Twonkey’s Greatest Twitch, Princess Margaret and the Pub Quiz Mafia…

Paul Vickers with clock sans cuckoo spoke on FaceTime

Twonkey aka Paul Vickers is back at London’s Soho Theatre on Tuesday with a new show. 

Well, sort of.

I talked to him on FaceTime. He lives in Edinburgh.

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JOHN: You didn’t play the much-cut-back  Edinburgh Fringe this year.

PAUL: No, because it kept wavering. I was due be doing it at Dragonfly again, but then that got closed for two weeks because of a Covid outbreak.

JOHN: You’re coming down south for your Soho Theatre show: Twonkey’s Greatest Twitch. Didn’t you have a Twitch show before?

PAUL: Yes, there was Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch. This one is more like a ‘Best of Twonkey’ show.

The difficulty is selecting what the best is. I’ve just chosen what I think the best bits are and hope people will agree with me. I mean, really, Twonkey started as a joke and just got out of hand. 

It was something I did off the cuff. I didn’t think: Oh, I’ll be doing this for over ten years. I just thought: I’ll do one Edinburgh Fringe and see what happens. But then you get addicted; you get on the treadmill of doing it.

I am feeling a bit like James Bond, in the sense that I’ve created a franchise and I feel like I’m getting to the point where I’d like to pass it on to someone else.

JOHN: Who else could do a Twonkey show though?

PAUL: Princess Anne was on the list.

JOHN: Have you asked her? It’s worth asking because you’re likely to get a reply from some official which you could quote… Who else?

PAUL: Peter Crouch, the footballer. John Craven was mentioned.

Twonkey’s greatest latest seen soon in Soho

JOHN: Why would Princess Anne be ideal to do a Twonkey show?

PAUL: It was thought she might give it a bit of dignity. But Princess Margaret was the fun one. She used to get stoned with the Incredible String Band, apparently.

JOHN: And now it’s too late…

PAUL: Yes. But I feel like Roger Moore gearing up for Octopussy. It won’t feel like that once I get going again. At the moment I’m in that nervous period.

It will be like Diamonds Are Forever when I get going.

JOHN: You haven’t performed as Twonkey for a while, because of the lockdowns…

PAUL: Yeah. I’ve been more into band stuff. (More on his band Paul Vickers and The Leg in my blog of February this year)

JOHN: Are you going to do less Twonkey and more music?

PAUL: I think it might be a bit like that, yeah. We were gonna try and incorporate a band thing in the new show, but we’re not really ready: it’s such a long process with the band.

JOHN: Your shows tend to have music in them, but you mean the band could actually be part of a Twonkey show?

PAUL: That could happen. I’ve always wanted to do that. The main thing that stops me is expense and all the Edinburgh Fringe venues are basically just like a plug in the wall. It would have to be a big enough venue to fit six people with equipment on the stage.

JOHN: Anything planned after the Soho Theatre and before next year’s Edinburgh Fringe?

A cultural dessert – the Custard Club

PAUL: Well, I did write another show that I had been going to do in 2020: Twonkey’s Custard Club. I had an elaborate idea involving custard as currency and where desserts had become the main meal.

JOHN: That works for me.

PAUL: I was all geared-up to do it at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2020, but then all the lockdowns happened and I couldn’t do anything for almost two years.

JOHN: So why are you not doing Twonkey’s Custard Club as your Soho Theatre show?

PAUL: Well, I kept opening the Word document and I thought: I don’t know how I feel about that now… There had been enough time for doubts to creep in. Previously, there had never been enough time for doubts to creep in because, every year, I barely had enough time to get a coherent show together for the Fringe.

I think everyone’s gone through this thing where you had a structured life and, during the pandemic, it wasn’t there any more. And then you start thinking: Do I really need to do that any more? Is that important? Do I LIKE doing that? It’s quite stressful.

Paul Vickers and The Leg – all six members of the band…

All those things came into the equation, so I became a bit more serious. The new band album is quite serious. I got quite into that during the pandemic – crafting a really good album.

JOHN: What was Twonkey’s Custard Club like?

PAUL: There was a book that had 100 pages with the same picture on every page. It was a tankard and a sleepy/romantic Alpine scene. There was a whole bit about if that book did exist, how would you interpret it? You would probably automatically think there might be a slight difference between the pictures and start looking for it. But there was no difference.

JOHN: Was any custard involved?

PAUL: In that bit, no. It was not custardy that bit. It wasn’t ALL custardy.

There will be a couple of custard songs in the Soho Theatre show – the ‘Best of’ show – despite the fact they’ve never been heard by anyone before.

