So yesterday I met comedian Ellis in the basement bar of The Toucan pub off Soho Square in London. He did not have a black eye.
Ellis says he does not want to be forever remembered as the man who got his stage partner Rose to punch him in the face so Ellis & Rose could claim Ellis had got beaten up by an irate objector to their Edinburgh Fringe show last year (Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show), get some publicity in the press and win a highly coveted Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award.
The video excerpt of him being repeatedly punched in the face is still on YouTube. He should be proud of how he suffered for his art. But, for some reason, he seems unwilling to milk it.
Now Ellis & Rose have come up with another new idea.
Potential mystery & mayhem coachmasters Ellis (left) & Rose
“We will get a luxury coach,” Ellis told me, “fill it with people and a few acts and drive out of London to weird, random towns and do bizarre town tours and scavenger hunts for weird items and the audience will be split into two teams. It will be like me and Rose taking a bunch of people on a school trip gone wrong.
“Before the people get to the bus, they will have filled out an online survey and we will split them into Red and Blue teams and they will have to come wearing predominantly one colour.
“We’ll stop off at weird museums and things and end up in the evening at a weird small venue where the headline act will do a show.
“Essentially, it’s going to be a very strange but fun full-day comedy show. We’ll stop off at a few places, acts will do bits and pieces but, if they’ve got a stage persona, the acts won’t necessarily be in that persona the whole day; they’ll be themselves, just part of the group. There will be about 45 people – the number we can get on the coach.”
“How are you going to sell tickets?” I asked.
Magikal Kickstarter page
“Through a Kickstarter page,” said Ellis. “People will pledge money to get a ticket, so we will know how many people want to come and we will hire the right-sized coach for that number of people. It also means our audience knows exactly what they are letting themselves in for and they are invested in the whole experience. We need to get the right audience for the trip: a comedy-savvy audience, the Soho Theatre audience.
“I think this is the perfect antidote to our Jimmy Savile show – another string to our bow – showing that we can do something big and organised.
“We’re thinking of doing it monthly over the summer. We could do it at the Edinburgh Fringe as a one-off.”
Their Kickstarter campaign has just gone online. It ends on 25th April, with the first coach trip exactly one month later, on Sunday 25th May. Tickets cost £40, leaving London at 10.00am and arriving back no later than 10.00pm.
Ellis, at the Toucan bar yesterday, has a Speedy idea
For the first Magikal Mystery Tour, Phil Kay will be ‘Chief Tour Guide Extraordinaire’ and Miles Lloyd, billed as ‘the most accident-prone Welsh comedian ever’ will be the coach’s ‘House Band’.
“How are you going to publicise this?” I asked. “Apart, obviously, from having it mentioned in my increasing-prestigious blog?”
“Maybe,” mused Ellis, “me and Rich should go on a bus and say we’ve put a bomb on there so the driver can’t slow down below 31 miles an hour otherwise the bomb will go off unless 45 people buy tickets for our own coach trip.”
In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that comedians often have another ‘day job’.
Around seven years ago, Bob Slayer was managing Japanese rock group Electric Eel Shock when they made a Christmas video in which he appeared as Father Christmas. It was posted on YouTube.
Now Bob has become a real Santa Claus. He started the job yesterday in a grotto under a giant Christmas tree at Whiteley’s department store in London’s Queensway and he will be donning his red-and-white robes there throughout December.
BEFORE…
AFTER…
‘Santa’ Bob with helper elves ‘Ruthy Boothy’ Sarah (left) and ‘Wilma Words’ Christine
I talked to him last night after he finished his Ho Ho Ho duties. He told me he was going to have to think up some more Christmas stories, because some children had come back a second time on this his first day in the role.
“I’d been telling them how reindeer fly and how they have to go to Tromsø in Norway,” said Bob, “and I could see some of the parents looking at me thinking I don’t know this story; this isn’t a real Santa, so I told the children You see, mummies and daddies don’t know about reindeer.”
One Happy Drunk illustration by Rich Rose
And that’s not all.
Tonight, at the Chortle Comedy Book Festival, Bob launches a children’s book he wrote, with illustrations by Rich Rose of comedy duo Ellis & Rose (last referred-to in this blog yesterday a propos their Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show).
“Rich is a brilliant illustrator,” said Bob.
“Remind me what the book is called?” I asked.
