Comic Becky Fury, who married comic Arthur Smith, has won multiple Awards

Last year’s Edinburgh Fringe saw the last Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards, but it is good to see former winners upholding Malcolm’s  penchant for creative inexactitude.

There is an admirable piece of not-altogether incorrect publicity on display in Edinburgh courtesy of Malcolm Hardee Award winner Becky Fury…

She won the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award in 2016 for seeming to claim in her publicity she was a finalist for the main Last Minute Comedy Award in Edinburgh… In fact, she had been a finalist for a totally different award from a similarly-named but totally different Last Minute lot (a small club no-one had heard of). She also put her Fringe poster on the Tinder dating site on the basis that she would either get additional audience members or a steady supply of young men or both.

After the Fringe was over, a mate of Malcolm’s then saw her perform in a pub in South London and gave her something which he also called a Malcolm Hardee Award.

So, on her posters and flyers this, year, Becky is honestly, if misleadingly, claiming again (arguably truthfully) that she was a 2016 Last Minute Comedy Finalist while adding that she won two Malcolm Hardee Awards in 2016.

She also has, on her posters and flyers, laurels for winning – this year – the ‘Arthur Smiffy Award For Show That Is Probably Very Good But I Haven’t Seen Yet’.

This Arthur Smiffy (for which, read Arthur Smith) Award might or might not be true as she ‘married’ Arthur Smith in Cumbria this year as part of a comedy show. Note that she ‘married’ him not married him.

In publicity, punctuation can make all the difference.

It is good to see traditions being upheld.

I think Malcolm would have approved of all this.

After all, with Arthur Smith, he did once write a review of his own comedy show, submitted it to The Scotsman newspaper under the name of their esteemed comedy critic… and they published it.

Cunning Stunts are to be encouraged and cherished in Edinburgh and elsewhere in the show business.

Becky’s show is titled The Apocaloptimist.

And, strangely, Fury is her real name.

I think.

That’s what she says, anyway.

PR Max Clifford and celebrities’ secrets

‘Disgraced PR man’ Max Clifford died in prison yesterday, serving a sentence for sex crimes. But I doubt if we have heard the last of him, because people can tell their stories now. And there is a risk he himself might have more stories to tell.

Stories about him abound.

For example, he used to go along to the after-show get-togethers of at least two major TV broadcasters with two, sometimes three, lovely young ladies and chat to producers, directors et al.

Let’s say he went with a blonde, a brunette and a lady of colour. People have different tastes.

And afterwards, well…

What happens happens.

Sometime later, in the general way of his work, he might invite a TV producer – let’s say one of the people he schmoozed with after the TV shows – along to his office to discuss future prospects.

When the producer arrived, Max would be sitting there in his office chair and, behind him on the wall, there might be framed photos of the producer is sexually compromising situations with one or more of the girls he had met through Max. Alright. having sex in well-shot photos taken without the producer’s knowledge.

The photographs were never mentioned by Max in his chat with the producer but it would come as no surprise if one or more of Max’s clients appeared later in one or more of the producer’s shows.

Part of his job was getting publicity for his clients – as in the (totally untrue) Sun headlines about comic Freddie Starr eating a hamster and MP David Mellor having sex in a Chelsea football strip.

But another job of the top PR man, of course, is to keep his client’s name OUT of the newspapers if there is some scandal or imminent scandal brewing.

And it would be not unreasonable for a worried client to go to Max with a plea to avoid bad publicity and/or get damage limitation.

In such a situation, of course,  it would be perfectly reasonable for Max to ask the client to tell him details not just of what they wanted to keep out of the press in this specific case but of ALL other possible scandals which might also get dredged up by any newspaper.

So he knew not just scandals that the press sniffed around but many of the scandals hidden in major celebrities’ closets that no-one had any idea existed.

Let us hope he only kept these secrets in the back of his mind and never wrote any of them down for future use.

Max Clifford as seen in graffiti on a wall in Battersea in 2014

Edinburgh Fringe Day 6: A terrifying smile and a lack of terrorism security

Yesterday’s blog ended with a mention of believable and unbelievable anecdotes.

Alexander Bennett’s bloody battle to perform

This morning, I had a long conversation with comedian Alexander Bennett – to whom all hail – in which we discussed the idea of simply making up some bizarre – completely false – event which allegedly happened during his Terrifying Smile show today… simply to promote the fact that he is performing at 2.00pm in the Dragonfly venue.

