WARNING! THERE ARE MULTIPLE USES OF THE ‘F’ WORD AND THE ‘C’ WORD IN THIS PIECE… PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL IF YOU ARE OF A NERVOUS OR EASILY-OFFENDED DISPOSITION… OTHER BLOGS ARE WIDELY AVAILABLE TO READ ELSEWHERE…
The Last Laugh with Jerry Sadowitz in September 1990
I encountered Jerry through Malcolm during that time and later, in 1990, I produced a couple of TV shows for BSB (the precursor to BSkyB) via Noel Gay Television.
The other was an episode of Noel Gay’s series The Last Laugh.
The Last Laugh with Jerry Sadowitz was recorded to be a 55-minute show though it was later transmitted as a 45-minute show (for general scheduling reasons, not because of content).
BSB had a fairly liberal remit for comedy content.
Comedians were allowed to swear, within reason, and could use the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ if they were an integral and essential component of the routine – ie if removing or changing the words would weaken the gag.
However, as Jerry tended to have a high level of expletives in his act – and, indeed, at one time used to say, with some justification, that “The word ‘cunt’ is a term of affection in Glasgow”, I thought trying to bar him from using the F and the C words altogether would damage the flow of his delivery of the lines.
So I told him in advance something like (I can’t remember the precise words nor the exact number):
“Try not to swear but we can probably cope with a couple of ‘cunts’ and four or five ‘fucks’. We won’t cut them out or bleep them but, if you try not to use them at all then, if a few slip through in the nature of the act… that’s OK.”
Imagine my surprise when he did the whole comedy and magic act, full-on for 55 minutes without a single ‘fuck’ or ‘cunt’. And he was still able to maintain the offensiveness of the act.
There was one, not really surprising, problem though.
During the show, there were two lesbians in the audience whom Jerry spotted and, inevitably, he started making them the butt of some of his material.
Afterwards they made clear to me and others how outraged they had been by all this “offensive” material aimed at them.
I can’t remember whether Jerry was there when they complained or whether I told him afterwards.
But he was, in my opinion, genuinely taken aback that anyone would or could be actually offended and complain about the content of his comedy show. His reaction was – and again I paraphrase here – “But it’s a comedy show!”
I tend to agree with him.
(The lesbians were cut out of the transmitted show for flow-of-the-programme reasons, not for offensiveness reasons.)
The Last Laugh with Jerry Sadowitz but without lesbians, for time reasons…
(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS AT LEAST ONE OFFENSIVE WORD; DON’T READ FURTHER IF IT IS GOING TO SCARE YOU)
Jerry Sadowitz’s 1987 album Gobshite
The aftershock of The Pleasance venue cancelling the second of Jerry Sadowitz’s two comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe rumbles on.
Yesterday’s blog was a transcript of what I said in an interview with LBC Radio yesterday morning.
As a reminder, the venue’s jaw-dropping Doublethink ‘explanation’ for cancelling Sadowitz’s show was:
“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his (Jerry Sadowitz’s) first show is not acceptable… This type of material has no place on the festival and the Pleasance will not be presenting his second and final show.”
After criticism, the venue has now issued a second carefully-worded (I emphasise carefully-worded) statement including the frankly chilling:
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
I have italicised “whether performed in character or not”.
As people who have actually seen Jerry Sadowitz shows over the last 30 years know (as opposed to those who have not seen the act) his confrontational delivery sets out to affront. It is clear he is being offensive as an act, for an effect.
He used to open his shows with: “Nelson Mandela – What a cunt!” presumably just to set the tone while the esteemed Mr Mandela was alive.
The Pleasance knew that Jerry Sadowitz’s act was – and would be – confrontational and intentionally offensive. Always has been. Indeed, it was advertised by Jerry and by The Pleasance as such. And they have staged his shows before.
The Pleasance stages theatrical performances as well as comedy.
To repeat with additional italicisation:
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
This means – and, yes, it can only logically mean – that character comedy such as Al Murray’s comic creation The Pub Landlord and Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge character should not be allowed to express their ‘unacceptable’ stories and views.
Both on-stage/screen characters often express views which are not the performer’s. Jerry Sadowitz’s on-stage performances – though more extreme – also include views which are equally and clearly not his own.
First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the stories and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing.
“…stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged…”
Vast swathes of British drama would presumably be deemed unacceptable because to express offensiveness would itself be unacceptable, even if the offensiveness expressed was by a character. That’s the end of parody, satire and irony, then. Context becomes irrelevant.
A drama – or indeed a comedy – about Hitler would not and should not be allowed to include the character of Hitler expressing any racist views. So Hitler’s thoughts and beliefs could not be shown to be vile because the thoughts and the expression of those thoughts would be in themselves too offensive to utter.
Last night on GBNews, Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation, with comics Leo Kearse and Josh Howie, discussed The Pleasance’s first steps on the Road to Hell.
Andrew Doyle is a former writer for the comedic Jonathan Pie character.
Someone I know tells me they won’t watch this clip because they won’t watch (their words) “right wing” GBNews.
For those who won’t watch the nationally-transmitted GBNews, at one point Andrew Doyle, who is gay, says:
“There’s always something in a Jerry Sadowitz show that makes you think: That’s too far! He couldn’t possibly have just said that!
“And that’s the point. That’s the context.
“I remember sitting there watching him do this TEN MINUTE rant about the evils of homosexuals and the disgusting things that they get up to behind closed doors and it was hilarious and (in theory) so offensive to people like me.
“He’s also incredibly anti-Semitic. He’s Jewish!
“That should give you a clue about what he’s doing there…”
Later, Doyle says:
“I heard, by the way, that the complaints mostly came from members of staff at the venue.”