“The Happy Drunk,” confirmed Bob.
He financed it by crowdfunding and reached 169% of his target. The title was originally Calpol Is Evil but he changed it – allegedly after he received an alleged letter from solicitors representing the manufacturers of Calpol. Never forget that Bob Slayer won a much-coveted Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award in 2011 for his ‘Cockgate’ stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe.
“What’s the premise of The Happy Drunk?” I asked.
“It’s a children’s book for adults. It’s for Big Kids.”
“Would 14-year-olds enjoy it?” I asked.
Bob’s new book is for Big Babies everywhere – but not lawyers
“I don’t know,” replied Bob. “I think they would, although whether their parents would want them to read it… I’d say it should have a PG rating.
“Actually, I should have put that on the cover!” he laughed. “I’ve only printed 50 so far – as a proof to check they’re OK – so I think I might put PG Rated on future covers.”
“Are drunks happy?” I asked.
“Drunks in comedy clubs,” explained Bob, “get a bad name due to the alcopop drunks that the Jongleurs and Highlight comedy chains get in, whereas the sort of people I like doing gigs to are genuinely happy drunks: people who know what they’re drinking.
“When I do gigs in breweries, they’re drinking nice drink. They’re lively, but they don’t get out of hand; they’re good audiences. They’re people who are in for their drink but also in for their comedy. In the comedy club chains, you get big groups of people and some of them do want to see comedy, but others had wanted to go to the cinema or go bowling; they’re not all committed to watching comedy.
“I’m going to print 1,000 copies of The Happy Drunk initially. Rich Rose is having 300, I’ll put some online and sell the rest at gigs. Writing it was a stopgap, because it’s taking me longer to write my How To Out-Drink Australia book than I thought it would. It’s taking longer to edit.”
Turning a tour into a book is complicated
“You have a problem with people’s perception of you,” I said. “People think you’re always going to be the OTT Edinburgh Fringe Bob Slayer character.”
“Well,” said Bob, “you have to respond to the audience that’s in front of you. I like to think that I can mirror whatever audience is there. If you put me in a golf club, then I’m not going to end up naked – well, unless that’s what they want. There have been occasions when it’s gone out of control and perhaps I have gone the wrong way, but they’re one-off incidents like in Norway, where I got banned from that theatre.
“But, look, the fact was that they had five members of The Cumshots band there. So I’m going to perform to my mates The Cumshots, aren’t I? And they’re a band that invite you to come onstage and ‘fuck for forests’ – I HAD to come off the balcony on a rope. Though the reason I was actually banned was because I opened a bottle of Jägermeister on stage and had a drink and I was unaware how strict the licensing laws are there.”
“Ironically,” I said, “you got a Scottish licence to run your own bar at Bob’s Bookshop during the Edinburgh Fringe. Are you going to do other comedy club bars?”
“Well,” explained Bob, “The reason I could be Father Christmas here was because I had a mostly-free December. And that was because I was going to do a pop-up comedy venue and bar in London – like Bob’s Bookshop in Edinburgh. I looked at a couple of places in Hackney and round East London, but I just ran out of time to get the licensing sorted. So I had kept December free and, when the pop-up club didn’t happen, I put a few club gigs into my diary then this Father Christmas offer came along.”
“So you will be doing other pop-up comedy venues and bars?” I asked.
“I’m doing one at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February,” said Bob. “The programme’s out tomorrow and I’m doing three long weekends, putting on about 30 shows – people like Tom Binns, Devvo, Brian Gittins, Stuart Goldsmith, Phil Kay, Adam Larter, Doug Segal, Ben Target. We’ve got an old chapel in Leicester – Hansom Hall, named after the guy who invented the hansom cab. He designed the building.
“I’m working with a new brewery – BrewDogwho are Aberdeen-based. They’re the fastest-growing food and drink company in the UK in the last three years. A really interesting independent brewer. They’re funding themselves by crowdfunding: you can invest in BrewDog. The moment they heard about Cockgate at the Edinburgh Fringe, they said We want to work with you.”
“And then?” I asked.
“I’m trying to be quiet in January to finish writing my Australian book. I’ve got to get the book done for the next Edinburgh Fringe.”
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.
The Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards 2013: Comic Originality, Pound of Flesh and Cunning Stunt,
The winners of the Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards – see www.increasinglyprestigious.co.uk – were announced during a rowdy two hour variety show in the ballroom of The Counting House at the Edinburgh Fringe in the early hours of today..
The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award winners are:
She performed her controversial show “Adrienne Truscott’s Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!” naked from the waist down in intimate new venue Bob’s Bookshop.
Malcolm Hardee judge Kate Copstick said: “This show is brutal, brilliant and brave. It is painfully funny and if you miss it you will miss the moment in the history of stand-up comedy wherein a woman actually took the genre and did something with it that no man could do. It is an extraordinary hour. All the more so because Adrienne Truscott isn’t even (or wasn’t until now) a stand-up. She is one half of the fabulous Wau Wau Sisters but, wau, is she sticking it to ’em now.”
Barry printed 2,000 fake copies of Fringe review sheet Broadway Baby in which his own comedy show was given six stars and the review: “This is without doubt the best comedy show I have ever seen, or am likely to see in the rest of my life…A phenomenal show. Better than life itself.”
He topped this with another fake issue of Broadway Baby with the headline FOSTERS AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED and then distributed the sheets around Edinburgh. The entirely fictitious nominations included Barry Ferns for both Best Newcomer and Main Prize. Members of the public could be seen picking it up and reading it all over Edinburgh.
The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards panel said this stunt was “in the glorious footsteps of Malcolm himself”… Malcolm once wrote a glowing review of his own Edinburgh Fringe show and submitted it toThe Scotsman in the name of their own comedy critic. They printed it. Barry’s stunt took this scam one step further by actually faking the entire publication within which the review was printed.
The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards panel decided there was no performer worthy of the annual ACT MOST LIKELY TO WIN A MILLION QUID AWARD this year so, instead – because they did not want to waste the trophy which had already been made – they gave…
THE MALCOLM HARDEE ‘POUND OF FLESH’ AWARD (already announced)
The Ellis & Rose comedy duo claimed Ellis had been attacked in the street because of their appearance in controversial comedy show Jimmy Savile: The Punch and Judy Show. In fact, Rose had punched Ellis in the eye four times simply to get publicity for their show. For more details, read my blog about it.
The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards panel said the award was for the comedy duo’s “relentless pursuit of the kind of publicity money cannot – and perhaps should not – buy”
John Ward, designer of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards
The shortlist has been announced at the Edinburgh Fringe for the increasingly prestigious annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards in memory of the late ‘godfather of British alternative comedy’ who drowned in London in 2005. As normal, there are three awards, but the third is more than a bit of a surprise.
The shortlisted nominees are:
THE MALCOLM HARDEE AWARD FOR COMIC ORIGINALITY
– Red Bastard
– Ursula Burns (unbilled in the main Fringe Programme)
– Adrienne Truscott
THE MALCOLM HARDEE CUNNING STUNT AWARD
(for best publicity stunt promoting a Fringe performer or show)
– Barry Ferns – for printing 2,000 fake Broadway Baby and Three Weeks review sheets and distributing them round Edinburgh. They gave his own show a 6-star review.
– Richard Herring – for deciding that expensive Fringe posters are pointless and, instead, giving members of his current show’s audience free DVDs of his past performances.
– Lewis Schaffer – for (having heard about Richard’s stunt) also giving away allegedly free DVDs at his shows – but free Richard Herring DVDs because Richard is more famous than Lewis (and you have to donate £5 to Lewis).
– Gareth Morinan – for listing his show 11 times in the Fringe Programme because this gave him more space (and was cheaper) than buying a quarter page ad in the Programme.
THE MALCOLM HARDEE ‘ACT MOST LIKELY TO MAKE A MILLION QUID’ AWARD
This will not be awarded this year because, frankly, we do not think anyone is worth it.
The Malcolm Hardee Awards, with ‘Million’ award in middle
However, the £-sign trophy has already been made and (in the spirit of Malcolm Hardee) we are not about to waste it.
So we are awarding it as a special one-off MALCOLM HARDEE ‘POUND OF FLESH’ AWARD to Ellis of the Ellis & Rose comedy duo for “the kind of publicity money can’t buy”.
