Mel Moon – a Sick Girl dicing solo with death away from the Edinburgh Fringe

Mel at home yesterday with husband Kris

Comic Mel Moon is being admitted to hospital this afternoon and she is having her throat cut in the operating theatre at 9.30am tomorrow morning.

The Edinburgh Fringe is going to be even more chaotic than usual this year, with some shows not appearing at all and a lot of acts performing at different times and in different venues to what is billed in the official Fringe Programme – all because of the Cowgatehead debacle. (See past blogs if you have to.) But some shows, dates, times and performances have changed for other reasons.

Back in a blog in February this year, Mel talked to me about her show Mel Moon Dicing with Dr Death which was to be co-presented with Philip Nitschke of Exit and would discuss her (since changed) decision to commit suicide with advice from Exit.

Now Philip Nitschke is billed as doing the Dicing with Dr Death show solo.

Why the change?

“These things happen,” Mel told me, when I went to her home in Sussex yesterday afternoon. “As is often the case when you work with someone you don’t know, things don’t always work out the way you would hope… I dunno… We were so different. So very different. Even down to some of the things we believe in. Now there are two shows. I wish him the very best of luck. He has put a lot of money into it. We got the Caves for him as a venue and he’s staying there.

“I am doing my show at the Counting House, 8th-30th August at lunchtime – 12.15pm – thanks to the amazing Alex Petty, who ran to my rescue and offered me a fair old chunk of venues.”

“So you,” I said, “are doing your own solo autobiographical show on much the same subject. Which is called…?”

“Sick Girl – same title as the sitcom Kate Copstick and I are working on for a TV production company.”

“And now,” I said, “you are going into hospital for an operation…”

“Yes. I’ve been through a bit and I’ve never really been scared before – not scared-scared… but… I spent a good chunk of time wanting to die. And now I don’t want to die. So it would be Sod’s Law if this was the thing that did me in.”

“The operation is going to take nine hours?” I asked.

“That’s the maximum,” Mel explained. “They told me the minimum will be 5 or 6 hours but to expect 9 because of the complications I bring to it.”

“Why the operation?” I asked.

“It’s a combination of factors. I had a car accident in 2008 which caused a bit of disc damage in the neck. Three or four of them dislodged, but it was fine. It was no big deal. I was young, I had a few injections for pain and eventually it stopped hurting.

“Then I got this disease – PGF (polyglandular failure) – and started living off steroids… What do steroids do? – They weaken the bone. In high doses, like I’ve been taking for the last three years, they certainly do. So I’ve been taking a couple of other drugs to protect the bones, but it’s not done enough because there was a weakness there already.

“So all those little discs have started to break up and now they’ve taken ones either side with it, so I’ve now got a neck that is slamming on all the different root nerves. So I don’t feel my hands. They’re just numb. I have no real grip and, if I hold my hand in any position for too long, it starts to twitch. And now I don’t feel anything in my lower arms, so I have burns on my arm where I have leant on the iron without realising.

Cut & burns: Mel’s un-feeling arm and elbow

“There’s no point them doing a bone graft because I still have to take the steroids and, in a few years time, the same problem would happen again. So they’re going to take away the damage in the neck and rebuild the neck using some titanium rods and some of these… I saw one… it was like a blue disc. I don’t think the discs are titanium, but I’m not sure.”

“The rods are replacing a bit of your spine?” I asked.

“I guess so,” said Mel. “The truth is I have not pushed for too much information.”

“I don’t think I would want to know anything,” I said.

“In January,” explained Mel, “I went for what I thought was a routine appointment to discuss having the next injection, because I’d been getting a bit of pain. They’d been giving me injections in the neck. Even though I didn’t feel my fingertips, the nerve pain deep in my arm was bloody awful.

“It was an orthopaedic surgeon and he said: I’m really sorry, but the option of giving you injections has gone. We need to operate and we need to do it quick. If you have it done, we can’t guarantee that the problem will go away, but we can guarantee it won’t get any worse. If you don’t have it done, we guarantee you will lose your hands within a year.

“So I signed the form, got out of there, cried my eyes out and made arrangements to have it done. It’s my throat they’re cutting. That’s the bit that gets to me.”

“They don’t,” I asked, “go in via the back of the neck where the discs are?”

“No. They say it’s safer to go round the front. That way, they’re less likely to hit the spinal chord. They cut on a crease in the neck and I’ve got loads of them from my fat.”

“Worth it, though,” I said.

“There are two incentives for the operation,” Mel told me. “One, obviously, is I don’t want to lose my hands. The other is I would really like to reduce the amount of morphine I take.”

