Are all Finns drunk all the time?

Anna took this selfie in Antwerp

Anna Smith, this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent, lives on a boat in Vancouver. She has an exotic past.

And, indeed, present.

Exotic dancing is what we are talking about here.

This week, she told me about Finland.

I mentioned that the first Finns I ever met were an uproarious and paralytically drunk group of tourists in Leningrad.

Very very amiable but (literally) staggeringly drunk.

Almost every Finn I have ever met since then has been very very amiable but amazingly drunk.

This is what Anna remembered of Finland.

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Trees and snow. Trees and Snow. Trees and snow.

Finland was the most civilised place I ever worked. There were saunas everywhere and sculptures of naked women, even in the post office.

I danced at La Scala in Helsinki for a week (which gave me the silly distinction of being able to add La Scala, Helsinki to my CV) and I toured the rest of the country for three weeks. It was the coldest February in decades.

La Scala was an ornate cinema on Esplanadi, the main esplanade on the Helsinki waterfront near the controversial mermaid fountain called Havis Amanda. When I danced at La Scala, the entire audience was composed of men wearing wolfskin hats.

The brochure produced by La Scala featured a photo of me baring my comely bottom and claimed that I was a “Upea Lumoojatar” (Gorgeous Enchantress). I danced to James Bond theme songs and emerged from masks and a cape, as the sea was frozen.

After years of poverty in England, I was enchanted especially by the food, which was included in my contract. I had shrimp cocktails daily and tried unsuccessfully to make myself sick of salmon, which I washed down with large glasses of thick piimä (buttermilk). Clusters of drunken men lurched towards me when I left the stage, pleading with me to drink with them. I cut a path through them by explaining: “Sorry, but I only drink piimä,” which sent them into convulsions and they echoed: “She only drinks piimä! She drinks only piimä!!!

I was followed out of the theatres several times by men – once by a beaming eighty year old who told me that I was very, very good at my work and that he knew what he was talking about because, as he said, “I am connasieur”.

In Tampere, an industrial town in the north, I was charmed to see the earmuff-wearing police. I performed in a vast hall that had no stage, so I had to dance on the floor in front of tables of pulp and paper workers. One of them was a woman who stuck her tongue out at me, but seemed to be enjoying my show. The sound system was terrible at that place. I could barely hear my music so I had to fake it as best I could, which was awful for me but the audience didn’t mind.

As I was putting my clothes back on in the washroom which served as my dressing room, the door suddenly burst open and a big drunk man came through it. He knelt at my feet and began howling out a stream of words in Finnish. I was standing by the sink wondering what to do next when four more drunk men crashed into the room. They were laughing but also apologetic.

“He wants to marry you,” they explained, looking back at me as they dragged him out of the room.

A video of comedian Malcolm Hardee paralytically drunk twelve years ago

Twelve years ago tonight – on 28th April 2002 – the BBC Choice TV channel (later re-branded as BBC3) transmitted an episode of their eavesdropping reality series Diners which included comedians Malcolm Hardee and Steve Bowditch, both seemingly a little the worse for alcoholic wear.

Well, Malcolm was paralytically drunk – something he had only started to be (in my opinion) in the previous six months.

There is a 5min 41sec clip on YouTube.

The next day, I went down to Malcolm’s Wibbley Wobbley floating pub in Rotherhithe. His insurance broker had stolen £1,000 instead of passing it on to the insurance company, so the pub was not insured. Both Malcolm and his girlfriend Andrée had wide, desperate eyes, but this could have been for any number of reasons.

Malcolm and I took his other boat out in windy conditions.

“When the lock keeper throws you a rope,” Malcolm told me, “just hold on to it.”

The lock keeper threw me a rope. I held on to it.

The lock keeper, his voice barely audible in the wind, started shouting: “The turn! The turn!”

I kept holding the rope. The lock keeper dropped his end of the rope in the water.

It transpired that I had been supposed to tie the rope to the ‘turn’ (a metal thing) on the deck. If the lock keeper had kept holding the rope, he would have been pulled into the water. He was neither a happy nor a forgiving man.

The boat – Malcolm insisted it should be called a ship – drifted sideways into the lock and the stern hit the side. It took some time to get out.

We sailed – or, rather, bounced on bumpy waves – down the River Thames to a floating diesel fuel station near Tower Bridge, but it was closed.

Malcolm Hardee on the Thames (photo by Steve Taylor)

Malcolm got a call on his mobile phone from Andrée to tell him she had “pranged” his car in an accident.

Then we sailed back along the Thames to the Cutty Sark pub where Malcolm met, as pre-arranged, his previous girlfriend Faith and three of her friends.

Malcolm, like the River Thames, was never uninteresting and the best thing was to go with the flow. He drowned, drunk, in 2005.

This year, the three annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards are being presented during a two-hour variety show at the Edinburgh Fringe on Friday 22nd August.

Which makes you a better stand-up comedian? Alcohol, cocaine or heroin?

Andy Zapp stayed in my flat at the Edinburgh Fringe last year

At last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, musician/comedian Andy Zapp performed in a show with comedian Ivor Dembina.

Currently, he performs on Saturdays at Ivor’s Hampstead Comedy Club in London.

He is billed as The Orchestra of Andy Zapp.

“A lot of jazz musicians liked heroin,” I said to him over tea in Soho.

“Yes,” agreed Andy. “Miles Davis, John Coltrane, all those ones.”

“One comedian told me,” I said, “that he might take Red Bull, but he never took cocaine before going on stage because he wouldn’t be able to control his act. I’m not sure I believed him, though.”

“Well,” said Andy, “Lenny Bruce managed to do it quite successfully for a time. I think you can do it if you have that creative spurt. I might be quite good doing that for five or six months, then I’d just be fucked. You’ve got that sort of creative burst because you’ve got the energy and you’re not worried about how you feel when they don’t laugh. Subjectively, you’re cut off. You’re not really connecting with the audience and it doesn’t bother you.”

“I suppose though,” I suggested, “it could make the paranoia even worse.”

