Edinburgh Fringe Day 3: Female comic accused of blowing a male instrument

Juliette Burton: one too many female comics?

Juliette Burton shared an interesting flyering experience with me.

“Hi there,” she said to a man in the street today, “would you like to see my show The Butterfly Effect?”

“Oh, hmm,” he replied apologetically, “the thing is I’ve already booked to see TWO female comedians.”

“So,” Juliette asked him, “you can’t see three? You know female comedians are the same as male comedians just with vaginas, right?!”

“He seemed,” Juliette told me, “to shut down when I vagina-ed him, so I walked away.”

The World’s Best MC Award posters – What is the real scam?

What I have been noticing is that there seem to be a lot of posters around town for Nathan Cassidy’s World’s Best MC Award Grand Final. This is the show where I am supposedly one of the judges.

As mentioned in this blog a couple of weeks ago, it seems to me likely to be an attempt to win an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award and I was convinced I will turn up to an empty room. But with all these posters, there is no way Nathan can avoid real punters turning up. So I do not know what the scam (if scam it is) can be.

The Fringe thrives on uncertainties.

The Edinburgh Students’ Union Dome at Potterrow is doomed

I was told today that the Potterrow Dome building is definitely being closed and replaced later this year. Well, presumably it might take a couple of years to rebuild, as such things tend to. It will remain a Student Union afterwards but what this means to the Pleasance Dome venue at next year’s Edinburgh Fringe, I know not and – hey! – I can’t be bothered to ask.

I only live in the Edinburgh bubble of Fringe shows which, at this early point, are having a slight problem of over-running. I was told that, earlier in the week, one of the Big Four venues had consecutive shows over-running to such an extent that they ended up an hour late and simply cancelled one performer’s entire show to catch up.

Kieron Nicholson – clever writer about dinosaur academia war

This morning, I saw Bone Wars, a cleverly-written show about dinosaur academia by Kieron Nicholson and Nicholas Cooke, with Michelle Wormleighton playing all the other parts, male, female and arguably other (i.e. God).

Am I the only person who never realised the logic – mentioned in Bone Wars – that, if God made Man in his own image, then God must share all Man’s many flaws?

Weird.

Which is a terrible link to the fact I had a double-dose of Weirdos at the Hive today.

Head Weirdo Adam Larter un-knowingly chose PR legend Mark Borkowski as a punter to get up onto the stage in his L’Art Nouveau show – something that could have severely damaged his future prospects if it had gone wrong. But, luckily, it may have the opposite effect.

Fellow Weirdo Ali Brice had a good audience for his Never-Ending Pencil show and was superb – pacing, audience control, improv, surrealism, serious sections, everything worked wonderfully.

Ali Brice (right) chats with Mark Dean Quinn

Ali told me before the show that, a couple of weeks ago, he had seen me in a street in Wood Green, London. But I have not been there for years; possibly not this century. A couple of hours later, Claire Smith (Scotsman critic and Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award judge) phoned me to say Come back and have a tea with me! as I had just walked past her in Bristo Square… Except I had been sitting in Finnegan’s Wake pub in a different part of town for the last 15 minutes or so.

So there must be someone roaming round London and Edinburgh looking like me.

He has my sympathy.

Belly Dancing in the Old Anatomy Theatre of the University of Edinburgh launched Death on The Fringe

Later I went to the launch of the annual Death on the Fringe, organised by Robert James Peacock, which showcases a range of Fringe shows to promote more open and supportive attitudes and behaviours to death, dying and bereavement in Scotland.

Always eclectic, it included belly-dancer Shantisha aka Miroslava Bronnikova, Scottish Comedian of the Year Rosco McClelland, chanteuse Woodstock Taylor and Pauline Goldsmith with a coffin.

Late night, I saw Andy Barr in Tropic of Admin on a desert island where the audience was involved in a place crash. I may have been hallucinating by this point.

Accusations against a woman blowing a didgeridoo

And, before that, I saw the ever-amiable and ever funny Martha McBrier’s show Balamory Doubtfire, in which the diminutive but plucky Glaswegian eventually plays a didgeridoo. Beforehand, she told me she was “a wee bit upset” because of an email she had received.

“This woman, “Martha explained, “emailed me on my website. She said I have subjugated an entire culture. She told me I am ignorant and that I should research culture and apparently women are not allowed to play the didgeridoo. It’s a men’s instrument.”

“So you are being racist AND sexist?” I asked.

“Apparently I’m being sexist and reverse racist.”

“What does ‘reverse racist’ mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But she quoted a rapper called Nas. As Nas said, she said, Respect.”

“Nas,” I admitted, “is a bit of a philosopher, isn’t he?”

“Women have been blowing on men’s objects”

“The thing is,” Martha told me, “women have been blowing on men’s objects for some time and no-one has complained before this.”

“Who is the offended woman?” I asked.

“It turns out she is a white sociology professor.”

“How,” I asked, “did you find that out? Did she tell you?”

“Well,” Martha told me, “I have people in the know and, by that, I mean people whose internet works in their flat in Edinburgh and they Googled her.”

“So she’s a highly-knowledgable professor?” I asked.

“Well,” Martha replied, “a didgeridoo is apparently called a yidaki and I’m a musician, so I’ll know that, obviously. But she spelled it wrong. She’s probably using the white reverse racist spelling. The thing is, I took up the didgeridoo on medical advice.”

“For your lungs?” I asked.

“Yes, to increase my peak flow and to reduce stress.”

“To increase your what?” I asked.

“My peak flow,” replied Martha.

“Ah,” I said.

“My flow has peaked,” Martha informed me, “but they want it even better. They told me the didgeridoo is commonly used to help sleep apnea, snoring, asthma.”

“But, if you play the didgeridoo in bed to help sleep apnea,” I suggested, “it’s not going to increase your partner’s happiness in bed.”

“Well,” said Martha, “I’ve had no complaints so far.”

Edinburgh Fringe Day 1: Good shows, a questionable director and a late disaster

Mark Borkowski is looking for originality

In the afternoon, with Kate Copstick, I recorded the first in a revived series of Grouchy Club Podcasts with stunt-loving PR guru Mark Borkowski who is up here partly to find right-wing comedians who may appear in a series of TV shows on RT (Russia Today). Well, that is my spin on it. Really he is looking for anyone who is so original and different that they are unlikely to get onto the currently bland and unoriginal British TV channels. Mark, in performance terms, has a taste for the bizarre and the original. He is well worth a listen.

After that, I went to see Robert White’s show billed as a comedy opera InstraMENTAL which was – rather dauntingly for the first Fringe show I have seen this year – utterly brilliant. Robert won the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality in 2010 so can he be nominated again? Who knows? This unified show is so different it is not what he won for before and, unexpectedly, Kate Copstick’s voice turns up about ¾ of the way through. When I texted her about being in his show, it was news to her.

Narin Oz, budgerigar & Brunström belly paint

I had forgotten to take a photo of Mark Borkowski during the podcast recording, something I did not fail to do at Fringe Central when I was accosted by Narin Oz, who showed me a photo on her phone of her blue budgerigar in front of a blue painting created by Malcolm Hardee Award winning Michael Brunström’s belly.

