“I was thinking of an evening called The Comedians’ Talking Therapy Group”

Jorik Mol… curator of what is on The Comedian’s Bookshelf

Last time I chatted to Jorik Mol for a blog back in December, he was about to perform for dogs and could not tell me much about attempting to write Raoul Moat: The Opera with Ellis of Ellis & Rose.

This week, still no news on Raoul Moat: The Opera and he was enthusing about his monthly Comedian’s Bookshelf shows

Jorik (who is Dutch) got his BA Hons degree in English Literature & Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam after writing a dissertation on The Goon Show. He is now doing a Masters in Comparative Literature at University College, London.

“Robin Ince,” I said, “used to run a night called The Bad Book Club.”

“But that was more about bad books,” said Jorik. “At The Comedian’s Bookshelf, we ask comedians to write a set about their favourite book or author. It’s been interesting at worst and absolutely mind-blowing at best.

“If you buy a book, you basically buy Thinking – you buy the author’s insights. A book is thought, is emotion, is the brain. More than a film or a video game or a painting, it works because narrative takes on life and something happens and you see and empathise with things that don’t exist.

“When you take a books’s thoughts to live comedy, where you don’t just have text, you have rhythm and musicality and physicality, you can work all those different things round these original thoughts. And that cannot not – a double negative – it cannot NOT bring out something creative.”

“Comedians nowadays,” I suggested, “tend to tell funny stories. They don’t do gags.”

“Jokes,” said Jorik, “are a narrative. Some information is given, then there is a comedic pivot and then a new narrative has to be worked up – from the ground up – very very quickly. There’s a gap that is bridged within the cognitive system.”

“I am a simple chap,” I asked. “What is the comedic pivot? The twist before the punchline?”

“It is the thing that changes the story from Narrative A to Narrative B,” explained Jorik. “If Narrative A is the feed-line and build-up, then the comedic pivot is where it changes and there is a leap to a second narrative that works. What the brain hates most of all is to be wrong.”

“Surely,” I said, “in most good jokes, the brain is wrong. It is misled and then you laugh from shock and/or relief.”

“No,” said Jorik, “Your brain is wrong first and then it is right. The reason you laugh is because your brain sends you endorphins because this second time you have seen it correctly. Well done brain. Endorphin buzz.”

“What,” I asked, “about when you laugh with relief at a horror film?”

“That is because,” said Jorik, “you thought you might be attacked and laughter is a way for the cognitive system to say Chill the fuck out. So laughter is introduced and endorphins are introduced to make you feel safe.”

I asked: “What about My wife’s got no nose – How does she smell? – Terrible?”

“The word Smell is the pivot,” said Jorik. “That’s just linguistics. That’s the pivot and then the entirety of the narrative changes – You have a smelly wife.”

“What next for you?” I asked.

“I was thinking of starting an evening called The Comedians’ Talking Therapy Group,” Jorik told me. “It would be a night when comedians talk about their problems – personal, psychiatric, money, gambling, sexual. I would talk about how life and depression is so much fun. I would get someone to headline talking about his or her anxiety or talking about trying to commit suicide – all of the LOLs and all of the pain. There is a night a little like that already – Karl Schultz’s It Might Get Ugly. I did some very dark material there and my parents were in the audience.”

“What did they think?”

“They loved it. I had explained a little about the comedy world to my mother. She told one of the other comedians: I hope you don’t die on stage.”

Comedian Jorik Mol wants a real life but is performing for dogs this week

Jorik Mol faces a possibly operatic future

When I talked to comedian Ellis of Ellis & Rose recently, he told me he was going to write Raoul Moat: The Opera about the recent multiple murderer. He told me the music would be written by London-based Dutch comic Jorik Mol.

So, obviously, when Jorik and I had tea in London last week, I asked him:

“How is Raoul Moat: The Opera going?”

“We haven’t met about it so far,” said Jorik.

“Do you intend to meet?”

“We do.”

“And the philosophy of Raoul Moat: The Opera is…”

“There isn’t one so far. I really don’t know what Ellis is planning. I’ve been listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music recently in the same way I listen to Wagner. You cannot listen to that music and not look on it as being anything other than completely and utterly soul-destroyingly manipulative. When you listen to the intro to Tristan und Isolde, it is like coitus interruptus without the coitus. This chord is never released – never released – never released – slightly released – and – the tension is only released four hours later, when the fat lady sings.”

