So is it a good gig when, before it starts, the sound of “Cunt! Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!” chanted by 500 voices precedes the act and, before his final song, the entire audience boos at the thought of what is to come?
Is it a good gig when the act steals an iPhone to stop a punter videoing the show, then videos the audience and throws it back at him?
Is it a good gig when, in the second half, the entire audience is joyously singing along to songs about Fred & Rose West, Jimmy Savile and sundry paedophiles?
Is it a good gig when the act rips off his penis and throws it into the audience?
Well yes it is, if the sold-out Saturday night gig at Proud Camden in London is billed as Kunt and The Gang‘s last ever performance after 13 years of touring the UK.
In the Pat Monahan blog, there was a single sentence, easily missed: “Then I watched a Graham Norton Show being recorded.”
That is not the full story.
In fact, Sandra appeared on The Graham Norton Show twice.
“My friend had applied for tickets and she got some, then she got a phone call asking: Have you got any stories for the red chair? She said: No, but I know someone who has.”
For blog-readers abroad… The Graham Norton Show is always filled with A-list guests – like Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro and Robert Downey Jr – but it has a section where members of the audience sit in a red chair, tell a story and, if Graham Norton gets bored, they are tilted backwards out of the chair.
The result of Sandra’s story – on a 2009 show with Jimmy Carr, Catherine Tate and 50 Cent – is on YouTube. She tells her story 2mins 15secs into the clip.
“So,” I said, “you told of your encounter deep in the Yew Forest with the man in a kilt…”
“And very soon afterwards,” said Sandra, “I got a message to ring the show and they said: Can you do another little thing for us?”
“What,” I asked, “did they say they wanted?”
“They changed their minds lots of times. First of all they said: We want you to tell the story again then go round onto the stage with Graham and you’ll see something. There was something about Scotsmen in kilts.”
“A lot of people,” Sandra told me, “got a lot of pleasure out of it. The maintenance man put it on a loop at work and someone I know saw it in Australia. She was surprised.”
“Who else was on that second show?” I asked.
“Well,” Sandra told me, “Sarah Jessica Parker was on it as a guest but had to leave before the end and Joan Rivers then said: Are the cameras off?
“Graham said: Yes.
“I want you Brits to know, Joan Rivers said, that Michael Jackson is a fucking paedophile. You might not have got the whole story. And she went on a complete rant about how much he had paid off people. So that was an unexpected extra.”
“It is always weird when you meet people involved with a gig and get on with them, have a laugh, then the gig goes wrong and they don’t want to look you in the eye. And other comics avoid you in case your dose of the unfunnies is catching. If you are sharing a car it can be a painful journey.
“The first gig was really struggling. But then it got to a bit which always goes down well: Martin’s Thriller sketch where we put elastic bands round our heads to distort our faces into zombie masks while we dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The original routine: Malcolm Hardee (left) & Martin Soan (photograph by Steve Taylor)
“Except that, when Martin cued the music (at which point we are already committed to the Michael Jackson zombie dance) instead of Thriller, the music that came on was Black or White. It was the wrong track on the CD.
“The audience just looked at us, confused, while we did our dance, putting rubber bands on our heads to distort our faces and dancing like zombies to Black or White. They didn’t know it is the wrong track. It just seems very strange to them.
“Afterwards, one of the acts told me he was watching and thinking: Are they making a statement about being black? With elastic bands????
“Fortunately, at the second gig, we got the right track and the gig went beautifully.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 