Dan March: Santa Claus via BBC TV’s “Miranda” sitcom & an Auschwitz man

Dan March – right – and (in Santa role) left

What is it with comedy people I know being Father Christmas in department stores this year?

Last month in my blog, it turned out Bob Slayer was being a Santa this year.

Just over a week ago, I mentioned comedy performer Dan March’s 40th birthday party in a blog. And, when I talked to him last week, it turned out he, too, was being a Santa this year – for Selfridge’s.

“Have you been a Santa before?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he replied. “I was Santa for Disney in their store on Oxford Street about ten years ago. I used to sit in the window and people would be brought in to me. It had its lovely moments and you get letters and they totally believe you.”

Dan’s 2009 solo show about Blockbusters

I met Dan in 2009, when he performed a one-man show called Goldrunner at the Edinburgh Fringe about how, as a 17-year-old in 1991, he had won the TV gameshow Blockbusters.

“You haven’t done a solo show at the Fringe since Goldrunner in 2009?” I asked.

“No. It’s been the (comedy trio) Real McGuffins since then. We started five years ago, before Goldrunner.”

“Sketch groups have had their day, haven’t they?” I asked.

Dan (top) is one of The Real McGuffins

“There’s always room for sketch comedy,” said Dan. “We’re working with a producer at a production company at the moment. We pitched four ideas, they liked one of them , so now it’s early stages.”

“And you might be doing a solo Edinburgh show next year?”

“I still haven’t made the final decision. I think it’s more about having a story to tell and wanting to tell it and there’s a couple of things I’m interested in telling. One is quite dark, so it might be a straight theatre piece. Or I could go down the full comedy route. I’ll be writing some stuff over Christmas and see if it’s taking shape by the middle of January.”

“Dark works well in Edinburgh for comedy,” I said. “And you’re still a straight actor as well as a comedy actor.”

“I thought I was a very serious actor,” said Dan. “I was in Casualty and EastEnders – I sold the Queen Vic to Peggy Mitchell back in 2001. I played estate agent Mr Hammond; I was in it for about a month.”

“Did you get recognised in the street?”

“I got recognised at a friend’s wedding,” laughed Dan, “and I got recognised the other day, when I was compering a wine-tasting evening. I sold a pub in EastEnders, ran a pub in Casualty and advertised a Belgian beer: so who better to host a wine-tasting evening?

“I thought I was a serious actor”

“I thought I was quite a serious straight actor and then I did News Revue at the Canal Cafe where I met Gareth Tunley, who’s now directing quite a few things – he directed Goldrunner at the Edinburgh Fringe. I wrote a bit with him for Radio 4 for The News Huddlines and I started drifting in and out of comedy and it was only about six years ago I took the total plunge of having a comedy agent and writing shows and doing Edinburgh really full-on. But a lot of stand-ups now alternate and do some serious roles. Terry Alderton’s in EastEnders at the moment.”

“EastEnders should cast Janey Godley,” I said. “She ran a pub for years and she has the genuine dodgy gangster background. Producers should cast comedians more. Good comedians have perfect timing, which is the most important thing in acting too.”

“The last couple of years,” said Dan, “I feel the experience of doing comedy has fed into my acting. I’ve just filmed an episode of a BBC3 sitcom Pramface. I think having gigged a lot in the last five years has really helped my acting. Even when you’re going for pure reality and not gags, the timing is there. Maintaining energy and controlling the audience while keeping in mind where you have to end up.

“I did do a very serious play this year. I think all performers get itchy feet for certain aspects if you haven’t done it for a little while. If you’ve done a lot of television, you get itchy for theatre; if you’ve done a lot of theatre, you get itchy to do telly. It does exercise different muscles, but you really cannot beat live performances.”

“You miss the immediate audible audience response?” I suggested.

“I was in Miranda,” said Dan, “and it was genuinely a joy to work on that programme. She’s a workaholic; she works really hard and people really do love her. She is genuinely famous. She goes out in front of that audience of 400 and they rip the roof off. The live audience response is phenomenal.”

“So, in ten years time?” I asked.

“I’d like to be a regular in a sitcom,” Dan replied. “There’s nothing better than making someone laugh. No better feeling than witnessing that and – in a live studio sitcom – you get that. Though, equally, if you’re filming something and the rest of the crew are laughing and enjoying it, then you know you’re onto something good too.”