Anyone present at the relevant Brunström shows will be aware this is not a joke.

Narin also showed me a photo of herself covered in mud and pointed out that her show #DirtyWoman includes copious amounts of real mud. She told me all her #DirtyWoman shows are being billed as ‘work-in-progress’ shows and, after the Edinburgh shows are finished, she will do previews in London of the already-performed shows. She said she reckons she may end up performing back in her mother’s womb. You maybe had to be there.

Elf Lyons – colourful Swan

Later, I saw that infinitely-rare thing, an act that has arguably been made even better by going to see that Gaulier man in France. Admittedly, we are talking about the already-highly-talented Elf Lyons. In her show Swan, she is telling and acting out the story of Swan Lake in eccentric costumes with dancing and mime and ongoing spiel in a form of Franglais. It is difficult to do justice to it all in a written description but, in parts, it is a sort-of disguised stand-up show with a Gaulier veneer, a lot of movement and her personality making it sparkle. She was justifiably playing to a full room.

In the audience watching her was Juliette Burton, whose Butterfly Effect show was today and will in future be (it is getting heavily booked-up ahead) playing to full houses.

All of the above titbits are part of the joy of the Fringe.

But I also received an email today from an act telling me about their show’s director:

The cobbles of Edinburgh have seen some blood flow in the last 70 years of the Fringe.

“I have paid (the named person) more than £2,000 over the last year to be director for my show and (the person) just told me TODAY that they won’t be coming up to the Fringe this year as if that’s the norm. They say their other clients who have shows here don’t mind. And I am even expected to pay an invoice for August because (the person) says they can direct my performance from London. It has really knocked me for six. This same person was here for my first few shows last year. I thought a director’s job was to sit in the audience early on to take notes. I worked really really hard doing various jobs to pay the director’s fees.”

Then, as I was about to post this blog online, Kate Copstick turned up at 1.00am (we are sharing a flat) saying she is due to review highly-esteemed musical act Die Roten Punkte for the Scotsman tomorrow night (well, tonight, in fact) – their opening night – but British Airways have lost all their musical equipment collected over many years and a very, very specifically-designed drum kit.

“British Airways,” Copstick told me, “don’t seem very concerned”.

Meanwhile, Die Roten Punkte are trying to borrow equipment and have arranged an emergency technical run-through at 07.00am.

The Edinburgh Fringe. Home of dreams and nightmares.

Cunning comic Becky Fury’s mis-billed Edinburgh Fringe show is already a riot

Bad news for anyone confused by the recent flurry of blogs about fake Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award and connected events.

In a blog two days ago, I mentioned that last year’s winner, Becky Fury, had suddenly had her Free Fringe venue changed and was out-of-pocket to the tune of several hundred pounds for her Fringe Programme entry which now has a totally incorrect venue listed.

Becky Fury (centre with Tony Allen) at an unconnected demo outside the Bank of England. (Photograph by Angus Lindsay)

She had originally been booked and confirmed in the cursed Fringe venue which used to be called Cowgatehead. Now she is going to be in the Black Market venue beside Waverley station.

But, I wrote, although the venue had changed, the show time had mercifully remained the same.

Two days is a long time in Free Fringe anarchy.

Now her show time has been changed – She has now been told she is in an earlier slot – 10.00pm in the Black Market, 6th-26th August.

She has had to have new flyers printed which, with luck, should arrive with her tonight.

But how to publicise the change?

Mmmm…. Where is the best place to publicise a show titled Molotov Cocktail Party?

Where best to publicise a Fringe show?

Last night Becky – a woman not without her own past experience of Class War – decided to go along to a demonstration in London which, somewhat appropriately, turned into a riot in which, according to this morning’s Independent, “Molotov cocktails, fireworks and bottles were hurled at police officers in Dalston, east London, and rudimentary road blocks were made and set on fire.”

“I went along with my little sign to this rally,” Becky told me innocently this morning. “Any publicity. Anarchy, chaos, Spirit of the Fringe.”

I know the Malcolm Hardee Awards are increasingly prestigious and her show is called Molotov Cocktail Party and she needs to get publicity for her venue and time change. But, even to me, this seems a tad excessive.

Enterprising, though. Definitely enterprising.

Becky’s rescheduled Molotov Cocktail Party

Her publicity for this year’s show already carries the legend: “Double Malcolm Hardee Award-Winning Becky Fury”.

In truth, she only won the single increasingly-prestigious Cunning Stunt Award last year. But then some chums of Malcolm in some dodgy South-East London pub decided they were going to give her an award too and they would also call it a Malcolm Hardee Award.

So fair enough.

You can’t blame a Cunning Stunt award winner for being cunning, can you?

While I was finishing writing this blog, I got this email from Becky:

“John, could you put in your blog that I in no way condone graffiting FUCK THE POLICE or FUCK THE BANKS on Barclays’ window… as it is a cliché.

If they were going to spray anything, it should have been:

MOLOTOV COCKTAIL PARTY
10.00pm
BLACK MARKET
EDINBURGH

How publicists can easily lose you an Edinburgh Fringe award nomination

Super Cally Fragile Lipstick go shoosh…?

In a blog last week, I mentioned that comic Cally Beaton has been publicising her Edinburgh Fringe debut solo show Super Cally Fragile Lipstick by saying her previous show Cat Call (with Catherine Brohart) “received a Malcolm Hardee Award” at  last year’s Fringe.

This sounded to me like the sort of admirable scam that should get her nominated for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

The story was picked-up yesterday by comedy industry website Chortle – as part of a list of false publicity claims by various performers – which reported re Cally that: “The press release for her delightfully named show Super Cally Fragile Lipstick boasts that she won the ‘Malcolm Hardee First Minute Award’, last year.

Today, Chortle has a piece which includes the suicidal lines:

“Comedian Cally Beaton also felt that she had ended up on the list through no fault of her own… Her publicist said they were told Beaton had won a ‘First Minute Award at the Malcolm Hardee Awards.”

The implication is that it was a misunderstanding rather than a blatant blag.

The publicity for Cally Beaton’s show

In fact, the publicity for her show this year, did not say she had won a First Minute Award (true) at all. It said: 

“Cally took her first show, Cat Call, to Edinburgh in 2016 with her comedy partner Catherine Bohart… where together they… received a Malcolm Hardee Award..”

Ironically, the publicist(s) have probably lost Cally a genuine Malcolm Hardee nomination.

I was strongly thinking of nominating her for a Cunning Stunt Award this year – the irony of pretending she had won a Malcolm Hardee Award actually getting her a Malcolm Hardee Award being an added bonus.

If the story now is it was all a tragic mistake rather than a wholly intentional piece of blagging then, obviously, it can’t be a cunning stunt.

To say she (or they) won a First Minute Award last year is true.

To say it was a Malcolm Hardee First Minute Award is stretching the truth beyond the facts (it was presented immediately before the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show started and was unconnected to the increasingly prestigious Awards themselves).

