Lewis Schaffer has bowel problems and Mooky crushes nuts with her hands

Lewis Schaffer, the comic who loves to be hated

“Your best blogs,” American comedian Lewis Schaffer told me last night in the car back to his home in Nunhead, London, “are the ones in which you express your own opinion. Your worst blogs are the ones when you resort to quoting some self-obsessed comedian talking about himself. Or even worse is when you quote a comedian talking about you and your blog.

“The five things that people wanna see in a blog,” Lewis Schaffer told me, “are One – themselves… Two – people they know… Three – places they’ve been to… Four – people or places they’d like to know or like to go to… and Five… Lewis Schaffer.”

“I don’t have a blog from tonight,” I told him, “although lots happened.”

I had been going to go to comedian Charmian Hughes’ Christmas party with my eternally-un-named friend, but she (my eternally-un-named friend) has a bad cough and decided not to go. So Lewis Schaffer went with me instead.

When we arrived at the door, I had the first of three bad coughing fits.

The guest list was interesting.

For almost a whole minute, comedian Harriet Bowden and I persuaded Lewis Schaffer that Harriet was my ex-wife and that we had lived together in a small house near Sandringham in Norfolk. Lewis Scaffer’s temporary stare of confusion as he looked at both of us (Harriet was wearing a full-length mink coat; I was looking rumpled) was worth the trip.

Harriet was trying to persuade people to go on a Weekend Comedy Workshop next month.

“Not for me,” I told her. “Ask Lewis Schaffer.”

“I’m not going to go on it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t been asked to teach it and I’m not going to show up and say I need help. Everybody knows I need help. It would be embarrassing, but I think that is how the comedy industry is going: comedians teaching other comedians how to make money and get out of debt by charging them £100.”

David Don’t (left) blows his horn in the kitchen last night

Charmian Hughes and her husband David Don’t have a toilet with a new Crapper… a genuine Thomas Crapper, boldly emblazoned as such on the cistern, inside the bowl and even on the sink. And they have a new kitchen with a new wood-burning stove.

“There’s no ash,” Charmian told me. “It’s very efficient. It burns the ash.”

It is a very neat, square, black stove. It looked very lovely, but reminded me slightly of an oven at Auschwitz. I did not mention this to Charmian at the time. Perhaps I should not mention it in this blog now. But it looks very nice and I am impressed it burns the ashes.

Sadly, I could not persuade Charmian to get her accordion out last night.

“I haven’t had it out for a while,” she explained.

“You could do the sand dance instead,” I said.

She ignored this – I thought rather good – suggestion.

But the party was enlivened by Charmian’s husband playing a trumpet and demonstrating very good magic tricks in the kitchen with cards, rubber bands and chess pieces. Not simultaneously, but his lessons with Jerry Sadowitz are paying off.

Nuts not jokes were cracked at the comic’s party in London

Also in the kitchen was Canadian cabaret act and clown ‘Mooky’ Cornish, who can and did crack nuts with her bare hands. When someone told her I organise the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards, I emphasised to her:

“They’re increasingly prestigious, you know.”

“I’m just impressed,” she said, “that they’re not named after a beer.”

She told me she had once been on the board of a company with Thomas Crapper’s grandson. I think it was the board of an organisation involved in puppets, masks and animated objects. I do seem to remember the phrase “animated objects” came up, but I may have lost track of reality by that point.

I certainly remember the party ending with Lewis Schaffer randomly going up to people he had not had time to meet and saying, “Hi! My name’s Lewis Schaffer.” They mostly looked slightly startled and slightly afraid. He chatted to three women with the opening gambit: “I hate women.”

In the car taking him home to Nunhead Heights, he told me: “I gotta make a poo, but I couldn’t make a poo in that Thomas Crapper thing.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It was too classy,” he said.

“I gotta go to the loo so badly,” he emphasised. “I feel like I’ve let you down by not giving you a blog.”

“You’ve given me a blog,” I said.

“I haven’t,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“You have,” I said.

“I could tell you,” he said, “why I support people’s right to own guns in America.”