Dan March practises his King Canute abilities for future use

“But presumably,” I said, “a 50-year-old comedian has more of a career problem than a 50-year-old actor because the live comedy audience is maybe aged 20-35 and they won’t relate to you.”

“Well,” suggested Dan, “Lewis Schaffer seems to be doing alright. He’s on the up.”

“But can he keep it up at his age?” I asked. “Lewis Schaffer’s shows are like sex. Have you seen his shows?”

“No,” said Dan.

“You have to experience at least two in a row to get the full impact of the unpredictability,” I said.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” laughed Dan. “Whether you can keep it up. The older you get, I think the wiser you get about how you use your time. I’m trying to be more focussed.”

“Apparently,” I said, “there’s some famous saying that, if you have not reached where you want to reach by the time you are 40, you are not going to reach it… Sadly I read this when I was 42.”

“I think that’s harsh,” said Dan. “Was it Margaret Thatcher said that? I know she said if you are still travelling on a bus when you’re 40, you’re a loser.”

“Did you read that on a bus?” I asked.

“No,” laughed Dan, “but I’ve just read an interesting book called Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl’s bestselling book

“He was viewed as the successor to Freud in psychotherapy terms. He was put in Auschwitz (and other concentration camps) and survived, then wrote a book looking on his experiences as objectively as possible: Why did certain people survive and others just gave up?

“He looked at what we want from life and there are three main schools of thought. There’s the hedonistic lifestyle of living for immediate pleasure. There’s looking for power. with money as an offshoot of that. And then there’s looking for meaning – looking for the essence of life. There’s really profound stuff in this very short book.

“He said there was this one guy who had this dream in 1942/1943 in Auschwitz that the War would end on a certain date and that’s when they’d be liberated. So he was fine: probably one of the strongest guys in the camp. He made it all the way through and was getting really excited the last week before he thought Auschwitz was going to be liberated. And then it didn’t happen. They were not liberated and, within a week, he was dead. He just gave up.”

“When I was a kid growing up in Scotland,” I said, “the thing that was always drummed and drummed and drummed into your head was the story of Robert The Bruce and the spider. However impossible anything may seem, you just keep going. If you want to do it or if you think you right, you just keep going. Keep at it. If you want it, keep going. Keep trying to get that first thread across the gap that you can build the whole spider’s web from. Dogged relentless determination. Never give up.”

“Yes,” said Dan. “You have to find out what it is that keeps you going. For me, it’s about being the best performer I can possibly be. The best actor I can be. The best funny man I can be. If that means doing more acting or more comedy, I’ll do that. I enjoy making people laugh and if, in ten years time, I’m still doing comedy – great. If, in ten years, I’m doing straight drama, then I will be equally happy… I’m happy where I am at the moment.”

DAN MARCH’S SHOWREEL IS ON VIMEO

A cage fight, a slap on the buttocks, a silent woman and a trip to Guatemala

Sober Dan March at his party

Last night, I had the choice of paying £35 for a VIP ticket or £25 for a standard ticket to see a cage fight arranged by self-proclaimed ex-gangster Dodgy Dave Courtney in his back garden in South East London or go to comic performer Dan March’s 40th birthday party at the Looking Glass Cocktail Club near trendy Shoreditch (£8 for a double vodka and orange).

It was a tough call but I am glad I went to Shoreditch, though I was unclear if getting into the back room through the looking glass door always entailed getting your buttock slapped with a riding crop or if this was a special addition for the occasion.

Lheila Oberman could not talk to me last night

I am glad I went because I bumped into comedy performer Lheila Oberman whom I have not seen in years. She used to perform as 50% of the late and very-much-lamented Aliens Ate My Schnitzel duo.

Alas she could not tell me about this nor anything else much, because she had totally lost her voice. When I asked how long she had lost her voice, I think she told me it was two weeks because she held two fingers up. We partly conversed through her friend Tim Eagle, a very successful clown, who looked a lot like Jerry Springer and told me people kept saying he looked very like the recently deceased Lou Reed.