“How much morphine do you take?” I asked.

“A shitload. I divide it between two doses. I’m on slow-release morphine. So, in the morning, I take between 70 and 90 milligrams. And I take some at night. So between 180 and 190 milligrams a day.”

“And you still get some pain?”

“Yes I do. I have different type of morphine for breakthrough pain but, if I took that as well, I wouldn’t be able to talk, so I use codeine, which I find as beneficial.”

“How long will you take to recover from the operation?”

“Well, they want you out of there as bloody quick as possible. The SALT team (Speech And Language Team) come to see you the next day and, as soon as you can speak, swallow and have your drains out, you can go.”

“I would keep schtum,” I suggested.

Mel Moon performing on stage

“No, I want to get out of there as quick as possible. The hospital I’m in is in Haywards Heath. But they’re moving to Brighton so, if I don’t recover in eight or nine days, I’ll be moved as well and I don’t want that.”

“Have you a poster or flyer for Edinburgh yet?” I asked.

“No. I thought I was doing the show with Dr Death, but now I’m doing my first solo show with no sponsor, no poster, no flyers. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for anything, including my accommodation, but the Independent newspaper asked me to write an article for them.”

“About the disease?” I asked.

“About everything that’s happened,” said Mel. “I was so excited. It should be published next week.”

Comedian and former plant Dec Munro says there is “Nothing Happening Here”

Dec Munro with an odd-coloured pocket at the Pleasance Dome in Edinburgh in August 2012

“What’s happening?” I asked comedian Dec Munro yesterday in a meeting room at a private members club in central London.

“Nothing Happening Here,” he said.

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? It is the title of the definitively odd comedy evening he runs with Niall McCamley. There is no website. Just a Facebook page.

“I enjoyed the last one,” I said. “I’ll come along this Tuesday (for the next one). How often is Nothing Happening Here?”

“Whenever we decide to do it,” replied Dec. “Tuesday’s will be the third.”

“So why call it Nothing Happening Here?” I asked. “Especially when lots happens.”

“We thought it would be stupid,” explained Dec, “and fun and a way of getting people to a location they might not otherwise go to.”

Dec’s Nothing Happening Here show partner Niall McCamley

“The one I went to last time,” I said, “was an art gallery in Haggerston. Where was the first one?”

“Niall’s flat.”

“And,” I asked, “you’re not going to tell me where this Tuesday’s is, because we’re going to meet at some mystery place you will tell us on the day. Can you tell me what type of location it is?”

“Odd,” replied Dec.

“Surely not?” I asked.

“Everybody is being encouraged to wear glitter,” he told me. “Although we will supply some.”

“Is it sexually dubious?” I asked, nervously.

“No. But that would be amazing: taking people to some kind of S&M torture place. Do you know one?”

Dec Munro in an interesting ex-Belgian room thinking about a torture chamber for comedy

“Dave Courtney,” I said, “has a torture chamber in his back garden in suburban Plumstead. He rents it out to film crews and anyone interested in such things.”

“Mmmm,” mused Dec.

There was a long, thoughtful pause.

“This used to be the headquarters of the Anglo-Belgian Club,” Dec told me.

“Not the most interesting of clubs, then,” I suggested.

“That’s a bit harsh,” he said.

“The Magritte Club would be interesting,” I suggested. “An antelope coming out of the wall wearing a bowler hat.”

“Mmmm,” mused Dec, “I was in the Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen show. I was the guy who runs out and does a little dance.”

“You were a plant in the audience?” I asked.

“Essentially yes,” said Dec. “I got a phone call from a friend saying: We need an idiot to get naked on stage at the Soho Theatre with Arthur Smith. Are you up for doing that? And I said: Sure, no problem at all. 

Arthur Smith Sang Leonard Cohen but required some nudity

“The first time I did it, I took a girl on a second date. Part way through the show, I asked her Will you excuse me for a minute? went backstage, took all my clothes off and tried to make it look more impressive.”

“Make what look more impressive?” I asked.

“My cock.”

“How?”

Dec made a vertical whirling movement with his hand.

“How do I describe that in my blog?” I asked him.

“Willy-wanging? Helicoptering?” he suggested.

“When you demonstrated that,” I said, “you used all four fingers and a thumb. For some of us, that is quite impressive to begin with.”

“The premise of the show,” explained Dec, ignoring my comment, “is that Arthur Smith is talking about Leonard Cohen; Leonard Cohen has a beef with Leonard Nimoy; and some of Leonard Nimoy’s poetry is featured.