One of the increasingly prestigious Cunning Stunt Awards

To say Cally actually won a Malcolm Hardee Award (totally untrue) is worthy of getting her nominated for or even winning a real Malcolm Hardee Award.

Sadly, by saying the 2016 award-claim was some sort of misunderstanding rather than a clever scam, the publicists have probably lost her an award nomination.

Award-winning UK comic to write play about Twin Peaks director David Lynch

Mr Twonkey promotes his Christmas in the Jungle in Brighton

So I had a chat with Mr Twonkey aka Paul Vickers at King’s Cross station in London.

He was on his way back home to Edinburgh. Last year, he won the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“How were your Christmas in the Jungle shows at the Brighton Fringe?” I asked.

“It was so hot,” he told me. “I don’t think people were feeling… They were… It occurred to me that maybe doing a Christmas show in the middle of the summer isn’t such a great idea.”

“But surely,” I said, “with your act, to do a Christmas show at Christmas would be a silly idea.”

“Well,” he replied, “I was pitching it as The only Christmas show on at Brighton in June. Unfortunately, there was another one called The Grotto. And, when I was flyering for it in the street, people were asking me: What’s wrong with you?”

“You are,” I checked, “still doing Christmas in the Jungle at the Edinburgh Fringe this August?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen the new Twin Peaks TV series yet?”

“No. But I am trying to write a play about David Lynch.”

“Your previous play was Jennifer’s Robot Arm,” I said.

“Yes. That was more kitchen sink drama/science fiction. This would be about people who actually exist.”

“How are you getting the facts?” I asked. “From Wikipedia?”

“Various sources. There’s a few books about him. The trouble is none of them are any good apart from one which is not bad: Lynch On Lynch, which is a series of interviews with him.”

“Does he know anything about himself?” I asked.

“I would imagine there are a few gaps. But there’s also a good documentary online about someone following him around while he’s making Inland Empire.

“And there’s a book coming out in February 2018, published by Canongate Books which has his full support. I think it’s called Room To Dream.”

“So your play,” I asked, “is about… what?”

“I want to focus on is the time he spent in London. The early part of people’s careers is always the most interesting. He was living in a flat in Wimbledon, making a suit for The Elephant Man.

‘You know, in Eraserhead, there’s a little deformed baby. I think he kept it very damp. I think he used chicken and raw animal flesh, moulded it together and used maggots quite a lot – to eat away the face. And then he kept it damp. His daughter wanted to play with it and he told her: You can play with it as long as you don’t touch it.

“After Eraserhead, he was a cult figure – a young hotshot director – and he had a few films he was trying to pitch. One of them was called Gardenback, which was about a community of people who could only speak to each other by passing an insect between them, either through the ear or through the mouth.

“The studio kept pushing him to write dialogue for it and he couldn’t write any. He said: Well, that’s the whole point: that they don’t speak. They communicate by passing the insect. So that project was shelved.

“Then he had another project called Ronnie Rocket, which was for the actor of restricted height in the Black Lodge. It was like Rocket Man, but he was small and it was surreal and it had villains called The Donut Men. But no-one would pick it up.”

“Jam on the fingers?” I asked.

“Yeah. So then they just gave him a pile of scripts and he picked The Elephant Man without reading it. Mel Brooks was producing it.”

“Mel Brooks,” I said, “once told me that, whenever you get your photo taken, you should always open your mouth.”

“Did he? Anyway, Mel Books had had success with Young Frankenstein as a black & white film and I think he quite liked the idea of re-invigorating the genre and Eraserhead had been in black & white.

“The Elephant Man was a big responsibility for David Lynch and apparently it was the closest he ever came to committing suicide. He almost put his head in the oven in Wimbledon during the development process. I was going to have a bit in my play where he puts his head in the oven and it turns round and Mel Brooks comes out from a theatre where he has been viewing Eraserhead.”

“This is live on stage?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Will the insects from Gardenback take part?”

“They could. But I was thinking focussing more around the fitting of the costume. They gave him six months to make a costume for The Elephant Man based on the fact he had done well with the baby in Eraserhead. And apparently what he created was horrendous. John Hurt came round for a fitting and he couldn’t hardly breathe or walk and certainly couldn’t act in the costume.

Mr Twonkey takes a train and a door north to Edinburgh

“So that process was unsuccessful and a lot of money had gone down the drain and I think that was when he thought about putting his head in the oven.”

“And the costume in the finished film?” I asked.

“I think, essentially, he got someone else to make it. There was a bit of controversy on the set because he was young but had experienced British thespians like Sir John Gielgud and Anthony Hopkins who had been round the block a few times. I think there was a friction with young David Lynch adapting to these older British actors.”

“Maybe they didn’t talk about it,” I suggested.

“What?”

“The elephant in the room.”

“That’s a good title.”

“You just have to make the play relevant to the title,” I suggested. “Would you perform in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the wrong shape for David Lynch,” I suggested.

“I don’t think I could play him convincingly enough for more than 5 or 10 minutes; then I would run out of steam. It needs to be a proper actor.”

“The good news with a play about David Lynch,” I suggested, “is that there’s no limit to the possible surrealism.”

“It can be a BIT eccentric,” Paul agreed. “It can be a bit Lady in The Radiator in Eraserhead.”

“But it can’t all be that. What would give it real poignancy is revealing a bit of his history that people didn’t know about. The main scene would be the fitting, where it goes wrong.”

“Hold on,” I said, “If you are going to do a show about David Lynch making a costume he can’t make, you have to make the costume, don’t you?”

“That’s true.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It will have to be a good costume.”

“The one that isn’t successful…”

“Yes. But it can be really horrendously bad. That will be good.”

Mr Twonkey and Sir Nigel Gresley, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Northern Railway (1911-1923) and the London & North Eastern Railway 1923-1941). He designed The Flying Scotsman train.

Mr Twonkey on the Chicken Church cult and being hit by Lewis Schaffer’s spoon

Paul Vickers/Mr Twonkey had forgotten too

“Why are we meeting?” I asked Paul Vickers aka Mr Twonkey, surrealist performer and winner of the 2016 increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality.

“I have forgotten,” he told me.

“Me too,” I said. “Are you doing the Leicester Comedy Festival?”

“I am. On 9th and 10th of February. And the Museum of Comedy in London on the 15th of April.”

“Maybe that’s why,” I suggested. “What else have you been doing?”

“I have been taking advice on relationships from Lewis Schaffer.”

“Are you mad?” I asked

“He has algorithms,” Paul told me, “and he is trying to teach me how to read. He says I haven’t learnt how to read properly. I am dyslexic, but he is convinced that it is not a real disease. He thinks I am not trying hard enough.”

“He is teaching you too read?” I asked.

“He has a book,” Paul explained, “and I have to read words that have similar sounds and get used to reading and recognising them.”

“What is the book called?” I asked.