I returned home later to a message from this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith, who is currently working in a Vancouver bookshop. In its entirety, her email read:

Anna Smith in Vancouver has an untold story of Guatemala

My sister went to Guatemala. The result was three children (now grown) and then she became an Anglican priest !

I asked for more details.

This morning, I awoke to emails with more details, but of Vancouver not Guatemala. The multiple emails read:

A guy who was in the bookshop two weeks ago strode in, eyes gleaming. He asked: “Has that chunky guy been round here much?” I had no idea who he meant.

Literary culture in a bookshop in Vancouver (Photograph by Anna Smith)

They’re making a movie at Macleods Books, down the street. Jenn, who usually works inside Macleods, was standing at the corner, eyes on the door. Her job was to extract the book hounds who wandered into the store oblivious of it being used for a film set, despite the grips rushing about taking measurements and the ladders and floodlights everywhere.

I had sold a couple of architecture books to the movie’s art director a few days earlier and witnessed my boss dismiss a location scout from a different film, possibly Fifty Shades of Grey. My boss was annoyed:

“Are you holding a contest?” he asked. “Because I don’t want my store involved in one of your contests.”

Marble Arch Hotel undercover in Vancouver (Photograph by Anna Smith)

“But it’s my job” said the location scout. We have to go to several potential sites, take photos and let the director choose. It’s not my decision.“

“No, I don’t want you people in here,” said my boss. “You leave a mess.”

A short, slight man rushed in and proffered a shopping bag with a thin wooden box inside. “Are you looking for some gold flatware?” he asked. I told him, “No,” and he immediately hurried out.

Across the street, the Marble Arch Hotel is clad in scaffolding and blue veiling. Three mentally ill drug addicts (two men and a woman) have been living there but are now locked out of the building. Yesterday, they pounded on the temporary plywood door and shouted in all directions, indignant and plaintive: “Would someone unlock the door to our OWN home !!!”

Chunky workmen seen from the bookshop (Photograph by Anna Smith)

A tall, good looking young construction worker walked into the shop today. He told me they are stripping the lead paint from the Marble Arch building. I must have looked alarmed, because he added: “Don’t worry, it’s not the bad kind of lead”. He asked for a book from the window display – How To Pick Up Women.

I still know no more about why Anna’s sister’s visit to Guatemala resulted in three children and her becoming an Anglican priest.

I live in hope of more details and that Lheila Oberman will speak to me again.

How I ate in a Chinese restaurant in London’s Soho with four New York Jews

Lewis Schaffer on stage last night

(This was also published in the Huffington Post)

Last night, I went to see American comedian Lewis Schaffer’s ongoing 90-minute twice-weekly Free Until Famous comedy show in London’s Soho. Every time a different show, but I almost got bushwhacked in Leicester Square by the ever-persuasive Dan March, flogging his excellent monthly sketch show Skitsophrenia. Well, it’s a show featuring The Real MacGuffins, but Dan is one of ‘em. It’s very good. I saw it at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“I’ll come and see it in May,” I told Dan. I’m away in April.”

“Where?” he asked.

“I’m not saying,” I replied.

“When did you get back from Adelaide?” he asked.

“I never went,” I replied. “It’s the power of bullshit in blogging. It just seems like I did because I quoted people’s e-mails so often.”

I had told Lewis Schaffer I was coming with comedian Bob Slayer but, at the last moment, Bob could not make it. I suspect he is probably still hiding from the wrath of expatriate Australians after his sojourn in Oz where, I imagine, the good people of Perth and Adelaide may bear the psychological and emotional scars for years.

Lewis Schaffer – always call him ‘Lewis Schaffer’, never just plain ‘Lewis’ – it’s more memorable in publicity terms – managed a stonker of a show, good from start to finish, despite five 18-year-old American girls in the front row who appeared to have had a major humour bypass or possibly even a humor bypass.

They were particularly offended by Lewis Schaffer’s circumcision routine and by his closing Holocaust routine – which still includes the best Holocaust joke I have ever heard.

After the show, I went with Lewis Schaffer, a New Yorker called Peter who lives in London and Jenna, the girl who rents Peter’s apartment in New York, to a Chinese restaurant in Soho. On the way, bizarrely, we bumped into Jenna’s father Steve. He is passing through London, working, for a week. Don’t ask. I didn’t.