Jorik is now living back in England again after a break at home in Holland for a couple of years. He is doing a Masters in Comparative Literature at University College, London.

“It sounds impressive,” Jorik told me, “but it just means I will never be able to get a job. I’m doing the Masters full-time; I’m doing extra tutorials; I’m doing translations for UCL; I’m trying to gig three or four times a week; I’m trying to write. This week I gigged five times which is a bad idea on all levels. I do not have a life.”

That was last week. This week Jorik is doing four gigs, including one totally in French tonight at the Comedy Cafe for the International Comedy Club (which is run from Zürich). And, on Thursday, he is performing in Streatham at a benefit for dogs in Romania organised by Danish comedian Sofie Hagen.

“Have you ever gigged for non-humans before?” I asked.

“I’ve gigged before for audiences in Holland that didn’t seem to be human,” replied Jorik.

“And next?” I asked.

“I’m writing an essay about Kafka and laughter.”

“I read somewhere,” I said, “that The Trial – which is always billed as the ultimate paranoid novel… Kafka and his friends thought it was phenomenally funny, like a comedy piece.”

“Yes,” said Jorik. “It’s the way it’s been translated into English and the way it’s been appropriated into English. It’s been made to serve a purpose in English culture. The word Kafkaesque does not really apply to Kafka. I want to do a PhD on Comedic Devices and Cognitive Stylistics – two terms I’ve made up.

Jorik in my Edinburgh Fringe chat show this year (Photograph by Brian Higgins)

“When a comedian goes on stage,” explained Jorik, “one of the common stupid opening lines is I know what you’re thinking. But that is actually what all comedy is about.

“Comedy is about leading the lines of cognition in a certain way, from a certain perspective. You are resolving issues that shouldn’t be resolved, you are duplicating narratives, you are leading people up the garden path.

“The cognitive system is in the pre-frontal cortex and it’s basically the thing that asks the questions Where? What? Who? Why? How? and Which?

“If that part of the brain – the cognitive system – doesn’t function, it’s very difficult for you to engage with humour in any way, because humour is about asking the questions Where? What? How? and Why? and those questions being subverted, inverted or converted.

“So I’m going to write about the 18th century: Immanuel Kant, Laurence Sterne, Voltaire and a guy from Austria called Johann La Roche who wrote puppetry plays. It was like Commedia dell’arte. People improvised what was happening in the room, in the street, in politics. It was topical jokes – boom boom boom.

“My interest is in joke shapes: the linguistic shapes that textual humour takes. It’s a linguistic notion of doing something or transgressing boundaries on a physical or social level.

“In Britain, it’s normal for people to say He’s a funny guy, She’s a funny girl, You ARE funny – which is bullshit. Being funny – using those joke shapes and tropes – is learnt behaviour.

“I was talking to people in the German Dept at UCL and someone told me: I can’t really say to students – especially First Year undergrads – This is funny, because their capacity to read German is just not good enough yet. Same thing with French. You can’t say This is funny because they’ll go No, it’s not, because they don’t yet fully understand the language.

“I want to look at texts and how they produce comedy. Was it you who wrote you can’t watch five stand-ups in a row because you get exhausted after a while?”

“Possibly,” I said, “I do think that’s one problem with current comedy clubs – you’re just watching stand-ups doing much-the-same thing – just standing there saying words – with no variation whereas, in the 1980s, the stand-up was interspersed with visual variety acts and bizarre acts.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jorik, “like Mr Methane and The Iceman.”

“Ah!” I said. “The Iceman! He lives in Bournemouth.”

Jorik laughed, as well he might.

“I want to work with Dr Steve Cross who does Bright Club,” said Jorik. “He works at UCL but is sometimes a stand-up.”

“You do an awful lot of gigs,” I said.

“Coming back here,” said Jorik, “I have to re-establish myself so I have to play the circuit. But I’m really struggling with life-work balance: that’s why I listen to podcasts all the time – to drown out my inner monologue.”

“I can blank my mind out to relax.” I said.

“I can’t,” said Jorik.

“That’s why you have trouble getting to sleep at night,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Jorik. “That’s why I need the mirtazapine. I find it very difficult, because my mind’s racing constantly. The first month I was here in London was rough as fuck. I’d basically been waiting to come back to Britain for two years and I’m the kind of person who wants everything done straight away and that just doesn’t work over here. It took me six weeks just to register with a GP.”

