Why the Greatest Show on Legs started their infamous Naked Balloon Dance

This afternoon, I am driving to Totnes in Devon with comedian Matt Roper, who has started to describe himself as a homeless vagabond, though I prefer to think of him as an itinerant purveyor of comedic entertainment.

Being a ‘vagabond’ might imply dubious liaisons with women and goats… Of which more later.

Matt Roper claims I will like Totnes, because it is full of interesting creative people.

Martin & Vivienne at home  last night

Coincidentally, last night, my eternally-un-named friend and I had dinner at Vivienne & Martin Soan’s home in South East London. Martin created comedy group The Greatest Show on Legs, famed for their naked balloon dance which included late godfather of UK alternative comedy Malcolm Hardee.

“Totnes is where we created the balloon dance,” Martin told me over dinner.

“I’ve never been there,” I said.

“It’s like a little model village,” explained Martin. “Perfect in every way. But full scale. Divorced rock ‘n’ roll wives in the 1970s decided that it was a good place to live.

“Malcolm had a liaison with one of these ex wives – I think she was an ex-wife of one of The Small Faces – and all these rock chicks had moved down there and just three miles up the road was Dartington College, which was the very first ‘free’ school which was very liberal and encouraged dramatic arts.

Totnes – like a model village but real… or is it maybe surreal?

“Totnes is like The Village in The Prisoner. It is perfect in every way. Not too many people. You have your drunks and you have your council house people. But, basically, all the locals have had four generations of acid-taking liberalism. Even the council-house crack-addict coke-head element has been gentrified and you get amazing sights.

“There used to be this one guy with a great big Afghan hound, an Edwardian suit and a waxed moustache who walked up and down like some latter-day rake.

“In the church, where Malcolm got off with a girl called Lucy The Goat Lady… That sounds very demeaning, but nicknames are easier to remember than real names… Her name was Lucy…

Crowley “the wickedest man in the world”

“She said we could stay at her place, a big rambling farmhouse which belonged to Dick Heckstall-Smith, the English jazz saxophonist and in the grounds was this de-consecrated church. It had been de-consecrated because the occultist Aleister Crowley had bought the house years before and done secret ceremonies late at night. When the locals found out, they had the church de-consecrated.

“And, in the kitchen of the house,” Martin continued, “the Greatest Show on Legs reacted to the local extreme, over-the-top feminists who were living in this land of privilege and having weekly meetings about how they could wipe out Chinese foot-binding in Devon. Shit. They were all living in a bubble, really. It was our reaction to that. We thought up the balloon dance in the kitchen and we went to the Dartmouth Inn that night and premiered it.”

My eternally-un-named friend was a bit surprised.

“It was a reaction to feminists wanting to ban foot-binding in Devon?” she asked.

“The Greatest Show on Legs were feminists,” said Martin. “We weren’t sexist in any way.”

“That’s what I thought – sort of,” said my eternally-un-named friend, who knew Malcolm and Martin before I did.

“Though,” said Martin’s wife Vivienne, “they antagonised feminists all over the place.”

“Yes,” said Martin, “but they were feminists who weren’t really thinking. In actual fact, we were rather gallant as a group of performers.”

“You just went round fucking everybody in sight,” said Vivienne.

(From left) Malcolm Hardee, Paul Wiseman, Martin Soan possibly/probably in the 1980s (Photograph by Steve Taylor)

“I was trying,” said Martin, “to think of a rather more poetic or lyrical way of putting it… We were young men and we enjoyed ourselves, but we did it in a rather gallant way.”

“After you, Malcolm…,” suggested Vivienne. “No, after you, Martin… Oops, sorry Malcolm… After you…”

“But, getting back to the balloon dance,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “What year was that?”

“I can’t remember,” said Martin.

“It would have been the 1970s, early 1980s,” suggested Vivienne.

“It’s like writing Malcolm’s autobiography,” I said. “He never knew which decade things happened in either.”

“Anyway,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “in this kitchen, you suddenly thought Ooh! Let’s do a strip with balloons!”

“Because,” explained Vivienne, “they were reacting against the ultra-feminists who were trying to create a storm about Chinese foot-binding.”

