How to make a horror film terrifying and the mystery of police horses in Soho

Chris Lincé was delayed by a bird in Soho

I first met Chris Lincé years ago when I wandered along with comedian Charlie Chuck to some project they were both involved in.

I met him again last week at Soho Theatre in London.

Chris was a few minutes late because a bird shat on his head when he was coming out of Chinatown.

Shit happens.

He now directs music videos, live shows, script edits, does lots. In Hollywood, they would call him a hyphenate.

“How would you describe yourself?” I asked. “A writer-director?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m a director who likes to get involved in the writing as early as possible, whether I’m writing it myself or – as is more often the case – working with a writer.”

He story-edited a British feature film which should be coming out next year – a superhero comedy called SuperBob, starring Catherine Tate, Brett Goldstein and Laura Haddock.

But, at the moment, he is concentrating on a crowdfunding campaign for The Exorcism of Danny Fontaine starring Danny Fontaine of rock band The Horns of Fury. There is a video for their song The Butcher (directed by Chris) on YouTube.

“The Horns of Fury had been going about eight years,” said Chris, “but they’ve recently disbanded. I did two music videos for Danny when the band was still together and now we’re working on this short 11-minute horror musical and there are plans further down the line to do longer and more extravagant things.”

Funding ends, appropriately, on Hallowe’en with filming due to start at the end of the year. The appeal is not just on Indiegogo but also on YouTube.

“Distribution?” I asked.

“It’s festivals and then internet,” said Chris. “There are probably more horror festivals than there are any other type of film festival. It’s a calling card and proof of concept showing you can have a horror musical sung through that is not what you think of when you think of musicals.”

“Sung through?” I asked.

“There are songs and no spoken dialogue. All the dialogue is sung.”

There must have been some, but neither of us could think of any other movie written originally for the screen (ignoring adaptations of stage musicals) which is wholly sung through.

“Is it comedic?” I asked.

“Not especially,” explained Chris, “other than the fact I’ll probably put some jokes in because I like jokes. It’s a proper 1970s-vibe rock opera – Phantom of the Paradise, Rocky Horror Show, that kind of feel.”

“So it’s camp?” I asked.

The upcoming musical – colourful not camp

“Not so much camp as vibrant,” said Chris. “The thing I’ve noticed in horror over the last ten years is that it’s gone greyer and greyer and greyer. There are a lot of dingy corridors and hand-held cameras. But I think that trend is changing. One of the trends at Frightfest in London this year was that colourful horror is starting to come back: a lot of highly-saturated lighting palates. There’s slightly more fun than there used to be. I think a lot of 1980s influences are starting to creep in.”

“The heyday of exorcism films was the 1970s, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“There’s still maybe one a year,” said Chris. “Immediately after The Exorcist came out in 1973, some of the knock-offs were extraordinary. There was a blaxploitation rip-off called Abby about a woman who was obsessed by a sex demon. The way her possession manifested itself was she left her husband and hung around in bars picking up guys… And then there’s an exorcism.”

“Of whom?” I asked.

“Her,” said Chris. “Women were not allowed to do that. Did you see The Manitou? It was a 1978 Tony Curtis film about a possessed tumour which I think I’m right in saying ends with them defeating the demon by throwing typewriters at it. They just chuck typewriters at it until it’s defeated.

The Manitou – killed by scriptwriters’ tools of the trade

“Films are scheduled and planned and written and everybody learns their stuff. But apparently at no point in the process did anyone say: Guys – Are we really ending this film with the mass typewriter throwing?”

“Maybe the scriptwriters were exorcising their own demons,” I suggested.

“What I particularly do like about horror,” said Chris, “is that it appeals to both extremes of human experience – base, gut-level, animalistic, instinctual fears… but you can also have intellectual conversations about morality and how do you behave in extreme situations. When you get both of those playing alongside each other, it doesn’t get any richer than that.”

“Surely,” I said, “science fiction films are the ones that often examine moral and intellectual subjects?”

“Yes,” said Chris, “but there’s something more immediate about horror. Sometimes science fiction can be a little bit detached, a little bit cold. And the stakes in science fiction tend to be lower. In horror, you’re normally running away from a problem or tied to a problem or the problem’s being cut off you while you worry about it. Horror can tap into a fear that you can’t intellectualise your way out of.

