Edinburgh Fringe: Picking up girls and boys + a court case on werewolf erotica

Adam Taffler at the Grouchy Club

Yesterday in the Grouchy Club show at the Edinburgh Fringe, showman Adam Taffler picked up a girl. Literally. He does it all the time.

And a boy.

One on each shoulder.

Afterwards, he took me outside where two girls wearing snorkels and flippers were in a restaurant opposite, eating noodles from boxes.

“I’ve lost my wedding dress,” one of them told me.

“How?” I asked.

This scuba girl has lost her wedding dress

“I was walking along and it fell off my back pack in London,” she told me.

“I’ve got the bridesmaid dress,” said the other scuba girl. “So we’re going to have a bridesmaid and no bride.”

“And no husband,” added the first scuba girl.

“Is this a real wedding?” I asked.

“I’m looking for a husband,” said the first scuba girl. We will find him.”

“It was going to be Garry,” said the second scuba girl, “but he ran away.”

“Does this link up to scuba diving in any way?” I asked.

“We are giving training in how to swim,” said the second scuba girl.

Second Scuba Girl of the Scoober Doober duo

“And how to be a bride?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said the second scuba girl.

“You’ve got to be really ladylike,” said the first scuba girl.

“Yeah. Really feminine,” said the second scuba girl. “We’re good at cleaning as well.”

“We found haggis today,” said the first scuba girl, “in a tin. We didn’t eat it.”

“I’ve just had an idea,” said Adam Taffler.

“Oh dear,” I said.

“Two naked people standing on the Royal Mile completely covered in flyers,” said Adam. “The more people come and take flyers, the more naked they get.”

I was physically harassed against an Edinburgh wall (Photograph by Adam Taffler)

Then he took me outside and photographed me against a wall with the two scuba girls.

As the girls flip-flopped their way across the road in their flippers, someone asked: “Are you promoting a show?”

“We call ourselves the Scoober Doobers,” they told her.

“But are you promoting a show?”

“No,” they said.

“Are you in any show up here?”

“No.”

At the Grouchy Club itself, Mathilda Gregory had told us about writing werewolf erotica.

Mathilda Gregory – funny girl turned mistress of wolf  erotica

Mathilda was the Komedia New Act of The Year in 2000, a BBC Writers’ Room/Laughing Stock winner in 2011 and a Funny Women ‘One To Watch’ in 2013.

“Why did you stop performing comedy?” I asked.

“It was a lot of hard work,” explained Mathilda. “You had to physically go to a place. You thought: Oh God! I’ve got to go to Birmingham!”

“It was specifically Birmingham that put you off?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Mathilda. “Or maybe it was the person I was sharing a car with.”

“So you took up writing instead…” I said.

“I’ve written six novels,” Mathilda replied. “Three of them are about werewolves.”

“What are the other three about?” I asked.

“One of them is about a woman who likes to spy on gay men having sex. One is about a woman who gets obsessed with a male prostitute. And one is about a woman who has a disability fetish. I won Writer of the Year at the Erotic Awards in 2007 and I have a wonderful trophy from that.”

A highly coveted Erotic Award – the Golden Flying Penis

“Ah!” said Grouchy Club co-presenter Kate Copstick. “The penis with wings.”

“Yes,” said Mathilda. “But my wings have fallen off.”

“How did you get into this?” I asked.

“My publisher,” explained Mathilda, “told me: We’re starting a line in paranormal erotica. There’s a huge market. In America, this is going to do really well.”

“Is it sex between consenting werewolves?” asked Copstick.

“There are three books,” said Mathilda. “We get into all kinds of things.”

“Apparently,” said Copstick, “wolves are much, much better at sex than men are.”

“I can believe that,” said Mathilda. “I’ve obviously done the research now. Vampires are not really very virile.”

Mathilda Gregory and one of her close friends

“I think everybody’s fucked a vampire by now,” said Copstick.