“I don’t quite see the connection,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“We arrived there,” said Martin, “and just thought This is sick. They’re living in their own world. Everything’s perfect. What right have they got to complain? They’ve got nothing to complain about. To start being over-the-top feminists in such a rarified atmosphere… It just antagonised us….

“So we thought: I know! We’ll fucking take our kit off! And we were laughing. We were not thinking about it as creating a routine. It was as much a joke for ourselves. A stunt. Let’s take our kit off! But it went down such a storm that night, Malcolm and I thought Right. Let’s keep it in the show.”

Martin Soan enters his living room last night in SE London

“So,” said Vivienne, “Totnes is now full of creative people who are probably all the children of these feminists.”

“And this goat woman…” asked my eternally-un-named friend. “She would be about 60 now?”

“Probably,” mused Martin. “Older. She was older than us.”

“She had a goat?” asked my eternally-un-named friend.

“She did have a goat,” replied Martin.

“Is that why she was called Goat Woman?”

“Goat Lady,” corrected Martin. “Not Goat Woman.”

“The Greatest Show on Legs were always very gallant,” I said. “What was the goat called?”

“John,” said Martin reprovingly, “I don’t know what the fucking goat was called. It didn’t have a name. I would have loved it if the goat had been introduced to me, but it was just there as the goat.”

“But goats have names, too,” I protested. “Bob Slayer went round Australia with Gary The Goat.”

“That’s slightly different,” said Martin.

“You’re the one who calls women ‘ladies’,” I argued. “Goats deserve respect too.”

“Eat your pudding,” said Vivienne.

Gary The Goat court victory in Oz soon to become comic Bob Slayer book/film

(This was also published by Indian news site WSN)

Gary The Goat, caught in a media scrum outside the Oz court

Regular readers of my blog with a taste for the bizarre have been following the saga of Gary The Goat (best friend of Australian comic Jimbo Bazoobi) for almost a year now.

Exactly a week ago, I blogged that the latest news on Gary was that he was facing criminal prosecution for eating some grass and (police alleged) some flowers outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

Yesterday, he and Jimbo stood accused at Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney of ‘damaging vegetation without authority’.

Well, OK, Gary was accused of eating the grass and flowers. Jimbo was accused of letting him do it.

Police prosecutor Senior Sergeant Rick Mansley claimed Jimbo “knew Gary was hungry and had been reckless in letting him near the flowers.”

Gary The Goat’s lawyer, Paul McGirr, claimed it could not be proved that Jimbo put Gary up to the act. “We can’t guess what Gary might have been whispered in his goat ear,” he told the court.

Gary The Goat was not called to give evidence and waited nervously outside wearing a rainbow hat, surrounded by reporters, while Jimbo faced the full wrath of the Australian constabulary in court.

In the end, after soberly considering the evidence (the police briefing dossier ran to 200 pages), Magistrate Carolyn Barkell found that Jimbo had no control over what the animal might eat and was unaware of his preference for flowers over grass.

“I accept that he did eat garden plants,” she said. However, she found there was no evidence that Jimbo brought Gary there with the intention of vandalising vegetation. “He might have fancied an ice cream,” she said.

Jimbo and Gary The Goat are on a near-constant tour around Australia. As chronicled in my blog, this time last year British comedian Bob Slayer toured with them with such bizarre and disastrous consequences that Bob is shortly issuing an eBook about their exploits. He also filmed a documentary, currently in post-production with Brown Eyed Boy.

Bob told me today: “We have been waiting for the outcome of this court case before completing the film. Now it just got a whole lot more interesting. There are many stories that can be told here. One angle is the cute goat tale, another is all about a billy goat standing up against the nanny state and then a third is how inspiring people like Jimbo are for the world of comedy.

“I believe that Jimbo, just like Kunt and The Gang before him, is one of the true unsung Heroes of Comedy and a real inspirtion. Having spent years on the fringes of the industry forging his own path, he really deserves this break – Jimbo and Gary The Goat are all over the world media today. Will he embrace the industry or elect to carry on doing his own thing?