So that’s how I ended up in a Chinese restaurant in London’s Soho with four New York Jews and that’s where the question came up:

“Who is John and what does he do?”

Steve asked Lewis Schaffer.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I have never been able to explain what I do. I wish someone could tell me.

“Do you know the phrase fingers in pies?” Lewis Schaffer asked Steve.

Steve nodded.

Lewis Schaffer shrugged and nodded towards me.

“I was working with Reg Hunter…” said Lewis Schaffer.

“Who’s that?” Steve asked.

“There are only five American comedians who are of any note in this country,” explained Lewis Schaffer. “There’s the black guy which is Reg Hunter. There’s the left wing guy which is Rich Hall. There’s the hippy guy which is Dave Fulton. There’s the gay guy which is Scott Capurro. And there’s a fifth…”

“You?” I prompted.

“No, I’m not noteworthy,” Lewis Schaffer replied absentmindedly. “Anyway there’s one more. But there’s not enough room in this country for even four, because they hate American comedians here because we’re not one of the tribe… So I was working with Reg over at the Arts Theatre… I liked Reg. Same as Peter,” he said, nodding at the young guy sitting opposite him. “Just as soon as I met Peter, I liked the guy. Did you sense Lewis Schaffer liked you?”

Peter shrugged.

“With you, John,” Lewis Schaffer said, looking at me, I didn’t know if I would like you or not, because you’re a shambolic, horrible-looking mess of a man. You don’t shave. You need your hair cut. It’s longer in the back. It’s like a Larry David kind of haircut. It’s like a mullet. I just met you and I didn’t know exactly what you did or what you wanted from me and I still don’t… So I said to Reg Hunter, who was my friend at the time – he doesn’t call me now. He doesn’t speak to me. People don’t like me.”

Jenna laughed loudly.

“Stop it!” said Lewis Schaffer. “We’re not in New York. This is why you’re going to hate living here. You’ve gotta lower your expectations.”

“Look at the food,” said Jenna.

“It looks good from a distance,” said Lewis Schaffer. “But then you taste it… It’s like my penis.”

“Small portions,” I said.

“It’s probably true,” said Steve, “that all comedians have small penises, because the whole comedy thing is a result of…”

“No,” said Lewis Schaffer, “I just pretend that I’ve got a small penis for the sake of comedy. “My penis is very large – it’s nine inches long. I measured it this morning. I put the ruler in backwards – 12 – 11 – 10 – 9 inches. How long into the skin are you allowed to jam the ruler?… So I asked Reg: What about this guy John Fleming? He looks like a shambolic mess.”

“A shambolic mess?” Steve asked.

“Look at this man,” Lewis Schaffer said to Steve, pointing to me, “This man is a dictionary definition of shambolic.”

“Is ‘shambolic’ not a word in America?” I asked.

“No,” said Lewis Schaffer. It’s not a word here either. There is no word ‘shambolic’ in English dictionaries.”

“There is,” I protested.

“There isn’t,” said Lewis Schaffer. “There’s no word for ‘gullible’ in the dictionary either.”

“In America?” I asked.

“Anywhere,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“Yes there is,” I protested.

“John,” said Jenna. “He’s just trying to make you seem gullible.”

“Very smart girl,” said Lewis Schaffer to Steve. “Your daughter’s very smart… So, I said to Reg, Is he a reasonable guy? Look at the way he looks? He hasn’t shaved. So he said… I can’t remember the funny quote, but he said…”

“Who said?” asked Steve.

“This guy Reg Hunter,” explained Lewis Schaffer, “He’s the Number One comedian in this country.”

“Does this guy really even exist?” asked Steve.

“Yes,” insisted Lewis Schaffer. “He said I like the way he looks…”

“Who?” asked Steve.

“John,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“I’ve never met him!” I interrupted.

“He said I like the way he looks,” Lewis Schaffer continued, “because, in this country, you never trust a man who wears new clothes – because he’s trying too hard.”

There was a long pause.

“Trying too hard?” asked Steve.

“Trying too hard,” repeated Lewis Schaffer. “Because in this country… Well, maybe he didn’t say that. But I’m saying that. That’s what Reg Hunter said.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Well,” said Lewis Schaffer, “I don’t want to misquote him. I don’t want to put words into Reg’s mouth which he didn’t say because I want to use it in my show.”