He, like Becky Fury, has been hit by the Curse of Cowgatehead, having previously been booked into the Opium venue, then Cowgatehead (re-named Bar Bados this year presumably to mask the Curse of Cowgatehead) and finally having to leave the Free Fringe venues altogether with no Fringe Programme listing and eventually, happily, ending up in the Heroes of Fringe Dragonfly venue.

We discussed making up a completely false event – well, OK, I tried to foist the idea on him – in order to publicise where he was actually now appearing… But how could we tell an untruth to this blog’s readers?

Alexander Bennett freshens his mouth today

Clearly we couldn’t.

A pity, as I was rather looking forward to writing about two members of his audience: one dressed as a dragon; the other dressed as a fly. Such a thing would not necessarily be unbelievable in Edinburgh during the Fringe. I remember years ago seeing the then-unknown Piff The Magic Dragon waiting at a pedestrian crossing on Nicholson Street. No-one gave any attention to a man dressed as a green dragon.

Truth and reality can vary depending on your viewpoint.

For example, in a Scotsman piece I read today, Kate Copstick describes me as “aged but still sentient”.

I would disagree with this very strongly indeed.

I certainly do not feel sentient.

Mike’s Frank Carson: If I Didn’t Laugh, I’d Cry

‘Aged’… fair enough, because I am so old I remember life before the iPhone 6S and things like a Blackpool lunch in the 1980s with stars of Granada’s TV series The Comedians where Frank Carson just never switched off and Bernard Manning (with some justification) seemed to think he was a bit ‘above’ the others. And I remember Saturday mornings on Tiswas with Frank Carson at ATV Birmingham where, again, he was constantly being Frank Carson.

Spike Milligan famously said that the difference between Frank Carson and the M25 was that you could turn off the M25.

In this blog a couple of weeks ago, fellow comic Mike McCabe said: “For someone to go on and on and on like that, there had to be some problem deep down.”

Mike’s current show about Frank Carson If I Didn’t Laugh, I’d Cry, tries to figure out Frank’s mindset and benefits from the fact Mike actually worked with him.

Steve Best amid his photos at the Stills centre this afternoon

I also felt slightly old going to the current exhibition of Steve Best’s photos of comedians at the Stills Centre For Photography in Edinburgh, designed to promote Joker Face, his second book of photos, quotes and quirky facts – featuring over 450 comedians.

And then I bumped into Gill Smith, the inspiraton for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

She is in Edinburgh for a week, reviewing shows for one4review. She was with her daughter Pippa, now aged seven. I think the last time Pippa and I were in the same room together was when she was a bump in her mother’s tummy.

Gill Smith and her 7-year-old daughter Pippa

In 2008 Gill, as a stand-up comic, sent me an email telling me she was nominating herself for the Malcolm Hardee Award on the basis that, by nominating herself, she could legitimately put on her posters MALCOLM HARDEE AWARD NOMINEE. She added that she thought Malcolm would have approved of this.

I had to agree with her and created a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award before she could give herself one. Ooh missus. Since then, of course, all the Malcolm Hardee Awards have become increasingly prestigious.

Today it was confirmed that Malcolm’s sister Clare Hardee is coming up to Edinburgh to sing on the final Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show on 25th August.

Becky Fury’s Molotov Cocktail Party curse

Which brings us to terrorism and last year’s Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award winner Becky Fury (her suitably real name).

In the High Street and elsewhere in Edinburgh, giant obstacles have sprouted to deter and prevent  random lorry attacks on the Fringe crowds, but none of the venues seem to make even cursory checks on bags going into shows.

Becky is another victim of the Curse of Cowgatehead and has been thinking of ways to promote the fact she is now in a different venue at a different time (10.00pm in the Black Market) to her billing in the Fringe Programme.

There was her appearance in a London riot the other night.

And she decided today that fire-blowing in the streets or wherever might attract attention. So she bought some paraffin.

..so she bought some paraffin…

It is relevant to point out here that her show is titled Molotov Cocktail Party.

Tonight, she and I went to see the always brilliant Milton Jones perform in the giant main Assembly Hall on The Mound.

In her back pack she had paraffin in a bottle – in essence, a Molotov cocktail. And, low on battery, I had a fairly large re-charger in my inside jacket pocket with a wire to the iPhone in my shirt pocket.