JOHN: Seems reasonable.

PAUL: If the gig at the Soho Theatre goes well, that’ll help me make my decision on what to do.

If everyone’s like You can’t stop doing that! That’s great, Paul! that’s one thing. But, if it ends with people booing and asking for refunds, then… (LAUGHS)

Twitch bound… the Wobbly Waiter from Twonkey’s Custard Club…

There are some amazing puppets that Grant’s made for the show. The Wobbly Waiter of the Custard Club has got leg braces and everything. It was going to have custard and wobbly things on the plate. You bomb about and create absolute chaos with him because it’s very heavy and impossible to control. So it’s the perfect foil for comedy activity. 

JOHN: You haven’t done Twonkey at all during the pandemic?

PAUL: Well I did a pub quiz as Twonkey in a little pub called The Hoppy in Edinburgh and that went really well. That was the first time I’d done Twonkey in ages.

JOHN: How does Twonkey do a pub quiz? Surreal questions?

PAUL: Well, there’s a lot of things I do that make it not work.

JOHN: Is that the basis of Twonkey? Making it not work.

PAUL: Essentially. For example, at the pub quiz, I was forgetting to read out all the answers and no-one had any idea who was winning, not even me because I had forgotten to count it up.

JOHN: What happened at the end?

PAUL: My brother tried to make sense of it all and we did crown a winner.

Woodland Creatures bar, home of an unconventional pub quiz

JOHN: You had hosted pub quizzes before?

PAUL: When I did it on Leith Walk, I used to do it at a place called Woodland Creatures. But the trouble with pub quizzes is that people take them very seriously and the Edinburgh Pub Quiz Mafia came round. I was like the new kid on the block.

JOHN: Who are the Edinburgh Pub Quiz Mafia?

PAUL: Well, there’s a few of them that do the pub quiz circuit. Some of them do five or six pubs. I used to think the host for a pub quiz was probably a local schoolteacher with a bit of knowledge and time on his hands but – nah – it’s much more cynical than that.

The Pub Quiz Mafia were like: What’s this guy up to? Because I was going against the conventions of pub quizzes…

JOHN: … like giving the answers…

PAUL: …erm… yes. It was controversial at first. I had one round where I showed a clip from a film and people watched it really carefully, thinking the questions were going to be about that clip… but then I’d ask questions about a completely different film.

Paul Vickers aka Twonkey – unconventional is now standard

At the start, it was quite popular. I had a dominatrix doing the score cards. She was in latex and stuff.

She was like Carol Vorderman from Countdown. She was the brain and the discipline of the quiz and I was like Richard Whiteley, sitting there not having a clue what was going on, but being charming in a way I suppose. If I messed up, the dominatrix would keep me in line.

JOHN: She would whip you into shape?

PAUL: (LAUGHS) There was no whipping involved, but she made it known she was displeased. And she got angry with people who weren’t behaving in the crowd. After she stopped helping out, I was just sort of floating because I forgot I was doing a pub quiz. And it turned out that really frustrates people.

JOHN: What were you thinking if you forgot it was a pub quiz?

PAUL: Well, I start off thinking: Oh, this will be fun. And then I lose interest because it’s a pub quiz. I suppose I’ve made it my own. You could say it’s just a bad pub quiz.

JOHN: You should do a bad pub quiz at the Edinburgh Fringe. People would flock to it.

PAUL: Maybe… I will send you a link to my new video: Everyone Loves Custard. It will be in the Soho show.

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And he did…

 

Paul Vickers aka Twonkey fails to explain next week’s comedy show…

Paul Vickers aka Twonkey performs his latest show Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch at the Soho Theatre in London next Monday night. He lives in Edinburgh. I live in London (ish). We talked via Apple FaceTime… We both got sidetracked in cyberspace…

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JOHN: So your new show is…

PAUL: Last year’s Edinburgh Fringe show. But it’s not been seen in London before… Well, no, that’s not true. The very first early version of it I did at the Bill Murray comedy club in London. But that was a disaster. All over the place. It was the first time I’d ever done a show where I had misjudged it so badly.

JOHN: Yet it was successful at the Fringe last August. What had you got so wrong in the first version?

PAUL: The right bits in the wrong order. I had sussed-out a formula for how to do my shows. The best way to do a Twonkey show is to have loads of short, fast, fun bits to (LAUGHS) lure people into a false sense of security and then, about halfway through the show start telling a longer narrative right through to the end.

For some reason, I decided in that first version to do it in reverse to see what would happen. I started with the story and then went to short, fast bits at the end and it didn’t work because people said: “You were telling a story and then you just completely abandoned it.”

