Comic Leo Kearse: dancing with David Icke and giving intelligence to the police

Leo Kearse at the Soho Theatre last week

“My biggest gig to date was at Wembley Arena,” Scots comedian Leo Kearse told me. “David Icke was doing an 11-hour conspiracy theory lecture. He was saying what we perceive as reality is a hologram controlled by electro-magnetic waves of information being beamed from Saturn…”

“And you were supporting him?” I asked.

“He just wanted dancers for his stage show,” explained Leo, “because he broke up his conspiracy theory lecture with dancing. I was the first one on stage. I ran on at 10.00am and everybody in Wembley Arena is sitting there wearing jackets and I am prancing around like Hey! Stay away from the brown acid! It was well weird.”

“Did you actually meet him?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’s a very nice bloke. I think it’s good to have someone out there prodding at things and making people look at things in different ways. But it was weird being backstage with other dancers who were total David Icke acolytes – Ickelites. (Leo likes a pun.) It was like I was the mad person in the room because I didn’t believe that people are shape-shifting lizards. I started to question my own sanity after a while.”

Leo had asked me if I wanted to have a chat with him because he will be the only act at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe “to have lost part of his body in a shark attack and one of the few to have been rimmed by a hungry farm animal.”

Leo and I met at Soho Theatre, but I never got round to asking about the the shark attack or the animal rimming.

Leo (left) and Darren Walsh strike a manly pose for their upcoming Fringe show Atella The Pun. Both tell tall tales.

His first solo Edinburgh Fringe show is called The Mangina Funalogs. He is also appearing in a second show – Atella The Pun – with UK Pun Champion Darren Walsh. Leo does like a pun. He is also appearing in a third Fringe show – Hate ’n’ Live – with Darius Davies: a show where comedians do improvised rants about topics suggested by the audience and drawn from a hat at random. He should, perhaps have called that one The Upset List.

His parents moved from London’s Notting Hill to Dumfries in the early 1970s.

“Why?” I asked.

“My dad’s a gunsmith,” explained Leo, “and they had a knitwear business. My mum used to do clothes for Lulu. So they moved to Dumfries for lower costs, but they couldn’t compete with China.”

“With a background like that,” I said, “it’s not surprising you ended up in comedy.”

“My dad can build a gun from scratch,” added Leo. “He knows all the different grades of steel and can make springs out of blocks of steel.”

“You performed at the Adelaide, Melbourne and Singapore festivals this year,” I said.

“Yes,” said Leo. “On the way back, around April time,  I was in Patong and bumped into Chris Dangerfield.”

“Was he horizontal or vertical?“ I asked.

“Vertical,” said Leo. “He’s really interesting. You know his lock picking business? I used to work for the police. Chris Dangerfield’s biggest customers are MI5, MI6 and the police. It’s just so funny.”

“You worked for the police?” I asked.

An upright member of the community. Now he knows comics.

“Yeah. For years,” said Leo. “I wasn’t a policeman. I was a criminal intelligence analyst and I managed the Criminal Intelligence Unit for a bit as well.”

“What is a criminal intelligence analyst?” I asked.

“Identifying emerging trends. Say there’s a new spate of burglaries and they’re using a particular method to break in… They could be using Chris Dangerfield’s lockpicks…”

“So you didn’t,” I said, “investigate murders.”

“No, that’s detective work. We had dashboards that followed reported crimes and 999 calls and looked at things like hospital admissions. If there’s gang violence and they stab each other, they don’t report it to the police but they will go to hospital. So we looked at A&E admissions, ambulance call-outs and I specialised in problem solving intelligence, which is bringing all partner agencies together, looking across a really wide spread of intelligence and using joined-up, co-ordinated resources to deal with it. Because the police tend to just treat crime problems as a crime issue and they deal with that by arresting people and chucking men in yellow jackets into the area.

“But night-time disorder can be tackled by arranging better transport links to get people out of an area quickly so they’re not milling around fighting. It’s looking at the core root of the problem.”

“That,” I said, “seems unusually intelligent of the police.”

“Oh, they don’t do it any more,” said Leo. “As soon as the Tories got in, we all got laid-off.”

“So what sort of mind,” I asked, “is interested in analysing crime trends AND making people laugh at puns in a room above a pub?”

“I don’t think there is a link,” said Leo. “I mean, Darren Walsh does Flash development and his comedy’s really different from computer programming.”

“Puns are about manipulating and moving existing things around laterally,” I suggested, “and your jobs…”

“Spotting patterns,” said Leo. “Maybe. I’ve been told that comedy is all about gags. But I don’t think it is. It’s about getting the momentum, the atmosphere going. It’s almost like music. You build it up and really nail it to a crescendo. It’s building up tension and releasing it like the Pixies or Nirvana or something like that.”

“Your Edinburgh show has a thread?” I asked.

Leo – Hunter. Fighter. Gatherer of puns.