I have no way of knowing if that’s true but, according to the BBC, The Pleasance said that “unacceptable abuse” was later directed towards some staff on Saturday from people phoning to criticise the cancellation.
Some members of the public complained about the show, so it was cancelled…
Some members of the public complained about the show being cancelled, so did The Pleasance bow to their individual views? No.
Presumably The Pleasance places more importance on the opinions of their temporary staff on the night and after the night than on the reportedly 600 punters who chose to pay to attend and see the show, which had up-front warnings from both The Pleasance and Sadowitz about it being offensive.
Incidentally, the show was titled: Not For Anyone…
Yesterday, Jerry Sadowitz put a video online promoting his upcoming comedy tour…
…and he also Tweeted, via @RealJSadowitz, a comment on The Pleasance’s actions.
“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his first show is not acceptable…”
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing.
On the same day that Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the US for writing something which some people found offensive, Anthony Alderson of the Pleasance (normally a logical man) issued a statement saying surreally:
“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his (Jerry Sadowitz’s) first show is not acceptable… This type of material has no place on the festival and the Pleasance will not be presenting his second and final show.”
The Pleasance had no inkling that Jerry Sadowitz might be offensive…
My reaction on air was:
Well, I think he should do a comedy show based on that. shouldn’t he?
The story is that Jerry was offensive. I mean, Jerry has been doing offensive material for 30 years – 40 years? – and the Pleasance have been going for about 30 years. The Pleasance and Jerry have been going for about the same amount of time.
He is famous for being offensive. That’s why you book him in. That’s why the Pleasance booked him in, presumably – that he would be offensive. That’s his schtick.
So, if he’s NOT offensive, people will complain. But now, because some people complained about him being offensive – despite the fact he was clearly flagged as being offensive – the Pleasance appears to be committing professional suicide.
Interestingly, they say it’s the material. Apparently he showed his willy to the front row. But they didn’t find that offensive; they found the MATERIAL offensive.
The whole point about Jerry Sadowitz is “He’s offensive!” That’s it.
Most comedy really has to be offensive in some way – or it has to be surprising. The whole point is a ‘punchline’ at the end. And a punchline is something you don’t expect, coming out of nowhere.
One of the best ways to come out of nowhere with a punchline is to do something that’s ‘offensive’. Frankie Boyle does it all the time. Bernard Manning used to do it to mainstream audiences. Bernard Manning is a great example.
I saw Bernard Manning at his own club twice and he had four-letter words all over the first half and then he stopped. They weren’t in the second half.
I thought: This is strange. Then I realised, in fact, he was being offensive to his very mainstream, middle-of-the-road audience in the first half but, having established that he was offensive, he didn’t have to do it any more. (They came to be offended.)
If you go to a Sadowitz show, you want to be offended.
There are no rules in comedy, really. People say you can’t make rape jokes. You can’t make jokes about rape. Generally, that’s true. But I have seen very funny rape jokes – But they’re not really about rape, they’re about…
I mean, Janey Godley, the Glaswegian comedian, had problems recently: being Cancelled. She put on Jerry Sadowitz’s first stand-up show in her pub. She did a show in Edinburgh – and wrote her autobiography about – being raped when she was a child, I think from about 5 to about 12.
And people laughed in the Edinburgh show. They didn’t laugh AT it. (They laughed WITH it.) She made the jokes against the rapist and she made the audience laugh despite the fact it was an ‘unacceptable’ subject.
You can make a joke about an unacceptable subject if you do it in the right way.
You have to be a very good comedian, as Sadowitz – and Janey – are.
Last weekend, actor Will Smith (a former comic) slapped Chris Rock (a current comic) in the face at the Oscars ceremony for allegedly slighting his wife with an ad-libbed joke obliquely-referring to her alopecia-caused baldness/shaved head.
I can’t help but feel that Americans’ sensibilities are a little too touchy and their attempts at edgy comedy could do with a bit more edge-sharpening.
Still… it was the slap that echoed round the world, making front-page news and generating much comment.
On Twitter, British comedian and writer David Baddiel observed: “As a comedy moment it’s still not up there with a member of the audience at Montreal’s Just For Laughs 1991 punching Jerry Sadowitz out cold for opening with Hello moose-fuckers!
The full line was: “Hello moose-fuckers! I tell you why I hate Canada: half of you speak French, and the other half let them.“
As David Baddiel pointed out, there is no footage of that particular punch, but there is a video of Clive Anderson interviewing comedians Denis Leary and Bill Hicks about it after the event…
In a comment on David Baddiel’s Tweet this week, Mr AR Felix (who describes himself as a “Ferrari supporter, casual artist and culture vulture”) wrote:
“The rarely-quoted follow up line, which Sadowitz claims is what actually led to him being attacked was: Why don’t you speak Indian? You might as well speak the language of the people you stole the country off of in the first place.”
When I mentioned the Sadowitz attack on my own Facebook page, former Time Out editor Dominic Wells commented:
“Loved Jerry/Gerry Sadowitz — the reason for my G/J being that when I was still chief sub on Time Out, and editor Don Atyeo showed his new columnist round the office, I asked him (pre-internet): How do you spell G/Jerry?
“Spell it how ye fucking want, son, ah don’t give a shite, quoth the comic.
Jerry or Gerry Sadowitz takes Time Out with Ben Elton
“So I (unlike Wikipedia, now that it exists) spelt it with a G in all his Time Out columns and the cover he was on, throttling the Spitting Image puppet of Ben Elton, for which Ben apparently never forgave us.