“Well, yeah,” said Andy, “you’ve gotta get paranoid first, though. When you take cocaine, you don’t automatically get paranoid; that’s further down the line. The initial part of it’s really nice, but then you start getting paranoid. Heroin would be better. Nice and relaxed.”

“You don’t want to be too relaxed performing comedy, though,” I suggested.

“You wouldn’t have the anxiety, though,” Andy argued. “I don’t know how it would work for comedians. They’re more piss-heads. Drink.”

“I wonder why?” I mused.

“Well,” said Andy, “it’s a different type of buzz. More outward. Music’s a little bit more inward: you don’t really have to ‘perform’.”

“I suppose drink makes people go off more at tangents,” I said.

“Garrolous,” agreed Andy. “Drink dis-inhibits. Heroin stops you feeling. You don’t feel physical pain, you don’t feel emotional pain. Me, I couldn’t use anything, really. I’m never tempted that much.”

“Why are you tempted at all?” I asked.

A ‘selfie’ taken by Andy in London last week

“I think: Oh yeah, I’ll just take a bit of speed and I can just really fly about or some cocaine and it’ll really turn off the internal sensor. But doing comedy clean the way I’ve been doing it – I’ve been doing it two-and-a-half years now – being with Ivor helps. He’s really useful.”

“Why? Because he’s analytical?” I asked. “I saw Ivor put his Palestine show together over a few months and it was like seeing a watchmaker paying attention to every little detail.”

“He’s maybe a bit too careful,” replied Andy, “but I’m all over the place, so he’s very good at getting me back on track. I’m still trying to sort this composure stuff out before I go on stage. If I forget my composure, I forget what I’m doing and get scared when I get up on stage.”

“Where did you and Ivor meet?” I asked.

“At the Red Rose Club about 27 or 30 years ago,” said Andy. “I used to like going to comedy shows. I was a junkie then.”

“How many years?” I asked.

“I’ve been in recovery for 27. I’m 15 years clean now.”

“How does that add up?” I asked.

“I was clean for 7; got a tumour on my spinal cord; the doctors prescribed me pain-killing medication and I sort of lost the plot on that; then I relapsed for 4 years; and I’ve been clean for 15. That’s 26-and-a-bit years. It’s been a great journey. I love being clean; I really do.”

“You recommend it as a career path?”

“I would. What’s your bag?”

“Chocolate,” I explained. “I have a stomach to support.”

“Other people do gambling or sex,” said Andy. “I just do drugs. It’s all addiction.”

“But if you’re clean of drugs now,” I asked, “what’s your addiction?”

“It’s kind of low-grade now,” said Andy. “I kind of understand how I roll. I can do chocolate now. I’ve got a high metabolic rate. I exercise quite a lot.”

“Marihuana is fairly harmless,” I said.

“That’s not true,” said Andy. “It isn’t harmless. It mimics mental health problems. Schizophrenia, paranoia, low self-esteem.”

“Sounds like the basic requirements for becoming a stand-up comedian,” I said.

“Well, it’s a good starting point,” said Andy, “but you can’t tell which way it’s going to go. It’s the way you smoke it, really. Physical damage; throat cancer; stuff like that. Heroin is the most benign of all the drugs.”

“Pure heroin,” I said.

In the 1950s, heroin was still a popular medicine prescribed by family doctors

“Yeah pure heroin,” agreed Andy. “I used to get jacks – 10mg tablets – like little saccharine pills. You got them off doctors. As a drug, heroin progresses through the body really easily. Within seven hours, it’s flushed through your system. It doesn’t damage any of the major organs. The only thing is it’s very addictive and, if you take a wrong amount, you can overdose. The stuff people get now… it depends what it’s cut with.

“It used to be only the middle and upper classes that took it and they were injecting heroin. But, once it became a smokable commodity, then it filtered into the working classes and the criminal classes and then it really took off.”

“It was the fall of the Shah of Iran that made heroin big here, wasn’t it?” I asked. “People couldn’t take their cash out of Iran, so they converted it into heroin and took that out.”

“Yeah,” said Andy. “But it was the marketing, really. People were putting it in joints, smoking it and thinking it was quite benign and, two weeks later, they’d got a heroin habit, a running nose, coughing.”

“What IS the Orchestra of Andy Zapp?” I asked.

“It’s me and a loop machine. Makes it sound like an orchestra of harmonicas.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

No blog today, but some toast hanging and the reality of a man talking to a wall

I have about five long and, I think, interesting blog-chats recorded and no time to transcribe them today.

You can normally tell when I do not have time to write a blog because I revert to some tale from a past electronic diary.

Last night, suffering from a small part of my eternally-un-named friend’s cold or mini-flu or whatever she has, I had trouble sleeping horizontally – the inside of my throat burned. So I had to try to sleep sitting up, propped amid four pillows. It was a fitful night. Little sleep. But at least my throat did not burn.

I woke late and have to leave early.

Wassail toast hangs from trees while cider is poured on roots

I think I vaguely remember some dream about people hanging pieces of toast from the branches of trees at night: some flashback to a wassailing night in nearby Shenley a couple of years ago. They poured cider at the bottom of trees to encourage them to grow.

When I woke up, I looked at my diaries. Nothing happened on this day in years past. Except that, in 2001, a friend of mine told me she was thinking of moving to Australia because she liked the Australian character which, she felt, was less cynical than the British “because the country isn’t so old and they haven’t learned it yet”.

She has not moved to Australia.

And, in 2003, I heard that someone I had worked with at Granada TV in Manchester was now living in Bath. He had gone to Yorkshire to stay with a friend for a week but had been asked to leave after two days because he was scaring the kids. Whereas others might take a few cups of tea during the course of a day, for him a bottle of wine stood in for each cup of tea. The children found it unsettling that he had a tendency to get up without warning and start talking to the wall.

He is dead now.

So it goes.

Does the fact I do not smoke, drink or take drugs make me boring or bizarre?