JOHN: So, like Eric Morecambe, you did all the right bits, but not necessarily in the right order… in that first London try-out.

PAUL: Exactly. So I did major surgery on it overnight and, the next day, I did it in Leicester in a completely different way and it worked. Can you hear the dog?

JOHN: What?

PAUL: There’s a dog here. He’s going tomorrow. He’s going to live on a farm, which offers him a more rewarding life than we can… Eric.

JOHN: Eric?

Eric is Paul’s dog, but is not Paul

PAUL: That’s his name. Eric.ou

JOHN: After Eric Morecambe?

PAUL: I don’t know. It was my friend Mary who named him. I suppose it’s a strong name. I’ve written a song about him.

JOHN: How does it go – the song?

PAUL: I remember! The name! It’s because of Lynn Ruth Miller… That’s why he’s called Eric. Because Lynn Ruth always calls me Eric. Whenever she sees me, she yells out (in an American accent): “Oh, my God! It’s Eric!”

JOHN: She has always thought you are named Eric?

PAUL: Yes.

JOHN: When I worked at Granada TV, there was a man who called me ‘Peter’ for two years. I never had it in my heart to tell him I was not Peter. But he was happy and I was happy, so no problem. It’s only a name.

PAUL: Yeah, well, that’s how it goes, isn’t it? After a while, I stopped correcting Lynn Ruth because it seemed pointless.

JOHN: What does she say when she sees the dog? Does she call it Paul?

PAUL: She’s never seen the dog.

Mr Twonkey is cleaning up (Photo by Steve Ullathorne)

JOHN: Just as well, The dog might have developed an identity crisis… You were talking about the narrative story in Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch? What’s the narrative?

PAUL: It’s about the fact that all the weather in the world has been replaced by fake weather in 1982. 

JOHN: Why?

PAUL: Because the old weather was being repaired and so there is a factory in the Dordogne where the weather is being stored. I travel to the Dordogne and find out who invented the weather originally… That kind of thing.

JOHN: Oh, the old ‘weather factory in the Dordogne’ meme…

PAUL: The previous year’s show Night Train to Liechtenstein had been about inherited wealth. It was a bit like Jack & The Beanstalk because, when I went to collect the inheritance, all there was were some beans but, when I grew the beans, inside there was a pumpkin and inside the pumpkin were diamonds. 

JOHN: But that is not what Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch is about…

Paul’s head is full of Twonkey ideas (Photograph by Steve Ullathorne)

PAUL: No. But the bit of music I was working on at the time of Night Train to Liechtenstein was like a choral thing and I realised the key it was in was exactly the same as Somewhere Over The Rainbow. So the end of the show had me holding up this pumpkin with diamonds in it and suddenly there was this weird choral music and out of it came Somewhere Over The Rainbow and it almost felt like I was floating out of the room. It was very odd, especially when I got tired.

JOHN: But that’s not the ending of Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch.

PAUL: No. It’s probably going to end with an advertisement for my next show, which will feature an interview with Maradona, the Argentinian football player. He will be played by Simon Jay, who is also in Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch. He plays ‘the old hag’ – and he’s also the technician as well. I thought: Well, it’s daft him just sitting there pressing buttons. If he came on and acted a little part, it would be cool as well.

JOHN: So he is going to do a trailer as Maradona for your next show at the end of this show in which he is ‘the old hag’.

PAUL: Yes. He was Leonardo da Vinci’s landlady in Night Train to Liechtenstein.

JOHN: And in your next show he will be Maradona.

PAUL: Yes. My next show is going to be called Twonkey’s Custard Club.

JOHN: It’s about custard?

“I misjudged what a physical mess…”

PAUL: It’s about rival custard shops. I’m still writing it. I’m hoping ‘the custard chef’ will be built in time, but he has very long arms and is difficult to pack. I’ve done one dry run of it, but I misjudged what a physical mess it creates, because there is a bit where I get covered in custard pies and I can’t actually see anything. It was difficult to see my laptop computer and it was not actually good for my laptop computer to be covered in shaving foam.

But it was good in terms of working out the parameters of what I need to do. I realised I will need a couple of towels close-by. And I now know how many custard pies you can get out of one tin of shaving foam. And I have a good Django Reinhardt kind-of jazzy song called The Custard Club, so it seemed like a good idea.

JOHN: But that’s not what happens in Twonkey’s Ten Year Twitch…

PAUL: No. Sometimes you don’t know what a show is about until like five years later and then you sort-of think: Ah! That show was about me! I think it’s impossible to create work without it being about yourself. But you can’t necessarily see it immediately… I had quite a difficult year last year. I had a lot going on in my personal life. Just a lot going on.