“With all those schoolchildren shot in America?” I asked. “You’re just saying that to be hated. Just so people will hate you.”

“They hate me already,” said Lewis Schaffer. “Every time something like this happens, I wanna say something, because English people get all indignant about it, but…” he paused, “I need to go to the loo so bad.”

He paused again.

“Perhaps I just need to fart,” he said, getting out of the car.

There was a long silence.

“No. That didn’t work,” he said.

And then Lewis Schaffer was gone into the night, like the sweet smell of strawberries blown on the wind at Wimbledon.

Cornish flags and the adjectivising of the Green Party’s transsexual comic

Shelley Bridgman, an adjectivised trans-genre creative

Yesterday, I went to Land’s End. With the weather the way it was, it was a bit like Scott’s last expedition to Antarctica. In the inevitable souvenir shop, they were selling Cornish flags and beer mats which were half Union flag and half Cornish flag (it is like the St George’s flag of England, but a white cross on a black background and has a piratical feel).

I am all for devolution in its various forms, perhaps even Scottish independence, but I have a nasty feeling some people really do have fantasies of Cornish independence. Quite how they think Cornwall could be economically viable, I have no idea. Perhaps tin will become the new gold.

Meanwhile, back in the semi-real world of politics..

As a follow-up to my blog two days ago about the Green Party’s spectacular PR own goal this week, when they cancelled an appearance by booked comic Lindsay Sharman because (in their own words)  “we’ve got a 63 old transexual comic instead of a second female artist”…

The transsexual involved was the highly talented Shelley Bridgman (formerly Shelley Cooper). I know Shelley a little. I prefer to think of her not as a trans-gender comic but as a trans-genre comic: she has more to her quiver than just the slings and arrows of outrageous comedy.

She tells me, after reading all the spinoff from this week’s PR fiasco:

“It’s not about the Green Party really; I don’t want to blame them; it’s everyone on internet forums and everywhere. On the plus side, instead of one adjective I now have two. Not content with everyone defining me a trans whatever, I am now a 63 year old trans whatever. Perhaps I should kill someone then I’ll be a 63 year old murdering, trans whatever. All suggestions on a postcard…”

Researching Bob Slayer’s comedy show in the Australian outback with a goat

Jimbo, Gary the Goat and Bob Slayer on a research trip

I spent most of yesterday driving from London to Plymouth in Devon and then to Penzance in Cornwall.

Who knew Penzance was that far away? Not me. And why are some of the road signs in Cornwall printed in Cornish? Who speaks Cornish? It is bad enough Tesco supermarkets in South Wales have signs in Welsh in areas where people don’t speak Welsh.

My friend and I are staying in a very nice 4-star seafront hotel in Penzance.

She complained to the hotel that the room was too cold; I took my sweater off because it was so hot. Mind you, she had been sleep-deprived the night before. (I had nothing to do with that.)

Hot water came out of the cold tap and cold water came out of the hot tap; then hot water came out of the hot tap and hot water came out of the cold tap.

Then the ends of the taps saying HOT and COLD fell off.

My friend was by now getting hysterical with laughter.

There was a slight creaking from the wall. She put her dressing gown over the wall-mounted trouser press.

“Was the trouser press creaking?” I asked.

“No,” she replied.

Meanwhile, from Australia…

British comedian Eric sent me an e-mail saying:

Just three days until the Adelaide Fringe kicks off and I have just found out that my opening night is sold out! And ‘Little E’ had her first bogey today. (I am so proud.)

Little E is his newish-born daughter Erica.

I found it rather worrying that the Adelaide Fringe starts in three days, because British comedian Bob Slayer is supposed to be performing there and, yesterday, I got an e-mail from him in the outback.

When last heard from, Bob had disappeared in the desert on his way to the Adelaide Fringe. He was stuck in Coober Pedy, the opal mining centre of the world, accompanied by Australian comic Jimbo and by Jimbo’s amiable animal mate Gary the Goat. They had encountered a Czech opal miner who might or might not have a daughter he is trying to marry off.