“You have a show about your werewolf books at the Fringe this year,” I prompted. “Werewolf Erotica She Wrote.”

“Well,” she said, “one of my books had been the subject of a court case. In 2013 a male prisoner in California, who was imprisoned for the attempted murder of a member of the Mexican Mafia, took his prison to court because they wouldn’t allow him to have one of my werewolf novels in prison. There was a two-year long court case where they read my book and tried to assess whether I had enough literary merit to be allowed in prison.

“They compared it to Shakespeare. They compared it to Dostoyevsky. The court report is the most amazing gift I’ve ever been given – 30 pages, just banging on about my book. It’s like an author’s dream.”

“Were they objecting to the sex?” I asked. “Or to the werewolves?”

Mathilda at the Grouchy Club

“They said it was inter-laced with pornography and that it incited violence. But the court found against them. So legally I have literary merit. There’s a lovely quote from an author called Peter Orner who they called as an expert witness. It says something like Pelican Bay is one of the most violent prisons in California. It has a lot of serious problems. An inmate reading books about werewolves having sex is really not a concern.

“So, legally, I have a judgment that my book has literary merit and is ‘perhaps’ less than Shakespearean. I like the fact they used the word ‘perhaps’ – so there is some legal doubt as to whether or not I am better than Shakespeare.”

Other creatures’ lives: Charlie Chuck and Elsie the duck who sits on his head

Yesterday, I drove up to Leicestershire to take photographs of comedian Charlie Chuck with his ducks. Well, they are not his ducks. They are his girlfriend’s ducks.

It is not a quiet nor a simple life having 21 ducks, two dogs, an occasional fox and Charlie Chuck in your back garden. Because they have to be mostly kept apart for safety reasons.

There are four females ducks, four very large males and 13 newly-born ducklings.

The four males have to be kept separate to stop them leaping on the four females, grabbing them violently by the back of their necks and making what Shakespeare almost called the duck with two backs.

The four females and 12 ducklings can be left to roam but need careful shepherding in case they make a bolt for the wrought-iron side gate and, from there, the front garden and road.

And then there is Elsie.

Elsie was a sickly duckling, excluded from the family nest which was in a large wooden dog house. She was tended by Charlie Chuck’s girlfriend’s grown-up son and has bonded with him and humans not ducks. She does not like water except to drink. She refuses to swim. And, if she goes outside when the other ducklings are around, they attack her. But she will settle on human shoulders – especially Charlie Chuck’s – like a miniature would-be pirate’s parrot.

And on his head.

If no human is available, she will follow the nearest mother substitute available – usually Billy the Jack Russell dog belonging to Charlie Chuck’s girlfriend. Of a night-time, Elsie would ideally like to sleep with Billy the Jack Russell dog, but Billy does not want this, so he tries to avoid the arrangement by running away, resulting in a regular circular chase round a tree in the back garden, with Billy pursued by Elsie in the twilight.

And then there is Charlie Chuck’s dog Ollie the collie who never barks at home but who does when he visits Charlie Chuck’s girlfriend’s home and hears Billy the Jack Russell dog bark.

And then there is the occasional fox, kept at bay at night by Charlie Chuck’s girlfriend’s grown-up son with a catapult in an upstairs window.

And then there is Charlie Chuck.

At home, the books on Charlie Chuck’s bookshelf include all the children’s stories written by C.S.Lewis, the autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake by Malcolm Hardee (he drowned) and The Paranormal: A Bishop Investigates by theologian Hugh Montefiore who was born a Sephardic Jew but who became the Church of England’s Bishop of Birmingham 1977-1987. He (Montefiore) converted to Christianity as a 16-year-old schoolboy when he had a vision of Christ while sitting in his study at Rugby school.

Jesus was a Jew who never converted to Christianity.

It can be a complicated world.

There are pictures of Charlie Chuck with Elsie the duck on my Facebook page here.