Agent/manager Hollie Ebdon’s Strip Light, big shout-out & Comedy Project

Angelic Hollie Ebdon has a Comedy Project

So, last night was the first Strip Light show at London’s Museum of Comedy.

“It’s monthly?” I asked Hollie Ebdon of Ebdon Management.

“Yes. Tamara Cowan, who runs the Musical Comedy Awards, and I decided to set up a production arm together – Strip Light Productions. And the Strip Light show is a monthly night at the Museum of Comedy every first Thursday until August, when we go up to the Edinburgh Fringe.”

“It’s a stage production company?”

“Yes. Live production company. We are interested in developing acts that could tour. We felt there was a bit of a gap in the market for acts that maybe aren’t quite so straight stand-uppy and for people who want to do more interesting concept nights and make them into something bigger.”

“And, separate from that,” I said, “you’re involved in The Comedy Project.”

“Yes. Starting on Monday and every Monday for a month there are Comedy Project shows at the Soho Theatre. It’s a separate thing. It’s not part of Strip Light or Ebdon Management. The Comedy Project has been going longer even than I have been working. It was started by actress/comedy writer Rosalind Adler in the late 1990s and has continuously pushed through loads of great new comedy writing.”

“So just the same thing year after year?” I asked.

Not the same annual thing: it has evolved

“No. It’s sort of evolved. There was a time when judges came in to give feedback, but the acts were kind of uncomfortable with that.”

“It was a competition?” I asked.

“No. But I think it maybe felt a bit confrontational getting feedback in a room with an audience.”

“So you run it with Rosalind Adler?”

“The last couple of years we’ve been doing it together.”

“And the idea of the Comedy Project,” I asked, “is two new scripts – one by an experienced writer and another by a less experienced writer?”

“It doesn’t matter, really,” Hollie told me. “It’s a balancing thing. It’s the mixture of the scripts and how they sit together. We don’t want to put anything too similar on together. We want acts that will complement each other tonally. So something surreal might sit next to something that could be a big BBC1 sitcom.”

“The object,” I asked, “is to find a TV sitcom?”

“The object,” said Hollie, “is to get the scripts seen by industry people who might take an option on one of them… to present the writers to commissioners – so they can learn who they are before they are pitched to them. And for the acts to be able to hear their scripts performed. They get so much feedback and they can really see what’s working.”

“They are all your clients?” I asked.

“No. Only three are my clients. We do a big shout-out to other agents and lots of other comedy writers.”

Ready to cross-pollinate

“Why are you,” I asked, “a presumably hard-headed agent, touting the work of other agents’ clients? – You can’t make any money out of them.”

“You gotta share the love,” Hollie explained.

“But,” I said, “if Fred Bloggs, a writer or actor from another agency gets a break from this, you get nowt.”

“Yeah, but that’s life. My writers and performers will cross-pollinate with other agencies’ writers and performers. It’s a community and a great thing to be able to do. I’m always going to support new writing, whoever it is.”

“You could always nick someone else’s clients,” I suggested.

“I think my eyes are good enough to pick out the best talent without having to take it off anybody else. I have a little bit of a spine left, despite being an agent, so I try my best.”

“It takes time,” I suggested, “to make money.”

“Nobody starts as a money-maker. You do have to put the time in. Things don’t happen overnight.”

“How did you become an agent?”

“The agency has been going just over 2 years. I used to work in TV production as a runner and was going up to co-ordinator level, but then I got the hump because I wanted to be a producer and I didn’t feel I was being pushed in that direction.”

“You go for the quirky end of the market,” I suggested.

“Not on purpose. I don’t feel like that. And I don’t like the word quirky. They’re just different; more interesting; unique voices.”

Malcolm Hardee Award winning Ed Aczel – What?

“Anyone who wins the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award is quirky.” I suggested. “You have Ed Aczel.”

“But he’s so inspiring,” said Hollie. “Everybody I ever put him in front of says: I don’t know what I’m going to do with him, but I want him. He gets cast in great films, Call The Midwife, whatever.”

“Are your parents in showbiz?” I asked.

“My dad’s a plumber.”

“He has loads of money, then,” I laughed. “There’s more money in plumbing than most showbiz.”

“He only recently retrained in his 50s,” said Hollie. “Before that, he used to work in a print finishers in Hackney where, essentially, you cut up flyers. He’s happy now. Everyone needs a plumber.”

