Outspoken Noel Faulkner, the veteran (he will hate me using that word) club-owner is leaving London after about 40 years (though with an interlude of about 18 years of that in the US). He started and ran London’s Comedy Cafe venue and, through his management agency, helped establish acts including Jimmy Carr. Last night, I met up with him to ask why he is leaving.
I had been seeing a comedy show and we met outside the venue after the show finished. That was his choice.
Noel Faulkner in London yesterday
JOHN: So you’re leaving in around 9-10 days. Do you have a set date for departure?
NOEL: No. I’m out of my house in London in about a week, then I’m going back to Galway. I’m from Galway. I’ve got a house there; I’m buying a boat – 40 or 45ft – and I’m going to sail six months of the year in the Mediterranean.
JOHN: I thought you were from Killarney.
NOEL: My parents moved a village in Connemara when I was a teenager. I was only there for a few years. Galway’s my home town.
JOHN: So why are you going back?
NOEL: Mainly because everybody I know in London is working. I never see anybody. All my friends are comics and I don’t want to hang round in comedy clubs. There is nothing more boring. I’d rather watch a proctologist operate.
JOHN: But you ran comedy clubs for…
NOEL: It’s all gone. After the Comedy Cafe closed, we tried it in a hotel but the people there were fucking idiots; they kept wanting to change the opening times. It’s done.
JOHN: Aren’t you going to feel pangs of nostalgia?
NOEL: I never want to see another comedian perform. I could have gone to this show you went to today. But I thought: I’m not going to sit in that. I just can’t be around comedy. You know the punchline and then the fuckers don’t hit it and you go: Oh! Fucking hell! I have no interest in comedy now. None.
JOHN: But you have an active mind. Galway is lovely. But you will get bored after six months, just sitting around.
NOEL: I’ll have a sail boat: you are permanently fixing something on a sail boat. I can fuck off anywhere I wanna go.
JOHN: And you are going to finish your autobiography in Ireland?
NOEL: Yeah. When I started writing it, there was only one Panama Canal. Since then, they’ve built a second one.
JOHN: Is it basically your 2005 Edinburgh Fringe show Shake, Rattle & Noel?
“…a Tourette-fuelled Helter Skelter ride through three decades” (New York Times)
NOEL: Yeah. But longer. More facts and craziness.
JOHN: What’s the last page? Leaving the Comedy Cafe?
NOEL: It doesn’t matter. Who’s going to buy it?
JOHN: You have amazing stories – Robin Williams, the drug cartels, being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, the…
NOEL: Yeah, it’s a great book but I’m nobody, so I won’t get a publisher. I just wanna finish it for me. I have no ego any more about anything. I don’t give a fuck.
JOHN: That’s age.
NOEL: Yeah. My mates are dying all around me. My brother’s girlfriend just died. I just want to get up every day and for it to be a good day and joyful.
JOHN: Paul Sinha has Parkinson’s Disease.
NOEL: Yeah. He’s a sweet man… Ian Cognito just died last month. I knew Paul (Cognito’s real name). He was a lovely man. Very sad.
JOHN: His death must have had an effect on you.
NOEL: Scary. That’s why I realised… Just get the fucking boat… I might be dead in five years time.
JOHN: He was 60. But he had lived a fair old bit…
NOEL: A brilliant singer. I saw him sing with Peter Graham’s orchestra at the Hackney Empire… white tuxedo… beautiful. Highly talented but totally self-destructive. Permanently on self-destruct.
JOHN: I’m amazed Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is still alive.
NOEL: It’s in the genes.
JOHN: Do you have long-living relatives?
NOEL: I have a great-great-great-grandfather who lived to be 125.
JOHN: Was he fairly compos mentis?
NOEL: I don’t know. I wasn’t born then.
JOHN: Comedy moves on. Jo Brand got into trouble. People in the UK have been throwing milk shakes at politicians. She joked on a BBC Radio show: “Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?” Nigel Farage complained; the police investigated but decided it was not an incitement to violence.
“We can’t start censoring. You’ll have Dialogue Police.”
NOEL: It was just a fucking joke. Listen, we can’t start censoring. You’ll have Dialogue Police. When I had the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch, they were doing a test attaching microphones to lampposts. If someone was murdered, they would hear it and the CCTV guys could start looking at the… That’s how fucking… So we could be sitting here outside a cafe having a conversation and you swear 12 times and say this word and… We are right up to that!
JOHN: 1984.
NOEL: We can’t have it! If I was doing stuff on stage now, I would fucking tear into everybody and go: Fuck you all! It’s like “Good evening ladies and gentlemen and everyone with a sexual preference from A to fucking Z”… Now I haven’t offended anybody, ya cunts. It’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t even know what the initials LGBTQ… Does ANYbody fucking know what they stand for? NO. But some guy’s got a penis transplant to his forehead and a vagina in his ear… For fuck’s sake!
JOHN: You should seriously think about doing an Edinburgh Fringe show where you just go up and rant.
NOEL: I don’t want to spend a month up there. It’s depressing. Really depressing.
JOHN: But, if you don’t give a shit, it’s OK.
NOEL: You’re still depressed. I’ve been up there with money in my pocket. Hated it.
JOHN: When you did your show in 2005? But you probably cared then. The trick is not to care.
NOEL: Yeah, but you’re spending fucking £10,000. Edinburgh, for a comic, is the greatest illusion ever.
JOHN: In what way?
NOEL: That you’re gonna make it.
JOHN: Are you gonna have a farewell ‘do’?
NOEL: No.
JOHN: Oh go on… A farewell rant.
NOEL: No, I’m not. I don’t want to stand round in a bar having to talk to people. They can fuck off. I’m gone.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 