“(Horror film director) Dario Argento said that, when he wanted people killed in his films, he would try to find a way that the audience had some experience of. He didn’t want to shoot people, because most people have not been shot; they don’t know what it feels like. You DO know what it’s like to cut ourself; You DO know what it’s like to burn yourself.

Director Argento took the ordinary to extremes (Wikipedia photo by Brian Eeles)

“He would find something which most people had done and then take it to an extreme – which did result in killers finding very peculiar ways of killing people. But scalding someone to death makes it relatable in a way that being shot or vaporised does not. If I see someone being vaporised in a science fiction film… I have never been vaporised… I assume it is bad, but I don’t know what it feels like. There’s nothing that affects me on a gut level.

“Whereas a paper cut I can understand. If you imagine a piece of paper slipped under your fingernail, pushing its way into your finger, you can imagine feeling that far more than someone being vaporised.”

“There is research,” I said, “that, when people watch violence on screen, they watch not the action but the re-action. If someone is punched in the stomach, they don’t watch the fist hit the stomach; they watch the reaction on the face of the person being hit.”

“Probably the most reaction you can get,” said Chris, “is going for the eye or mouth. Have you seen the Dario Argento film Opera?

Dario Argento’s eye-opening horror film

“There is a scene where the killer wants a woman to watch the killing he is about to do. So he Sellotapes needles to her eyes so that, if she closes her eyes, they will stick in her. A close-up of an eye with needles attached to it is far more horrifying than the actual act of violence which Argento then shows – somebody being cut in the neck – because you are just that much closer to something you can relate to.

“Last night, we were having long discussions into the night about the best way of killing somebody in our film. Long, dry discussions along the lines of Yeah, but if we cut him across the belly, it’s bloody but it’s not as interesting as cutting the face. Conversations about maximum impact and maximum reaction.”

“I guess,” I said, “in cinema, punching someone on the nose feels more violent that stabbing someone in the stomach with a knife because it has more of a visible effect. Attacks on the face are more frightening.”

“It’s where we view everything from,” said Chris.

“I suppose,” I said, “that horror is the most constantly violent genre, along with westerns.”

“Westerns,” said Chris, “are one of the few genres I don’t get on with and I don’t really know why. It might be the hats.”

At this point, as Chris and I sat in the Soho Theatre Bar, we saw two policemen ride slowly up Dean Street on horses.

“There is something I don’t know about police on horseback,” said Chris. “If you are a policeman on horseback and you see some criminal activity – like you see someone running down the street with a stolen television – are you allowed to gallop after them?”

“I guess so,” I said.

Chris had a hairy time when we met in Soho…

“I just want to see that,” said Chris. “It seems dangerous.”

“Though,” I said, “even if they gallop, it would be easy enough for a man on foot to escape from a pursuing horse in the West End.”

“It just seems futile having horses in Soho,” said Chris.

“I had better take a photo of you before you go,” I said.

“I really do have dry bird shit in my hair,” said Chris.

Giacinto Palmieri – on Wagner & comic Jerry Sadowitz taking a holiday together

Giacinto talked of operatic orgasms last night

London-based Italian comedian Giacinto Palmieri’s last full-length comedy show Pagliaccio was based on Ruggero Leoncavallo’s operatic character.

His new Edinburgh Fringe show this year is about German composer Richard Wagner and, more specifically, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung.

Giacinto jokes that he has explained its plot to all his ex girlfriends (with the emphasis on ‘ex’) and now he wants to do the same with his audience.

It is going to be all about dwarfs, giants, Walkyries, magic helms and love potions and their connection with office parties, IKEA, Facebook and modern dating rituals.

I talked to Giacinto about it yesterday in the upstairs room of a pub off Shaftesbury Avenue.

“I’m challenging myself to laugh at my hero,” he told me. “One of the themes I’m developing in the show is laughing at your heroes in order to avoid falling into fanaticism. I thought: I really love Wagner; he’s always been a hero of mine. Let’s see if I can laugh at something I really love.