Lewis Schaffer’s book without wooden spoon

“This Simple Book Will Let You Teach Anyone to Read by Lewis Schaffer. When I mess up, he hits me with a wooden spoon. It is based on a similar thing to Dr Seuss. It does actually work. But it is tedious and unpleasant. I think Lewis Schaffer finds it funny – and I did to start with, but then it became tiring…

“…and painful,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “Lewis Schaffer was upset because I didn’t take the book with me last time. He said they had printed it out specially for me.”

“There is,” I asked, “only one copy of This Simple Book Will Let You Teach Anyone to Read by Lewis Schaffer?”

“I think there may be 3 or 4 copies. But he has got a copy that is specifically for me. It is signed at the front and  it is my copy. We have had two sessions so far.”

“When was the previous one?” I asked.

“In May last year, I think.”

“Have you progressed?”

“Not as much as I thought. He showed me the page where we left off last time, and it was only halfway through the first page. But I think he may be cheating; I am sure I did more than just that page.”

“Is it enjoyable?” I asked.

“No,” said Paul. “It is not a fun activity and, last time, I did it before and after a gig so I was quite tired. But that doesn’t stop him. He’s relentless.”

A page from Lewis Schaffer’s relentless book

“Relentless in what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Just relentlessly… erm… cruel, I suppose. It seems a bit cruel.”

“I thought you were seeing him for relationship counselling?”

“Well, there is that as well, but he has not written a book about relationships. He just has an algorithm that he feels will work.”

“An algorithm on relationships?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the algorithm?”

“It is based on the fact that all people are fundamentally selfish.”

“Lewis Schaffer thinks other people are too inward-looking?” I asked.

Paul laughed: “I am not sure I can repeat a lot of what was said.”

“Are you going to follow his advice?”

“It is always good to get the Lewis Schaffer’s perspective on a situation.”

“No it isn’t,” I said. “On relationships??? That seems like a very bad idea. You are going to end up an emotional wreck with no self confidence and speaking with a fake American accent.”

A Soho selfie by Paul Vickers aka Mr Twonkey

“That is true,” Paul agreed.

“Who first suggested,” I asked, “that you should go to Lewis Schaffer for reading lessons and relationship counselling?”

“That’s just what he sees as necessary when I turn up,” Paul replied. “That’s his idea of passing time with me.”

“Better than conversing…?” I asked.

“Well,” mused Paul, “he made me a chicken sandwich and then he took the book out… and the wooden spoon.”

I asked: “Does he keep a special wooden spoon for lessons?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “That’s the one he beats you with.”

“This should be a show at the Edinburgh Fringe,” I suggested.

“It’s quite tedious, though,” Paul told me. “It really is quite tedious. It’s like blog – slob – cog – mob – gob – hob – lob. Quite tedious.”

“What does this supposedly teach you?” I asked.

“It teaches you how to recognise how certain things sound, because he says I get my Bs and Ds mixed up, which is true. And that I have difficulty recognising sounds and words. When I look at a page, I do sometimes have that thing where I can see words backwards. It’s partly why I ended up going down the road I’ve gone down. Apparently dyslexic people either turn to crime  or art… I could be in prison…

Another selfie by Paul Vickers aka Mr Twonkey

“…instead of being hit by a wooden spoon?” I asked.

“The dyslexia has actually affected my life,” Paul continued. “If only Lewis Schaffer had got to me sooner, then maybe I would have turned into an upstanding member of society.”

“I am not convinced,” I told him, “that you are learning to read. You are just getting bruised.”

“He sees it as doing a good thing,” Paul countered.

Then there was a long pause.

“Well, I don’t know if he does,” he added thoughtfully.

“Anyway,” I said, “what is this new show you are taking to Leicester, the Museum of Comedy and the Edinburgh Fringe?”

“If you could push my Museum of Comedy show on the 15th of April that would be cool,” said Paul.

“And the new show is…?” I prompted.

“It is called Twonkey’s Christmas in the Jungle.”

Mr Twonkey’s Christmas in The Jungle – is not in a jungle

“Is it going o be performed at Christmas in a jungle?”

“No. At the Museum of Comedy in London on 15th April.”

“Have you written it all?”

“More or less.”

“Which?” I asked. “More or less?”

“Well, I have a beginning and an end but, because it has never been performed in front of an audience, I don’t entirely know how much of it works. I have a rough story.”

“Which is?”

“My manager – I don’t have a manager but, in Twonkey World I do – he sends me to do the Iquitos Fringe in the Hallucinogenic Peruvian jungle. The idea is he is trying to get rid of me, cos he has other acts who are more prestigious and exciting to manage.”

“Are you,” I asked, “going to have a jungle in the venue?”

“Yeah. My long-suffering other half, Mary, has made a jungle for me and some of my puppets have turned to a religious cult called The Chieftains of Paradise Who Welcome Evil.

“They wear a lot of rosettes and they believe that Jesus, when he rested, actually went to Hawaii and, when he was in Hawaii, he came up with some ideas like the Solomon Islands and Canada and the piña colada.

“I am trying to wean the puppets off the religious cult and the only way to be rescued from the jungle is for someone to go to the Chicken Church – which actually exists. It is not in the Peruvian jungle, but it’s a massive church that looks like a chicken. Well, it is not supposed to be a chicken: it’s supposed to be a dove but it looks more like a chicken. It has become a tourist attraction.

The real Chicken Church is actually in the Indonesian jungle

“The idea is that, if the puppets get to the Chicken Church and ring the bells, then the rescue helicopters will come and lift us all to safety.

“There is a song about the Chicken Church in Twonkey’s Christmas in the Jungle.”

“That would be,” I said, “the show which is going to be at London’s Museum of Comedy on 15th April?”

“Yes. The song is from a new album by Paul Vickers & The Leg with the working title Sherbert and Chilli – but that’s a long way from finished. We have about twelve tracks written and demo-ed. Christmas in The Jungle is another of the songs. It takes a while to finish these things… and there is always the temptation to try and get it right this time.”

“Do you,” I asked, “resist that temptation?”

“Well, I think I sometimes get it right accidentally. I do know how to persist and I know when something has gathered a certain amount of mass and it may be worth presenting to people, but it’s difficult to know when anything is ever really truly finished. It’s quite tricky to constantly mine the human consciousness for those gems or whatever they are.”

“Have you thought of doing something completely different – like not being Mr Twonkey?”

“I could have gone into advertising, but I didn’t. I could have gone any number of ways.”

“You still can,” I suggested.

“Yeah. That’s the thing. You feel you are in a very small, tight little room but, when you find those little doors it can take the roof off and it becomes expansive again. When people talk about writers’ block it’s really that they don’t have the keys to a door yet.

Paul Vickers tried a new look for Mr Twonkey after our chat

“David Lynch explains it really well. He says that sometimes you get little bits of ideas but you can’t work out what to do with them or how they connect and everything you need is in one room but it is a room you are not allowed access to yet.

“I think the ideas I have are not necessarily always fully explored. Jennifer’s Robot Arm – the play that I did – was originally just a 500-word story but I realised I could expand it out. There’s a lot of things I have like that; they could be expanded out. I would like to write more plays.”