Ellis displays his vividly genuine black eye (photograph by Lewis Schaffer)
On August 14th, Ellis was attacked in the street by an unknown, irate member of the public who was annoyed by Ellis & Rose’s appearance in Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show. Ellis received a very bad black eye. This followed a Chortle comedy website review which revealed Ellis & Rose’s names as the show’s performers – They had asked not to be named. I blogged about the incident at the time.
EXCEPT – it was revealed to the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee judges late last night that the attack never happened. It was a publicity stunt.
In their Edinburgh flat, Ellis repeatedly hit himself in the face with the blunt end of a milk whisk. When this did not have the required effect, his comedy partner Rose punched him four times in the face to give him a black eye.
They videoed the creation of the black eye.
The video (only now uploaded to YouTube) shows Ellis being punched in the face. If you watch it, be sure to have the sound turned up high.
Late last night (from left) Mills, Ellis, Rose, Levites, Copstick
Ellis showed the full video to me (including the preliminary milk whisk hits) – and to fellow increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award judge Kate Copstick – in the cafe of the Gilded Balloon venue late last night. Also there in the cafe were his comedy partner Rose, their cohort in the stunt Paul Preston Mills and American comedian Laura Levites.
“When did you first decide to do this?” I asked Ellis.
“After Steve Bennett’s 1-star review of the Jimmy Savile show came out in Chortle,” Ellis told me. “We thought How can we turn this around?”
“And did the reported attack increase the size of audiences for your Jimmy Savile and Ellis & Rose shows?” I asked.
“Probably by about 50% on average,” said Ellis. “It went up and down, but it was more consistently full. People love to see and read about people getting hurt.”
“It could,” said Kate Copstick, “become a new marketing tool for comedy shows: grievous bodily harm.”
“Why did you start out by hitting yourself in the face with a milk whisk?” I asked.
“I looked on the internet to find out how to get a black eye – how to give yourself a black eye – and it said Get yourself a blunt object like a broom handle, so you can control the amount of force yourself. We looked in the kitchen and a milk whisk was the best thing we could find. It had a blunt, plastic end.”
“But that didn’t do enough harm to your face?” I asked.
“Well, it did pretty well,” admitted Ellis.
“But you’re a perfectionist?” I asked.
“Well, Rose said That’s not enough,” explained Ellis. “ he said You’ve got to let me punch you.”
Ellis last night, his left eye recovering from Rose’s punch
“How many times did he punch you in the face?”
“Four times,” replied Ellis. “He punched me twice, but we forgot to record it, because we were quite drunk – So he had to do it twice again for the video.”
“What did you have to do with all this?” I asked Paul Preston Mills.
“Well,” he said, “I arrived on the Tuesday – all this happened on the Tuesday night – and we were talking about it. But we decided they weren’t quite drunk enough before I left them and went to bed and, at that point, they were still deciding whether Rose was going to hit him or they were going to prod him in the eye with a broom handle. I thought hitting him had to be the correct thing to do.”
“Did your venue manager Bob Slayer have anything to do with the stunt?” I asked.
“Well,” said Ellis. “before the Fringe started, we had ideas of getting publicity and, when Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show first came out in the Programme, the media jumped on it and it was in the national press and we were going to ramp it up by saying we had death threats and performers had dropped out and Nick Awde, who wrote the original script, had been getting death threats and things like that. So it kind of stemmed from that idea. We found that being named in the Chortle review allowed us to play off that.”
“Any other result from the stunt?” I asked.
“The black eye has made me more appealing to the opposite sex,” replied Ellis.
“Is he,” I asked Laura Levites, “more appealing with or without his black eye?”
“Oh, I like him with,” said Laura. “It means he can take a punch. You want a man who can take a punch.”
“So,” I said, “when his skin recovers and the black eye disappears, he should do it again to be more appealing to the opposite sex?”
“Oh,” said Laura, “he should do the other eye. You’ve got to let one heal and then hit the other one.”
“You were hit by Rose,” I said to Ellis, “your comedy partner. Do you think there might be a homo-erotic element in this?”
“No,” said Ellis.
“Yeah,” laughed Rose. “It’s been a long Fringe and I’ve been quite frustrated a lot of the time.”
“He’s got a girlfriend who isn’t here,” said Ellis.
“So I had to release some tension,” enthused Rose, “and Ellis’ face is small and squishy, much like a breast.”
“We thought,” Kate Copstick interrupted, “that the milk whisk was doing rather a good job of damaging Ellis’ face. Why punch him?”