“I confess I have done comedy courses and usually one of the exercises you are given is to Rant or Rave. You have the choice to rant about something you don’t like or rave about something you love and 90% of people choose something to rant about. It is much easier to be funny about something you don’t like. Being funny about something you like is much more challenging.”

“Are there a lot of laughs in Wagner?” I asked.

He liked to climb trees & stand on his head

“Well,” said Giacinto, “he was a very funny man. He liked to climb trees in his friends’ gardens for no reason. When he was very happy about something – particularly during rehearsals – he used to stand on his head. He was very histrionic. His works are not always that funny, of course.

“But comedy is a way of talking about things rather than a specific subject. The Great Dictator, the Chaplin film about Hitler, was very funny., but the subject was not funny. I don’t think there are ‘comedy subjects’. There is a comedic way of talking about subjects and, actually, the less obvious the comedic connection, the more interesting it can be.

“The Australian comedienne Hannah Gadsby did some very good shows last year about the history of art. I think there is more room in comedy to explore difficult subjects.

“You can talk about something which is already funny – but, in that case, the added value of your comedy is very low – or you can talk about what interests you – in this case Wagner – in a funny way and that is what I am trying to do.”

“Wagner’s stuff is very emotional, isn’t it?” I said.

“It’s even considered dangerous,” said Giacinto. “Wagner said about Tristan and Isolde – Only bad performances can save me, because good performances will drive people crazy. And it’s true. The intensity of it will drive people mad. Some music director said that the Second Act of Tristan and Isolde contains seven simultaneous orgasms. Try that in life.”

After talking to Giacinto – unusually for me – I looked up some background.

Tristan and Isolde killed Felix Mottl

On 21 June 1911, Felix Mottl uffered a heart attack while conducting the Second Act of Tristan in Munich. He died 11 days later.

In 1968, Joseph Keilberth died after collapsing while conducting the same part of the Second Act of the opera, also in Munich.

“Wagner’s work is more intense than life,” claimed Giacinto last night.

“I am trying to tell the plot of The Ring in parallel with my own life story, trying to explain the connections and the gaps in my life that I use Wagner to fill.”

“Women wearing horns on their heads?” I suggested.

“Well,” said Giacinto, “it has been noticed by, among others, Bryan McGee that mainly lonely people love Wagner.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Probably because of the intensity of the emotions,” said Giacinto. “People who feel that gap the most, who are trying to fill it through art.

Jerry Sadowitz reaches extremes just like Richard Wagner?

“The first time I went to see Jerry Sadowitz perform, I noticed a parallel between him and Wagner. When you go to see Jerry Sadowitz, you are allowed for an hour to get in touch with levels of yourself that normally you are not aware of.”

“Which are?” I asked.

“It’s like…” said Giacinto. “It’s like you take your liver out of your body and put it on the table. You look at it. You are disgusted. But you know it is part of you. It is just a part of you that you don’t normally want to recognise. When you hear Jerry Sadowitz going so deeply into stuff which is (or, at least, seems to be) a bit misogynistic or a bit racist, you know That is what we built civilisation to protect us from. But it is very difficult to be civilised all the time. So you go and see someone like Jerry Sadowitz and, for one hour, you are allowed not to be civilised any more. You are allowed to get in touch with your more selfish instincts.”

“So Wagner is uncivilised?” I asked.

“Wagner,” suggested Giacinto, “is a holiday from civilisation. For 3 or 4 hours, when you watch Wagner, you are allowed to be in touch with a level of emotion, with ideas and themes – like incest, for example – there is a lot of incest in Wagner – the kind of stuff that normally people don’t accept.

“For the duration of the work, you are allowed to get in touch with a level of passion – perversion, if you want – which normally you are not allowed to accept in your life. Just like Jerry Sadowitz. A holiday from civilisation.”

“I seem to remember Jerry loves Mahler,” I said.

“That’s interesting,” said Giacinto, “Because Mahler was a disciple of Wagner. I love the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th, which is the music from Visconti’s film Death in Venice.”

“So,” I said, “you are going to do a totally uncivilised comedy show about a perverted German composer?”