Yesterday’s e-mail told me all three have now reappeared in Roxby Downs – a town, Bob tells me, which was built to house the miners of what is set to become the largest mine in the world – the Olympic Dam mine. This is what he told me:

__________

Extremely well-paid employees are pulling copper, gold and uranium out of the ground in vast quantities. Instead of Coober Pedy’s beat-up trucks and utility vehicles, Roxby streets are lined with 4x4s that have never seen anything other than tarmac. The streets are lined with green manicured grass and there is not a real local in site.

We go into the smart environs of Roxby Downs Community Club and I am pleasantly surprised when they are happy for us to put on a gig the following night. They initially have concerns about being able to drum up a crowd, but the presence of Gary the Goat swings it. We have a feed and then, after seeing how expensive the motel is, we decide to sleep rough on the football oval. I doubt the motel would be very happy with Gary anyway. In the morning, we are woken by the sprinklers and then, before we can have a shower, we are moved on by the parkies. 

The three of us go for a swim in the outdoor swimming pool at the community leisure centre but then staff change their mind about Gary the Goat because someone has complained. If they had thrown us out because Jimbo and I had turned their pool cloudy then I would understand. But Gary the Goat was happily chewing grass and being patted by the local kids while we had a swim. 

The nice staff at the pool tell us that the complaint comes from a lady with a dog. It seems that if her little poodle isn’t allowed into the pool area then why should a goat be? Well little vegetarian goat droppings are very different to dog shit. People are odd complaining about someone else’s happiness. When we take Gary out of the pool area, a little girl cries because she wanted to pat Gary some more.

We decide to go for breakfast before doing some promotion. The cafe is next to the school and Gary the Goat somehow gets into a classroom. Woops! There follows a heated lecture from the principal who tells us that Gary is a danger to the children. While she is telling us this a dozen toddlers, who are now leaving morning playgroup, are taking it in turns to pat Gary. 

A council lady turns up. She is nice but says we have to take Gary the Goat to the park. We explain that we have already been thrown out of there. We take Gary away and more children cry. Two of the mothers get angry with the principal. We are causing a bit of a scene. 

In the middle of all this commotion, the kinder garden teacher tells us that her husband Julian runs the local radio station and would like to interview Gary the Goat. As we leave the radio station, two girls turn up from the Roxby Downs Monitor and we give them an exclusive on the Gary situation. When they leave a man from the Roxby Downs Sun turns up and we give him an exclusive as well!

In the evening, at the gig, our gorilla promotions seem to have worked as over 100 paying punters turn up to see just who are these people with the goat. We have a great show and a good old knees-up afterwards.

We now have more than enough money to afford the Roxby Downs motel but we sleep on the football oval, this time by choice!

__________

That was yesterday. When I woke up this morning, there was another e-mail from Bob – a Press Release saying he has been doing preparation and research in the outback for his Adelaide Fringe show Bob Slayer Will Outdrink Australia, including a visit to Wineries in McLaren Vale “where I spent the last couple of days working on the new vintage for Alpha Box & Dice winery who paid me in my weight in wine!”

I looked up the Alpha Box & Dice website. Their slogan is: “Where all your dreams come true”.

According to Bob’s Press Release, there will be two shows each day at the Austral venue in Adelaide:

5:45 – Early show (first drink of the day) – a solo show.

Midnight – Late show (still drinking) – includes special guests.

Bob describes himself in the Press Release as a “hilariously drunk and deranged rock & roll tour manager turned Edinburgh Fringe award winning comedian. Wilder than the acts he has looked after (Iggy Pop, Snoop Dogg, Grinspoon, Bloodhound Gang, Regurgitator, Electric Eel Shock etc).

“I have been to Australia once before, maybe five years ago,” he says, “when I was tour manager of Nashville Pussy (from the USA). This time I wanted to take in the real Australia.”

Apparently his escapades are being filmed for a future documentary and “reported on a highly-regarded UK Comedy Blog.

I am beginning to worry about Bob’s views. Is this blog highly-regarded? I feel it should be less respectable.