“Well,” said Paul Preston Mills, “FIST or MILK FROTHER? Which would you choose if you were putting a headline out for publicity?”
“I wanted to keep my ring on my finger,” said Rose, but Ellis wouldn’t let me. I got him really, really drunk. The only reason we decided it would be him not me was because he owed me quite a lot of money.”
“Only 40 quid for groceries!” said Ellis.
“What would have happened if he’d owed £90?” I asked.
“Anal rape,” said Copstick.
“At one point,” said Rose, “I was concerned he was bleeding and I almost felt bad… My hand was sore.”
“Do you expect to get more stars for revealing all this?” I asked.
“Well, we just want more bloody reviews,” said Ellis.
“Bloody is the word,” I said.
“You could say,” suggested Ellis, “that Ellis & Rose are not into punchlines, but we will take a hit for comedy.”
Juliette Burton (right) and her flash mob in the High Street
But, before that…
Juliette Burton led a flash mob in a choreographed dance down the High Street to publicise her show When I Grow Up…
And, on my way to see Irish comic Christian Talbot’s late night comedy compilation show at the Phoenix venue, I heard one of those lines that only seems reasonable during the Edinburgh Fringe.
I bumped into Frank Sanazi in the street and, as we walked along, he told me: “She only does the gimp act on my show when Jesus Christ is not available.”
This is both bizarre and true: I myself have seen Jesus climax Frank Sanazi’s Dax Vegas Night II.
Other things which seemed perfectly normal yesterday were:
Andy Zapp introducing his gorilla (who had flown in from London) at Christian Talbot’s show…
Stompie – The Half-Naked Chef – cooks up mischief last night
Stompie performing his unbilled nightly Half-Naked Chef show at Bob’s Bookshop partially in the venue and partially in the street…
And Bob Slayer of Bob’s Bookshop explaining where he got his new chairs from. Bob is known for his high-profile criticisms of the Big Four venues in Edinburgh, including the Underbelly.
“I was in the Udderbelly’s Abbatoir last night,” Bob told me, “and Ed (co-owner of the Underbelly/Udderbelly) came up and said: So you’re Bob Slayer, who writes things about us!
“I said: We don’t have a problem here, do we?
Bob Slayer (left) makes up with Ed Bartlam of the Underbelly (photograph by Claire Smith)
“He said: Well, it does annoy me when you get your facts wrong.
“I gave him my card and said: Well, do correct me, because I would like to criticise you with the correct facts.
“We had a bit of a smile, a bit of a laugh and he said, as an aside, Well, if there’s anything I can help you with, just let me know.
“Well, funny enough,” I said, “I’d love some new chairs for my audience. And – first thing this morning – Ed had 40 brand new chairs delivered to Bob’s Bookshop.”
And so to the beating…
At last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, I blogged about performer Ian Fox being randomly attacked in the street.
Three days ago, I mentioned in a blog that Scotsman journalist Claire Smith had been randomly attacked in Leith.
Yesterday, Ellis of comedy duo Ellis & Rose told me about being attacked in the street – but not randomly. He was with his comedy partner Richard Rose.
Richard Rose (left) with Ellis and his eye yesterday
“We went out for a few drinks last night,” told me. “We were walking down to Cowgate, near Bob’s Bookshop, at about two or three in the morning, a little bit drunk, and this guy walked past and asked us: Are you Ellis and Rose?”
“We were quite chuffed that someone had recognised us,” said Richard.
“He told us,” continued Ellis. “You’re sick! You’re sick in the head! and we reacted like What?? and he said You do that Jimmy Savile show, don’t you? We said Yeah and he said You’re fucking sick!”
Rose explained: “Ellis tried to engage in dialogue.”
Ellis continued: “I was saying to him But you haven’t seen it, have you? You haven’t seen the show. He was quite a big guy, Scottish accent, in his late-twenties.
“And then he just punched me in the face. I stumbled back a bit and then just ran.”
“To look on the bright side,” I said, “the good thing is that you were recognised in the street. That’s all most Fringe performers want.”
“This stuff wasn’t happening before we were named in the review,” said Ellis.
Ellis – how he he suffered for his art (photograph by Lewis Schaffer)
As I mentioned in my blog three days ago, Ellis and Rose (who did not write the Jimmy Savile show) had specifically asked reviewers not to name them but the Chortle review did.