Star of the Ring – Amalie Materna, the first Bayreuth Brünnhilde + Cocotte, donated by King Ludwig II to play her horse Grane

“Well,” replied Giacinto, “comedy itself is a holiday from civilisation. It is sometimes a holiday from logic, a holiday from being polite, a holiday from making sense. It is an area of freedom. I think there is a lot in common between comedy and the type of art which Wagner represents. Because it offers you room to experiment and feel things that normally you are not allowed to experience.”

“You are previewing the show in Brighton this month,” I said.

“And in my living room,” said Giacinto, “which is something Wagner himself used to do.”

“He used to preview his operas in your living room?” I asked.

“No,” said Giacinto. “He used to do readings of his libretti and perform piano excerpts in front of his friends.”

“It must have been a big living room,” I suggested. “Wagner is a bit loud.”

“But there is also a very soft side to Wagner,” said Giacinto. “There is so much else to Wagner than The Ride of the Valkyries. There is a Wagner who gives voice to the forests or to water or to animals. There is a Wagner of the small things. He can be very lyrical. His palate is so rich. He is much more nuanced than people credit him.

“Mark Twain joked that Wagner’s operas are better than they sound. Music is only one part of something more complex. It’s a great example of how a joke can explain more than a detailed academic analysis.

“And Wagner is a great role model: the way he pursued an impossible dream of creating this cycle of operas which was impossible to stage. He worked on it for 26 years. It was very long; it required a type of singer that didn’t exist – a very ‘acting’ singer – and it required an audience that didn’t exist. It was not proper opera, it was not theatre. To attempt something like that really required a courage, a faith in himself.

“Of course, if you dare so much and you win it is quite understandable you become very arrogant. Of course he was a megalomaniac and full of himself. Only someone who IS can achieve such a difficult project. But he is a reminder of the fact you should dare, you should take risks. He had amazing artistic courage.”

“Are you using costumes?” I asked.

Giacinto’s Brighton Fringe poster artwork

“No,” said Giacinto. “Just for the poster. For me, finding socks in the morning is difficult enough.”

“Who else do you like musically?” I asked.

“Pink Floyd. The Wall and Dark Side of The Moon.”

“And who else liked Wagner, apart from Hitler?”

“T.S. Eliot was a fan,” said Giacinto. “The Waste Land is full of references.”

“I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to understand The Waste Land,” I said.

“Like Wagner,” said Giacinto, “The Waste Land is one of those works you can spend all your life interpreting and finding new meanings in. That’s why Art is not Science. It is always open to interpretation. You can spend a lifetime in Wagner’s Ring.”

I laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” asked Giacinto.

“It was when you said You can spend a lifetime in Wagner’s Ring,” I explained.

“We have found your level there,” said Giacinto.

“I think so,” I admitted. “It was almost a knob gag.”

Comedian Jorik Mol wants a real life but is performing for dogs this week

Jorik Mol faces a possibly operatic future

When I talked to comedian Ellis of Ellis & Rose recently, he told me he was going to write Raoul Moat: The Opera about the recent multiple murderer. He told me the music would be written by London-based Dutch comic Jorik Mol.

So, obviously, when Jorik and I had tea in London last week, I asked him:

“How is Raoul Moat: The Opera going?”

“We haven’t met about it so far,” said Jorik.

“Do you intend to meet?”

“We do.”

“And the philosophy of Raoul Moat: The Opera is…”

“There isn’t one so far. I really don’t know what Ellis is planning. I’ve been listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music recently in the same way I listen to Wagner. You cannot listen to that music and not look on it as being anything other than completely and utterly soul-destroyingly manipulative. When you listen to the intro to Tristan und Isolde, it is like coitus interruptus without the coitus. This chord is never released – never released – never released – slightly released – and – the tension is only released four hours later, when the fat lady sings.”

Jorik is now living back in England again after a break at home in Holland for a couple of years. He is doing a Masters in Comparative Literature at University College, London.

“It sounds impressive,” Jorik told me, “but it just means I will never be able to get a job. I’m doing the Masters full-time; I’m doing extra tutorials; I’m doing translations for UCL; I’m trying to gig three or four times a week; I’m trying to write. This week I gigged five times which is a bad idea on all levels. I do not have a life.”

That was last week. This week Jorik is doing four gigs, including one totally in French tonight at the Comedy Cafe for the International Comedy Club (which is run from Zürich). And, on Thursday, he is performing in Streatham at a benefit for dogs in Romania organised by Danish comedian Sofie Hagen.