Why Richard Gadd won a Perrier Prize at the Edinburgh Fringe but justifiably failed to get a Cunning Stunt Award

Richard Gadd with what used to be called the Perrier Award

Richard Gadd’s first words to me were: “You thought I would cancel this meeting, didn’t you, John? You thought I would be too big for you now. But I like you, John, even though everyone else doesn’t.”

He was joking.

I think.

After he was nominated for – but failed to win – this year’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award back in August, he texted me a message saying: “You. Are. Dead. To. Me.”

He was joking.

I think.

Yes, he was.

Yes.

We nominated him for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award on the basis that he had caused a buzz at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe with his show Waiting For Gaddot – mostly because it was stunningly original but also because it was almost impossible to get in to see it because there were far more people wanting to see it than there was space in the small room he had booked at the Banshee Labyrinth venue.

So, this year, he booked his new show Monkey See, Monkey Do into an even smaller room at the Banshee Labyrinth, meaning the difficulty of getting in – and the consequent buzz – was even greater. We checked with him and he said, Yes, indeed he had booked himself into the smaller room as a cunning stunt to create more buzz.

Richard Gadd winning that ‘other’ comedy award in Edinburgh

He failed to win our award, but he did go on to win the other main comedy prize at the Fringe – the one that is forever called the Perrier Award even though the sponsors have changed over the years.

“So,” I told him this week, “booking yourself into a smaller room was a very clever cunning stunt…”

“Well, no,” he replied. “It wasn’t a stunt.”

“You told us it was!” I said.

“No, it wasn’t a stunt,” Richard repeated. “When I visualised the show, there was only one room in the whole of Edinburgh I visualised – the Banshee Labyrinth Cinema Room. I needed a screen that was bigger than me. I needed a screen that would engulf me and engulf the audience.

“I thought: What do I do? Do I sacrifice audience numbers and money for artistic gain? And the answer was: Absolutely. I didn’t do it to create a buzz or as a cunning stunt or anything like that. It was a genuine artistic decision that I made.”

The poster image for award-winning Monkey See, Monkey Do

“And Monkey See, Monkey Do went on to win the Perrier,” I said. “That can be life-changing.”

“Well,” he replied, “I’ve had a lot of interest since then, but I’m not a mainstream act. It used to be, back in the day, that someone would win it and get a TV series straight away. But those days are over.

“I think now, if you win the Perrier, there is a more logical route towards the Have I Got News For Yous and Mock The Weeks. But that’s not my route either because I’m a very alternative act.

“I’m very interested in the art performance and I’m very theatrical, so those sort of (panel show) offers did not come through the door, but a whole bunch of people did get in touch who do want to work with me. Television companies and theatre companies. Writing work, drama work, stage work. And better acting auditions.

“People seem to take you more seriously. They know who you are – you’re not just a sort of underground comedian this, cult comedian that. People now know who I am and I think that’s important – and they know I take myself seriously and I’m still young – I’m 26.

“People don’t really trust people in their mid-twenties but, if you win the Perrier, if they have whittled down 1,000-odd shows in Edinburgh, it’s no easy feat to win that award. So at least I’m not being patronised any more.”

“A lot of people,” I said, “thought you should have been nominated for the Perrier last year.”

“All my other comedies have been very -in-your-face romps”

“Well, I think my work until very recently has been very polarising, very in-your-face and some people don’t like their eardums blasted or their eyes tainted with images of this and that. I think this year it set out to make a difference and to change opinions on things and it did tackle some big subjects.

“All my other comedies have been joyful romps or very -in-your-face romps but this year it set out to say something. I’ve had a challenging and complicated life in a lot of ways and this year I was tackling a subject that not many people speak about.”

“There is,” I prompted, “an autobiographical revelation in the show.”

“Yes, I use an autobiographical account in the show to reveal this information about myself. It’s an incident I went through that no person should go through and it caused a lot of turmoil and upheaval in my life, especially as a man.”

“I don’t want to give too much away,” I said.

“You can say sexual assault,” Richard told me.

“So the type of show you did,” I said, “was different this year…”

“I think the difference,” replied Richard, “was that, this year, it had a lot of heart and a lot of soul. It was trying to challenge views on masculinity. That was quite important to me. I’ve always felt I was a man but, after the incident, my masculinity was taken away from me.”

“Can I include that?” I asked.

“You can put what you like but just put me in a bloody good light, for the love of fuckery.”

“Righto,” I said.

Richard Gadd wants to challenge YOUR views on masculinity

“I wanted,” Richard continued, “to challenge the mainstream media definition of masculinity, cos masculinity needs to shift now, in this day and age of feminism and emotion on your sleeve. I feel masculinity needs to become synonymous with openness, But there is still this keeping-it-all-bottled-up masculinity; being ‘the man’.

“I bottled it up for so long because I felt it was a dent in my masculinity. That was the difficult part. But then, all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you realise: Jesus Christ! It’s just a word. It doesn’t exist.

“Your masculinity is as fickle as sexuality. These words that just cause people so much pain and don’t mean anything in the end, because boundaries are blurred. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is concrete. They’re just words, but they can cause so much misery.”

“It must,” I suggested, “have been scary to decide to talk about it openly.”

“I hinted about it in every single thing I did. Every single show I did, there were big overtones of it.”

“You seem,” I said, “very commendably serious about what you do as being art.”

“Yes, I am. I care. I kick myself if things aren’t good enough. I always try my best. If I’ve made mistakes, I will try to learn from them. I’m interested in the process of art and what it can achieve. And I’m interested in always doing things differently. You just have to keep staying one step ahead of what people expect you to do and expect you to be.”

“So what is your next step ahead?” I asked.

“I’m going to chop my cock off on stage and then eat it and regurgitate it and use it as a flute.”

“And,” I asked, “in reality?”

“I have ideas about what next, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them to you, Mr Fleming.”

“Would these new things,” I asked, “be like writing a different type of comedy drama or coming out of a totally unexpected trap like writing a musical?”

Breaking Gadd: “I wasn’t doing anything different”

“I did Cheese and Crack Whores. Then Breaking Gadd the year after… and Breaking Gadd was Cheese and Crack Whores in a different setting with a different group of characters but sort of the same. Despite the fact it did well and got well-reviewed, I realised that the buzz was elsewhere because I wasn’t doing anything different. So the next year Waiting For Gaddot was a big shift in a different direction and that got the buzz.”

“Some people,” I said, “equate arty success with low audiences.”

“Yes,” said Richard, “Some people think: I like being cult. I like being not for everyone. I’m too cool for mainstream. But it’s ridiculous to think I would write a piece of work so only the cool people can enjoy it. I would like to be as mainstream as possible. But I still like to bring these off-kilter themes into the mainstream and still be challenging. You can be challenging in the mainstream: you just need to figure out how to do it. To rebel against it is wrong. Charlie Brooker is a good example of someone who manages to be quite challenging in the mainstream.

“I don’t care about money. I was brought up better than that. I don’t care about that. I would like to expand my audience size but, at the same time, get my message over and do a piece of work in the best possible way it can be done.”