Just as well we were not given any cursory search. Or was it?

I look old and far from sentient with Becky Fury at tonight’s Milton Jones show in the Assembly Hall

 

 

From Tiswas custard pies to cunning comedy awards, my petard is hoisted

ITV’s Tiswas – Good clean family fun

I can’t remember what a petard is and can’t be bothered to look it up, but it’s easy to be hoisted with your own one.

I used to work as a researcher on the slapstick-ish children’s TV show Tiswas, where people had custard pies shoved in their faces. So, sometimes, when I met people who wanted to be on the show, they felt obliged to demonstrate how ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’ they were by shoving a custard pie in my face.

Except they used a real custard pie. The Tiswas ones were actually made from highly-whipped and coloured shaving foam (it clung to you, did not stain and wiped off easily).

Now I organise the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, so I have to beware of people pulling cunning stunts on me.

Last year’s Cunning Stunt Award was won by Becky Fury who not only put her flyer on the dating site Tinder to attract single men to her Fringe show but who, on that flyer, claimed she was a ‘Last Minute Comedy finalist’.

Becky Fury – burgering around yet again

Last year, the second most prestigious comedy awards at the Fringe – formerly known as the Perrier Awards – were sponsored by lastminute.com so were called the Last Minute Comedy Awards.

Becky correctly called herself a ‘Last Minute Comedy finalist’ to lure in punters thinking she was up for the ‘Big’ prize whereas, in reality, she had been a finalist in a competition run by a small comedy club operation called Last Minute in Hertfordshire. The day I saw her show, four people had, indeed, come with (and still retained when they left) that false belief. A cunning success.

But who would have thought that the lovely Becky was a grass?

Or possibly a nominator. It depends on your viewpoint.

This week, she drew my attention to a couple of comedy blurbs.

Loose Brie – never-knowingly under-promoted comedy duo

In one, comedy duo Loose Brie blurbed themselves as MALCOLM HARDEE FIRST MINUTE AWARD NOMINEES 2016 –

Like The Dangerous Brothers, Vic and Bob and We Are Klang before them, Loose Brie deal in the glorious art of high-concept, low brow, organised chaos. They’ll use their bodies in ways you didn’t think were possible. You’ll see things you can’t un-see.

All jolly and appealing except there was and is no such thing as the Malcolm Hardee First Minute Award. At least, I don’t think there is. Reality, like grassing-up/nominating someone, is often a case of personal perception.

Cally Beaton – a cunning award winner

Cally Beaton is publicising her debut solo show Super Cally Fragile Lipstick by saying her previous show Cat Call (with Catherine Bohart) “received a Malcolm Hardee Award” at the Fringe last year.

What happened last year was that the excellent Edward Hobson (a former producer on BBC TV’s The One Show) had the cunning idea that he would give an award for the Fringe show with the best first minute. On the basis that, if a show doesn’t grab you in the first minute, it is no good. He would go into shows, see the first minute and then leave. Which he did.

So I gave him one minute at the start of the increasingly prestigious two-hour-long Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show last year to announce the winners of his First Minute Awards. Which he did.

Cally Beaton was the winner; Loose Brie were nominees.

Cunning and genuinely award-winning Cally Beaton

They were, to tell 100% of the truth, neither nominees nor winners of a Malcolm Hardee Award but they deserve brownie points for exploiting every opportunity. In fact, I am of a mind to possibly nominate Cally Beaton for a Cunning Stunt Award this year on the basis of her not-quite-100%- truthful plug for her excellently-named Super Cally Fragile Lipstick show at next month’s Fringe.

I did ask both her and Loose Brie if they had any quotable comments and the Brie duo sent me a frankly unnecessarily-long statement, which read:

We believe it is very much in the spirit of our show about confidence (Loose Brie Are Great, Camden Fringe, July 31st – Aug 6th) and the Malcolm Hardee Awards, to have linked our nomination for the jokey, one-off ‘First Minute Awards’ to the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardees, due to them both being given out at the same venue.

Loose Brie: never knowingly under-promoted comedy duo

By claiming almost-but-not-quite falsely to have been nominated for a Malcolm Hardee Award we have provided a fitting send off to, at the very least, the Cunning Stunt Award.