“Your persona on stage is not anxious,” I said.

“Yes, it’s quite friendly,” said Jorik, “and sweet and flirty but occasionally bitchy. When I was 20, I wanted to be an angry comic, but I’m the opposite of an angry comic on stage. It’s weird. I feel I have been lowered down into this persona and, with age – I’m 25 and have been performing since I was 17 – I’m only starting to get away with it now.”

“You may have already peaked,” I joked.

Jorik Mol in London last week – Mozart has a lot to answer for

“Yeah,” laughed Jorik. “It can only go downhill from now! I’ve always felt like that. I wake up like that every morning. When I was 4, I read a book about Mozart and that he had composed his first symphony at the age of 3 and my brain shouted out: YOU’VE LOST!

“It’s unlikely I’m ever going to achieve anything in comedy. There are so many people doing comedy right now. It doesn’t matter how original you are. It does not even how matter how good you are. You will not succeed. Success is only what other people talk about when it’s over and done with and you’ve come out the other side.

“It sounds lame, but I now cannot function without doing stand-up at least once a week.”

“Because…?” I prompted.

“It’s just me and my life,” said Jorik, “I was always seen as the weird one. I envy my brother because he is able to go to work then go out at the weekend and have a nice time and live. He runs the supply department for care homes for children with severe disabilities. He’s really happy and is able to function. I have to pretend to be a person. When you do comedy you can sometimes take a step back and just observe: OK. This is functional behaviour. That’s why I want to get into academia as well.

“I could never envisage a life for myself in Holland. I don’t mean being happy – because that’s never going to happen – but just to be functional, just to be working…”

The difference between “bumming around” in rural Wigtownshire and with comedians at the Edinburgh Fringe

Edinburgh as I left it last night, worryingly like The Exorcist

I have escaped on the last day of the Edinburgh Fringe to Wigtownshire in south west Scotland, to see if any grains of my mother’s ashes are still around. She died in 2007.

So it goes.

My mother and father grew up in Wigtownshire.

I put my mother in a little space in the rocks of the breakwater by the cottage in which she grew up, just outside the village of Garlieston.

I put her ashes above the high waterline but sometimes the sea is especially high and I thought I would leave it to Nature to decide whether to wash her ashes out to sea or not.

The Isle of Whithorn: the tide is out & so is a T-mobile signal

I am currently booked into a hotel in the Isle of Whithorn – well, the only hotel in the Isle of Whithorn – the seaside village where my father grew up. But I am posting this from the confusingly unconnected small town of Whithorn. Same name. Different places, although both share a lack of any T-mobile phone signal.

Being in parts of Wigtownshire is almost like being in the 1920s and 1930s, when my parents were growing up.

As far as I can find, there is no T-mobile cellphone reception within 20 miles, even in the town of Whithorn. And the WiFi reception at the hotel in the Isle of Whithorn is, if I am being kind, erratic.

Edinburgh is a century away and – given the narrow, winding country roads on the way here  – about 45 minutes longer than the SatNav (Oh, it will only be 3 hours and 9 minutes) told me.

Ellis and Rose last night, as both Punch and puncher

Before I left Edinburgh, I had a meal with the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show techies Misha Anker and Jorik Mol… and I bumped into Richard Rose and Gareth Ellis, who had no additional visible bodily wounds… and I belatedly saw Almond Roca: The Lost Cabaret at The Hive, which celebrated the cult of almonds.

I went to see the two-hander show because I had bumped into Adam Taffler aka Adam Oliver a couple of years ago, like one does, when I had arranged some spaghetti-juggling in the Grassmarket and he – out publicising his own show – joined in and acquitted himself as well as anyone can when juggling spaghetti.

Nancy Sanazi at the Malcolm Hardee Awards

I also went because I discovered at Friday night’s Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show that Frank Sanazi’s extraordinarily and brilliantly OTT sidekick – storm trouper Nancy Sanazi – is actually Canadian one-woman dynamo Nelly Scott who is also half of The Lost Cabaret in her guise of Zuma Puma.

Before last night’s show Adam and Nelly, dressed in their white and gold ceremonial costumes. told me that they were not going to perform their normal show. They would, they told me, just make this one up and it would be a bit low-key…

LOW KEY ???? !!!!!