“Have you ever gigged for non-humans before?” I asked.

“I’ve gigged before for audiences in Holland that didn’t seem to be human,” replied Jorik.

“And next?” I asked.

“I’m writing an essay about Kafka and laughter.”

“I read somewhere,” I said, “that The Trial – which is always billed as the ultimate paranoid novel… Kafka and his friends thought it was phenomenally funny, like a comedy piece.”

“Yes,” said Jorik. “It’s the way it’s been translated into English and the way it’s been appropriated into English. It’s been made to serve a purpose in English culture. The word Kafkaesque does not really apply to Kafka. I want to do a PhD on Comedic Devices and Cognitive Stylistics – two terms I’ve made up.

Jorik in my Edinburgh Fringe chat show this year (Photograph by Brian Higgins)

“When a comedian goes on stage,” explained Jorik, “one of the common stupid opening lines is I know what you’re thinking. But that is actually what all comedy is about.

“Comedy is about leading the lines of cognition in a certain way, from a certain perspective. You are resolving issues that shouldn’t be resolved, you are duplicating narratives, you are leading people up the garden path.

“The cognitive system is in the pre-frontal cortex and it’s basically the thing that asks the questions Where? What? Who? Why? How? and Which?

“If that part of the brain – the cognitive system – doesn’t function, it’s very difficult for you to engage with humour in any way, because humour is about asking the questions Where? What? How? and Why? and those questions being subverted, inverted or converted.

“So I’m going to write about the 18th century: Immanuel Kant, Laurence Sterne, Voltaire and a guy from Austria called Johann La Roche who wrote puppetry plays. It was like Commedia dell’arte. People improvised what was happening in the room, in the street, in politics. It was topical jokes – boom boom boom.

“My interest is in joke shapes: the linguistic shapes that textual humour takes. It’s a linguistic notion of doing something or transgressing boundaries on a physical or social level.

“In Britain, it’s normal for people to say He’s a funny guy, She’s a funny girl, You ARE funny – which is bullshit. Being funny – using those joke shapes and tropes – is learnt behaviour.

“I was talking to people in the German Dept at UCL and someone told me: I can’t really say to students – especially First Year undergrads – This is funny, because their capacity to read German is just not good enough yet. Same thing with French. You can’t say This is funny because they’ll go No, it’s not, because they don’t yet fully understand the language.

“I want to look at texts and how they produce comedy. Was it you who wrote you can’t watch five stand-ups in a row because you get exhausted after a while?”

“Possibly,” I said, “I do think that’s one problem with current comedy clubs – you’re just watching stand-ups doing much-the-same thing – just standing there saying words – with no variation whereas, in the 1980s, the stand-up was interspersed with visual variety acts and bizarre acts.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jorik, “like Mr Methane and The Iceman.”

“Ah!” I said. “The Iceman! He lives in Bournemouth.”

Jorik laughed, as well he might.

“I want to work with Dr Steve Cross who does Bright Club,” said Jorik. “He works at UCL but is sometimes a stand-up.”

“You do an awful lot of gigs,” I said.

“Coming back here,” said Jorik, “I have to re-establish myself so I have to play the circuit. But I’m really struggling with life-work balance: that’s why I listen to podcasts all the time – to drown out my inner monologue.”

“I can blank my mind out to relax.” I said.

“I can’t,” said Jorik.

“That’s why you have trouble getting to sleep at night,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Jorik. “That’s why I need the mirtazapine. I find it very difficult, because my mind’s racing constantly. The first month I was here in London was rough as fuck. I’d basically been waiting to come back to Britain for two years and I’m the kind of person who wants everything done straight away and that just doesn’t work over here. It took me six weeks just to register with a GP.”

“Your persona on stage is not anxious,” I said.

“Yes, it’s quite friendly,” said Jorik, “and sweet and flirty but occasionally bitchy. When I was 20, I wanted to be an angry comic, but I’m the opposite of an angry comic on stage. It’s weird. I feel I have been lowered down into this persona and, with age – I’m 25 and have been performing since I was 17 – I’m only starting to get away with it now.”

“You may have already peaked,” I joked.