“G/Jerry was by a long chalk the funniest columnist I have EVER read, let alone subbed. I would hoot with laughter at his copy. Sadly G/Jerry proved too close to the edge even for Time Out. The editor couldn’t handle the letters of complaint and sacked him after just four or five, despite my entreaties.
“I guess the tone was set by his very first column, replacing Muriel Gray, who had departed for the Guardian or similar. It opened with a poem:
“See that Muriel Gray/ In a’ the Fleet Street papers/ You can read her if you want/ But I’d rather fuck the Proclaimers.“
After this Facebook comment, comic and cultural icon John Dowie reminisced:
“What’s the worst opening remark a comedian could ever say? asked Nick Revell, backstage prior to a 1980s comedy gig. Nelson Mandela – What a cunt! was the winning answer… Jerry opened with it… Of course.”
Then, returning to the subject of outrage caused at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, Rob Williams (who describes himself as a “writer of stuff” added:
“Malcolm Hardee at Montreal got told before going on that they love observational humour. Do observational stuff and you’ll be fine, they told him… So he opened with: Have you ever noticed that if you stick a carrot up your arse and lick it it tastes like shit?”
I can’t help but feel that Will Smith – especially as an ex-comic – was being more than a tad over-sensitive and Chris Rock could have been more offensive.
My Scots comedy chum Janey Godley is down in London this week, from Glasgow.
I met up with her this evening for a chat.
“I’ll give ye a blog,” she told me. “What do you want me tae talk aboot?”
And, before I could reply, she started:
“I’ve stopped smoking for a month now,” she said, “and I’m on a diet, so my whole family have been put into the witness protection programme while that happens. And, if you talk to me about it, I’ll stab ye.”
“Well,” I said, “No change there, then.”
‘It’s hard to stop smoking,” she continued, “but to stop smoking AND go on a diet isn’t really that much harder cos you’re using the same willpower for both.”
“I would have thought,” I said, “that it must make you twice as angry as normal – but maybe that’s not possible with you.”
“That,’ said Janey, “is what (Janey’s nameless husband) says: How can we tell the difference?”
Janey looked over her shoulder.
“There’s really loud people behind me,” she said, “who deserve to be stabbed.But I’m really excited cos I’m up for four Scottish Comedy Awards on 27th April. have you voted for me yet?”
“Yes,” I said quickly.
“I won the Podcast one last year,” she told me. “This year, I’m up for Best Headliner, Best Compere, Best Podcast again and Best Festival/Tour Show.”
‘Tell me why are you in London in some way that’s repeatable?” I asked.
“I’m in London this week,” she explained, “cos I had a couple of meetings with the BBC about future projects and I’m doing a couple of gigs – Banana Cabaret in Balham and Soho Comedy.”
“Is that the one in the gay street?” I asked. (It is not.)
“A gay street in Soho?” laughed Janey. “That must be a fucking hard task to find, eh?”
The Admiral Duncan pub in Soho (Photograph by Ewan Munro)
“Old Compton Street,” I said, “I didn’t know the street was supposed to be gay until the Admiral Duncan blew up when the nail bomb went off.”
“You didn’t know it was gay,” said Janey, “because not one gay man has ever approached you in your entire life. They’ve all went: No, you’re on yer own, John.”
“Not even women,” I said. “I once had a pigeon approach me at Oxford Circus.”
“I bet,” said Janey that even it bolted when it saw you.”
“No,” I said. “You know the barriers at the kerb to stop you walking across the street? I was outside one of those, walking on the narrow bit of the kerb, and this pigeon was strutting towards me and I thought it would give way to me, but it didn’t. I had to step into the road so it could walk along past me on the kerb.”
“That happened to me,” said Janey, “in Earls Court with a rat. You remember that hotel I lived in in Earls Court? There was a rat in the middle of the pavement and I thought: Well, clearly, if I bang ma feet, it’ll bolt. No. It stayed. I had to go into the road and I almost got hit by a car cos I was walking round a rat. And, see, when I went to the other side of the street, it turned its head to look at me and never moved. I am thinking like: Ya fuckin’ bastard! It was the size of a small poodle. I was frightened.”
“It was a very self-confident pigeon,” I said. “Its shoulders were going like it was an Essex Boy.”
“It’s the only bird that would come near you,” said Janey.
“Any other jollities for the blog?” I asked.
“I’m still,” said Janey, “having a fight with people on Twitter over the word cunt. They still can’t believe you can say that word. The other day, Ricky Gervais put up a post with the word cunt in it. That’s OK cos he’s rich and middle class. But, if I say it…”
“But you won’t,” I asked, “have had any Scottish people objecting?”
“A lot of people,” said Janey.
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
Janey’s current Twitter page has 16.5k followers
“Yup. It’s really weird that nobody will say anything to me (At the time of writing, Janey has over 16,500 Twitter followers) but, the minute I say cunt, people start to come on Twitter and moan. I always then put up this post that says: If the first time you’ve contacted me is cos you’ve saw the word cunt but, whenever I’ve asked you to donate to the Food Bank and you’ve never contacted me, then that means you’re a cunt.”
“But I mean,” I said, “in Glasgow, it’s the equivalent of an Australian calling someone a ‘bastard’. It’s not strong.”
“They still have an issue with it,” said Janey. “It’s unbelievable that the word cunt makes you bad.”
“When you think,” I said, “of the things they asterisked-out in Victorian novels – H*ll possibly and certainly d***ed.”
“In London in 1960,” said Janey, “they had the court case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover – about the language in that – cunt – and it was found to be not obscene. So I can say the word cunt specifically.”
“Some of us,” I said, “lost the same court case in Norwich in 1996.”
“Did you?” said Janey.
“I was,” I told her, “found guilty of Malicious Communication for calling someone a fucking cunt.”