After a lifetime of avoiding drink and drugs…

Yesterday, the BBC reported: “Long queues have been seen as the world’s first state-licensed marijuana industry opened for business in the US state of Colorado… Washington state has also legalised cannabis and is expected to allow the drug’s sale later this year.”

People think I am a bit odd if I mention I have never knowingly taken recreational drugs.

I have nothing at all against people taking marijuana in any form though I think, maybe, I would not want my airline pilot, bus driver or the person overtaking me at 90mph on the motorway (with or without a car) to be totally zonked out of their head.

I think I may have had hash cakes a couple of times without realising it – and without any discernible effect. But I have worked with people who have clearly been taking too much hash for too many years.

I once worked for a TV company where the man in charge of the department found, on a Friday morning, that we were unexpectedly very understaffed due to illness. He spent three hours – three rambling hours – telling us how we were going to re-arrange things to get through the increased workload. I could have killed him but, alas, I was not drunk so had no real excuse.

The only drugs that ever attracted me were heroin and LSD. Neither were available to me when I would have taken them and, by the time they were easily available, I had met smack and acid casualties.

Well, that is not altogether true.

Me – in my late teens or early twenties

I never took LSD because I thought it might push me over some nearby psychological ledge and I would never be able to get back again.

By the time heroin was available, I had already tried suicide and that had not worked.

I was never interested in marijuana because I never smoked nicotine (so the actual smoking technique was a mystery to me).

I do not smoke nicotine because, when I was about six years old, I asked my father: ”Daddy, can I have a puff of your cigarette?”

And he said: “Yes.”

I was appallingly nauseous.

I never wanted to smoke again and did not.

The attraction to other people of marijuana seemed to be that it had the same relaxing, uninteresting-to-me effect as drink – though without the bad side-effects of excessive drink like wild, mindless aggression, vomiting and splitting headaches.

It never seemed to me that getting drunk and then proudly saying the next day: “I can’t remember anything I did last night,” was a good life choice. If I want to get so drunk I can’t control my own body and start falling down in the street and/or losing consciousness because my brain has closed itself down to avoid further damage, I might as well get into a boxing ring with a psychopath and get him to repeatedly punch me in the head until I become unconsciousness.

People seem to drink to lower their inhibitions, so that they feel free-er to do or say what they want and, if it goes wrong, they can blame the drink. I think I was always prepared to do or say what I wanted without having to have excuses.

Although that is, perhaps, not good career advice.

People think I am bizarre – they really do – because, except on special occasions when it would be rude not to, I do not drink alcohol or spirits.

I had some mulled wine with a couple of meals over the Christmas period. The last time I drank before that was probably last Christmas.

When I tell people I do not drink, they assume I am an ex-alcoholic.

In fact, it is because I never enjoyed it.

In my teens and early twenties, I used to drink small amounts of lager to be sociable because it had a more bland taste than other beers. I never actively enjoyed drinking it.

I only ever really enjoy vodka drowned in orange juice and champagne drowned in orange juice.

Nothing else grabs my taste buds.

Also, in my late twenties, I encountered two people.

One was the Press Officer for a film distribution company. He had obviously been very bright and intelligent in his youth. Now he was in his mid-forties and I guess had been drinking socially and doggedly for professional reasons for about 20 years. His mind was doolally.

The other was someone I had worked with in a broadcast TV company. We then ended up working at the same Soho TV facility production company AND with him living in my flat weekdays for about six months.

He was highly intelligent. After graduating from Oxford University, he had been talent-spotted and trained by Granada TV. He used to sit and watch University Challenge and effortlessly answer about half the questions, almost without thinking.

But he had been drinking solidly, like the film PR man, for about 20 or 25 years.

He used to drink wine at lunchtime in Soho. Then, after work, he would have a few pints of beer. Then he would come home and drink spirits.

I was still drinking at this point – though only small amounts of lager after work.

I stopped drinking altogether because of him.

His brain – though still able to function at work and answer University Challenge questions – had been damaged.

He would start a sentence, then stop in the middle, drift off and start doing or saying something else, never completing his original sentence or thought process.

I did not want to be like him in 20 or 25 years time.

The irony is that now I have a shit memory. And I witter.

But then I always did.

As far as I remember.

Irony. Don’t talk to me about irony.

Can comedian Bob Slayer – infamously Edinburgh Fringey – turn into a cuddly grey-bearded children’s entertainer?

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that comedians often have another ‘day job’.

Around seven years ago, Bob Slayer was managing Japanese rock group Electric Eel Shock when they made a Christmas video in which he appeared as Father Christmas. It was posted on YouTube.

Now Bob has become a real Santa Claus. He started the job yesterday in a grotto under a giant Christmas tree at Whiteley’s department store in London’s Queensway and he will be donning his red-and-white robes there throughout December.

BEFORE…

AFTER…

‘Santa’ Bob with helper elves ‘Ruthy Boothy’ Sarah (left) and ‘Wilma Words’ Christine

I talked to him last night after he finished his Ho Ho Ho duties. He told me he was going to have to think up some more Christmas stories, because some children had come back a second time on this his first day in the role.

“I’d been telling them how reindeer fly and how they have to go to Tromsø in Norway,” said Bob, “and I could see some of the parents looking at me thinking I don’t know this story; this isn’t a real Santa, so I told the children You see, mummies and daddies don’t know about reindeer.”

One Happy Drunk illustration by Rich Rose

And that’s not all.

Tonight, at the Chortle Comedy Book Festival, Bob launches a children’s book he wrote, with illustrations by Rich Rose of comedy duo Ellis & Rose (last referred-to in this blog yesterday a propos their Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show).

“Rich is a brilliant illustrator,” said Bob.

“Remind me what the book is called?” I asked.

“The Happy Drunk,” confirmed Bob.

He financed it by crowdfunding and reached 169% of his target. The title was originally Calpol Is Evil but he changed it – allegedly after he received an alleged letter from solicitors representing the manufacturers of Calpol. Never forget that Bob Slayer won a much-coveted Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award in 2011 for his ‘Cockgate’ stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“What’s the premise of The Happy Drunk?” I asked.