Jorik Mol in London last week – Mozart has a lot to answer for

“Yeah,” laughed Jorik. “It can only go downhill from now! I’ve always felt like that. I wake up like that every morning. When I was 4, I read a book about Mozart and that he had composed his first symphony at the age of 3 and my brain shouted out: YOU’VE LOST!

“It’s unlikely I’m ever going to achieve anything in comedy. There are so many people doing comedy right now. It doesn’t matter how original you are. It does not even how matter how good you are. You will not succeed. Success is only what other people talk about when it’s over and done with and you’ve come out the other side.

“It sounds lame, but I now cannot function without doing stand-up at least once a week.”

“Because…?” I prompted.

“It’s just me and my life,” said Jorik, “I was always seen as the weird one. I envy my brother because he is able to go to work then go out at the weekend and have a nice time and live. He runs the supply department for care homes for children with severe disabilities. He’s really happy and is able to function. I have to pretend to be a person. When you do comedy you can sometimes take a step back and just observe: OK. This is functional behaviour. That’s why I want to get into academia as well.

“I could never envisage a life for myself in Holland. I don’t mean being happy – because that’s never going to happen – but just to be functional, just to be working…”

Comedy duo Ellis & Rose: beefing-up Jimmy Savile, looking for other work

Worth a punt? Saturday’s Big Comedy Conference in London

On Saturday, I am on one of the panels at the Big Comedy Conference in London.

Yesterday night, I got a message from a starting-out stand-up comedian based outside South East England:

Hi john,

Do you think I would benefit from the Comedy Conference?

My answer was:

No idea. It’s a bit pricey – £149 – but good value for money. It runs 09.00am to 11.00pm and there are over 40 top names giving advice, from Big Name comedians to BBC bosses, writers, agents and the whole gamut down to the likes of me.

But, if you have free accommodation in London, I say go for it. The only way to get on in anything is to be in the right place at the right time. There is no way of knowing where or when that is, so you just have to put yourself about a bit as much as possible. If you don’t go, you can be 100% certain nothing will come of it. If you do go, there is at least a chance something might.

I think you should go not expecting to LEARN anything specific as such, but it would give you a wider, non-local, professional view of the business and I suspect you can schmooze well (something I’m shit at).

It is a financial decision really. If you can afford to go, look on it as a weekend holiday with potential benefits; expect nothing; hope for the best. It is a bit like the Edinburgh Fringe. Toss money away and pray.

I think the comedy-going public assume when they see a comedian on stage that he/she is a full-time comedian. The truth, of course, is that for maybe the first five or six or more years of their professional lives, comedians tend to have ‘day jobs’ because they cannot survive financially on their comedy work.

Coincidentally, I had a chat on Friday with award-winning comedians Ellis & Rose.

I say “award-winning” because they won a Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, when Rose repeatedly punched Ellis in the face so they could – as a publicity stunt – claim he had been beaten up in the street by an irate punter who was offended by their show Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show.

That is REAL dedication to your art. They videoed the punching and it is on YouTube.

I met them on Friday in a pub in London’s Soho.

I paid for the single round of drinks. After all, let us not go mad on spending money. I am a Scot brought up among Jews.

“So,” I said, “you performed Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show in Norwich, while I was safely out of the country in Nuremberg. How did it go?”

“It was the first time we’ve done the beefed-up Jimmy Savile show,” replied Ellis.

Ellis & Rose – beefed-up show in Norwich

“Beefed-up?” I asked.

“Now with real puppets,” explained Rose.

“Glove puppets or string puppets?” I asked.

“Muppet-sized puppets,” said Ellis.

“Foam and felt,” said Rose.

“With people in them?” I asked.

“Well, me,” said Rose.

“The audience in Norwich really liked it,” said Ellis. “I think because we’ve added more stuff. It’s become something.”

“What have you added?” I asked. “A plot?”

“Not necessarily a plot,” admitted Rose.

“It started off as nothing in Edinburgh,” said Ellis, “but, by the end of the Fringe, it was consistently hitting… erm… the hour mark. So we’ve added in extra nonsense like Rolf Harris.”

“That was what it was lacking,” said Rose.

“They all really enjoyed it in Norwich,” said Ellis. “Not one of them really hated it,” he added with a hint of surprise in his voice.