No need to thank us, as the nomination is thanks enough. 

We are not up in Edinburgh this year (because we are at Camden Fringe, July 31st – Aug 6th, show title: Loose Brie Are Great). But, if we were there, we can all agree Loose Brie definitely would have been nominated for several more Malcolm Hardees. Our 2018 poster quotes are likely to reflect this.

Edward Hobson at the Grouchy Club during last year’s  Edinburgh Fringe

Ed Hobson told me today:

“Cally did win and Loose Brie were nominated, but I never told them it was a Malcolm Hardee Award so I think they’re just being ‘cunning’.

“The First Minute Award is not making it to Edinburgh this year because I spent one minute planning my trip, looking at trains and accommodation and then stopped. If it can’t be decided in one minute it’s not worth doing.

“Also, with my wedding in October and getting my fiancée over from the USA, I decided it might be out of my budget.”

“Wedding?” I asked.

Ed Hobson with his possibly sedated betrothed Nikki Kvarnes

“Yes,” he said, “I’m getting married to Nikki Kvarnes, an American musician and artist.

“She was in a band called Those Darlins.

“We find out today if her visa to marry me has been granted or not. Very exciting day. She is far too talented and beautiful for me but thankfully my sense of humour paid off.”

Or perhaps hers.

Everyone thinks they’re a comedian.

The Edinburgh Fringe: How to win a Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award

Well, the best way to win an Award and to honour Malcolm’s memory would be to lend me £500 and not expect to get it back but, if you are more vanilla in your Award approaches, the first thing is to know is what the fuck the awards actually are.

There are three and they are given in memory of the late Malcolm Hardee who was, according to The Guardian, the “patron sinner of alternative comedy, renowned for his outrageous stunts”. The Daily Telegraph called him “godfather to a generation of comic talent” and, in their 2005 obituary, the Independent said he was “the greatest influence on British comedy over the last 25 years”.

I know the last quote must be totally true because I wrote the obituary myself and included that phrase on the basis that future lazy journalists would simply blindly copy it.

The current three annual, increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards are:

THE MALCOLM HARDEE AWARD FOR COMIC ORIGINALITY

Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality

Basically, we have no idea what we are looking for. If we did know what we were looking for, we would be able to define it and it would not be original. But the award is for a performer not for a show and one producer who approached me this year touting a “family friendly” children’s show was wide-of-the-mark on almost all counts. Malcolm was known for having the biggest bollocks in show business and for showing them to everyone at the drop of a testicle. On stage, he was not family friendly.

Past winners of the award have been Reggie Watts, Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds, Edward Aczel, Otto Kuhnle, Robert White, Johnny Sorrow, The Rubberbandits, Adrienne Truscott, Candy Gigi and Michael Brunström.

THE ACT MOST LIKELY TO MAKE A MILLION QUID AWARD

For Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid

Well, the title says it all, really.

The judges have to take a wild punt on who may survive the vagaries of – and triumph over the good and bad luck inherent in – a comedy career to attain seldom-attained financial success.

There is no point anyone approaching us to suggest themselves. If we think you are likely to fulfil the future requirement and win it, that’s our call, not yours.

Past winners have been Bo Burnham, Benet Brandreth, Trevor Noah, Luisa Omielan and Laurence Owen.

THE CUNNING STUNT AWARD

I pose with the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award

This is the one the press like. It is for the best CUNNING stunt promoting a Fringe performer or act or show.

But pay close attention to the inclusion of the word ‘cunning’.

Riding an elephant painted pink down Princes Street and inviting the press is a stunt but it is not a cunning stunt.

This award was started when comic Gill Smith sent me an email saying she was nominating herself for the Malcolm Hardee Award on the basis that her email to me allowed her to legitimately put on her posters and flyers “Malcolm Hardee Award Nominee”. She said she thought Malcolm would have approved. I thought he would too and started the award.

The winners have been:

GILL SMITH – for that initial piece of chutzpah.

LEWIS SCHAFFER – for convincing several publications that he was the new sponsor of the (formerly Perrier) Edinburgh Comedy Awards for £99 and that his mother and agent would be on the judging panel.

STEWART LEE – for successfully encouraging people to vote for little-known Japanese act Frank Chickens in a poll for Best Fringe Performer despite the fact they were not performing at the Fringe. (As a result of the publicity, ironically, they did perform at that year’s Fringe.)