“Touring with Jimbo in mining towns, farm towns and sheep stations last year, I saw him handle some of the most difficult comedy audiences imaginable and yet end the night smiling, having given them all a great night out. He has filth and shock in his arsenal but, behind that, there is an extremely high level of skill and a brain that is quite simply hardwired for comedy.

“When, in most comedy rooms, you stand up and do material which points out that racism is perhaps not the greatest idea in the world, you can be pretty sure the audience will agree with you. But, really, this is shooting fish in a barrel. How many acts that do jokes on these subjects could have gone into a room that made the Ku Klux Klan seem a moderate organisation and not only made them laugh, but also actually got them to think about their world view? I saw that happen last year.”

After the court verdict was announced yesterday, Jimbo told an excited media scrum outside: “‘Gary’s name has been cleared of all this slander. I just think there’s so many laws and regulations in Australia which are just an abuse of common sense. This is actually an abuse of the laws of nature – a goat eating grass. I’m a comedian – I can come up with jokes, but it’s pretty hard to compete with the cops coming out with this stuff. Gary the Goat taught the cops a valuable lesson and that is Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

Gary The Goat made no comment.

I suspect he may have sold rights to his exclusive first-hand story elsewhere.

(You can see a video of Gary The Goat and Jimbo outside court HERE.)

Attractive Norwich sheep in a pub; Gary The Goat charged in an Australian court

The Bishop of Norwich was not involved

In May 2011, I wrote a blog about cat wrestling and a sheep in a pub in Norfolk. It seemed like a good idea at the time and is fairly normal stuff for Norfolk.

At the time, Norwich comedian Dan McKee told me a tale about a local pub – the Ironmongers Arms:

“The peculiarities of the old Ironmongers Arms knew no bounds,” Dan said. “The landlord had no tongue, but he did have a pet jackdaw which hopped around the bar and Friday night entertainment consisted of a young lady singing the hits of Tina Turner. She didn’t sing to karaoke tracks but actually sang over the original Tina Turner records on the juke box and she just tried to sing louder than Tina’s vocals…

“Then there was the night somebody brought a sheep in for a pint. We asked him why he had come in with a sheep and he replied: Well, I couldn’t very well leave it at home.”

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Howard Posner in Norfolk. It read:

“A friend of mine just referred me to your old blog on the tale of the sheep. The sheep was, in fact, stolen from a field on the way back from a rugby game at Beccles in 1976.

“It travelled on the rear seat of a old Ford Cortina. I was in the front seat. The sheep was very placid and was taken into the pub by some of the University of East Anglia’s rugby fourth team (The Rams). I played for the team on and off for three season (two of which went undefeated).

“At the time, UEA’s first team was called the “u’s” and consisted of a lot of lads who were prepared to train regularly and drink a lot. The second and third teams were made up of those who failed in their efforts to get in the first XV. And the fourth team was made up of ‘social’ students, plus a couple of junior lecturers and a chef from the kitchens at Fifers Lane – who had quite a lot of ability but no desire to conform.

“Our pre-match routine was to meet in a pub somewhere and consume beer in such quantities that we would often arrive at the game with less than the requested fifteen players. Luckily, most of the opposition where of a similar sporting standard.

“As the fourth team, we adopted the Ram as our emblem and acquired a rather large advertising hoarding for pure wool with a sheep on it. The sheep was called Louise and we took this with us to all our games and wrote the results on the hoarding.

“On the way back from winning in Beccles on that fateful night, we decided that it would be more appropriate to have a live ram. There were lots of sheep in the area and we ‘acquired’ one. How were we to know the difference between a male and female sheep? We picked that particular sheep because it was the prettiest in the field.

“Our destination was the usual one, the Ten Bells pub, who would not let us in with a sheep. But the landlord of the Ironmongers Arms was happy to allow in at least fifteen drinking men and a sheep. Sadly, the sheep would not drink the beer, which I recall was high quality Norwich Bitter. When it urinated in the bar some of the liquid was mopped up into a pint glass and was quite favourably compared to the Norwich ale in look and smell. As the evening progressed, our numbers swelled and we moved on.