“I often get mistaken for Brad Pitt,” I said.

No-one laughed.

With sketch shows, it is impossible to know who will be famous in the future.

With comedy sketch shows, it is almost impossible to know which, if any, of the performers may become successful – famous, even – in the future.

I am old enough to have been stumbling around in the primeval alternative comedy mists of the last century and seen the Edinburgh Fringe show by the Cambridge Footlights group which included Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. I was aware of their names because it got a lot of newspaper coverage afterwards – that’s one of the benefits of going to Oxbridge. But all I really remember, unless my memory fails me, is Stephen Fry sitting in a wing armchair wearing a smoking jacket and reading a very linguistically convoluted story from a book.

“Well,” I thought. “That’s very literate and he seems to aspire to being someone older than he is, but he’s not going to go very far with that as an act.”

I was also working at Granada TV when they made the long-forgotten sketch show Alfresco. I saw one being recorded in the studio. It starred Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane and Siobhan Redmond. The writing was a bit rough-and-ready and the cast made no impact on me at all, except I remember feeling Robbie Coltrane thought a bit too much of himself and Ben Elton thought he was cock of the walk. I am sure they have changed.

Which is all a pre-amble to the fact that I have seen three sketch shows in the last three days at the Edinburgh Fringe. They may have contained the big comedy and/or drama stars of the future, but who can know for sure? Certainly not me.

I went to see The Real McGuffins’ Skitsophrenic because I had met Dan March at a couple of previous Fringes, notably when he performed his Goldrunner show about being a contestant on the TV gameshow Blockbusters when he was a kid.

I saw The Real McGuffins perform at the Fringe last year and, while they were OK and energetic – a better version of the more-publicised Pappy’s aka Pappy’s Fun Club – they were, in truth, nothing special. This year, they are something special. The scripts are sharper, the performances are even sharper and the show zips along at a tremendous pace. They have also kept and improved on a scripted interaction between the three performers which adds a semi-narrative thread – always a good thing in sketch shows which, by their nature, can be very disjointed.

This unification of their comedy sketch show is something The Durham Revue’s 33rd Annual Surprise Party! does not have. They try to paper over the unavoidable gaps between separate sketches with extremely good and instantly recognisable rock music. But choosing such good music turns out to be a mistake as the extracts are so strong it distracts from rather than unifies the various sketches. I mentally opted-out of the live show to bop-along in my head to the music between sketches, then had to opt back in to the live show. Bland music, ironically, would have been better. Or some live running link to creatively Sellotape over the gaps.

At least one of the Durham Revue team appears to have the charisma necessary to get somewhere in showbusiness in the future but (see above) who can tell?

As for Casual Violence’s Choose Death, which I saw last night, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. There were a lot of tears, a lot of shouting, several characters’ deaths, Siamese twin assassins, a clown and a serial killer who looked like Daniel Craig on acid, but what exactly was going on or why was utterly beyond me. Nothing made much sense at all but the characters seemed to believe in what was happening within their own fictional world. Casual Violence could have created a new genre of ‘realistic surrealism’. There was certainly an awful lot of shouting which seemed to work rather well. But I have no idea why.

The six performers and keyboard accompanist were uniformly good and strangely realistic while being totally OTT in a script which was from another plane of reality on another planet. The important factor was that the script seemed to make logical sense to the characters within the show. And, while played straight and getting plentiful laughs from a near-full house, there was such an element of complete surreality permeating the whole thing that I warmed to it after about ten minutes and enjoyed it thoroughly throughout – without knowing what was going on over-all. The words made sense. The sentences made sense. But what was happening had more than one layer of insanity. It had the logic of a long-term inmate in a mental asylum.

The Real McGuffins were slick, smooth and ready for television and Dan March is a star in the making.

The Durham Revue performers need another year at the Fringe but showed promise.

Casual Violence’s Choose Death was so strange it is beyond any sane description and, in a long-shot way, is the most interesting of the three. The show was written by James Hamilton. I think he may need psychiatric help. Though not creative help. He is doing something right. There is something very original in there. I just don’t know what the fuck it is.