“I think you should tour old people’s homes,” I suggested. “You need to find people who will be really offended.”

“You didn’t help us,” said Rose, “with your Raoul Moat headline (Jimmy Savile comedy duo banned from Norwich pub. Now they plan a musical based on a murder maniac rampage). I’m never gonna get a job now.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “am I the person who beat up his comedy partner in Edinburgh just to get a couple of lines of publicity in The Scotsman newspaper?”

“One line,” said Rose.

“Anyway,” I added, “What did I say about Raoul Moat, the infamous murderer?”

Police photo Raoul Moat

“You said it was a musical,” Ellis told me, “but it’s an opera.”

“And I’m not involved in it,” added Rose warily.

“You made it seem like a frivolous entertainment,” complained Ellis. “It’s going to be a real work of art. It’s going to be a departure from what we normally do.”

“I didn’t think you actually intended to do an opera,” I explained. “I assumed it was a cheap publicity stunt.”

“I’m meeting up with Jorik Mol,” said Ellis, “and we’re going to write material for it… It’s going to be a genuine opera. It’s going to be a serious tragedy.”

“I believe that,” I said. “I have seen your previous work.”

“John Kearns has agreed to play a sniper lens,” said Rose.

“Karl Schultz has agreed to be a fishing rod,” said Ellis, “and Adam Larter is going to play a startled deer.”

“So when is this seriously tragic opera going to be staged?” I asked.

“2016,” said Ellis. “It’s only an idea so far.”

“What gave you the idea?” I asked.

“The story,” explained Ellis, “is just incredible… unprecedented in terms of the media interaction: the week-long narrative that developed around it.”

“The problem now,” said Rose, “is that partly due to you, John, if you type my name into Google followed by the words Raoul Moat or Jimmy Savile… well there goes any chance I have of getting a job.”

Seeking any employment: Ellis (left) and Rose

“That’s why we’re unemployed,” said Ellis.

“Yeah thanks, John,” said Rose.

“I’d like to say in your blog,” emphasised Ellis, “that I’m looking for a job.”

“As what?” I asked.

“Well, I’m good at organising gigs,” replied Ellis.

“That’s not a job,” said Rose.

“Surely you could earn a good living as a gigolo?” I asked.

“I’ve got a licence for bar management,” continued Ellis. “I can manage a venue.”

“There must be money in being a gigolo,” I said. “Women were throwing themselves at you in Edinburgh.”

“I want a job and a girlfriend,” insisted Ellis.

“You’re asking too much from life,” Rose told him.

“I’d just like some money,” said Ellis.

“Have you never seen The Producers?” I asked. “You just find some old women, get them to finance your shows, leech onto them and get loads of money.”

“But we’ve already produced one of the worst shows of all time,” said Rose, “and it didn’t make us loads of money.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I financed Killer Bitch, the movie… I think Raoul Moat: The Opera could be equal to Springtime For Hitler.”

“What I like about your blogs with us,” said Rose, “is that they manage to be even less coherent than the ones with Chris Dangerfield.”

“So plug something,” I said.

Ghost of Jimmy Savile pursues comedy duo

“We’re doing our Ellis & Rose show on Tuesday and Jimmy Savile on Thursday,” said Rose.

“Is there a point to the Jimmy Savile show?” I asked.

“It wasn’t satire in Edinburgh,” said Rose, “but now it is.”

“It’s a satire on the nature of performers,” said Ellis.

“No, don’t give it away,” said Rose. “It’s not that.”

“Is it a post-modern comedy?” I asked, trying to help.

“It’s not even comedy,” said Ellis.

“It’s definitely not comedy,” agreed Rose.

“It’s genuinely a work of art,” said Ellis. “I don’t think it’s classifiable. It’s funny, but it’s not a comedy. It’s a kind of tragedy.”

“It’s poignant,” suggested Rose. “Actually, Ellis did have a kind of revelation…”

“…during the show in Norwich,” explained Ellis. “I just stopped.”

“The whole show stopped,” said Rose.

“We had this beautiful moment with the audience,” said Ellis.

“The audience stopped laughing,” said Rose.