“When Spencer’s night club would not let us in on the grounds that the sheep was not a member, it was taken away. I was told it was released in a field of other sheep (not its own) but there was a tale, never substantiated, that it was actually taken to the Wild Man pub, escaped and was last seen heading towards the Cathedral. I like this version better.”

Coincidentally yesterday, comedian Bob Slayer also updated me on the progress of Gary The Goat, best friend of Australian comic Jimbo Bazoobi.

Bob’s adventures with Jimbo and Gary The Goat as they crossed Australia last Spring were partially blogged about here last year and Bob is about to publish an eBook about their joint exploits.

Gary The Goat reads the charges against him in Australia

As I mentioned in a blog last month, Gary The Goat was recently disgracefully arrested for eating some grass and (police allege) some flowers.

As a result of this arrest, Gary The Goat’s Facebook page, which had 400 likes, zoomed up to 8,500 likes and the first post about the case went viral, had 25,000 likes and was seen by nearly half a million goat-fascinated folks…

The latest news is that Gary The Goat is going to court next Wednesday, accused of ‘damaging vegetation without authority’.

“Earlier this week,” Bob Slayer tells me, “FOUR cops arrived at Jimbo’s place to deliver their ‘brief of evidence’. It is a 200 page document. So far, I’m only half way through reading it.”

One UK comedian obsesses about a goat; another refuses to tell me a story

The last two days have been odd… It all started with a goat in Oz

The last two days have been odd. I and my eternally-un-named friend have had colds and coughs for three weeks.

Yesterday morning in London, comedian Bob Slayer was trying to persuade me I should write a blog about Gary The Goat in Australia. As regular readers of this blog will know, earlier this year Bob traversed the Outback with Gary The Goat and his owner Australian comic Jimbo.

Now Jimbo has found himself in trouble with the law because Gary The Goat ate some grass and (the police allege) some flowers.

“This is Goatgate!” Bob tried to persuade me. It’s a must-do blog post!!!”

“I don’t know what the angle is,” I told him. “The story is basically Goat Eats Grass. That’s a Dog Bites Man story. It’s not interesting. Man Bites Dog and Then Eats Grass and Flowers would be a story. Goat Eats Grass and Flowers and Owner Gets Fined is like Dog Bites Man and Owner is Prosecuted. It’s not quirky. It’s normal.”

Gary the Goat (left) with Jimbo earlier this year in Australia

“This is Goatgate!” said Bob. “Gary The Goat’s Facebook page was on 400 likes at the start of this and it is now 8,500. The first post about this that went viral had 25,000 likes and it was seen by nearly half a million folks…”

“Gary The Goat has a Facebook page?” I asked.

“Yes, he does,” said Bob.

“It’s not unusual enough,” I told him, coughing.

Then I got a phone call from comedian Martin Soan.

“I’m running around putting the show together for tonight,” he told me. “I’ve a great blog for you, but I’ll forget it. I’ll tell you the title. Remind me tonight.”

“Y-e-e-e-s-s-s…” I said warily.

“The Social Structure is Alive and Well in the NHS,” said Martin.

“Righto,” I said, coughing.

Last night, I went to Martin’s Pull The Other One comedy club Christmas show and party.

Bob Slayer on stage with a hat & a mop last night

Bob Slayer was there. He told the audience a story about being employed to hang up dead Christmas turkeys which shat themselves. I think that was the story. He wore a Father Christmas hat and swept the stage a lot.

Afterwards, he told me: “Gary The Goat didn’t eat any flowers. Them coppers have invented that to try and justify their ridiculous actions. Anyway, the story is about the nanny state. And the fact that increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award winning comedian Bob Slayer is in the thick of it and making a documentary with Brown Eyed Boy…”

“If Australia really were a nanny state,” I argued, “it would welcome goats.”

“That is the line!” said Bob triumphantly. “Gary is a Billy! It is about sexism!”

“It’s not unusual enough,” I told him, coughing.

Then comedian Charmian Hughes showed me a video on her phone. It appeared to show her dancing ballet in the middle of a three-lane motorway.

The 1812 Overture performed with cannon on London stage last night

After that, Martin Soan performed the 1812 overture with a cannon on stage, his wife Vivienne on clarinet and comedian Stephen Prost on trumpet. It was quite messy.

