The night comedian Malcolm Hardee urinated on a member of his audience

Legends grow in the telling and re-telling of them.

When comedian and club owner Malcolm Hardee drowned in 2005, The Stage called him “a larger than life character whose ribald behaviour and risqué pranks were legendary”.

I told one definitive anecdote about him in yesterday’s blog.

But one of the most famous stories told about Malcolm was the night he pissed on a member of the audience at his legendarily rowdy comedy club The Tunnel.

Comedian Mark Lamarr was there that night. He says:

“Jerry Sadowitz was on stage, very loud and noisy and, while he was on, this bloke was fast asleep in the front row with his head down, just absolutely gone. And Jerry rants, There’s this fucking bloke fell asleep here!… but at no point did he wake up.

“After Jerry finished, Malcolm walked on and said, Oy Oy There’s a bloke asleep and the audience – who were a vicious Klan Rally of an audience – all started shouting Piss on him, Malcolm! Piss on him!

“And he said, Yeah, alright.

“But he didn’t do it immediately. He had the most perfect comedy timing. He just started telling jokes and drinking to fill up his bladder.”

Ben Burke, who was also there in the audience that night, says: “It was Stuart North… sadly demised now, though not from being pissed on.”

Mark Lamarr remembers well what happened: “The audience is yelling: Piss on him, Malcolm! and he’s saying, Yeah, alright, and for five minutes he’s saying this and the bloke is still fast asleep.”

Ben Oakley, who was also in the audience that night, says: “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Malcolm looked down at the bloke and nudged his boots which were up on the stage. After no response, Malcolm casually whipped it out.”

Ben Burke says: “As I recall, Malcolm took Stuart North’s furry Russian hat off and pissed in that.”

“Then,” Ben Oakley says, “Malcolm continued to drink his beer whilst streaming full pelt onto the bloke’s head.”

“He pissed all over this bloke,” Mark Lamarr recalls, “But it wasn’t a dribbly piss. From where I was standing, no-one could have lit this better. There was a big arc of piss coming over and dribbling down this bloke’s face and the crowd, as a man – 300 people – stood up and yelled: Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!! And the bloke still hadn’t woken up.

“For a minute or so, there’s this stream – like a waterfall of piss – just going down his designer clothes. He’s there asleep and it’s going on and on and on.

“Eventually, Malcolm zips himself up and says, Alright. That’s it. See you next week. Goodnight, and that’s the end of the night and everyone leaves and there’s this bloke who’s sat there, covered in piss, still fast asleep and eventually his mates nudge him and wake him up and, from across the room, I saw his mates were miming to him how Malcolm pissed on him and he looked down and looked up and opened his mouth in happy excitement. He was over the moon that he’d somehow been a big part of the show, just as a piss recipient.”

Ben Oakley remembers is differently. He says, when Malcolm pissed on Stuart North, “The bloke woke up slowly at first by licking his piss-covered lips and face, then wiped his hand across his cheek and looked at it, at which point the whole place erupted. He got up and ran/staggered out the place.”

When Malcolm told me the story of what had happened, he said that, the following week at The Tunnel, he saw the same guy in the bar. The guy walked up to him and Malcolm thought, Oy Oy He’s going to hit me but, in fact, he beamed at Malcolm, shook him by the hand and thanked him.

“I’ve been dining out on the story all week,” he told Malcolm.

I asked Ben Burke if he thought it would be OK to name Stuart North in this story.

“Please do,” he told me. “It would make Stuart’s family very proud!”

Legends grow in the telling and re-telling of them.

Is there life after stand-up comedy? There is huge potential, it seems.

Next Monday, the movie Huge premieres in London, with a general release on 8th July. It is directed by comedy actor Ben Miller and co-scripted by Simon Godley.

Simon Godley is interesting because he used to play the stand-up comedy circuit but is now a dentist to many top British comedians. Well, he was always a dentist when he himself was a comedian, but now he has a trendy Notting Hill surgery, also runs an art gallery at the same address and acts occasionally.

Huge first premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June. It is about a struggling comedy double act and their ambitions to be the new Morecambe and Wise. Written (in alphabetical order) by Jez Butterworth, Simon Godley and Ben Miller, it was originally a stage play at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1993 and seen as an in-joke about the Fringe but it has also been called “a more universal meditation on the dark heart of comedy”,

The stage play was set in a squat and had only two characters, played by Ben Miller and Simon Godley.