“It’s a children’s book for adults. It’s for Big Kids.”

“Would 14-year-olds enjoy it?” I asked.

Bob’s new book is for Big Babies everywhere – but not lawyers

“I don’t know,” replied Bob. “I think they would, although whether their parents would want them to read it… I’d say it should have a PG rating.

“Actually, I should have put that on the cover!” he laughed. “I’ve only printed 50 so far – as a proof to check they’re OK – so I think I might put PG Rated on future covers.”

“Are drunks happy?” I asked.

“Drunks in comedy clubs,” explained Bob, “get a bad name due to the alcopop drunks that the Jongleurs and Highlight comedy chains get in, whereas the sort of people I like doing gigs to are genuinely happy drunks: people who know what they’re drinking.

“When I do gigs in breweries, they’re drinking nice drink. They’re lively, but they don’t get out of hand; they’re good audiences. They’re people who are in for their drink but also in for their comedy. In the comedy club chains, you get big groups of people and some of them do want to see comedy, but others had wanted to go to the cinema or go bowling; they’re not all committed to watching comedy.

“I’m going to print 1,000 copies of The Happy Drunk initially. Rich Rose is having 300, I’ll put some online and sell the rest at gigs. Writing it was a stopgap, because it’s taking me longer to write my How To Out-Drink Australia book than I thought it would. It’s taking longer to edit.”

Turning a tour into a book is complicated

“You have a problem with people’s perception of you,” I said. “People think you’re always going to be the OTT Edinburgh Fringe Bob Slayer character.”

“Well,” said Bob, “you have to respond to the audience that’s in front of you. I like to think that I can mirror whatever audience is there. If you put me in a golf club, then I’m not going to end up naked – well, unless that’s what they want. There have been occasions when it’s gone out of control and perhaps I have gone the wrong way, but they’re one-off incidents like in Norway, where I got banned from that theatre.

“But, look, the fact was that they had five members of The Cumshots band there. So I’m going to perform to my mates The Cumshots, aren’t I? And they’re a band that invite you to come onstage and ‘fuck for forests’ – I HAD to come off the balcony on a rope. Though the reason I was actually banned was because I opened a bottle of Jägermeister on stage and had a drink and I was unaware how strict the licensing laws are there.”

“Ironically,” I said, “you got a Scottish licence to run your own bar at Bob’s Bookshop during the Edinburgh Fringe. Are you going to do other comedy club bars?”

Comedian; promoter; licensed venue manager; looney?

“Well,” explained Bob, “The reason I could be Father Christmas here was because I had a mostly-free December. And that was because I was going to do a pop-up comedy venue and bar in London – like Bob’s Bookshop in Edinburgh. I looked at a couple of places in Hackney and round East London, but I just ran out of time to get the licensing sorted. So I had kept December free and, when the pop-up club didn’t happen, I put a few club gigs into my diary then this Father Christmas offer came along.”

“So you will be doing other pop-up comedy venues and bars?” I asked.

“I’m doing one at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February,” said Bob. “The programme’s out tomorrow and I’m doing three long weekends, putting on about 30 shows – people like Tom Binns, Devvo, Brian Gittins, Stuart Goldsmith, Phil Kay, Adam Larter, Doug Segal, Ben Target. We’ve got an old chapel in Leicester – Hansom Hall, named after the guy who invented the hansom cab. He designed the building.

“I’m working with a new brewery – BrewDog who are Aberdeen-based. They’re the fastest-growing food and drink company in the UK in the last three years. A really interesting independent brewer. They’re funding themselves by crowdfunding: you can invest in BrewDog. The moment they heard about Cockgate at the Edinburgh Fringe, they said We want to work with you.”

“And then?” I asked.

“I’m trying to be quiet in January to finish writing my Australian book. I’ve got to get the book done for the next Edinburgh Fringe.”

What???

Bob Slayer “trying to be quiet”?

This does not compute.

Juliette Burton on what it’s like to sing at Scotland’s T in The Park rock festival

(A version of this piece was also published on the Indian news site WSN)

Comedy performer turned rock chick Juliette

The annual T in The Park is Scotland’s equivalent of the Glastonbury music festival.

This year, the acts included Snoop Dogg, Paloma Faith, Killers, Mumford & Sons, The Proclaimers, Dizzee Rascal, Stereophonics, Travis and comedy performer Juliette Burton, who is staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe titled When I Grow Up.

In it, she recounts how, this year, she tried to be all the things she dreamt of being when she was a child – including a baker, an artist, a Muppet and a pop star.

Performing yesterday at T in The Park was her “research” for being a rock star. She sang one song – Dreamers (When I Grow Up) – which is on sale for charity now and online as a music video later this week.

“What was it like yesterday?” I asked her.

“Unusually,” she told me, “there was no rain. But it got so dusty I am still sneezing dried mud out of my nose. I thought I had got a tan but when I had a shower this morning I realised it was just dust.”

“I’ve been to Glastonbury a few times,” I said, “but never to T in The Park. It’s much the same I imagine?”

Juliette about to go on stage

“Well,” said Juliette, “there were the obligatory sightings of men and women peeing in public. That was expected. But there was an unusual fashion I hadn’t realised existed where young women wear hot pants cut so high that their bottoms hang out. I played ‘spot the arse’ which was a fun game. Sometimes it wasn’t bare cheeks I spotted but arses of a different kind – young men. I learned a lot about how to spot people on different types of recreational drugs.

“Then there were the tanked-up teens who decided to play volleyball in the middle of the crowd dressed as Monty Python-esque characters. There were some other excellent costumes around: the panto horse, the superheroes, the men dressed as bananas and a guy with a hoodie that just said CUNT on it. I was not sure whether he was advertising it or wanted to find some or he just wanted to let people know he was one.”

“So it was a different audience to the normal comedy show audience you’re used to?” I asked.

“Yes,” agreed Juliette. “Normally my audience keep their shirts on. There are usually far fewer nipples on display at a comedy show.”