Afterwards, I said to Martin: “What about that blog idea? The Social Structure is Alive and Well in the NHS.”

“If you stick that iPhone in my face,” he said, shouting over the loud music from DJ Ratsmilk, “I’ll dry up. I talked to Steve Frost today and – this is absolutely true – absolutely fucking true – But I’m not going to tell you the story now, because I’ll fuck it up.”

“You won’t,” I said.

“I will!” he shouted.

“Go on,” I shouted.

“I told Steve Frost today in the car,” he shouted, “about anal exploratory surgery. And, in the sketch on The Frost Programme with John Cleese and The Two Ronnies, it was… I didn’t even realise it. I should’ve been a stand-up doing it on stage and I would have been up there with Michael McIntyre. Well, that’s a lie. But Steve made me remember.”

“What?” I asked.

“It’s a genius story,” said Martin. “but I’m drunk.”

“So tell it,” I said.

“No, I can’t now, John!” shouted Martin over the music. “I’m drunk. I will fuck it up. It’s the rule of three, it’s comedy and it’s the National Health.”

“Tell me the story,” I insisted.

Martin Soan (left) introduced Vincent Figgins, Edwardian animal impersonator, last night

“No!” said Martin. “I will not do it now!”

“I can blog about you not telling me the story,” I told him.

“In the sober light of day, I will tell you,” said Martin. “It is perfect, it’s the truth and it’s the rule of three. And it’s comedy. It happened to me in an exploratory anal situation.”

“In a hospital or in a toilet?” I asked.

“You’re just trying to wind me up and wind me in!” Martin shouted over the music. “You’re not going to get anywhere. It’s perfect. I do not want to fuck it up. Steve reminded me. He said it’s just genius, it’s true and it happened to me, but I’m not going to tell you now because I’ll just fuck it up. It was cool, though. Really cool. It’s perfect. And it’s true.”

“What is?” I shouted. “Have you seen the video of Charmian dancing in the middle of a three lane motorway?”

Then I had a coughing fit.

I went to bed at 3.45am.

At lunchtime today, my eternally-un-named friend suggested I put a cabbage leaf on my chest, to stop my coughing.

“Crush the leaves with a rolling pin until the juice starts to appear,” she said, reading from a book called A Guide to Home Remedies. “Place three or four leaves over the chest area and cover with gauze. Then place a warm blanket over to keep in place…. So,” she added, “you could watch television while doing that.”

I looked at the page in the book.

“You can also,” I read out loud, “drink the juice of the cabbage sweetened with a teaspoon of honey.”

“We’ve got the juicer,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “so you can drink the juice.”

“This is when the chest is tight with coughing,” I read out. “Cabbage has an extraordinary ability to draw out toxins.”

“There’s going to be a lot of onions,” said my eternally-un-named friend. “And garlic, maybe. And ginger. But you didn’t find a decent ginger the other day.”

“This means we are going to have to take a picture of a cabbage leaf on my chest,” I said.

I am wary of the medicinal power of vegetables

“This means you might do it?” asked my eternally-un-named friend, with a surprising hint of hope in her voice.

“What’s the alternative?” I asked.

“A poultice of roasted onion, apparently,” she replied, “applied to the chest every two hours. Onions can also be drunk, it says.”

“They can’t be as drunk as Bob Slayer,” I said.

“Oh, John…” sighed my eternally-un-named friend reprovingly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My friend was by now getting hysterical with laughter.

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

“Was the trouser press creaking?” I asked.

“No,” she replied.

Meanwhile, from Australia…

British comedian Eric sent me an e-mail saying:

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

Little E is his newish-born daughter Erica.

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

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

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

__________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comedian Bob Slayer finds a mate in the Australian Outback: Gary the Goat

Bob Slayer’s mates in Australia: Gary the Goat and Jimbo

After references in my blog yesterday to sightings of British comedian Bob Slayer in Perth and to him going AWOL in Australia, he has re-surfaced in the Outback, 800 km from Adelaide.

Last night, I got this message from him:

________________________

I have finally managed to escape Perth, the city that did not agree with my digestive tract… I went to out-drink the town and it crushed me like a beetle.