KUNT & THE GANG/BOB SLAYER – for getting fans to put stickers depicting penises on the posters of rival acts to promote Kunt & The Gang’s show. Personally, I never liked the original stunt but Bob Slayer, Kunt’s promoter, kept the publicity stoked-up and refreshed for so long in so many ways it became a work of PR art.

STUART GOLDSMITH – for a series of YouTube videos about Fringe censorship of the title of his show Prick.

BARRY FERNS – for printing and distributing around Edinburgh fake copies of Broadway Baby which gave his show 6-out-of-5 star reviews and reported that his show had been nominated for the Fosters Comedy Awards, in both the main category and the newcomer category.

CHRISTIAN TALBOT – for using his 12-year-old daughter Kate to go up to strangers, looking sad, ask them “Have you seen my daddy?” and, if they said “No”, handing out flyers to them.

MATT ROPER – for hacking into the Facebook account of Malcolm Hardee judge & Scotsman reviewer Kate Copstick and posting fake messages – purportedly from her – “bigging himself up”.

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Jay Handley’s Cunning Stunt

This year, there have already been two arguably worthy contenders for the Cunning Stunt Award – though that is no guarantee they will get nominated – There may be better as-yet unpulled cunning stunts.

Jay Handley has launched an online change.org petition to get the Oxford English Dictionary to change the spelling of ‘Religion’ to ‘Relgion’.

His basic argument is that “For too long people across the country have been spelling ‘religion’ in a manner that is unacceptable to people who have ordered 5000 flyers for their Edinburgh Fringe show with it spelled ‘relgion’ in the main copy of their blurb.”

John Robertson’s Cunning Stunt

Meanwhile, there is an online Huffington Post piece by John Robertson lauding the “Ten Best New Comedians” at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Number One is John Robertson and the other nine also contain references to John Robertson and his Fringe comedy show.

It is, in a way, a combination of Barry Ferns’ stunt of publishing a fake edition of Broadway Baby and one of Malcolm Hardee’s most infamous stunts where (with Arthur Smith) he wrote a review of his own Fringe show and conned The Scotsman into publishing it under the byline of their own comedy critic.

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The judges for this year’s Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show (that is the way it is billed in the official Fringe Programme) are:

MARISSA BURGESS
Freelance comedy critic, lover of all things weird and an inveterate streaker. This Fringe she will be criticising comedians for The List and Fest.

KATE COPSTICK
Chief Comedy Critic of The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. Loudest member of various judgely huddles from the Perrier Award to Home Made Pickle of the Year at The Parrot in Forest Green and author of The Illustrated Guide to Sapphic Sex.

BRUCE DESSAU
Comedy Critic of the London Evening Standard, editor of website beyondthejoke.co.uk and author of biographies of Rowan Atkinson and Reeves and Mortimer.

JOHN FLEMING
Handsome, debonair fashion icon. “The Boswell of the alternative comedy scene” (Chortle) Co-host (with Kate Copstick) of the Grouchy Club’s weekly podcast and its live shows at the Fringe.

JAY RICHARDSON
Freelance journalist for The Scotsman, Chortle, The Guardian, Independent, Sunday Times, Metro, BBC, Channel 4 etc.

CLAIRE SMITH
Freelance journalist, reviewer and feature writer for The Scotsman. Fringe lover, cabaret freak, arthouse baby, catastrophe thinker, water rabbit.

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The Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show takes place at the Ghillie Dhu in Edinburgh on Friday 26th August and MC Janey Godley should be introducing music by (but one can never be sure at the Fringe):

Bob Blackman’s Tray
Ursula Burns
Kate Copstick
Elvis Corpsley: The Zombie Elvis
Brian Damage & Krysstal
Candy Gigi
Kunt & The Gang
Lynn Ruth Miller
Laurence Owen
Ariane Sherine

The show will also include the announcement and presentation of this year’s awards, the annual Scottish National Russian Egg Roulette contest and the presentation by Edward Hobson of Ed at Last’s new FirstMinute Awards for the best first 60 seconds in a Fringe comedy show. The fact that the long-running, formerly Perrier Edinburgh comedy awards are now sponsored by lastminute.com is, I am sure, entirely coincidental.