“We are having a chat,” I reminded him, “to plug your Monkey See, Monkey Do show at the Soho Theatre in London, so when is it on?”

Richard trying to keep one step ahead outside Soho Theatre

“We are doing a live recording for the DVD this Saturday at 5.30pm. Then the show runs 18th October to the 12th November. That run is completely sold out already, so it will probably be back in the New Year.”

“So this blog is completely pointless,” I said. “You don’t need the publicity.”

“No, I don’t,” agreed Richard. “But I like talking to you, so that’s fine.”

I do not think he was joking.

But who can tell with comedians and actors?

Comic Becky Fury wants to ‘go out with’ another comedian – against my advice

More Red Army Faction than Royal Air Force

“Fury is your real name?” I asked stand-up comic Becky Fury.

“Yes.”

“Middle name?”

“Anne.”

“So Rebecca Anne Fury? RAF. Like the Royal Air Force.”

“No,” she said. “Like the Red Army Faction.”

In August, Becky Fury won this year’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. She had posted her Edinburgh Fringe show flyer on the dating site Tinder as a commendably lateral thinking way of increasing her audience numbers. She also printed on her flyer that she was a nominee for the ‘Last Minute Comedy Award’.

The used-to-be Perrier Awards were sponsored this year by lastminute.com. So this claim was impressive and, on the night I saw her show, four Canadians had been lured in on the basis she was, they told me, “up for the big Edinburgh comedy award”. But Becky had, in fact, been nominated a while ago in a contest run by the small club based in Hitchin called Last Minute Comedy – totally unconnected to last minute.com. It was an admirably truthful yet misleading cunning stunt.

Becky with her increasingly prestigious Cunning Stunt Award

“So,” I said to her, “as a result of winning an increasingly Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award, you must now be inundated with phone calls from Los Angeles and Las Vegas?”

She laughed.

“When I started doing comedy,” she told me, “I met Tony Allen. And him and Malcolm Hardee never got on at all.”

“Because,” I asked, “they had different versions of how the phrase ‘alternative comedy’ was first coined?”

“Yes. So, since I got the Malcolm Hardee Award, Tony Allen ’s not speaking to me.”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s not your fault you got it.”

“I think he thinks I should have turned it down and maintained my… I think he’s feeling a bit unjustly forgotten.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” I said. “He may or may not have invented the phrase ‘alternative comedy’, but he was important in inventing the concept.”

“He was,” agreed Becky, “and I think Malcolm Hardee deserves credit for being an amazing, anarchic comedy promoter but also Tony didn’t really like Malcolm Hardee because he thinks that Malcolm sold out.”

“Idea was it should be a revolutionary force for social change”

“How did he sell out?”

“By not being completely pure and truthful to what Tony thought alternative comedy should be.”

“Which was?”

“That it should be political. His idea was it should be a revolutionary force for social change.”

“Whereas,” I agreed, “Malcolm thought it should be a load of bollocks – literally.”

“Yes,” laughed Becky. “Anarchic fun.”

“Where did you meet Tony Allen?” I asked.

“At an anarchist book fair and I went to one of his workshops at the beginning of my stand-up comedy career. He mentored me. He sort-of took me on as his sort-of daughter for quite a few years.”

“And didn’t take advantage?” I asked.

“No. He looked after me because I was not in a very good way. He was my surrogate dad figure and he played that role wonderfully. He was really good.”

“And eventually…?”

“Relationships and friendships,” said Becky, “run a course. I’m moving my boat up to near where he lives in Ladbroke Grove, so we will probably see more of each other again.”

“You live on a boat?”

Wanting a genuinely interesting alternative life

“It’s the freedom and, if you’re going to create interesting art, your art is your life, so it’s difficult to create genuinely interesting alternative work if you don’t live a genuinely interesting alternative life.”

“You want to be a free spirit,” I said.

“I want to be happy.”

“Are you?”

“I live on a boat and I work very little and I have a very nice life. I try not to hurt anybody or cause anyone any stress. People should be what they want to be. I am a free spirit. But why do I live on a boat? Because it’s cheaper. I used to live in a squat, but you can’t do that any more.”

“For how long?” I asked.

“Five years. It was very beautiful experience.”

“Just the one squat?”

“Lots of them. We had one in Shadwell that had a circus space in it. A trapeze. A yoga space. The council was going to give it to us, but we had to fill in loads of paperwork and we couldn’t be bothered. Now I think maybe it would have been worth the effort. The council actually offered us a £3 million property. I think it had been an old dairy. They owned it. They said: If you want to turn this into a housing co-op, fill in the correct paperwork and we’re open to the idea. Now it is a traffic wardens’ storage space.”

She was a nice middle class girl who went to a private school.

“Living in a squat,” I said, “suggests an urge to rebel.”

“I went to a private school and could see my life was too narrow and wasn’t interesting enough. I thought I needed to expand my horizons and my life experiences and go a bit crazy in order to create more interesting art. You don’t create interesting art if you’re a nice middle class girl who goes to a private school.”

“You occasionally,” I said, “lapse into poems on stage.”

“I am a poet. I don’t want to be a poet. But I do more paid poetry gigs than paid comedy gigs at the moment. I would like to think my life was poetry, hence the fact I live on a boat. Is that really pretentious?”

“Potentially in print it might be,” I said. “All sorts of things people say change their tone when they’re printed.”

“You lose the intonation,” said Becky.

“Yes,” I said. “How long have you been doing comedy?”

“About five years, but I was quite depressed when I first started. I suppose it was maybe a way of not killing myself. I was just going round doing open mic gigs as a way of keeping myself sane.”

“Surely a wrong choice of career in that case,” I suggested.

“Yes,” laughed Becky, “I don’t think you can say that about comedy: that it’s a way of keeping yourself sane.”

“I wasn’t happy and I was taking quite a lot of drugs”

“This was in your drug period?” I asked.

“Yes. I wasn’t very happy and I was taking quite a lot of drugs. So I was going around self-harming on the open mic circuit, doing lots of horrible gigs as an alternative to taking hard drugs and cutting myself.”

“Which you used to do?”

“No. All the cool kids cut themselves, but I’m quite lightweight when it comes to self-harm.”

“Just doing open mic gigs and going with unsuitable men?” I suggested.

“Yes. I need to find a comedian to go out with so I can re-sharpen my comic brain.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” I advised her. “Never go out with a comedian. They’re all mad.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Becky replied. “I don’t care how mad they are. It’s about my career development.”

“But you will also be competing against each other.”

“That’s fine. I will win.”

“Have you been out with a comic before?”

“He said it was not a good idea because he was too mental”

“Yes. Years ago. A long time ago.”

“How many comics?”

“Two. I was very young.”

“You told me earlier that, when you were about 19, you met (COMEDIAN 1) and he helped you.”

“He was a lovely man. He was about 40. He said I was too young for him to go out with. He said it was not a good idea because he was too mental.”

“Well,” I agreed, “he’s spot-on there.”

“He said: You don’t want to waste the best years of your life dealing with me.”

“That’s surprisingly sensible of him,” I told her.