I did two shows – they went “gang busters” (a local saying for ‘they went rather spiffing’) – then I went a bit mental in the hot sun with a few ales inside me – Did you know how strict the licensing laws are over here? Crazy. I really thought I could  steer this into an adventure but I just sailed the ship up a muddy creek of epic shit proportions.

I did have a bit of a Perth send-off, though: a hastily-arranged free gig to make up for the cancelled ones. Ten minutes before show-time I was sat in a bar with no microphone or stage and five locals, thinking Why did I set this up?

But, ten minutes later, people started arriving and they kept coming. Around 100 of them came to see me off – or to make sure I did in fact leave Perth. A great 90 minute show and $500 in the hat….

OK, maybe I will come back one day. But right now I am all about the Outback. The real life. Where men are hairy and made of leather.

________________________

At this point, I should mention Gary the Goat.

In my blog yesterday, Eric made an unexplained reference to Bob Slayer and a goat.

Comedian Jimbo Bazoobi bills himself as “Australia’s crudest comedian” and, allegedly, used to be “Sydney’s most popular children’s party clown throughout the 1990s”. Also, according to Jimbo, goats have often been part of his performances and, last year, he traded a case of beer for Gary the Goat. Now they are “friends for life”. They have performed at almost 200 rural towns across Australia and have released a CD called Goats Need Love Too!

The very thought of Bob Slayer travelling unsupervised with Jimbo and Gary the Goat is almost too much for my fantasy brain to cope with. It sounds like the basis for a particularly weird Tim Burton movie.

But it has now happened. Bob tells me:

________________________

I set off for the Outback with a man and his goat in an old beat-up $400 Ford something-or-other.

We decided to drive through the night. We have to make regular stops for Gary to piss and poo. Jimbo also grabs a bit of scrub bush at every opportunity so that Gary the Goat has something other than the car seat to chew on while he is sat in the back. He is a happy travelling companion who surprisingly does not smell. Well… not as bad as Jimbo. The pair have clearly bonded and Jimbo cannot stop telling me about how much his life has improved since he got a goat.

Shortly after sun-up, I take over driving the goat transporter. Within five minutes of getting behind the wheel, a giant rat jumps across the road in front of us. There is a Blam!! The car does a jump and Skippy is not going to bounce any more. There is an old Outback saying – You are not a real Aussie until you have killed your first roo – Well hello Australia; Bob Slayer is now one of you.

I want to dig a hole by the side of the road and bury him but Jimbo, although not insensitive to the welfare of animals – as he has displayed in his love for Gary the Goat – points out that we pass a road-kill kangaroo probably every couple of kilometers and we would need to do a lot of digging to respect them all.

At midday, with the temperature in the 40s, we pull into Coober Pedy, the opal mining centre of the world. Less than 2,000 people live here. That is half the capacity of the London Apollo. Half of these folks live underground cos it is so hot. The landscape of mines and caves has been used in Priscilla, Queen of The Desert, Mad Max, Pitch Black and a bunch of other films.

My first impression is: What a hot and dusty shithole!

We have no gig booked but, after an hour of walking around town with Gary the Goat, we have a gig set up for tomorrow evening in the Opal – a place to stay underground, beer and a good feed. This seems to be how they roll out here. If they like you then they take you in.

We had a sleep and then spent the evening putting up posters in the town’s four shops, two servos, two pubs and four-and-a-half restaurants. We meet the local cops, who are coming down for a knees-up tomorrow. We also meet a Czech opal miner called Vic who has been over here for 30 years. He has invited us for a kangaroo Bar-B-Q tomorrow. I did not ask if it was a bring-your-own. Jimbo suspects that the Czech opal miner might have a daughter he is trying to marry off.

Gary the Goat has just done a little bleat outside our cave. He is the most low-maintenance travelling partner you could ever imagine. So long as you give him a bit of old tree and a splash of water every now and then he is happy. He is sleeping on top of Jimbo’s car.

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I fear we may hear no more of Bob Slayer and he will disappear from the known world, living in a menage-a-quatre in a cave with Jimbo, a Czech opal miner’s daughter and Gary the Goat.

My sympathy is with the goat.