“Were you more nervous?” I asked.

“I was trying to cope with the nerves by not thinking about it until it happened,” replied Juliette. “Which is a great coping strategy… until it happens. Before going on stage I was more of a bundle of nerves than I’ve been in a long while. I felt physically sick. I was worried I’d not be able to pogo in the shoes I’d chosen, worried I’d forget the words and worried about being bottled by the crowd.”

“So it was much scarier?” I asked.

Juliette on screen and (tiny on the right) on stage yesterday

“Terrifying,” said Juliette. “My comedy isn’t stand-up exactly – and stand-up is terrifying for much the same reason as T in the Park was terrifying – the crowd. But a comedy crowd – especially during the Edinburgh Fringe – comes to see a show because they love comedy. They want to watch a show you’ve put your heart and soul into creating.

“The crowd at yesterday’s T in the Park gig was not there to appreciate the fact I wrote a pop song to realise my childhood dream of being a pop star. They were there for the beer. They were mainly men, already pissed and enjoying themselves.

“I’ve never taken drugs – because I’ve already had a psychosis and nowadays I like to get my highs from laughter. So some of the young men may have also been on something else. It was a music a music festival after all. I don’t know about that. But I do know they were loud and a little aggressive. And they just wanted more beer.

“Even the compere of the show said they were the toughest crowd they’d ever had and the crowd was terrifying because they weren’t listening. So seeing that crowd before I went on was absolutely the scariest thing. I mean, what if they bottled me? Or chucked pints of pee at me?”

“So how did it go?” I asked.

Juliette had to fend off marriage proposals from front row

“Actually,” said Juliette, “it was frickin’ awesome. I owe a lot of that to the amazing comperes – Ben and Rufus. They introduced me in a way that meant the crowd (even that crowd) would warm to me – We want you to go crazy for this lady. Imagine she’s Rhianna and Beyoncé’s love child! – and they said they’d give free beer to my biggest fans…

“So, with that sort of introduction and bribery, I was lucky. Some of those guys, though, took the biggest fan thing really seriously. I got proposed to mid-song by two of the guys in the front row.

“I was told by the lovely team backstage that another thing in my favour was the fact most of the guys in the audience were ‘laaaaaads’ who, when they see a woman, just revert to Animal mode. And that’s Animal from The Muppets. They just end up shouting WOMAN! WOMAN! in their minds. The fact I wore a sparkly dress also meant they were distracted by something shiny.

“So lots of different tactics meant I didn’t get bottled. If they had been preparing pints of warm liquid excreted from their bodies especially for me, they kept them reserved for another band later on – maybe The Killers or David Guetta… I hope it was the latter because The Killers were fantastic.”

“And afterwards,” I asked, “you felt what?”

It looks like not everyone in the audience yesterday was a lad

“I imagine,” replied Juliette, “that will be how it is for the first performance of my actual show at the Fringe in the Gilded Balloon – terror and then fun. That’s why performing is amazing – it’s real life. A mix of the best and the worst. Maybe the preview reviewers might get their nipples out too… I don’t know.

“After the show yesterday I was so high – on life, not whatever those guys in the front row had been taking. I wanted to do it all again. I don’t know… Maybe I will get the chance again one day.

Juliette foregrounded by either arms or legs

“Emotionally, my inner tweenager was overjoyed – I’d just realised a childhood ambition. All those days I had dreamed of singing a song to adoring fans, wearing a cool dress; all those days I had fantasised about it in my bedroom at home and drew little pictures of myself performing on stage – putting those pictures in a little homemade magazine inspired by such intellectual publications as Bliss magazine – I was NOT a cool little girl.

“And then finally, yesterday, I had realised that little uncool girl’s dream. It felt brilliant. But not as good as I imagine the first show at the Fringe will feel – That has been fewer years gestating but I think I care about it in the long term far more.”

“How does yesterday fit into your Fringe show?” I asked.

Juliette wants to recreate T in the Park orgasm

“The pop star section is at the end of the show,” explained Juliette, “and there will be proof of all that I’ve done in all this mad research on video and in photo form throughout the show on a Powerpoint. I don’t want to give too much away, but the pop star bit is a big climax of the show. Much like the orgasm I had walking off stage at T in the Park yesterday. It’s meant to be euphoric, life-affirming and uplifting.

“What did you think when you woke up this morning?” I asked.

“Did that really happen?” said Juliette. “Followed, right now as I’m talking to you, by thinking: Seriously – anything can happen. We can make anything happen if we want it to – and if we work hard enough for it.”

“Did you video yesterday’s performance for YouTube?

“Yes, some kind fellow performers filmed it for me. And I did a little introduction to camera afterwards to explain it. I’ll be editing that in the next day or two and get it online. And, if I can do a plug…”

“Yes you can,” I said.

Downloadable Dreamers from iTunes, Spotify & Amazon

“Anyone can buy the song I performed yesterday from iTunes, Spotify and Amazon – Just search for Dreamers (When I Grow Up).

“All the money raised until the end of the Fringe is going to Children in Need.

“As is all the money raised from auctioning off the When I Grow Up Dreambook – which is being signed by all kinds of exciting people – already including Janey Godley, Robin Ince, Stewart Lee and more. They’re all writing in it what they wanted to be as a child and what they do now. It will be on eBay during or just after the Fringe.”

“And when is the pop video you shot for the song – which I blogged about – going online?”

“Hopefully later this week.”

“So,” I asked, “what you have learned from all this is…?”

“That I think the Fringe might actually be a more restful time than this past week,” laughed Juliette. “And it would be a terrible waste of a life if we didn’t do something we at least enjoy, right?”

YOU CAN SEE A VIDEO OF JULIETTE’S PERFORMANCE HERE:

Pretty soon, comedian Martin Soan will not be speaking to me. Lucky him…

Pretty soon, comedian Martin Soan will not be speaking to me. Lucky him, some might say.

Yesterday’s blog about things I cut out of my blogs reminded me of something else I had cut out but still had as an iPhone recording: a chat I had with Martin shortly after one of his several 60th birthday parties.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog in which Martin talked about spirituality.