Adam (left) & Nelly (right) surprised two audience members

About a third of the way through, Adam ran into the bar adjoining the venue and, as far as I am aware, simply kidnapped a poor unsuspecting girl whom he carried into the venue accompanied by about five of her friends. He ran in carrying her fireman-style over his shoulder.

The anarchy then involved a young man being enticed onto the stage with her and progressed via stripping the young man and painting his body with white paint… to human jousting, audience bouncing, marrying the two punters to each other and much chanting, climaxing with a finale in which both Adam and Nelly stripped naked and ran up and down the aisle.

The Lost Cabaret: Adam (left) and Nelly performing ‘low-key’

If this was low key, I clearly have to go out more often and stop watching re-runs of Come Dine With Me.

All I can say is that the sight of Nelly running starkers up and down the aisle waving her arms in the air and holding a giant gold-painted almond is one I will long treasure and it makes me understand why the Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s biggest and best arts festival.

Quite what the farmers of Wigtownshire would make of it, I do not know.

When I walked back to my Edinburgh flat afterwards to get my car to drive to Wigtownshire, I dropped into Bob’s Bookshop to say goodbye to Bob Slayer and his hard-working and resigned-to-oddity bar manager Cat.

She showed me an indistinct photo from the previous night’s Midnight Mayhem of a female audience member putting her finger up Bob Slayer’s bottom.

I would like to say this came as a surprise. But it has happened before.

When I arrived in Wigtownshire late this morning, before the phone signal went and the WiFi became erratic, I got what, by his standards, was an explanatory e-mail from Bob. It read:

Stompie, the Half-Naked Chef, in the window of Bob’s Bookshop – the venue of an innocent?

“A couple of years ago, I had a young girl in the audience reply to my statement that she should be shocked by my nonsense with the words: You will not shock me.

“When she laughed at the most shocking thing I could say to her, I told her I was approaching 40 and had not yet had my prostate checked.

“One thing led to another and she ended up donning a rubber glove, spitting on the finger and double knuckling me.

“In the early hours of this morning, I told this story at the end of my Midnight Mayhem show. I told the audience: That girl gave me the all clear… but I don’t think she was medically trained…

“A woman in the audience asked me if I wanted a second opinion… It turned out she was a nurse.

“There followed another live prostate examination in front of my audience and I am glad to say it was confirmed that I do have the all clear.”

I do not know what the moral is to this blog about two worlds – the Edinburgh Fringe and rural Wigtownshire.

But I suspect it says something about something.

And, for some unknown reason, the words Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire spring to mind.

More injured and bloody comedians cause chaos at the Edinburgh Fringe

Casual Violence – injured minds, bloody strange, very funny

James Hamilton of comedy sketch group Casual Violence has been nominated for an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award in two consecutive years for his bizarre writing. This year, Casual Violence are performing not one but two shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

When I first saw one of Casual Violence’s shows, I wrote of  James: “I think he might need psychiatric help. Though not creative help. There’s something very original in there – I just don’t know what the fuck it is”

My opinion has not changed.

Yesterday afternoon, I was heading to see the new Casual Violence show House of Nostril at the Pleasance Courtyard when a tall young man handed me a flyer for Alexander Bennett’s Afraid of the Dark with Jorik Mol.

For some reason, I asked: “Are you Jorik Mol?”

“Yes, John,” he replied.

“People keep telling me I should meet you,” I said.

“We met a couple of years ago,” Jorik said.

“I have a shit memory,” I told him, “Where have you been?”

“I was in Amsterdam for a year,” said Jorik.

“I’m not surprised,” I said, “You’re Dutch.”

Jorik Mol – very pleasant at The Pleasance yesterday

“I was convalescing from clinical depression,” continued Jorik, “I basically spent a year in a haulage container doing voices to myself.”

“Because?” I asked.

“Because what else is there to do in a haulage container? I also read Tolstoy’s War & Peace.”

“You mean the big metal containers they transport on ships?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“You need money to afford a haulage container,” I suggested.

“You don’t,” said Jorik. “I was given one. I was a student at the University of Amsterdam and they give them out to people who either live very far away from Amsterdam or who are strange. The containers have all been turned into flats. There’s a window at the front and a window at the back.”

“When did you stop living in a container?” I asked.

“I’m still officially living in a container in Amsterdam,” Jorik told me. “But I’m moving to London next month, going back on the comedy circuit and starting to study a Masters in Comparative Literature at University College, London.”

Jeremy Bentham sits, stuffed, at UCL

“Is that where Jeremy Bentham sits stuffed?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Jorik.