“The most appealing thing about it first of all,” says Ben Miller, “was that it had two characters and one setting. It seemed a cheap film to make. But, of course, by the time we started filming it had fifty actors and umpteen locations and wasn’t cheap at all.”

In the movie, the roles that Ben Miller and Simon Godley played on stage are now taken by Johnny Harris and Noel Clarke.

Simon Godley suggested that every other comic in the film should be played by a real one.  So, for one scene set at a comedy awards (surprisingly not the Malcolm Hardee Awards), Jo Brand, Alan Davies, Harry Hill, Eddie Izzard and Frank Skinner play themselves.

“If your dentist asked a favour, would you dare turn him down?” Ben Miller says.

And then there’s also Stephen K Amos, Ronni Ancona, David Baddiel, Ninia Benjamin, Kevin Bishop, Jack Dee, Hattie Hayridge, Mark Lamarr, Rory McGrath, Sean Mayo, Alistair McGowan, Sally Phillips and Nick Revell all playing themselves plus Simon Day playing a character strangely called Noel Faulkner.

Simon Godley’s celebrity dentist status brought to my mind what happened to Jonathan Meres after he left stand-up comedy.

He used to play the comedy circuit under the name Johnny Immaterial. His opening line was:

“Hello. The name’s immaterial,.. Johnny Immaterial.”

He used to make me laugh mightily though, it has to be said, often more from his charisma and delivery than from the material. It was an act without its own catchphrase but, when Johnny Immaterial intoned “Ooooh, nooo, matron!” in Kenneth Williams‘ unmistakable nasal twang, you could forgive him anything.

He disappeared from the circuit, as I heard it at the time, when he found a good woman in Edinburgh. Anything is possible in Edinburgh.

He was Perrier Award-nominated in 1993 for a show called My Booze Hell By Little Johnny Cartilage, the same year Simon Godley and Ben Miller performed Huge at the Edinburgh Fringe but he played his last stand-up gig in 1994 after, as I understand it, he became disenchanted with the business.

Johnny Immaterial reverted to being Jonathan Meres and became a very highly successful children’s author, publishing his first book in 1998; he has also written extensively for children’s television and, like Simon Godley, kept his performing skills up-to-scratch with various acting roles.

So, yes, there is life after stand-up comedy – it generally pays better and it may lead on to even better things.

The Tunnel, the all-star line-up and the dead godfather

(This blog originally appeared in What’s On Stage)

I am sponsoring the Malcolm Hardee Awards until 2017. This year’s are presented on Friday 27th August. But, in the meantime, every day at the Fringe, there is the Aaaaaaaargh! Malcolm Hardee Documentary event. Nothing to do with me except I gave the director around 20 hours of audio tape recorded when Malcolm and I were writing his autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake.

“This film is beautiful, evocative and in an odd way profound. Brilliant.” (Arthur Smith)

“This is great.” (Stewart Lee)

It was The Independent on Sunday‘s No 1 Fringe comedy favourite and The Scotsman‘s ‘Best of the Festival Pick of the Day’ but I hadn’t seen the whole hour-long event until yesterday. It is an event, rather than a film. Yesterday, it was introduced by comedian Bob Slayer. Future screenings will be introduced by the likes of Simon Munnery and Arthur Smith.

The screening includes a 32-minute documentary The Tunnel (about Malcolm’s most notorious comedy club) followed by a trailer for the still-in-production docmentary Malcolm Hardee: All The Away From Over There… followed by about 16 minutes of clips from MH:ATWFOT.

Interestingly both documentaries are rather wistful, with Malcolm Hardee: All The Way From Over There in particular mixing both laughs and sadness – like all great comedy. The list of those appearing in even these early clips is extraordinary:

Keith Allen, Jo Brand, Charlie Cbuck, Jim Davidson, Harry Enfield, Boy George, The Greatest Show on Legs, Ricky Grover, Rich Hall, John Hegley, Lennie Henry, Jools Holland, Phil Kay, Mark Lamarr, Norman Lovett, Chris Lynam, Bernard Manning, Paul Merton, Simon Munnery, Mike Myers, Vic Reeves

I am not involved in the production of this documentary but, holy shitteroonie, it looks like it could be a fittingly extraordinary tribute to the extraordinary and much-missed ‘godfather of British Alternative Comedy’ Malcolm Hardee.