“You called somebody a cunt?” asked Janey.
“A fucking cunt,” I said. “I thought it was fair comment. The judge said in his ruling that both the words fucking and cunt were ‘clearly indecent’. As far as I could see, that overturned the decision in the Lady Chatterley case under Common Law.”
“You got taken to court for calling somebody a cunt?” asked Janey.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re a dick,” she told me. “Who did you call a cunt? The Queen?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “You should read my blog.”
“I usually do. It’s fuckin’ brilliant. Ashley (Janey’s daughter) is obsessed with your North Korean blogs. They’ve made Ashley want to go to North Korea.’
“Everyone should go to North Korea,” I suggested.
“She’s no going to North Korea,” said Janey firmly.
“It’s safe,” I said, “provided you don’t say anything. I used to go to lots of Communist countries because they were safe.”
Jonathan Ross as I remember him between my holidays….
“I have to say,” said Janey, “that the best laugh I ever had on Twitter was when I contacted Jonathan Ross and asked: Do you remember John Fleming? And he Tweeted back: Is he still going to weird Communist bloc countries? And I said: Yeah. You definitely remember him.”
“That’s it finished,” I told Janey. “That’s the way to do a blog. Pretend it’s about someone else, but it’s really all about Me, Me, Me.”
Pete covers up a nasty or potentially Nazi spot on his neck
This blog was supposed to be posted on 1st April, until I realised there might be a credibility problem if I posted it on that date.
I had a chat with Pete Perke aka Pete Sinclair aka Pete Cunningham aka Tom Mones aka Frank Sanazi. Frank Sanazi sings like Frank Sinatra but looks like Adolf Hitler.
“So,” I said to Pete, “you are going over to Austria as Frank Sanazi to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.”
“Well,” he said, “Kulture Banane, the Austrian boylesque troupe, have become massive in Austria and have asked me to go over and do my show Das Vegas Nights (Zis Time We Win) on 18th April,two days before Hitler’s birthday. Actually, I only recently realised that Hitler was born on 20th April, which is Aries. That would make him a genuine Arian.”
“They’re just boylesque?” I asked. “Not Nazi boylesque in short trousers?”
“Well,” said Pete, “one of the guys – he could be a woman for all I know – performs a hijab act which is basically strip burlesque.”
“You’ve played Frank Sanazi in Berlin, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah. Five or six times.”
“How do they react?”
“The first time I did it, the crowd were a bit…”
“Stunned?” I suggested.
“Well, I was told they loved it, but you can never tell with German audiences. There’s not laugh-out-loud vocal appreciation. When I play to an older crowd in Germany, they can be uncomfortable-squirmy a bit, but the young crowd just find it hilarious. Time has moved on so much they don’t feel part of anything their forefathers did.”
Frank Sanazi at the 2014 Malcolm Hardee Awards Show
“I suppose Hitler will never die,” I said. “Malcolm Hardee and I booked The Rockin’ Gorbachev on a couple of TV shows and, of course, his career died when Gorbachev got ousted. But you’re not just a one character act.”
“Yes, I’ve diversified,” said Pete. “I do a lot of straight singing and I have Frank Sanazi and Tom Mones (an old Tom Jones).”
“How is your Vladimir Putin act doing?” I asked.
“I’m not sure if he has legs,” said Pete. “Putin is still very ‘in’ at the moment. As long as he keeps in the spotlight, I’m OK. At the moment, I sing Ukranian Men (to the tune It’s Raining Men) But Crimea River (Cry Me a River) is an obvious follow-up. And then there’s Putin on The Blitz (Putting On The Ritz).”
“Are you doing him at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?” I asked.
“No,” said Pete. “This year I’ve got the Voodoo Rooms to take my whole Iraq Pack show. I’ve got Pete Storm playing Dean Stalin (Stalin singing like Dean Martin) and I’ve written a great song for George who’s going to play Osama Bing Crosby and Saddami Davis Jnr is singing Arranged Marriage to the tune of Love and Marriage:
Ar-ranged marriage Ar-ranged marriage To a woman called Fatima Mohammed This I’ll tell you mother She looks just like her brother
“I wrote a new song recently for Osama Bing Crosby. He said he needed a song on his own because we were just doing a duet:
I have heard to the Taliban You are now a forgotten man Well, dead Jew ever What a swell party this is
“So I wrote him:
How unlucky can one guy be They shot her, then they shot me Like the New York Times said Ain’t that a shot in the head?
“I’ve never,” I said, “heard you ever talk about getting bad reactions from audiences.”
A singing Hitler – apparently less offensive than a dead Elvis
“I used to do an act called Dead Elvis,” Pete told me. “I used to come out of this coffin in a mask with worm holes cut out and I did send-up songs: Are You Hungry Tonight? (Are You Lonesome Tonight)… and The Burgers Went Straight To My Heart… those sort of songs. And I got more stick for doing that than I ever have for Frank Sanazi. Because people love Elvis so much they treat him like Jesus. I stopped doing that act because I was getting so much grief for it.”
“And you’re trend-proof,” I said. “because you play the comedy circuit, the cabaret circuit and the fetish circuit.”
“Yes,” said Pete. “There’s a Festival of Sins show this Saturday, a new fetish night. It ran before, five years ago. It was always overshadowed by the Torture Garden but Festival of Sins was possibly the second biggest in London – run by a guy called David de Vynél and he’s re-kickstarting it. It went tits-up when he married the woman he ran it with.”
There is a clip on Vimeo from the Festival of Sins show in 2010.