“And you’ll be gigging on the side?” I asked. “Comedy is difficult.”

“No,” said Jorik. “People say comedy is easy but, when you’ve been through severe clinical depression and hospitalisation, maybe everything is easy.”

“Ah…” I said. “Stand-up comedians and mental hospitals…”

“Mental hospitals are great,” said Jorik. “I was punched in a mental hospital. People in the mental hospital really fucking hated me.”

“Because?” I asked.

“Because,” said Jorik, “I’m young, I can speak and I can read novels. There was a guy in the mental hospital who was like the alpha male – he was like a white van man. He thought I was threatening his position in the ward. There were seven completely inert people there, three of whom had regular ECT treatment. So there wasn’t a lot of pride to rule over as the Lion King he thought himself to be.

“One day I woke up late, because I was on a lot of medication, and I was about five minutes late for finger painting or whatever I was supposed to do and the guy just came up to me and just knocked me out.

“I am pretty proud that I am so viscerally annoying that I annoyed someone out of severe inert depression.”

“It sounds like good training for playing comedy to British audiences,” I said.

“Absolutely,” said Jorik.

It turned out he and I were both at the Pleasance to see Casual Violence’s House of Nostril, as was uber-mindreader Doug Segal (he, of course, already knew in advance that we were going to bump into each other).

It was a full house as, indeed was Casual Violence’s other show – Om Nom Nominous at the Voodoo Rooms. It is their ‘greatest hits’ show which I also saw yesterday and, inevitably, it was very weird, very funny, strangely dark, strangely melancholic and the full house pissed themselves laughing.

Pekka & Strangebone’s accident-prone Fringe show

I also saw Pekka & Strangebone’s Comedy Showpiece at the Voodoo Rooms – another odd sketch show with a dash of darkness added to basic (this is a good thing) silliness. There were three cast members. One had twisted his ankle – the bone had popped out then popped back in again. He had had to go to A&E earlier in the day. Another of the trio had fallen onto a piece of broken glass in the Meadows and gouged a great bloody hole in his hand. He had had to go to A&E earlier in the day.

When I came out of their show, I told them they should try to get publicity on the basis of being the most accident-prone show in town – or the show with most accidents soonest. Then (this is true) I checked my iPhone for e-mails and there was one from this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent Anna Smith. It was headed:

PLEASE, NO MORE INJURED AND BLOODIED COMEDIANS…

I thought I started to hear the theme music from The Twilight Zone.

The increasingly medically challenged Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show

Then I opened another message. It told me that Miss Behave – who broke her heel in Dublin a few weeks ago and is compere of the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show on Friday 23rd August… is NOT.

The message read:

“Not possible for me to stay without cutting my foot off and clubbing myself to death with it.”

Miss Behave, rightly, is going back to London to recuperate rather than continuing to damage herself by leaping around Fringe shows in Edinburgh.

I asked Janey Godley – the comedienne who can handle any situation – if she could compere the Malcolm Hardee show instead. She said Yes. Yippee!

Then I opened another e-mail…

It was from Andy Dunlop, the President of the World Egg Throwing Federation. He will be supervising the Scottish national Russian Egg Roulette Championships at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show on Friday 23rd August. Except that he will not be…

The e-mail said:

President Andy Dunlop in happier days

I am meant to be in Australia right now but I am not…..

My wife is unwell and starts Iodine 131 radiotherapy on Friday. Currently she is exhausted, can’t sleep, faints a lot, is over heated and very very grumpy.

As from this Friday she will also be radioactive for some considerable time and in quarantine at home for at least 14 days. This prevents her from being left alone, cuddling cats or sleeping with husband. She is upset about item 2.

My suggestion that I bugger off to Edinburgh for a few days may lead to suffering from a beating and probably divorce although it would reduce my risk of cross contamination by gamma and beta emitters.

I am unable to predict her recovery and thus am unlikely to make it for the 23rd but John Deptford, our World Vice President, is available due to his Russian Visa not coming through.  He is better than I at compering. Can he crash at yours?

I said Yes.

But it is going to be a crowded night in my Edinburgh flat on Friday 23rd August.

There will be me, John Deptford, Martin Soan, Mr Methane.

Four men and one bed.

It could be a Richard Curtis comedy.

If Mr Methane farts, he may die.

Perhaps all of us will.

So it goes.