When he read it, he told me he thought it made him sound like a drunken airhead. I think what he said was very interesting. Okay, he was drunk, but he can still say interesting things when he’s drunk.

He was slightly drunk in this conversation, too, recorded shortly afterwards. If he doesn’t like what is quoted, he can always claim he was drunk. I do not have that excuse.

A brick wall – or maybe it could be anything you want it to be

“I read an article years ago,” I was saying to Martin, “which suggested that, in the future, you’ll be able to manipulate molecules. Everything we see is just molecules. The air, the stone walls, my hand: they’re all just molecules. So, if you can control the molecules, you don’t need to have walls for your house that are permanent brick walls. You can make them of anything you want. You could reconfigure the walls’ structure with the press of a button. You could have leaves or television screens instead of walls and change them in the click of a button if you have access to the right molecular structure.”

“But going back to my previous drunken blog with you,” interrupted Martin, “about spirituality.”

“Much appreciated,” I said.

“Fuck off,” laughed Martin. “Are you ever going to escape Man’s essential… How many millennia are we going to have to live into the future before we pass on to the next stage of evolution? That’s if Man’s even lucky enough to be included in the next stage of evolution. Manipulating molecules is just going along a linear line of technology and invention in such a small speck of evolution.”

I told Martin he could sell this ‘found art’ to Tate Modern

“I think,” I said, “within a hundred years, we…”

Martin started laughing loudly: “You think you could go down Argos and get it?”

“Within 100 years, we could manipulate molecules,” I said.

“But that,” said Martin, “wouldn’t necessarily mean you had any more understanding, would it?”

“It would mean different ways of living,” I said. “I mean, Shakespeare was only 400 years ago. The Queen Mother lived to over 100. The distance between Shakespeare’s time and now is only the length of four people’s lives.”

“But,” argued Martin, “for several millennia, Man’s been exactly the same.”

“In Shakespeare’s time,” I said, “there were people living in wattle huts.”

“But is that the point?” asked Martin. “To be warm?”

“When I came down to London for the first time when I was a kid,” I said, “you walked along Whitehall or looked at St Pancras Station and there was no detailing on the buildings, because it was all totally caked in black soot and it smelled of soot.

Claude Monet’s view of London at the turn of the 20th century

“In the thick pea-souper smogs, we got let off school early, the air smelled of sulphur or something and, if you held your arm out in front of you, you couldn’t see your hand. You had to move carefully along the pavements step by step and pray when you crossed a road. If you walk around now, it’s a completely different world.”

“Certain things are better…” admitted Martin.

“Almost everything’s better,” I said.

“Ahhh, John,” said Martin, “I don’t think that’s true.”

“What’s got worse?” I asked. “I read old newspapers when I was researching a TV programme and, in 1780-odd and 1880-odd, you could not walk down Regent Street in the daylight in mid-afternoon without the risk of getting mugged. They were calling out the army every Friday and Saturday night to quell drunken riots in places like Woking. The army! The more the cameras look at us and the more GCHQ hacks into us, the safer it will be.”

There was a long, long pause.

“John…” said Martin. There was another long pause “…John…” he repeated.

“But really,” I said, “Just 400 years ago – which is nothing in time terms – people were living in mud huts in Britain. If you brought someone from 1613 to here, they’d have no idea what was going on.”

“But John,” argued Martin, “you’re just basing the next stage of Man’s evolution on sitting in a warm place with a computer and loads of puddings bought from Marks & Spencer… and without any walls. I don’t think that’s necessarily the next step in Man’s evolution. Molecular-manipulated houses and blogging and Marks & Spencer puddings – that’s your next step in evolution.”

“Yes,” I said. “Wasn’t it the US Agriculture Secretary who got sacked for saying people just want a tight pussy, loose shoes and a warm place to shit? There was some racism involved too but remove the racism and he has a point.”

“Will we live any longer?” asked Martin.

“Yes,” I said.

“But is living longer important?” asked Martin.

“It’s a bad thing living longer,” I agreed.

“I saw this TV programme by Kate Humble,” said Martin, “and she went to this part of Afghanistan where the average life expectancy is 35 years and, of course, their life is fucking hard. But that’s what I think life is. I mean, in Sex and The City, they’re moaning because they haven’t got the right boyfriend and can’t find the right shoes and they’ll live to 90 and they’ll spend the last part after they’re 60 bitter. Wouldn’t it just be better to burn out in glory and respect by the age of 35? It’s better to have a good life than a long life.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “There was that Greek myth about the wife who asked the Gods to give her husband eternal life and, of course, she found out that was the wrong thing to ask for. She actually wanted eternal youth, not eternal life. Eternal life would be appalling.”

“And that American sci-fi series,” said Martin. “The famous episode where there was a third-rate comedian who sold his soul to the Devil. He said I just want everyone to laugh at me all the time and, of course, he went out and someone was stabbed and he got blamed and everyone was laughing at him Oh! That’s so funny, man! and he got sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair and everyone was laughing Hahaha! What a way to go out! Now that’s what I call a funny man!”

“Life’s constantly getting better,” I said.

“Most of the guys who sell me my food,” said Martin, “are orphans from foreign countries.”

Fallujah, Iraq, 2003 – more life-enhancing than East Glasgow

“Janey Godley,” I said, “had a line in one of her shows that life expectancy in Fallujah, Iraq, is 65… In the East End of Glasgow, it’s 55.”

“Also,” said Martin “there was a line in The Wire – though all these things we quote we don’t know if they’re true – that literacy levels are worse in downtown Baltimore than in central Africa.”

“But centuries ago,” I said, “everywhere was shit. Now some places aren’t shit. I imagine the Central African Republic is as bad as it ever was, but Manhattan isn’t as bad as it was.”

Martin then opened the back window of his living room and pulled a beer from the refrigerator which he keeps outside.

“You leave me alone, John,” he said. “I’m drunk. Leave me alone.”