“I performed at his wedding and the wedding cake was an entire woman just covered in cake: you had to eat the cake off the top of her. It was very well-presented. This guy turned up – the best man – completely stark bollock naked. All he wore were a couple of little bits of tinsel round his penis and a couple of baubles for balls. And he had a massive dong – I think that’s why he went round naked.”
“I remember one Torture Garden,” said Pete, “where there was a guy in a cage and he had a Superman-style cape on and nothing else and he was peeing on people as they walked past. The other thing they had was like an iron lung from Barbarellawith perspex over it, so you could put your hands in the gloves and feel whoever it was inside.
“And you know those things they have in Post Offices? Big thick latex things that hang down. I think they do it for health & hygiene. They have them in abattoirs – almost see-through plastic that you can push our way through…”
“Your local Post Office,” I said, “is more interesting than mine.”
“Well,” said Pete, “they had these people just chopping meat up. They had carcasses of sheep. I don’t know how they got away with that, because blood was spattering over everybody as they were going through.
“A couple came in when I was performing- I only knew they were a man and woman because of their size and shape. They had full Nazi outfits on and full gimps masks with zips so you could just see their eyes. They sat right in front of the stage when I performed, watched me for about 25 minutes, then stood up, clapped their gloves together and walked out. It was the most surreal thing.”
“Who else is on the bill with you for the Hitler birthday gig?” I asked.
“Jesus Christ is flying over from Glasgow,” said Pete.
There is a clip on YouTube of Frank Sanazi singing Strangers On My Flight.
I have blogged about the Dapper Laughs controversy before. It is too complicated to explain again, but you can pick up the gist on Wikipedia if you have to.
There is also a compilation video of Dapper Laughs material on YouTube
Comedian Lewis Schaffer – an American based in the UK – once got a review at the Edinburgh Fringe from a young, inexperienced reviewer. It said his act was ‘mildly racist’. Lewis Schaffer has always said this review was one of the worst he has ever received because of the use of that horrible, horrible word – ‘mildly’.
“Who wants to be mildly anything?” he says.
Yesterday afternoon I went to see Lewis Schaffer perform at The Establishment Club in London and, in the evening, saw him perform at his regular weekly show at the Leicester Square Theatre.
At The Establishment, gay acts Scott Capurro and Dickie Beau were on the bill and stayed around to watch him. Lewis Schaffer’s act was relentlessly about gay people. In the evening, almost everyone in the audience got ‘picked on’ for being gay or Scottish or (in one case) coming from the Indian sub-continent – which translated as being a Palestinian Islamic extremist, despite the fact the guy said he was a ‘Christian atheist’.
Both shows were very funny.
After the Leicester Square show, I had a chat with Lewis Schaffer.
Mild Lewis Schaffer at the Leicester Square Theatre last night
“The attitude of people in this country at the moment,” he said, “reminds me of America during the Vietnam War – how excited everyone was about everything. There was a heightened level of awareness and movement.”
“I think we’re just as lethargic as ever,” I said.
“No, I think there’s a big difference,” said Lewis Schaffer, “between now and even five years ago. People now get into arguments over the slightest possible thing.”
“That is just you being argumentative,” I said.
“No,” said Lewis Schaffer, “it’s other people being argumentative – like what they did to Dapper Laughs. Whether what Dapper Laughs said was good or bad, I think the reason other comedians picked on him was because they were jealous of him: that he had not worked his way up through the ranks, that he called himself a comedian.”
“Well,” I said, “he needed a manager to control what happened.”
“Yeah,” said Lewis Schaffer, “he needed someone to take the flak for him. He rose too high and he fell too fast.”
“But he was a one-off,” I said. “He was just not experienced enough to deal with it.”
“He had a TV series, a tour, an album,” said Lewis Schaffer. “He had everything. The question is What does he do now?”
Dapper Laughs – is the presenter’s career “dead in the water”?
“He’s dead in the water,” I said.
“Do you think he ever has a chance making it back in the comedy business?”
“Not for five or six years,” I said, “by which time he will be perceived as being from a previous generation of performers.”
“And,” said Lewis Schaffer, “at that point, he’s not going to be interesting to anybody.”
“Yup,” I said. “He tried the best he could by going on Newsnight and saying Oh, I’ve killed off the character – to make it seem like there’s a distinction between him and Dapper Laughs. But it was too little too late.”
“It’s similar to what happened to Andrew Dice Clay in America,” said Lewis Schaffer.
“He just seemed to disappear from the radar,” I said.
“Well,” said Lewis Schaffer, “he rose very fast as well. He was on MTV and making movies and things and then people heard what he was saying. He saw himself as a joke but his audience was taking him seriously. He was a skinny Jewish guy from Brooklyn and he was playing it as a tough Italian.
“He was under a lot of pressure with people hating him. He didn’t want people to hate him. He was a comedian. As soon as he cried – forget it – he lost his core audience. They didn’t want to see some supposedly tough guy crying.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He still performs but he’s never reached the level of success he had. He’s done some acting – I think he was in a Woody Allen movie.”
I laughed out loud.
“He also did a DVD of a comedian basically being unprepared and self-destructing on stage.”
“He’s stolen your act,” I said.
“With me, hopefully,” said Lewis Schaffer, “there’s some kind of ending where it all comes together and we all have a good time. I think he was told at the time You can’t release this DVD and he released it anyway.
“It’s fascinating in this business what happens when people turn on you – what happens in life when people turn on you. It’s like TheBonfire of The Vanities scenario where the guy is a Master of The Universe one day and the next day he’s running for his life.”
Fatty Arbuckle – or is it Michael Barrymore?