Dec Munro attempts to mount a small horse

“So I ran out onstage completely naked except for a Leonard Nimoy face mask, did a little dance, disappointed a lot of people in the front row for a minute by dangling my cock arguably far too close to all of them, ran back offstage, put my clothes back on again and re-joined my date in the audience.

“At no point until about an hour afterwards did she know it was me. She just thought I had gone to the toilet. A friend of mine was there with her parents – I had no idea she was there. She came over and said: Dec! – Great cock tonight! Great cock! That was the point at which the girl I was on a date with figured out it was me.”

“And,” I asked, “then what did she say to you?”

“Nothing complimentary at all.”

“Was there another date?”

“Yes. I imagine it was my natural charm. You know, there is a moment of questioning your life choices when you are backstage downstairs at the Soho Theatre wearing a Spock mask looking at a mirror, whirling your cock round and trying to make it look as big as you possibly can.”

“You did this for the whole run of the show?” I asked.

“No. There was another guy who did it and he had the ability to play the accordion.”

“With his cock?”

Dec Munro – mercifully fully clothed

“No. That would have been impressive. But I got a phone call from my friend saying: Dec, actually there’s another guy and he brings a bit more to it. He can play the accordion while naked and is happy to flash his balls. So he won out and he got to go on BBC Radio 4 and do it when they made Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen: the 30 minute version.”

“Naked on radio?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it an accordion or a squeezebox?” I asked.

“I think it might have been a squeezebox. What’s the difference?”

“A squeezebox,” I suggested, “sounds funnier when a cock and balls are involved.”

“Then it was definitely a squeezebox,” said Dec.

“Whole new avenues open up for your career,” I told him. “If you’re happy to go naked. Malcolm Hardee shows beckon. Have you ever jumped out of a plane?”

“Yes,” replied Dec, “I have jumped out of a plane and it went wrong, because they packed the parachute badly. They do a fixed line thing which automatically opens the parachute. It pulled and dislocated my right shoulder. I was the first person in twelve years to land outside their drop zone – somewhere just outside Lancaster. I landed in a ditch next to barbed wire and ended up on morphine that night at my friend’s birthday.

“I have to say morphine is amazing. You can get through absolutely anything on morphine. I was supposed to organise a surprise party for my friend, so I said: Please, just give me lots of morphine. I have not had it since, but I look back on it fondly.”

“Morphine was amazing in what way?” I asked.

“You just float,” explained Dec, “and, even though you know you’re in a lot of pain, you’re distracted and everything feels lovely and you’re happy. I think morphine should be obligatory.”

“Well,” I said, “I think it is in certain parts of London. Are you plugging anything else apart from Nothing Happening Here and morphine?”

A photo promoting Nothing Happening Here displayed on the show’s Facebook page

“I’ve now got a little venue just next to the Bank of England that I’d like to put previews and stuff in so, if people would like to get in touch, that would be amazing. I’m going to try and get some well-known people and some weird, different, offbeat, Michael Brunströmy type fun people. He was the first act at the first Nothing Happening Here. He did 15 minutes as Mary Quant and nobody in the audience bar two people knew who Mary Quant was. I loved it.”

“Beyond that?” I asked.

“I want,” said Dec, “to do fun things and meet good people and do interesting things and maybe earn some money while doing it.”

When I am a few hours away from death, give me tons of morphine

I met someone the other day who is trying to give up smoking.

His doctor has prescribed tablets to help him.

In some patients, according to the doctor, the tablets can have the side effect of making the person taking them feel suicidal.

So no problem with the Trade Descriptions Act there, then. Suicide would certainly stop you smoking.

Western medicine. Dontcha love it?

It reminds me of the quirky UK law which says that it is illegal for a doctor to administer drugs with the aim of killing a patient. But it is legal for a doctor to knowingly give a patient a lethal dose of a drug if the primary reason for administering the drug is to alleviate pain. So a doctor can legally give a drug to a patient knowing it will certainly kill him/her provided that death is only a side-effect and the primary aim is to stop pain and suffering.

I have no problem with that law because it allows euthanasia through a loophole and also, as I understand it, large numbers, if not the majority, of people who die “quietly” in hospital are speeded on their way by doctors. Having sat alone in a room with my father while he died over several hours without ‘help’, I think it is one of the often surprisingly sensible quirks in the British legal system.

“Death rattle” is a remarkably exact description of the sound of the certainty of oncoming death, although it doesn’t even hint at the effect when it continues for hours.

When I am a few hours away from death, give me tons of morphine or anything to shorten the process.