“Exactly,” said Becky. “Isn’t that nice? So he just carried on being a lunatic and left me to get on with my own shit.”

“How did he help you?” I asked.

“By not going out with me.”

“Did he help you professionally?”

“No. Except maybe by not going out with me.”

“This is before you went to university,” I said. “You did drama at university, so you must have wanted to be an actress?”

“No. I’ve always been into comedy. When I first went to comedy clubs, I used to do a bit of chatting up the performers”.

“Only chatting up?”

“And sleeping with them occasionally. I was young.”

“And the attraction was?”

“I found out they were all completely mental”

“Women always sleep with comedians, don’t they? That’s one of the reasons why guys like doing comedy. Because it gets the girls. And it got me when I was young and impressionable and when I thought that, offstage, they were like they were onstage.”

“But then…” I prompted.

“Then I found out they were all completely mental.”

“How long did it take you to realise that?”

“Pretty quickly.”

“But, after that, you chose (COMEDIAN 1) despite the fact you knew they were all mental.”

“Well, I never really went out with him. I had a thing with him. And I had a thing with (COMEDIAN 2) and then I didn’t go out with any more comedians for ages. I decided I should probably go out with sensible people my own age instead. Well, I went with junkies. I wanted people more sensible and mentally stable than comedians, so I started going out with junkies.”

“A wise observation,” I laughed.

“But now,” Becky continued, “I do need to go out with a comedian again. I need to sharpen up my comedic abilities. That’s why I contacted you: so I can get hold of a comedian to shag. Basically, this is a personal ad.”

“How can they get in touch with you?” I asked.

“They can probably find my Edinburgh Fringe flyer on Tinder,” said Becky.

The Kunt (and The Gang) Monologues

When Kunt and The Gang announced earlier this year that he was retiring, I immediately booked him to climax the Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe last month with his song Paper Boy. That version is not on YouTube, but this one is…

I thought it would also be interesting to chat to him for a blog, but he told me: “I stopped doing face to face stuff as it never comes across in print quite as well as the email interviews.”

I told him: “I’m never very keen on written Q&A ‘interviews’ because they never sound like a lively conversation. Writing in grammatical perfection is always a killer.”

So, inevitably, we did do a Q&A email interview. This is it.

Q – Why are you giving up? Have you run out of original ideas? Have you gone mentally dull? Do you now want to smoke a pipe, suck Werther’s Original sweets and hug people rather than offend them?

Kunt had new inspiration suddenly pumped into him in 2011

A – I ran out of ideas in 2011 but, luckily for me, Operation Yewtree came along and helped me drag it out for another five years. I’ve been thinking of packing it in for a few years, but my mind was made up because of how many maverick celebrities have croaked this year – Bowie, Prince, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne etc. etc. If they keep dropping at this rate, it’s only a matter of time before my minor internet celebrity status gets bumped up and then I’m on the ‘at risk’ register.

Q – Are you so stinking rich now that you don’t need to work and just want to watch Countdown on TV?

A – Yes, because playing 50 gigs a year for 6 quid a ticket can make you a millionaire. Are you having a fucking laugh? Don’t worry. I’m still driving round in a Ford Fiesta and looking for the yellow ‘whoops’ stickers in Asda.

Q – Did you get to keep your 2011 Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award or did Bob Slayer nick it?

A – I gave it away in a competition. A bloke from Colchester won it. They’re not worth loads of money, are they?

Q – They’re increasingly prestigious. Is your retirement just a scam? Everyone thinks it might be. Are you going to keep doing ‘return’ gigs like Frank Sinatra?

A – I’m not quite sure why everyone thinks it’s a big scam. I think people are just in the denial stage of grief. I had four people at my gig in Bristol last week tell me that I should call my comeback tour ‘The Cum-back Tour’. With my current Christ complex, I’m favouring ‘The Res-erection’.

Now then, now then, boys and girls. What will he do next?

Q – Are you likely to reappear as a different character? Like Avid Merrion in Bo’ Selecta became Keith Lemon?

A – Highly unlikely.

Q – How did you think up the Kunt character and, indeed, why?

A – I’m still a bit baffled that you refer to me as a character! Is Sting a character? Is Bono a character? No!

They’re really just a couple of cunts so why can’t I just be a kunt?

Q – What were you before you were a Kunt?

A – I worked part-time for the local council doing odd jobs for the Youth Service. Whenever I tell anyone that I suddenly see them thinking: Historical sex crimes.

Q – Odd jobs? Such as?

A – It was a few years ago but, as I remember, I was just sent to the youth centres in the daytime when there were no teenagers around to do minor maintenance tasks like collecting the money out of pool tables and sniffing the toilet seats.

Q – Describe your best shit.

A – A one-and-half turd visit on the 15th December 2013, which I tweeted a picture of to Simon Cowell as part of the world’s first ever virtual dirty protest.

Q – Describe your worst sex act.

A – Drunkenly trying to get big Karen to finish me off in a toilet cubicle in the multi story car park next to Club Art in Southend while my mates jumped up pulling faces over the door.

Q – When you were 17, what did you think you would be when you were 34?

A – I couldn’t imagine being 21 when I was 17, let alone 34. I’ve always thought if you think about things too hard you’ll talk yourself out of it.

Q – So, in the past, this philosophy of life has resulted in you doing what?

A – All this. And kicking the odd pensioner’s wall in.

Q – Has writing wall-to-wall filth worn your spirit down? Are you going to write non-filth now?

A – I don’t think of it as wall-to-wall filth. I think I’m just dealing with the difficult subjects that no one else wants to sing about. Because of that, I think I‘ve been lucky to have a whole new raft of rhyming couplets that no other fucker wanted – like ‘come uppance’ and ‘lady’s tuppence’. That said, I always had a secret ambition to do Eurovision but I’m worried I might be overqualified.

Q – So will you write ‘clean’ song lyrics in future? Your songs are so technically good, you could make it in the ‘straight’ music biz. You could do The Voice or a Simon Cowell TV show or, yes indeed, Eurovision.

A – There’s millions of kunts out there writing clean songs. It’s very hard to stand out. Why do you think I was forced to forge a career out of singing about masturbation and paedofiddlia?! Furthermore, in case you hadn’t noticed, the TV talent shows are not for people like me that write catchy original songs and sing them in our own voices – more for perma-tanned twats warbling around the main melody of existing songs.

Q – Have you made useful contacts in the ‘straight’ music biz?

A – No

Q – Your final show is in London on November 5th. Seven days later, what will you be doing where, why and with whom?

A – Sitting on the sofa on my own, in my pants, watching Police Academy 7 on DVD.

Q – Describe your house. Where is it? – In a city? In the countryside? In suburbia? What is it like inside?

A – Is this fucking Hello magazine? I’ve got a square-ish house with a pointy roof on the upskirts of a town. It is the town where Depeche Mode are from and also Brian Belo from Big Brother. Inside there’s some rooms containing the usual furniture and in one room a bed along with piles of old posters and boxes of unsold CDs and T-shirts. (Note: Depeche Mode and Brian Belo came from Basildon.)