“Michael Barrymore was Fatty Arbuckle,” I said. “As far as I understand it, Fatty Arbuckle had three trials, was found innocent of rape and manslaughter – he didn’t do it, but his entire career was destroyed. He had just organised a party. And, as far as I’m aware, no-one has ever said Barrymore was in any way directly responsible for the death of the guy in the swimming pool. He just hosted a party in a rambling house where something happened. But his career was destroyed.”
“What interests me,” said Lewis Schaffer, “is how do people deal with being idolised one day and being persona non grata the next? I find that really fascinating. The question is What is going to happen to Dapper Laughs?”
“He won’t have made that much money,” I said. “One series on ITV2 and a first tour.”
“The point is,” said Lewis Schaffer, “he’s the kind of person who’s doing anything for a laugh. He’s not political; he’s not motivated; he’s not a misogynist or racist; he just wants to be famous and he picked the wrong thing to be famous over. Now he’s thinking: Holy shit! I made a mistake here! It’s not that I agree with what he did or said – I don’t even know exactly what he did or said.”
“It’s too extreme,” said Lewis Schaffer, “but I imagine he meant it as a joke.”
“I think maybe,” I said, “he just lost control of the character. He was thinking through the character’s mind and lost objective control of what he was doing.”
“He wasn’t experienced enough,” said Lewis Schaffer. “After a while you know what you can and cannot say. He didn’t have that experience and the other comedians turned on him. Well, they don’t even consider him a comedian because he hadn’t done open mic spots or been on a road trip for some agency.”
Carr at the 2006 Malcolm Hardee Show (Photograph by Warren King)
I told Lewis Schaffer: “When I staged a five hour Malcolm Hardee show at the Hackney Empire in 2006, I had three comperes for the three parts and, because of their availability, I had to have Jimmy Carr and one of the hosts in the first part. I scheduled Jimmy Carr as the last act in Part 1. Then the compere of Part 1 – who wasn’t available for Part 2 – said he would not introduce Jimmy Carr because he had just done that joke about gypsy moths which had got him a lot of flak. So I had to move Jimmy Carr to the first act of Part 2 because he wasn’t available later.”
“What was the gypsy moth joke again?” asked Lewis Schaffer.
“The male gypsy moth can smell the female gypsy moth up to seven miles away – and that fact also works if you remove the word moth. Which is a clever joke.”
“No it isn’t,” said Lewis Schaffer. “It’s not nice to the gypsies.”
I laughed: “Your entire act is based on insulting people. That gypsy moth joke is very well-crafted and, said, in Jimmy Carr’s cynical, throwaway persona I’m sure it was very funny. I never actually heard him tell it, so I don’t know.”
“It IS a well-crafted joke,” agreed Lewis Schaffer, “but the problem is it’s not making fun of the audience or making fun of the audience for believing that gypsies smell. The point is you can’t tell that joke to an audience of non-gypsies. I think Jimmy Carr is hysterically funny but that joke is inappropriate.”
“But you’re always insulting your audience,” I said.
Lewis Schaffer advice after last night’s Leicester Square show
“If he had an audience of gypsies and he made that joke right to their faces,” said Lewis Schaffer, “that’s OK… In my gig at The Establishment Club this afternoon, I didn’t do any race material. I never do black material unless there are black people there.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I suppose I could tell an anti-Semitic joke to you because you’re Jewish and that would be OK, but it would not be acceptable to tell it to…”
“…a room full of Nazis,” said Lewis Schaffer.
“Though I might make good money.” I said.
“You might make some money,” agreed Lewis Schaffer, “but you shouldn’t do it. That’s the point.”
Sometimes it is strange what people find offensive.
Last night, my eternally-un-named friend and I went to Vivienne and Martin Soan’s monthly variety and comedy club Pull The Other One in Nunhead, South East London.
Ending the night was Frank Sanazi, the wonderful act that sounds like Frank Sinatra but looks like Hitler.
Three people walked out.
The problem was his new sidekick ‘Anne Stank’ who talked about being lonely up in the attic and sang Björk’s Ssshhhhh….It’s Oh So Quiet.
Anne and attic antics
“I don’t understand,” my eternally-un-named friend said afterwards, “why they didn’t find Frank Sanazi offensive but they did find the Anne Frank bit offensive.”
And, indeed, the three walk-outs did seem to have found Frank Sanazi’s re-versioning of Sinatra’s That’s Life as Third Reich entertaining and found the re-writing of the Strangers in the Night lyrics as Strangers On a Plane (as in the 9/11 hijacks) perfectly OK.
But Anne Frank they walked out on.
I had never seen the Anne Frank part of Frank Sanazi’s show before – his Das Vegas Night is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe this August (it got a 4-star review last year) – but ‘Anne’ told me after the show that I had blogged about her during last year’s Fringe.
“I was the one wearing a lettuce,” she told me.
“You didn’t recognise her with her clothes on,” Frank Sanazi added.
I was walking down Niddry Street, and found comedian Bob Slayer standing in the street outside his Hive venue.
“I had to get naked in my show,” he told me. “I think it was the worst show I’ve ever done so I had to get naked. Jamie the sound guy sees my show every year and he told me: You failed on so many levels there, but it was definitely my favourite show. I had to get naked and there was a lady in the audience who turned up just wearing a lettuce.”
“Just a lettuce?” I asked.
“Just wearing a lettuce on her fanny,” said Bob.
“She had nice tits,” a female staff member added, tweaking one of Bob’s nipples. Passers-by ignored it. This is the Edinburgh Fringe.
“The lady with the lettuce was a friend of Frank Sanazi’s,” said Bob.
“That might go some way to explaining it,” I said.
A girl wearing nothing but a lettuce leaf over her frontal bits was almost normal in Edinburgh last August. But a girl with her clothes on (never referred-to as Anne Frank) in South East London last night triggered three people walking out of an always-bizarre monthly comedy show.