“Yeah. It’s about how hard it is being a man. Which is bullshit: it’s dead easy being a man. I’m so glad I’m a man. We’re built for all the horrible stuff. We’re bullies. We’re good at throwing stuff really far. Hunting. Fighting. We never get to do those things in everyday life. Now it’s all sitting at a computer and doing boring stuff like that. Male masculine skills are not appreciated any more. There’s so much bullshit around.

“I remember teachers at school saying Oh, bullies are like that because they were bullied themselves and they’re just sad and that’s why they’re doing it and they’re upset and… That’s bullshit… Most bullies do it because it’s really funny to sit on another kid and make it eat grass until it cries. I’m trying to debunk a lot of these myths.”

“Did you do that at school?” I asked.

“No,” said Leo. “But, for the purposes of my show I did. I’ve got a bit about me being bullied and how it turned me from English to Scottish. In Scotland, you can say anything as long as it’s funny. It can be as cruel as you like – as long as it’s funny. When I moved down eleven years ago, I had to adjust to England. People would say That’s horrible instead of saying That’s horrible, but it’s funny and laugh like they did in Scotland.”

“And the aim of all this is to get your own radio or television show?” I asked.

“Well, a company called Forefront Media has made a 27-minute documentary about me called Stand-Up London: the pilot for a series. It was going to be for the London Live TV channel, but no-one’s watching that, so they’re pitching it to Sky Arts.

“I’m also going to be on Dinner Date on ITV in September or October. I was one of the men cooking. I got picked by the girl.”

“A good calling card,” I said.

There is a video of Leo’s puns on YouTube.

Casual Violence with Mr Methane farting around, plus Fringe comedy, David Icke & the Bilderberg conspiracy

Last night, I saw comedy sketch group Casual Violence performing what they called a ‘work in progress’ version of their upcoming new Edinburgh Fringe show House of Nostril.

It was slick, sick and silly, peculiar, perverse and potty – in other words classic Casual Violence weirdness.

James Hamilton, Casual Violence writer and twice Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award nominee, reckons his stuff is not weird but, then, he IS weird, so what does he know about it?

Casual Violence have even put a video about hair on YouTube this morning.

After the Casual Violence show last night, I got back to relative normality at home when I received to an email about the World Farting Championships at Utajärvi in Finland.

It seems the Chortle comedy website’s Fast Fringe preview is on 11th July in London and Chortle’s Steve Bennett had inquired into the availability of Mr Methane, the farter of alternative comedy, but he was sadly unavailable because he will be off to the World Farting Championships.

When I intruded into Steve’s grief last night, he told me: “It’s a shame. Mr Methane would have added something very distinctive to the atmosphere of the gig. However, the other 28 acts who are on the bill will possibly be grateful as the dressing rooms at Leicester Square Theatre are very small.”

I asked Mr Methane about his now tragic non-appearance at the upcoming Chortle gig:

“Being invited to the Fast Fringe,” he told me, “is a significant acknowledgement for any performer who is out there working his ring off, so it goes without saying that I’m more than a little frustrated at having a Diary Clash.

“But, that said, I can’t let down my fans in Finland nor the World Farting Championships – The promoters had already booked my tickets and announced my appearance.

“I have promised them some anal japery and anal japery they will get. My word is my bond. Mr Methane always come up trumps.”

“But,” I asked him, “what if you HAD appeared at the Fast Fringe preview: what would you have shown them?”

“I would,”  he told me, “have given potential Fringe goers a taster –  if that’s the right word – of what to expect at my Edinburgh Fringe show.

“It’s not just a performance show this year. I am attempting to give audiences the ‘back story’ of my 20+ years at the ‘bottom end’ of showbusiness… the quirky, stupid stuff that to me has become everyday normal but to everyday normal people is anything but normal.”

I thought of Casual Violence at this point.

“That said,” continued Mr Methane, “I realise that many will just want to see the farting so I’m going to do that as well… All the crowd pleasers… Candle in the Wind, the cake, the talcum powder, farting the dart…

“It’s going to be tricky getting the balance between spoken word and farting right, but I’m sure that wherever the balance point ends up I will share some good crack.”

His show – Mr Methane: My Life in Farting – is at the Edinburgh Fringe 13th-17th August – at Bob Slayer’s new venue Bob’s Bookshop. It should, as Steve of Chortle said, add “atmosphere”.

Never knowingly under-promoted: my upcoming Fringe show

For better or worse, I may have to inhabit some of that atmosphere, as my show Aaaaaaaaaaaarrghhh! So It Goes- John Fleming’s Comedy Blog Chat Show is in the same venue 19th-23rd August. Let us hope the sweet smell of success transfers.

Mr Methane had two other little snippets of news for me.

The first was something totally unexplained in an e-mail. He told me:

“I met Bob Slayer at the weekend. The tank broke down due to fuel starvation, so he wasn’t able to arrive from out of the sea on an amphibious craft but is hoping to try again next year.”

