edinburgh just to see the comedy shows.
I asked her what she thought of the post-Covid Fringe. It was certainly crowded on Friday/Saturday; it felt back to normal as far as the crowds went.
Janey, as is normal for her, had a 100% sell-out show.
My ‘ordinary’ audience member, who prefers to remain anonymous, had gone to comic Phil Kay’s show the previous night in which he roamed round the streets of Edinburgh with his audience. That was his show. She was impressed:
He had about 20 or 30 people in his audience. He stopped at various places and told us about various experiences he had had in each place. Very funny experiences. Uniquely eccentric. The eccentricity hit a very high level.
I had seen him a couple of times before. Once I was trapped on a bus with him. I used my friend as a human shield. I thought I would go and see him again this year because I thought it would be an experience and I thought, as it was a walk, I would be able to run away if I needed to.
Where has Phil Kay not been? He’ll suddenly say: “Oh, I know a man who sells Morris Marina parts in Sri Lanka.” He’s had his fingers in so many pies. I’ve never known anybody who goes so fast from one mad experience to the next. He seems to end up naked a lot in his stories.
He was great.
But there seems to be more anger at the Fringe shows this year – Anger on stage from the comedians.
I saw three other shows yesterday, back-to-back, from people I had previously enjoyed. And there was anger from the stage in all three. It was one show after the next. Anger anger anger. Three in a row. It felt like it was a genuine anger aimed at the audience.
Covid has messed things up so much. People not having been on stage for a while. People not being able to earn money and then having life experiences that were horrific and then also things like TikTok.
People were going viral with ridiculous, nasty TikTok things.
People on TikTok and other sites were getting all this money and all the attention when the comedy performers, chipping away at their craft, couldn’t work.
Has comedy come back to its full pre-Covid state? I don’t think so. I think people are still upset a bit.
One of the well-known acts I had seen before – very experienced – he’s done quite a lot of telly – was, this year, really just practising his show. It wasn’t billed as a ‘Work in Progress’.
He told the audience he would have it down pat in the future. He said he didn’t want to look at his notes. He would just recall things and then say things but…
It wasn’t really ready as a show.
And, this year, I feel a definite hatred of the English.
I was at a show performed by an Irish comedian yesterday and she called me out because I was English. She picked on me and said there was a certain English smile that denoted something and I’d just smiled at something. Big distaste for the English. I understand those things, but not everyone’s that English stereotype. She didn’t know I’m half Irish. Just because you speak with an English accent, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re English. I understand she’s in a very bad place in life – her husband had a huge stroke and now he’s in a wheelchair.
In the next show I saw, a black male comedian was angry about English women and the way they react. I’m a white English woman who has lived in the States, has been in a bikers’ gang, lived with a black retired cop. I’m highly sensitive to racism against black people, but at what point am I myself having racism used against me because I’m white or because I’m English?
The black comic, like the Irish woman, had gone through bad experiences – his dad had died.
I suppose you have to perform comedy assuming people have not travelled; but you don’t know their experiences. I think what some comedians should remember is that, if you insult people enough, they’re not going to come back to your show. If it’s constant abuse towards the members of the audience in a show, it’s going to put you off.
The third show I saw was a British-born Indian. He was just constantly talking about white people, the way they are and kind of dumbing them down. I understand that too but, if it goes on through the whole show like that and you in the audience are the dumb person – if the audience are constantly the butt of his jokes – it’s not really that funny and you’re not going to bother seeing his next show.
Again, like the other two comics, bad things had happened to him – His dad had died from cancer – his treatment was delayed because of Covid – AND his mum had died from Covid – they would not give her the jab at that time.
I do understand the anger and I do understand they’re all in bad places but I sat there after the third show and thought… Well, when people start to have a go at you for being English repeatedly or being white – three shows in a row – you’re like WHAT THE HELL??
At what point do you start to think: This is a kind of racism and it’s kind of intense.
I go to different ethnicities of comedy because there ARE so many now, which is great and I like that. But at what point do you think the acts are being over-sensitive? When it’s three in a row, you start to think…
A few years back, there was another comedian rolling about on the floor. I think he had mental health problems at the time and couldn’t cope. He was rolling about on the floor saying how difficult it was to get up and do these shows night after night and the audience had no understanding of the pressure he was under. When somebody got up to leave, he said: “Do you think my show’s shit?” and the guy said: “Well, I don’t want to sit through this.”
It was horrible, really, because the comic was mentally in a bad place and to see the way people treated him was…
I thought it was terrible what the ‘fans’ did to Janey Godley tonight.
She has cancer. She said she wasn’t meeting people afterwards because she’s on chemotherapy but someone got her off the stage to sign a jumper. Someone should have passed that jumper to her. But, because Janey seems a kind person, it set off a whole wave. To get pictures taken with her. Not one of those people thought: We could kill her by touching her and being round her.
There was a woman in the row in front of me wearing a (health) mask and she went to have her picture taken with Janey and pulled her mask down and tried to put her arm round her and Janey said No about the arm-round.
But the woman shouldn’t have been standing next to her.