John Ward, designer and manufacturer of the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards

Edinburgh Fringe: some shows, a man dangling from a bridge and a romance

Performer Richard Gadd (right) appeared to be preparing to punch comic Joz Norris in an Edinburgh street yesterday

My yesterday at the Edinburgh Fringe started with a Danish man playing the bagpipes and ended with a policeman.

There were stunts along the way, but none of them cunning stunts.

I saw seven shows yesterday. Five of them were:

Claus Reis: Return of the Danish Bagpipe Comedian
The show works, but there’s a presentation problem. If your USP is confounding expectations by being a Danish bagpiper and you dress up in a kilt and traditional Scots piper costume and you look fairly Scottish, then there is no real visual USP. Naff as it may sound, you should be wearing Viking horns or some equally stock cliché Danish costume while playing the pipes.

Candy Gigi: Award-winner with a new face this year

Candy Gigi: Chicken Soup
Last year’s Malcolm Hardee Award winner for comic originality. This year, she has developed the madness, adding in more glimpses of her acting and great singing voice and, yesterday, picked a perfect punter to unleash her insanity on. She handled him so well, I thought he might be a plant. He wasn’t. It was like watching a mescaline-crazed Cilla Black. Her shows tread a narrow line between sunshine and darkness.

Joz Norris: Hey Guys!
Always talented and charismatic, Joz’s new show now holds together as an entity. Tremendously enjoyable, with hints of a genuinely interesting autobiographical back story. If he has the nerve to increase the true stories while retaining the surrealism, he could break through massively. Perfect TV face.

Martha McBrier: Pigeon Puncher
It is easy to think she is ‘just’ a naturally very, very funny storyteller, but there is a lot of preparation and an enormous talent in audience control behind this show and her performance. Very very very funny indeed.

Bob Slayer conducting his BlundaBus show

Bob Slayer’s BlundaBus: Never Mind the BusStops
With anyone else, this unplanned rambling shambles of comic chattery in a double decker bus would be a car crash. With Bob (nominally) in charge, it still is – but that is the point of it. It’s a success! Not so much as a show but as an event.

Nathan (right, in red) with DeLorean before the wind came

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In among all the above, I also went to the Three Sisters pub in the Cowgate, where Nathan Cassidy had managed to get hold of and park a DeLorean car to plug his Back To The Future trilogy of shows.

People could wear the hero’s red jacket and get photographed in the car and the bonnet was covered in flyers for Nathan’s shows: a good stunt undercut by the fact this is eternally-windy Edinburgh and occasional gusts blew the flyers off the bonnet into the street.

On second thoughts, though, perhaps that was not a negative factor. That was publicity. This is the Fringe.

John Robertson: very Dark in The Underbelly

Walking away from that, I bumped into John Robertson in a rubber suit (no change there, then) plugging his Dark Room show… and then photographer Garry Platt, who has been wandering round photographing shows and events.

As Garry and I wandered off, I looked up. The Old Town of Edinburgh is built on two levels. Above out heads was the George IV Bridge from which a giant trapeze was dangling and a young gent was climbing down a rope towards it.

I said to a girl standing on the pavement: “He has eleven minutes to kill himself.”

“What?” she said, slightly surprised.

“I have to leave in ten minutes,” I explained, “so he only has eleven minutes to fall onto the road and plug whatever show it is by killing himself.”

It turned out she was doing the PR for the show.

Dolls duo dangling dangerously above the Cowgate yesterday (Photographs by Garry Platt)

The young man dangled and was followed by a young woman who dangled. They both dangled. By the time I left, a fair crowd had gathered on the bridge above and on both the pavements below to watch them dangle.

The traffic slowed as drivers looked up and small flyers were handed out to publicise the show Dolls.

But I think, to be truly effective, it needed a banner dangling from the bridge itself, above the two dangling trapeze people risking their lives for a line in The Scotsman.

Semi-ironically, the next event I went to was a 90-minute event publicising Death on the Fringe, an umbrella organisation which I blogged about last month.

It aims to stimulate discussion of death, end-of-life issues, bereavement and grief.

It was held in the Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre in the Medical School building of Edinburgh Universally.

All the talk was of death, terminal illnesses and mortality, but it seemed strangely refreshing amid the incestuous atmosphere of egos swirling around in the streets outside.

There have been sadly few cunning stunts so far this year.