“And we actually realised why we were all there,” said Ellis, “watching this show about Jimmy Savile.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” said Rose, “we’re not going to give it away.”

“You’re going to have to come along and see it,” said Ellis.

“And we’ll cynically try to recreate that revelation,” said Rose.

Is it original art? Is it comedy? Is it a post-modern revelation?

“I was talking to someone the other week,” I said, “and he suggested we should have an annual beating-up of Ellis at the Edinburgh Fringe.”

“I’d be happy with that,” said Rose.

“It could become a Fringe tradition,” I suggested.

“I think someone every year has to get punched in the face,” agreed Ellis.

“It could make you a star,” I suggested.

A sparkle appeared in Ellis’ eyes, but I am not sure what caused it.

Maybe it was a tear.

Shimmering images, Ann Widdecombe’s brilliance and Gordon Brown – The Opera

I have had a fair amount of feedback from yesterday’s blog about the appalling image of the current Labour Party leadership.

One thing I have not been able to figure out is how the Conservative Party has successfully re-imaged at least two of its failed former party leaders.

John Major had a very large and very under-underrated role in bringing a 30-year stretch of Irish Troubles to an (almost) end (or at least to a healthy pause). Tony Blair took the credit but it was John Major who set all the necessaries in place and started everything rolling along. Unfortunately for him, as Prime Minister, he had the image of a weak, grey man out of control of the economic events buffeting him and the accusations of tabloid sleaze swirling round his colleagues.

Yet, just a few years later, he had been turned into an amiable, cricket-loving uncle figure and now he has been transformed yet again, this time into an elder statesman – a wise advisor with a steady pair of political hands.

Almost more staggering was the transformation of William Hague from simultaneously too-young and too-bald laughing stock into the wise semi-Churchillian muse he always aspired to be – and now into a calm, respected Foreign Secretary. I would not be surprised to see him ‘do another Churchill’ in a few years time and return to lead the party or even the country.

A third failed Conservative Party leader (there have been an awful lot of them) Michael Howard seemed to be brilliantly and terminally characterised by a venomous Ann Widdecombe as having “something of the night about him”. But now, when he occasionally pops up on TV, he seems less like a political vampire than an amiable man with a humorous twinkle in his eye and a jolly chortle. Though I would still not trust him after dark in a gothic mansion.

Even Ian Duncan Smith, a man for whom the word ‘bland’ seems too glitzy a description, has re-appeared on our screens of late not seeming too definitively dull. I think, with him, though, even the Conservative Party’s best spin doctors are on to a semi-loser.

Compare these mostly successful Conservative image-changes to the Labour Party’s PR failure with their ex-leaders.

Neil Kinnock still comes across as a charming, well-meaning Welsh windbag, simultaneously over-erudite and approaching near air-headedness. I can imagine him banging his head in Wayne’s World.

Tony Blair is now seen as the bullshit artist he always was: a man endlessly prepared to duck, dodge, dive, weave, spin and shit on others – and allow others to die for his principles – always smugly secure in the knowledge that his opinion is right because he and God work as a double act.

That’s two former leaders whom the Labour Party has been unable to re-image.

And then there is the sad case of Gordon Brown who is still in that nether region where he is too embarrassed to pop his head above the parapet and everyone else is too embarrassed to talk about him.

If Anna Nicole Smith’s life can be turned into an opera (as it just has been for the Royal Opera House), then Gordon Brown’s story cannot be far behind. It cries out for loud Wagnerian music to accompany one of the great political and personal tragedies of the last 50 years.

The story of a man with deeply-held socialist principles and a lust for power who had to wait ten years watching superficial socialist pretender Tony Blair – all style and no substance – get plaudits… then, after waiting that long decade of labyrinthine, Machiavellian, soul-destroying plotting, he eventually gets the powerful job he always knew he deserved and was promised… only to find the whole edifice comes crumbling down around him. And, ironically, the one thing he was always lauded for – his sure touch on the Economy – is one of the main causes of his downfall. That and an accidentally-recorded aside about an ordinary woman he casually called a racist on an apparently insignificant visit to the provinces.

It is like James Cagney at the end of White Heat.

Gordon Brown – he finally got to the top of the world and it blew right up in his face

If that is not meat for an opera, I don’t know what is.