Q – Any unfulfilled ambitions?

Shannon Matthews The Musical: a great loss to the West End

A – I’m gutted my Shannon Matthews musical didn’t make it onto the big stage. I always secretly believed Lloyd Webber would discover it and make us an offer. But he didn’t, the rubber-faced old posho.

Q – Who was she again?

A – Shannon Matthews was the 9-year-old daughter of ginger munter Karen Matthews, who unsuccessfully masterminded her fake kidnapping to try and cash in on the back of the Madeleine McCann bandwagon.

Shannon Matthews: The Musical is a full-length audio musical I wrote based on the case and then recorded with some mates from Huddersfield. It is my proudest moment, but sadly never got produced on the big stage. Fucksticks.

Q – What is going to happen now when you have all these great creative ideas and you have nowhere to use them? You will get creatively constipated, won’t you?

A – I haven’t really thought about what I’ll do for an outlet but, put it this way, I wouldn’t want to be my paperboy. I have been regularly frustrated on this tour stuck in fucking traffic. Currently it’s averaging out 8 hours in the car for every hour on stage. It’s doing my biscuit in.

Q – Was there ever a Gang?

A – When you’re in it, you know!

Q – Are there Kunt groupies when you are on tour?

A – Sadly, they are mostly sweaty mental balding men in their mid to late 40s. I meet loads of really smashing people but, in the last few years, I seem to have become like a flypaper for nutjobs.

Kunt on tour with Mike Gibbons, whom he calls “my former manager, minor internet hit wannabe and dangerous loner”

Q – Why do you think that has suddenly happened?

A – I think it’s just the law of averages. You meet thousands of people, so odds on there’s going to be a few fruit loops. They always seem to be more persistent and intense, though, giving the impression that there’s more of them than there actually are.

Q – Have you any baby Kunts at home or are you planning any?

A – I’m in my early 30s now so I guess at some point soon I might have to start thinking about that.

Q – Is there a Mrs Kunt?

A – Not a Mrs Kunt, but a long-suffering Miss Kunt. It’s been hard over the years to keep a relationship going whilst doing as many gigs as I have but these days you can just have a wank into FaceTime.

Q – So how are you going to financially support yourself, Miss Kunt and your potential mini-Kunts?

A – I don’t live a lavish celebrity lifestyle. I don’t dine at the Ivy. I dine at Harvester where you get unlimited salad with your main meal. At the end of this tour, I’ll have a dwindling pot of cash that gives me 9 months to work out what the fuck I’m doing next and make a go of it. Having failed at everything I’ve ever done apart from this it’s very likely there’s going to be a much anticipated ‘Cum-back’ tour…

Q  Any regret yet that you have announced your retirement?

A – Of course. I fucking love doing this. I love the gigs, meeting people and hearing about the time they soiled themselves and where they stashed their underwear after. But the time still feels right to knock it on the head, while I’m still enjoying it rather than waiting for it to all turn to shite.

Mr Twonkey’s Buxton Fringe Diary

Mr Twonkey was big front-page news in Buxton

Performers often preview their Edinburgh Fringe shows at the Buxton Fringe.

This year, the Buxton Fringe runs 6th-24th July and the Edinburgh Fringe officially 5th (but, in fact, 3rd) to 29th August

Paul Vickers  is a songwriter, comic and puppeteer who performs as Mr Twonkey. 

Last year in Edinburgh, he was nominated for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality.

He will be performing his new show Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel in Edinburgh next month and has just returned from performing it for three nights in Buxton. This is his diary of what happened over the weekend…

---

DAY ONE

Mr Twonkey performed late night underground in Buxton

As soon as I arrived, I headed for a vegetable shepherd’s pie. The table I choose to sit at was about three foot taller than all the other tables. I had set myself up to be the freak straight away. Old ladies gazed at me gloomily as Old Blue Eyes provided the swinging soundtrack. I felt so vulnerable.

Afterwards, I walked along the high street and spotted some teenagers dressed in World War 2 clobber. They had just performed their first show and all seemed to think the audience was a little nervous and quiet as they hammered their show into them like a night raid on Coventry.

The evening came round fast.

First I did Barrel of Laughs which was a mixed bill show. I tried out new songs and it all went down very well. People started singing along automatically which was unusual. It was almost as if they knew the songs better then me, which was a little creepy.

My late solo show was more sparsely attended. However I had a reviewer in and he loved it, saying I was as mad as a trumpet made from ear wax but enjoyable all the same.

My Air BnB was incredibly minimal. When I opened the door to my room, the handle came right off. I went straight to bed.

DAY TWO

Mr Twonkey stared at the viaduct and the grass

The morning began with a fright as I heard a penguin flapping about in the loft above my head. Luckily, I managed to secure the door to the hatch with an old broom. I would be horrified having to deal with a bird flapping around my small room hungry for berries and seeds. Or fish.

I decided not to start my day with a punishing schedule of Fringe shows but to immerse myself in the sanctuary of nature and stone temples.

First I went off to stare down a viaduct and, just up the road from that humped wonder, I found a lovely farm shop. They served cherry Bakewell ice cream, which was pretty much the best thing ever.

Afterwards, I tried talking to a horse and a farmer caught me at it. He said he once had a bull that rolled it eyes when it was hungry.

Then I walked back into town refueled and ready to give Buxton a show to remember.

I picked up a new cast member in a junk shop called Maggie Mae – a fine coconut frog belly monster with a devilish grin.

I played to a busy house. The show fell straight off the bone, which is the way I like it: loose but tasty.

After my success, I read an old copy of the Buxton Advertiser and fell asleep.

DAY THREE

Mary Queen of Scots used to rub herself against the stalagmites in Poole’s Cavern (Photograph by Stephen Elwyn Roddick)

The morning began with a hop, skip and a jump down a cave – Poole’s Cavern. This comprises a network of tunnels that Mary Queen of Scots used to visit via candlelight as she feverishly rubbed her body up and down the stalagmites in a desperate effort to try and cure her rampant arthritis.

I also learned about the beaker people. Their bodies were discovered when the area near Solomon’s Temple (a Victorian viewing booth on the moor) was excavated. Apparently they were buried with beakers between their legs so that when they arrived in heaven they would not go thirsty.

In the afternoon, Buxton was simply throbbing with brass bands, vintage sports cars, cream teas and jollity. People in blazers tiptoed around the opera house gorging themselves on fancy cakes and antiques. The sun was so hot you could hear the huge laminated portraits in front of the Milton’s Head sizzle: a bizarre tribute to the fallen Prince, John Lennon, Whitney Houston and Cilla Black.

As the day drew on, posh people left the park and were soon replaced by local yobs kicking bottles of Buxton spring water around in a hateful manner. I started to feel a little nervous about my final Buxton show.

I gave them my most physical show yet.

I was burnt-out but satisfied by the end of it.

I did it!

I blasted the Buxton Fringe.

I gave them a bit of Twonkey and – you know what? – I think they liked him.

As for me, I don’t care for the guy.