Mark Dean Quinn – King of Fringe Flyerers

But I bumped into Mark Dean Quinn yesterday. Last year, he got a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt nomination for his flyering techniques.

This year, he is mostly plugging his own show More Observation Without Comedy Is Not On Today about which he was strangely quiet, perhaps because it does not start until ten days time and is only on for two days. But he is also plugging Ben Target’s show Imagine There’s No Ben Target (It’s Easy If You Try) by handing out imaginary flyers and paper bags which say:

A BAG IN WHICH TO PLACE
YOUR IMAGINARY FLYER FOR
IMAGINE THERE’S NO BEN
TARGET (IT’S EASY IF YOU TRY)

3pm
THE HIVE
WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES

“How does Ben Target pronounce Ben Target?” I asked.

“Well,” explained Mark, “he pronounces Target as target and Tarjay as tarjay

“Each day,” Mark told me, Ben has given me a precise number of people he wants me to get into his show by flyering.”

“A different number each day?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said Mark.

“What,” I asked, “happens if you miss the target for Ben Target?”

“Well, I don’t intend to fail on any particular day, because I’m sure there will be serious ramifications and I have seen what he carries in his suitcase.”

Janey Godley in a suitcase. There is no Ben Target on view

“What does he carry in his suitcase?” I asked.

“I have signed an actual written document to say I can’t say what’s in it, but it’s quite special.”

“Is the penalty different,” I asked if you are over or under on the audience numbers?”

“If you want to find out what the penalty is – and see what’s in the suitcase – come to the show at 3.00pm at The Hive daily, you’ll actually see the inside.”

Now THAT is effective promotion with a hint of cunning stunt.

As I walked back to my flat at around 2.00am last night/this morning, I turned down a side street. On the other side, walking in the opposite direction, back into the centre of Edinburgh, were a ballerina and a policeman hand-in-hand. They were not publicising anything. Just happy to be with each other.

Just when I thought the anarchic nature of the Edinburgh Fringe had peaked…

Four comedians went naked at Bob’s Bookshop late last night

It was Bob Slayer’s final Edinburgh Fringe show last night and, I presume the last Fringe show in general, given that the Edinburgh Fringe officially finished five days ago.

That was no deterrent to Bob Slayer though and he ended it as anyone who knows him would expect – with four naked comedians playing what I think is called “Willie Tag”.

Willie Tag is played in much the same way as the normal children’s game of Tag – the object is to touch another person who tries to evade you. The difference is that, in Willie Tag, you try to touch the other person with your penis.

Yes, I know… I know…

What can I say?

I was as surprised as you.

All I can say is that the four naked comedians pursued the game with some vigour in-and-out of the audience and, shortly afterwards, the audience dispersed with a variety of looks on their faces.

But, as I say in the headline to this blog, Just when I thought the anarchic nature of the Fringe had peaked…

…there was another surprise.

A few days ago, I mentioned in a blog that a well-known comedian had (for reasons only known to himself) told his PR people NOT to put review quotes and stars on his posters. He had then been shocked to see stars from Broadway Baby reviews on his posters. But both his management’s PR people and his venue’s PR people denied sticking the stars on his posters.

Edinburgh’s secret star maker is revealed

On a wild whim yesterday, I sent an e-mail to Barry Ferns who, this year, won the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for publishing spoof versions of the Broadway Baby and Three Weeks review sheets, which included fake reviews praising his own Fringe show.

“I don’t suppose,” I wrote in my e-mail to Barry, “that by any stretch of a very stretched imagination this was you trying to get ahead on a Cunning Stunt for 2014?”

Today Barry replied:

“Ha! I was adding random bogus stars to posters throughout this Edinburgh for my own amusement… It wasn’t a campaign as such. I just had some printed up… I didn’t think anyone had noticed.

“However, to add to the intrigue, I did not accredit any stars to Broadway Baby… They were just unmarked stars… So perhaps the search continues!… I quite like this element of bringing out your deductive skills around my comedy industry related seditious acts. Moriarty to your Holmes…”

Bob Slayer protects what little modesty he has

Barry warns me that he is planning an even bigger and more spectacular scam next year.

Who am I to dis anarchy?

I am leaving Edinburgh this afternoon with Bob Slayer in my car. He has not showered since Tuesday. It is an 8 hour journey to my home and another 45mins to his.

I have hopes of renting him to the Syrian government as a chemical weapon.