Personally, I thought it was slightly eerie and very funny.
But, then, I like Chinese pickled ginger with scrambled egg on toast.
Conspiratorial comedian Hayden Cohen in Tenerife this week
Back in February, I wrote a blog about an anonymous comedian who had decided NOT to perform at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe because of the financial complications it always involves and the balance of creative risk-taking.
The then-anonymous comedian was Hayden Cohen who, last year, rather successfully performed his Age of The Geek show in Edinburgh.
He has now changed his mind and he will be performing his new show at the Fringe – Secrets of the Elders of Zion (which I blogged about in January).
I Skyped him in Tenerife this week…
Quite why he was in Tenerife wearing a white hat, looking like a dodgy South American dictator from the 1950s and surrounded by the sound of twittering exotic birds, I did not dare ask, in case he was involved in some secret conspiracy. But I did risk asking:
“Why did you change your mind about not going to this year’s Fringe?”
“And how are you going to do that?” I asked this man who will clearly go far in showbusiness.
Edinburgh symbol worthy of a Cunning Stunt Award?
“I was going to try and get a gigantic Star of David,” he explained, “and hand out flyers that said: Sshhhhh…. It’s a secret! but I don’t think that’s cunning enough to get a Cunning Stunt Award. Maybe I need to offer free head-shavings, where you can get a Star of David shaved into the back of your head. Or a little tattoo just on the neckline.”
“Or have a number tattooed on your arm,” I suggested.
Hayden ignored this and told me: “I’m going to be at the Paradise Green venue. I’m actually paying. I think it has to be a pay venue. I think, if it was in a free venue, it would definitely attract the crazies.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Just because people are interested in stuff to do with Zionism and Jews. It’s difficult. I’m playing off that whole Jewish stereotype thing anyway, aren’t I? I don’t mind hecklers, in fact I quite like funny hecklers, but what I don’t want is people stopping other audience members enjoying the show. I just feel someone could start Oh I think blah blah blah… and going off on one.
“I don’t mind discussing or arguing with people – I love it – but, if people have paid to see a show, other audience members are likely to tell then to shut up and, frankly, if someone wants to pay money to heckle me – well – good for them; why not? I’m getting their money,”
“So you’re expecting to be heckled?” I asked.
“The show is only offensive if you want to take it as offensive,” Hayden said. “I’m not out to offend anyone but, at the same time, I’m a bit sick of mainstream comedy that doesn’t have bite any more.”
“Why did you change your mind about going to the Fringe?” I asked. “Have you won the Lottery?”
“No,” said Hayden. “It’s just I won’t be losing anywhere near £4,000. I’ve got a chance of breaking even – a chance. I’ll still probably end up losing money, but it won’t be too bad. At worst I might lose about £1,000 tops.”
“You do it for the love of it?” I asked.
“It actually annoys me when people say We do comedy for the love of it,” replied Hayden. “I think Well, yeah… I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t love it. But, at the same time, I think performers are being exploited at the Fringe. There’s a risk-reward ratio with anything. You invest in it; and it pays off or it doesn’t.
Hayden Cohen at 2012 Edinburgh Fringe
“My issue with the Fringe is that, just to beak even, you have to have a 75% paying capacity audience – that’s what I figured out for my own shows. You hear about Aaaaaa Bbbbbb who loses £7,000 every time she goes up and it’s nuts.
“Like anyone else, I will have crafted my show for months. I’ve crafted my performing art for years. And to go out on stage at the Fringe with likely zero chance of making money. I’m charging £7 and £5, which isn’t a lot, but it’s not pennies either. The punters think we’re making money and we’re not. How can you continue to go back?”
“Well,” I said, “there’s that eternal chance you’ll get spotted and it will change your life.”
“Alright,” said Hayden. “Maybe I’m a hypocrite! If a big venue or agency snapped me up and said We love your show, Hayden, but you need to take all that Jewish stuff out and we’ll pay you £50,000 to do it, would I say No? Probably not.”
“So that’s the golden apple dangling at the Edinburgh Fringe,” I said. “It’s all potential sunshine and happiness.”
“But,” said Hayden, “this show, artistically, scares the life out of me.”
“Every silver lining had a dark cloud,” I said. “The weather is always ‘interesting’ at the Fringe.”
I woke up this morning to two things. One was the sound of comedian Janey Godley trying but failing to vomit in my toilet. I fear, dear reader, that you and I may hear more of this in the days to come.
The other thing was an e-mail which started:
Hi John,
Just writing to say how much I enjoy reading your site. We at Lifeinsurancequotes.org recently published an article “8 Ways Funeral Homes Will Try To Rip You Off”, that we think is tailor-made for your readers.
Either their computerised spam system is totally out-of-control (surely not!) or I must be mis-targeting this blog.
I have little good advice on funeral homes.
Janey Godley once told me that, if you are going to murder someone, the best hiding place for the body is in a graveyard – the police will not look in a graveyard for a dead body and, if they are tipped-off, they will be wary of causing a public outcry by potentially digging up a body which may not be the missing victim.
That is my only funeral tip for today, but it may prove useful for Israeli comic Daphna Baram.
Whoever killed Jesus, it wasn’t Daphna
Yesterday, she told me: “There was a very drunken guy in the audience at my Frenemies show (it’s only on until Saturday) – Yuri from the Czech Republic. At some point during my set, the idea that I was Jewish – at least nominally – penetrated through the layers of beer in Yuri’s mind and he started heckling: You killed Jesus! You killed Jesus!
“I remembered I had a routine from my first Christmas as a comedian. Clearly this was a good moment for resurrection.