“It’s OK,” I said. “You got drunk and I got my blog and you’re sitting here accumulating money even as we speak…”

“Accumulating money?” Martin asked.

“The value of your house has probably gone up by £10,000 in the last ten minutes,” I said. “This is Peckham. Things are getting better all the time.”

Comic Martin Soan on spirituality and Malcolm Hardee’s “Oowwerwerwouer”

Martin Soan in his resplendent garb last night

Performance artist and comedian Martin Soan was richer than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in one thing this year – birthdays.

Her Majesty has two birthdays every year – her real one and her official one.

This year, Martin Soan had three.

He had a birthday party last Monday. He had his actual birthday on Wednesday.

And yesterday he had another birthday party, coinciding with the Queen’s official birthday.

The Queen decided to knight actor Tony Robinson yesterday.

A 60-year-old man ping-pongs yesterday

Martin decided to play ping-pong at home and then go down the pub and get pissed with his mates and neighbours.

Well into the evening, I had a chat with him. He is now 60 years old. He was wearing a jester’s outfit, given to him by fellow Greatest Show on Legs member Steve Bowditch. This was befitting as, the previous weekend, Martin had been created ‘official fool’ at the annual International Jesters’ Tournament at Muncaster Castle in the Lake District. He receives his annual salary in beer.

“So,” I asked him, “what is it like being 60 and drunk and dressed as a jester?”

“John,” he replied, “let me ask you this… Do you know about your spiritual side? Have you a spiritual side, John?”

“Well, I have a spiritual stomach,” I replied. “Some people might call me Buddha-like.”

Martin pays homage to my pussy picture at Fleming Towers

“I have seen some of the pictures on your wall in your home, John,” persisted Martin, “and I would say you would have a spiritual side. But, a bit like Malcolm (Hardee, Martin’s deceased partner in the Greatest Show On Legs act), you are really reluctant to go to your spiritual side and talk to me and converse with me on a spiritual level. Exactly the same as Malcolm.

“Over all the years I knew him,” Martin explained, “I got Malcolm to talk about it twice. Now, you have some art on your wall that tells something about your spiritual side. Blog about that, John, blog about that.”

“Which pictures?” I asked, slightly taken aback.

“I don’t remember the bloody names of them,” replied Martin. “You know the ones I’m talking about: the eye, the…”

“The eye?” I asked.

“Well, there must be one with an eye,” said Martin. “I can’t remember them all.”

“Do you mean the cat with spectacles on?” I asked.

The barely-glimpsed ship about to enter a living room

“Yes! Ah! Yes!” said Martin. “The cat… The ship coming through the house… What’s his name?”

“Dominique Appia,” I said. “So what was Malcolm’s spiritual side?”

“Even though we were close all those years,” explained Martin, “and did all that stuff together, there were only a couple of times when he could actually say something to me, like Hello, mate. We done well, ‘aven’t we? He normally just went Oowwerwerwouer. A bit like you. You’re a bit Oowwerwerwouer.”

“Am I?” I asked. “I’m Oowwerwerwouer?”

“Yeah, you are,” said Martin.

“I swear to God I’ve never gone Oowwerwerwouer in my life,” I told him.

“If people are close,” said Martin, “why not just embrace it? Malcolm had a tough time accepting that. Malcolm would go Oowwerwerwouer… So what do you say to that, John?”

“What was Malcolm’s spiritual side that you saw twice?” I asked.

Malcolm Hardee (left) – the spiritually repressed family man

Martin told me: “That he actually did have a wonderful family side to him and he did actually love me but he could never express it and that he…”

“I can’t blog that,” I said. “People will misunderstand because it sounds gay.”

Martin gave a shrug:

“Malcolm and me grew up together, we had loads of experiences together and, if I tell you them all, it just makes them sound petty, but we went through shit and we had a great time and there was a spiritual side to us that was like brothers. We were like brothers, but he would never admit to that.

“When we took acid or got stoned or something like that, he’d just go Oh no, I… No I just feel a bit off and… But a couple of times I got him off-guard and he said We did well, we did well.

“With Jim (comedian Boothby Graffoe) I can say Oh fuck, we did really well, man. We did that and We did that. I love you, guy – We did that! We did that together. We fucking did that! Malcolm would never say that and we did so much. He’d just go Oowwerwerwouer.”

“How did he go?” I asked.

“Oowwerwerwouer,” repeated Martin.

“It’s as if Malcolm was in the room,” I said.

“You are like that, John,” Martin told me. “You are like that, John. You crack naff jokes to escape what it is dealing with people.”

“Mmmm….” I said.

“Yes you do,” said Martin.

“I wasn’t saying No,” I said.

“I can say that,” said Martin. “You’re blogging about me and I can say whatever I want to make my blog that you’re doing about me more interesting.”

“You’re interesting to begin with,” I replied.

Martin Soan says he is spiritual but is not interesting

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not,” Martin repeated. “Who’s interesting?”

“That bloke with one eye who killed two policewomen,” I said.

“Yeah,” conceded Martin. “He might be interesting.”

“So what’s your spiritual side, then?” I asked.

“My spiritual side,” said Martin, “is that I love rain, I like moss and I love mist… I did manage to take Malcolm on a little walk once and we did see that side. He did actually go Oh yeah, OK, that’s pretty cool… My spiritual side is all to do with getting out there and being in the wind and the rain.

“I loved today. I love today. It’s my birthday party, it rained and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I loved the wetness… No, I don’t love the wet. I love the effort you have to put into protecting yourself against getting wet and cold. That’s what I love. I love sitting there and being cosy and looking at wet because I know I’ve protected myself. That’s really significant. Really significant. So tents… I love sitting in that tiny environment and I can control that tiny environment and remain dry. It’s an amazing feeling. I love being surrounded by weather and being cosy.

Martin Soan – a man who likes all things natural

“My glorious, absolutely top fave moment was when I went to the Welsh coastline with Vivienne (Martin’s wife) and it was raining and I had a tape of Keith Jarrett where it’s just him improvising on piano.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous: very classical and free, not just pinned-down by notes that you have to play, so he’s interpreting. And the rain was going against the window of the car and I put the tape on.