Janey’s immune system’s completely compromised. The reason you wear a mask is to stop you infecting other people. The woman wore the mask when she was sitting in the audience but pulled it down when she stood next to Janey for the photo. I thought it was an outstanding display of selfishness. People were taking advantage of her. Her kindness.
There’s anger from a lot of comedians – not Janey – but the audiences are a bit unsettled too.
With Phil Kay, there was none of that. It was an escape into a mad world which makes you laugh and makes you happy.
You go to see a comedian to escape, to be taken out of your world. There’s nothing better than a good laugh.
In the summer of 1981, he was performing on stage off-West End in London as part of The Mad Show.
Another of the Mad Show performers was Anthony Irvine, who later developed an ice-block-melting performance art routine as The Iceman and who, more recently, became a painty-painty real artist as AIM.
The Iceman with ice and duck in London
Anthony has just shared some memories of Bob Flag with me. He writes:
I loved Bob’s helter-skelter act in The Mad Show. I used to admire his manic energy, both on stage and off.
In The Mad Show, his act included drums, music and a chaos that I related to. He had a sort of milkman sidekick on keyboards. I watched him every night of the run. Something about his fast-talking, almost serious, delivery got me – and the disintegrating drums, like The Iceman’s music stand.
I can’t remember if he participated much in the other antics in the show, like the immersion in the aquarium or the Japanese singing fruit group or the open bus trip round the Mall where Dave Brooks (of the Greatest Show on Legs) joined the soldiers at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard. He wore his kilt and played his bagpipes.
I didn’t really stay in touch with Bob after The Mad Show finished – my loss. But I do remember two particular meetings.
The first was a completely random meeting of 40 seconds when I got out of a northbound train at somewhere like Newark and there was Bob on the platform.
We both behaved as if this was completely normal.
Before I could say much beyond the pleasure of seeing him again years after The Mad Show, I had to get back on the train which was only doing a brief stop.
The second and last time I saw Bob was when I sold him a brand new baritone saxophone I had bought in East Germany before the Berlin Wall’s de-construction. The saxophone was very big in relation to him. He paid cash. It was in Leyton.
He came in like a man in a hurry to get elsewhere. It was a very good sax. He paid me in wads of cash. I was surprised how much money he had on him.
I had bought the saxophone in East Germany – possibly in Leipzig – with lots of East German Deutsche Marks that I had received. And, yes, I was big in the East before the Wall came down.
I blogged about Anthony a couple of times in July (HERE and HERE) when he was about to start an exhibition/clearance sale of more than 1,000 of his (AIM’s) artworks at a gallery on a farm in Dorset.
That exhibition/sale has now finished. The exhibition/sale was titled PEG IT! because a lot of the exhibits were pegged up in mid air.
Part of The Iceman/AIM’s multi-pegged art exhibition/clearance sale at the farm gallery…
He (Anthony/The Iceman/AIM) tells me:
De-pegging and dismantling the show was a huge physical effort because I had spent four weeks adding to/pegging up the show. Fortunately I had a team of customers – Jonathan, Liz, Dale – who broke the back of it.
While we were un-pegging, a local lady – Alison – appeared and chose eight pictures she wanted to buy. She kept going home to get more cash. She repeatedly kept having a new painting wish and going home to get more cash to the extent that I showed my concern about whether she could afford to buy them. This inadvertently became an unintentional sales technique.
I sold over 20 paintings on the very last day. As the gallery is a bit out-of-the-way, this was remarkable indeed.
A site for sore eyes: the waste recycling site
My latest project is to sell my AIM paintings at the waste recycling centre in Bournemouth.
This is very logical because people at Bournemouth’s waste recycling centre have just dis-burdened themselves and so have empty cars.
Stuart liked my idea of ‘recycling’ sales and latched onto the “performative element”. This gave me confidence.
The very next day I tested the idea on site at the waste recycling centre.
It did feel a strikingly original idea and the public intercourse that resulted was very funny.
There was some interest, some amusement plus some indifference.
Overall it was a success, though I can’t give any sales figures at this junction. I found the ‘performative element’ to my satisfaction: interacting with the dis-burdening public
Two recycling workers at the waste recycling centre had diametrically opposed reactions which, I think, encapsulated the experience.
One was very sympathetic and we talked about Egyptian art.
The other warned me that I was breaking regulations and I must be off.
I have also now got into film shorts mapping my artistic achievements. You can see them on YouTube HERE.
Later today, the esteemed online publication Fringe Review (currently reporting on and reviewing shows at the Edinburgh Fringe) is hosting a Zoom meeting titled Using AI to Write a Convincing Review of a Show You Have Never Seen: A Short and Horrific Zoom Masterclass.
So, in the spirit of the Fringe, I thought I would plagiarise this idea before it happens and ask ChatGPT to review my non-existent Edinburgh Fringe comedy show.
Note: I am not and never have been a performer. I have no talent for it and no interest in performing myself. I have never performed a show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Nonetheless, I told ChatGPT: Write a 100 word 5-star review of John Fleming’s Edinburgh Fringe comedy show “A Non-Existent Comedy Show”.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 