“In my most authoritative voice (I do authoritative well) and with, I regret to say, a certain degree of c-word usage, I informed Yuri that the whole 30 shekel story is highly non-credible as no Jew I’ve ever heard of would sell a hippy to the italian mafia for the equivalent of a fiver…
“He kept silent for a while but, in a later section about my military training in Israel, he started heckling again. I told the audience. I saw Yuri outside and invited him to the gig and thought Great! I’ve pulled!… But now all I can think about is where I am going to hide his body…”
Well Daphna now knows, courtesy of Janey Godley, she can actually do this with little comeback.
In my first weekly column for Fringe magazine Three Weeks today, Mervyn Stutter criticises the BBC for putting on too many free shows at this year’s Fringe, to the detriment of hard-working performers who are already having a bad enough time with the big TV names and the Recession. You can read the Three Weeks piece by picking it up in Edinburgh or clicking here or you can download the whole issue here. I will post my golden words here on this blog in one week’s time (when the paper is no longer on the streets of Edinburgh).
I had another BBC-bashing angle punted to me last night, when I got chatting to someone who had better remain nameless. He works for a radio production company and has a lot of dealings with the BBC.
“It’s an odd thing,” he told me, “because, in America at the moment, there’s a huge flowering of female-driven comedy. You’ve got 30 Rock, Girls, the Mindy Kaling Project– loads and loads of female driven comedy – and people say part of the reason for this is the influx of women into US TV production. But, in Britain, we are not having that same increase in female-driven comedy.”
“Maybe because most producers here are male,” I suggested.
“Not now,” he corrected me. “Not in radio. Most of the level entry producers at the Beeb – the ones who comics new to radio would be working with – are female.
“At the BBC, there’s actually a big influx of women into radio production but, as yet, that doesn’t seem to be translating into a flowering of female comedy – certainly not at Radio 4 which has traditionally been a proving ground for comics before they get onto television. Radio 4 does not have many female-led, female-driven, female-written, female-fronted shows.
“That’s a generalisation, of course,” he said, “Jane Berthoud is top dog there and she’s tremendously supportive of women, but the increased number of female producers has not helped women in comedy.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “All I’m saying is it’s an interesting area. There are now lots of female producers, which is good. Maybe the heterosexual ones are more interested in and more physically attracted to the male acts and therefore female comics are getting an even bummer deal that they were before.”
“You mean the female producers want to screw the male acts?” I said. “Now there’s a dangerous idea to say out loud. But surely, traditionally, there were more male producers and they would have wanted to cop off with female acts so there should have been lots of female shows around in the past. In theory, female comics should have always done better than men because there were more male producers. But that’s not the case.”
Possibly realising he was on dangerously non-PC ground, he continued: “It’s very difficult to un-pick because, statistically, if you looked at the number of shows made by men over all… Maybe there are more shows made with male stars because there are more men pushing to get in. Maybe sometimes there’s a lot of schmoozing and, rather than being about talent, it’s about who gets on with people and who people want to sit in a pub and chat and get drunk with.”
It is certainly an interesting idea and there must be something psychological going on beyond my fathoming.
Checkley & Bush’s Comedy Riot is just that
Last night, I was at a party thrown to celebrate ten years of the Funny Women organisation. Very hard-working. Very effective in raising the profile of female comedy, But still British TV and radio shows are generally skewed-away from female performers.
I left the party to see excellent character comedy from Checkley & Bush. They’re better than a lot of the under-experienced new male comics who pop up on TV and in radio.
And, earlier in the day, I had attended a ‘knittathon’ – a publicity stunt organised by Charmian Hughes at which the audience was invited to knit throughout her show to create something she could use in her climactic and erotic ‘Dance of the Seven Cardigans’… Charmian was listed at No 7 in the Chortle comedy website’s Ten Most Underrated Comics – the only woman in the list.
Lewis Schaffer, a masterclass in offending
No 8 in the list is American comic Lewis Schaffer, whom I had been chatting to even earlier in the day. There was a lot of chatting yesterday.
As I came out of Checkley & Bush’s show, I got a text message from Lewis which said simply:
I had 65 punters at tonight’s show. There were 40 walkouts.
I texted back:
Tell me more and I may blog about it.
He later told me what he had said.
“I can’t put that in my blog,” I told him. “You will get lynched.”
Perhaps being truly offensive is one thing women comics cannot get away with. As if to prove this, later I was walking down Niddry Street, and found comedian Bob Slayer standing in the street outside his Hive venue.
“I had to get naked in my show,” he told me. “I think it was the worst show I’ve ever done so I had to get naked. Jamie the sound guy sees my show every year and he told me: You failed on so many levels there, but it was definitely my favourite show. I had to get naked and there was a lady in the audience who turned up just wearing a lettuce.”
“Just a lettuce?” I asked.
“Just wearing a lettuce on her fanny,” said Bob.
Bob Slayer has his nipples tweaked
“She had nice tits,” a female staff member added, tweaking one of Bob’s nipples. Passers-by ignored it. This is the Edinburgh Fringe.
“The lady with the lettuce was a friend of Frank Sanazi’s,” said Bob.
“That might go some way to explaining it,” I said.
“Well,” said Bob, “Frank came and then that happened and then I had to get naked. It depends how you rate a show. It was the most avant-garde show I’ve ever managed to do. Apparently there was a reviewer for The Skinny in there, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they made of it. I hope it was the guy who refused to get on stage. There’s no way I’m going to get a good review but I hope it was that guy because he HATED it.”
At the Fringe, being loved or being hated are good. Being ignored is bad. Oscar Wilde was born before his time.
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