“We initially didn’t want to be named,” explained Rose, “because we just didn’t want it to be confused with our own show.”
“I imagine if he’d see the actual Jimmy Savile show,” continued Ellis, “he would not have punched me.”
“Maybe we should sue Steve Bennett of Chortle,” mused Rose.
“Yeah,” said Ellis, “maybe Steve Bennett (editor of Chortle who personally reviewed the Jimmy Savile show) actually is culpable.”
“This wasn’t happening before that Chortle review came out,” said Rose.
“Though it may increase our audiences,” said Ellis. “We are doing the Fringe properly… One star reviews; audiences love it; and I got punched in the street.”
“A couple of days ago, at the end of the Jimmy Savile show,” said Richard, “it had gone really well so we asked the audience: Would you like to hear a review of the show? And we read out Steve Bennett’s review to rapturous applause. They particularly liked the opening line This show is an insult…”
“Did you see stars when you were punched?” I asked Ellis.
But he is also one half of English comedy duo Ellis & Rose.
He is in Belgium tomorrow, performing a new solo stand-up act as William Shakespeare. He persuaded me to write a blog about this. Which is why I met him at Bar Italia in London’s Soho.
However, I failed to write the blog, because both Ellis AND his comedy duo partner Rose both turned up.
“You’re going to be performing comedy as Shakespeare…” I started saying to Ellis.
“That’s his vanity project,” said Rose. “It’s destined to fail, because I’m not involved.”
“Shakespeare’s been done before,” I suggested.
“I’m just doing him as a character,” explained Ellis. I’m doing it at Whitespace in Belgium tomorrow, for a bunch of internet computer hackers and programmers. It’s called Hackerspace @ Whitespace.”
“Is that your new audience?” asked Rose. “Criminals?”
“That’s the fanbase you want to build up?” asked Rose.
“I’ll be on Live at The Apollo as William Shakespeare,” said Ellis.
“And I’ll be in a flat with heroin in my eyes,” said Rose.
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
“We didn’t,” replied Ellis.
Ellis (left) & Rose on-stage after – eventually – meeting up
“We met at a party,” replied Rose. “We were both at Goldsmiths University for the same three year period. He did Drama & Theatre and I did English & Creative Writing, but we never once met each other.”
“I got invited to a house party at his house and didn’t go,” said Ellis. “So we could have started this off two or three years earlier.”
“We could have been famous by now,” said Rose.
“We were in Edinburgh, doing two different things,” said Ellis, “and we didn’t meet there either, but we were introduced in a bar…”
“No we weren’t,” said Rose.
“Yes we were,”said Ellis. “I’ve whittled it down. We were all in this bar on the same night and we must have been introduced but didn’t chat to each other. That was in 2011 – the year before we did our show in Edinburgh last year, which was 2012.”
“Yes it was,” said Rose.
“So we met at a party in February 2012,” said Ellis.
“We made each other chuckle,” said Rose. “I think we were both a bit drunk and we irritated everybody else. We came up with a skit about a unicorn. I don’t know how it went, but it seemed funny at the time.”
“We were just shouting He’s not a unicorn!” said Ellis. “He’s just a horse with a cone on his head!”
“We’ve grown since then,” said Rose, “both as performers and writers.”
“No we haven’t,” said Ellis.
“No we haven’t,” agreed Rose.
“So you did a show together at the Edinburgh Fringe last year…” I started to say.
“But you saw it in Camden Town after the Fringe finished,” Ellis reminded me.
“Which was a slightly improved version,” added Rose. “We took out a horribly mis-judged Michael Jackson seance which we’d done every day at the Fringe and sometimes got a laugh but really shouldn’t have done, because it was mean-spirited, crass and didn’t suit our show. Though now everything is even more mean-spirited and crass.”
“That’s our new angle.” said Ellis.
“You’re going to be mean-spirited and crass?” I asked.
“Yes” said Rose.”I’m crass.”
“And I’m mean-spirited,” said Ellis.
“And your show in Edinburgh this year, Ellis & Rose: Big in Denmark,” I started to say, “is a sketch show and it…”
“It’s not sketches,” said Rose. “It’s the Chuckle Brothers as imagined by David Lynch.”
“It’s like Salvador Dali doing a self-portrait on acid,” said Ellis. “We’re not as whimsical as last year.”