I have absolutely no idea what this means.

The second thing he told me was in the same e-mail:

“BTW there is a Fringe Festival happening near you very soon – the Bilderberg Fringe Festival. Speakers confirmed so far include David Icke and Alex Jones, who Rolling Stone described as a giant in America’s conspiracy sub-culture.

Publicity for Bilderberg Fringe features esteemed David Icke

“Fancy! The Bilderbergs just happening to set up shop down the road from you and then along comes a Bilderberg Fringe Festival as well. They’ve got an alternative media centre outside the hotel – That’s a whole week’s blog material right outside your front door. It’s come a long way since Jon Ronson covered them.”

I looked up the Bilderberg Fringe website after getting Mr Methane’s e-mail. It says:

“The Bilderberg conference is an annual, unaccountable, off-the-record summit attended by royalty, politicians, intelligence, Big Pharma, tech, banking and corporate CEOs plus policy-makers and media moguls from all over the world. The press are not invited, nor given any details beyond a participant list and a sketchy agenda.

“The group is run by a Steering Committee (which is the Bilderberg Group proper). The UK’s Minster of Justice Kenneth Clarke has been a member of the steering committee since at least 1998.

“Seeking to stimulate hearts and minds and unite the politically conscious, the Bilderberg Fringe Festival is an unmissable occasion for conscious citizens from all over the world to join together. We are expressing our outrage at this travesty of democracy the only way we know how. By hula-hooping in the sunshine and dancing barefoot in the grass. Except where cows have been.”

Perhaps James Hamilton and Casual Violence are not as uniquely weird as I thought.

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls – Are they the Laurel and Hardy of British politics?

What is happening with Ed Miliband and what has happened to the Labour Party’s once-feared PR machine?

Young Ed looks like he is being paid by the Tories to undermine his own party and Alastair Campbell’s once gleaming and perfectly-oiled Labour PR machine seems to have seized up with rust or is being operated by 5-year-old children who are too small to reach the levers they have to pull.

That Labour Party conference speech yesterday and all the interviews around it were an unmitigated piece of failed image-building tripe.

The long-thought-out line – they are supposed to have worked all night on the speech – seemed to be:

“We, the Labour Party, would like to apologise for the things we did wrong which we humbly admit, sort of, but it’s the Tories’ fault for anything we did really and, if they are doing now what we said we would do or what we would have had to do, well, that’s what comes of all those years of Tory… erm… government… erm… oh…

“Oh… and the government should make things better and tell other people to make things better. We have had long discussions about this and decided that both the people and the country would be better off if the Economy were in a better state and not worse. Vote for us next time because we are new people not the ones who made any of the mistakes before. Well, sort of.”

One of Ed’s problems is he cannot ‘do’ passion. Someone is writing passionate speeches for him, but he is unable to deliver them. He tries to be passionate, but his lightweight voice is just not up to it and his heart is clearly not in it. It is like he is reading Chaucer to the English class.

I saw an interview he gave a couple of days ago in which he said, basically: “The government should not lecture the Europeans and tell them how to make things better. The government should make things better and, if we were in power, we would be pro-active and tell the Europeans how to make things better.”

The main problem young Ed has is not difficulties in writing credible speeches and an apparent lack of any actual policies. The even bigger problem is a superficial presentational one.

Before Margaret Thatcher came to power, she listened to her very wise advisors. She softened her hairstyle and she lowered the pitch of her voice.

Tony Blair was already a master of fake sincerity when he got the Top Job – that’s what comes of being a good lawyer – lots of experience telling barefaced lies. His technique was so good he almost made me believe in David Icke’s theory that all the top-nobs in Britain are actually alien lizards in human skins.

But no-one seems to have given poor young Ed any advice at all. He is an apprentice lizard.

He still looks like a scared schoolboy unexpectedly made into a prefect and, with his rabbit-in-the-car-headlights eyes, looks shit-scared that people will find out that even he does not believe he is up to the job.

A couple of days ago, there were staggeringly mis-judged PR pictures of slim Ed Miliband and chunky Ed Balls – and there is an image problem here to begin with, as Ed Miliband looked like Stan Laurel to Ed Balls’ version of Oliver Hardy and who wants Stan Laurel as their Prime Minister?… I almost expected Ed Miliband to scratch his head and stare at the camera in innocent confusion with those big open calf’s eyes.

Anyway… there were the two of them walking across a square, being filmed smiling for the TV News, smiling and chatting in an attempt to look in relaxed conversation, but the separated body language and the appallingly stilted audible conversation appeared to show there was no chemistry, no amiability, no ability nor desire to communicate with each other.

They looked as if, in a party – let alone in a Party – they would stand alone at opposite sides of the room and try to avoid ever meeting because they knew there would be an embarrassing, awkward silence.

In this case, two Eds were not better than one.