“It was the best ever, man. It was the best ever. The best ever.”

*****

Martin Soan will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe with The Greatest Show On Legs during The Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show on 23rd August — and I will be talking to comedians in five shows at the Fringe – So It Goes – John Fleming’s Comedy Blog Chat Show, 19th-23rd August.

There was a comic in England, a comic in India and a comedy critic in Kenya…

(This was also published by the Indian news site WSN)

I guess other people’s half-glimpsed lives always seem more interesting than your own but, if you actually lived their lives, you would only be aware of the hole in your left sock, occasional toothache and a tendency to go to the toilet in the middle of the night if you’ve drunk too much tea before going to bed.

Ah…

Just me, then.

Yesterday, I blogged about chatting to comedian Bob Slayer after a This Is Your Laugh comedy gig in London and his plans to tour Europe with a Swedish rock group. This morning, he told me what had happened to him after the gig:

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Bob Slayer just before he was kicked

I got kicked in the face by a girl from Slovenia… OK, I did ask her to do it but that doesn’t make it hurt any less…

I was walking home after This Is Your Laugh and I saw two young ladies drinking a box of wine on a bench in Mile End Park. Attracted by the wine, I decided to go over and say hello. They both told me to “Fuck off, weirdo!” Which I suppose is fair enough. A lone man approaching two young ladies in the park after midnight can be a little intimidating.

I was going to just walk on but decided that an alternative way to put their minds at rest might be to acknowledge the situation and at the same time show them that I was friendly.

So I asked them: “Do you want to kick me in the face?”

One of them simply increased her volume of “Fuck off, weirdo!”

But the other showed some interest.

“Can I really?” she asked, as she bounced up and down like a Ninja.

“Um… OK then…” I replied.

She leapt in the air like Chun-Li, spinning around as she did so, then landed her foot directly on my nose in what I believe was a perfectly executed ‘roundhouse kick’.

I didn’t have time to be impressed as I was instantly falling backwards and downwards like a sack of spuds. She didn’t need to tell me that she was a kickboxer but she kindly did anyway.

I was also very impressed with her after-care service.

She apologised a lot, then took out some wet wipes to clean up the blood and we drank her wine together for the next hour before I finally tootled off home…

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That story, if you know Bob Slayer, might not seem to be particularly exceptional.

But this morning, I also got an e-mail from amiable and – I suspect he would not want to be called this, but he is – sophisticated comedian Matt Roper. (He performs as ‘Wilfredo’.) He is taking a break abroad:

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Matt Roper with a hair of the Indian dog

There are sights in India a man should never have to see.

At the top of this list is the sight of yours truly, waking up fully-clothed on a bed in a ramshackle beach hut with my top lip stuck to my gum and wearing just one bright pink sandal.

There is an alcoholic drink made in Goa called Fenny, made from the juice of cashew apples then suitably distilled. One glass with a mixer can make you feel slightly merry. Two can get you utterly smashed. Unfortunately, as I found out far too late, it is also used medicinally as a strong laxative.

I thought I knew India – and my own body – very well. But I have been far too cocky. Stomach cramps. The shits. Five long days spent switching between staring at a rattling ceiling fan and looking at the back of the toilet door. Squatting for five days straight can send a man mad. You can’t go anywhere. You daren’t move.

Many words can be used to describe India but boring could never be one of them. It awakens your senses.

The other day I witnessed a lifeguard on a jet ski almost accidentally killing a swimmer and I have spent an afternoon paragliding with a lesbian from Kazakhstan. I have been called ‘a shit’ by a girl from Eastbourne, which is quite wrong. A bit of a cunt I might be. But not a shit. They are two entirely different things.

A friend from England is here somewhere, following Amma on tour. Amma – a guru from Kerala known as ‘the hugging mama’ – is giving satsang today. My friend, it seems, has become a devotee. I just had a text from her telling me that she is (my friend, not the guru) ‘on the stage’ at 5pm. What she is actually doing on the stage is a mystery which will soon be revealed. It staggers my mind. But, with a bit of luck, I might get a hug from the infamous Amma. I just hope she doesn’t call me a shit.

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Meanwhile, doyenne of British comedy critics Kate Copstick continues her work in Kenya, where her Mama Biashara charity helps poor people (mostly women) set up their own small businesses by giving them small start-up grants. She sent me these extracts from her diary:

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Kate Copstick working in Kenya despite men

Doris is waiting with some groups of Zimbabwean women (the ones who are having to do casual labouring to eke a living) who want a grant, so we head back to Corner to meet Doris and the Zimbabweans.

The women are very sussed. These are terrific women – smart, strong and sooooooo long-suffering you would not believe it.

Husbands divide into three categories:

1) dead

2) ”anaenda anakuja” (he comes and goes)

3) useless/drunkard.

The average number of children is around six.

The women are anything from first to third generation Zimbabwean refugee. Their community is VERY male dominated (albeit the men are useless or drunk) and their religion forbids the use of medicines. If someone gets sick, they pray.

Frankly, I am beginning to thing that the Amoxill/Piriton/Ibuprofen brigade are quite smart after all.

The first group we meet are planning to sell fresh ginger. They know the market, they know their suppliers and they are going (at my insistence) to do half wholesale and half retail to maximise profit. There are nine women in the group, with forty children between them and their total grant is just under £300.

It is around £30 each. And I think this business will fly.

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As I said at the start, I guess other people’s half-glimpsed lives always seem slightly more interesting than your own but, if you actually lived their lives, you would only be aware of the minutiae. Even Kate Copstick’s minutiae, though, are more interesting than the hole in my left sock. She adds:

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My cats are fattening up on UHT milk and tinned sardines. And so are their fleas (I suspect) on ME. Anything that is not a scab is a lump, anything not a lump a bruise. I am considering suing the manufacturers of Doom, the spray with which the air in my lair is heavy and which promises death to anything that crawls or flies.

I am off to scratch.