“It’s more coherent than last year,” said Rose. “You said we kind of needed a point, John. So this year we’re pretending we have one.”
“I think it’s definitely more rounded,” said Ellis.
“But last year?” I asked.
Comedy duo Ellis (left) and Rose on the loose in Soho’s streets
“After we first met after that party in 2012,” said Rose, “he pretty much immediately said Let’s form a double act and I said OK, thinking it would never come to anything but, as soon as I turned up at his place, he said Right, we’re doing the Edinburgh Fringe and I said But we don’t know each other and he said Well, we’re doing it anyway and I think that day we filled in the form, which is why we’re called Ellis & Rose, because we couldn’t think of a better name immediately. And then we were forced to become friends really quickly.”
“That was around March last year,” explained Ellis, “before the Edinburgh Fringe in August.”
“We threw a show together in four months,” said Rose, “without really knowing each other at all.”
“We still write separately,” explained Ellis.
“Nothing ever gets done if we sit down to write together,” said Rose.
“We re-write it in rehearsal,” explained Ellis, “like un-filtering our brains.”
“I have a feeling,” I said, “that you’re not doing the normal Edinburgh thing and treating it as a career move. You see it more as a having a bit of a laugh.”
Ellis laughed: “No! I disagree with this. We’re just learning by mistakes how to do things…”
“…like an interview,” added Rose.
“And,” I said to Ellis, “at last year’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show, you manned the tech booth with the lovely Misha. And you got it right.”
“I had fun,” said Ellis.
“And you’ll be there this year too,” I said.
“Yes I will,” said Ellis.
“Just introduce me to Miss Behave,” Rose told me. “Because that foxy lady and her melon-head-smashing ways was, quite frankly, the biggest turn-on at the Fringe last year.”
“And she can do things with that tongue…” Ellis started to say.
“Oh!” said Rose enthusiastically, “Oh! Oh! I’d forgotten about that tongue.”
“Or the sweat,” said Ellis, “running down her arm and out of that latex dress, like a torrent of…”
“It cascaded out…” enthused Rose.
“Like sexy lady juices,” said Ellis.
“Like a Niagara Falls made of leather,” enthused Rose.
Miss Behave, creator of men’s fantasies
“She should have stood in a paddling pool for the whole show,” said Ellis, “and then, at the end, someone could have dived in and splashed around in Miss Behave’s juice. That would have been a brilliant closer. There you go, John, that’s an act this year.”
“Now my mum can’t read this interview,” lamented Rose.
“Maybe Bob Slayer should do it this year,” suggested Ellis.
“What?” asked Rose, “Bob in a PVC suit?”
“Full of sweat,” enthused Ellis. “They could get sponsored and do it in Bob’s Bookshop. Get a little paddling pool. Get some hot lights and Miss Behave in her latex dress. Do stuff in there for an hour or so…”
“Or just stand still and sweat,” said Rose even more enthusiastically
“Well,” said Ellis, “she can move about a bit to get the juices going.”
“Sweat,” said Ellis. “Whatever’s coming out, until it’s a few centimetres deep, and then Bob can get in there and splash about. He can raise money for something.”
“It would get people in,” said Rose. “Bob dancing around in Miss Behave’s sweat.”
“But would your mother come?” I asked Rose.
“My mum and I,” he replied, “accidentally saw a striptease at Edinburgh last year and that was very uncomfortable.”
“Accidentally??” I said.
“We went along to one of those variety shows,” he explained. “they had Piff The Magic Dragon, The Boy With Tape On His Face and then Miss Kitty dressed as a cat who removed everything and I sat there clutching my knees very tightly. She got down to little nipple-tassles and a crotch-covering glittery thing and dribbled milk down herself. Me and my mum didn’t say anything about it until three months afterwards. I brought it up jokingly one day and she asked me Was that filthy? and I said Yes, it was pretty filthy, mum and she said Oh. I must not have had my spectacles on.”
“You think your mum is innocent,” said Ellis. “She probably thought that was tame.”
“Perhaps that was how you were conceived,” I said to Rose. “Tell me about being the Lothario of the Lothians,” I suggested to Ellis
“No,” said Ellis.
“Readers of my blog will make up their own back story,” I warned him. “They have very vivid imaginations.”
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 