Why Richard Gadd won a Perrier Prize at the Edinburgh Fringe but justifiably failed to get a Cunning Stunt Award

Richard Gadd with what used to be called the Perrier Award

Richard Gadd’s first words to me were: “You thought I would cancel this meeting, didn’t you, John? You thought I would be too big for you now. But I like you, John, even though everyone else doesn’t.”

He was joking.

I think.

After he was nominated for – but failed to win – this year’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award back in August, he texted me a message saying: “You. Are. Dead. To. Me.”

He was joking.

I think.

Yes, he was.

Yes.

We nominated him for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award on the basis that he had caused a buzz at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe with his show Waiting For Gaddot – mostly because it was stunningly original but also because it was almost impossible to get in to see it because there were far more people wanting to see it than there was space in the small room he had booked at the Banshee Labyrinth venue.

So, this year, he booked his new show Monkey See, Monkey Do into an even smaller room at the Banshee Labyrinth, meaning the difficulty of getting in – and the consequent buzz – was even greater. We checked with him and he said, Yes, indeed he had booked himself into the smaller room as a cunning stunt to create more buzz.

Richard Gadd winning that ‘other’ comedy award in Edinburgh

He failed to win our award, but he did go on to win the other main comedy prize at the Fringe – the one that is forever called the Perrier Award even though the sponsors have changed over the years.

“So,” I told him this week, “booking yourself into a smaller room was a very clever cunning stunt…”

“Well, no,” he replied. “It wasn’t a stunt.”

“You told us it was!” I said.

“No, it wasn’t a stunt,” Richard repeated. “When I visualised the show, there was only one room in the whole of Edinburgh I visualised – the Banshee Labyrinth Cinema Room. I needed a screen that was bigger than me. I needed a screen that would engulf me and engulf the audience.

“I thought: What do I do? Do I sacrifice audience numbers and money for artistic gain? And the answer was: Absolutely. I didn’t do it to create a buzz or as a cunning stunt or anything like that. It was a genuine artistic decision that I made.”

The poster image for award-winning Monkey See, Monkey Do

“And Monkey See, Monkey Do went on to win the Perrier,” I said. “That can be life-changing.”

“Well,” he replied, “I’ve had a lot of interest since then, but I’m not a mainstream act. It used to be, back in the day, that someone would win it and get a TV series straight away. But those days are over.

“I think now, if you win the Perrier, there is a more logical route towards the Have I Got News For Yous and Mock The Weeks. But that’s not my route either because I’m a very alternative act.

“I’m very interested in the art performance and I’m very theatrical, so those sort of (panel show) offers did not come through the door, but a whole bunch of people did get in touch who do want to work with me. Television companies and theatre companies. Writing work, drama work, stage work. And better acting auditions.

“People seem to take you more seriously. They know who you are – you’re not just a sort of underground comedian this, cult comedian that. People now know who I am and I think that’s important – and they know I take myself seriously and I’m still young – I’m 26.

“People don’t really trust people in their mid-twenties but, if you win the Perrier, if they have whittled down 1,000-odd shows in Edinburgh, it’s no easy feat to win that award. So at least I’m not being patronised any more.”

“A lot of people,” I said, “thought you should have been nominated for the Perrier last year.”

“All my other comedies have been very -in-your-face romps”

“Well, I think my work until very recently has been very polarising, very in-your-face and some people don’t like their eardums blasted or their eyes tainted with images of this and that. I think this year it set out to make a difference and to change opinions on things and it did tackle some big subjects.

“All my other comedies have been joyful romps or very -in-your-face romps but this year it set out to say something. I’ve had a challenging and complicated life in a lot of ways and this year I was tackling a subject that not many people speak about.”

“There is,” I prompted, “an autobiographical revelation in the show.”

“Yes, I use an autobiographical account in the show to reveal this information about myself. It’s an incident I went through that no person should go through and it caused a lot of turmoil and upheaval in my life, especially as a man.”

“I don’t want to give too much away,” I said.

“You can say sexual assault,” Richard told me.

“So the type of show you did,” I said, “was different this year…”

“I think the difference,” replied Richard, “was that, this year, it had a lot of heart and a lot of soul. It was trying to challenge views on masculinity. That was quite important to me. I’ve always felt I was a man but, after the incident, my masculinity was taken away from me.”

“Can I include that?” I asked.

“You can put what you like but just put me in a bloody good light, for the love of fuckery.”

“Righto,” I said.

Richard Gadd wants to challenge YOUR views on masculinity

“I wanted,” Richard continued, “to challenge the mainstream media definition of masculinity, cos masculinity needs to shift now, in this day and age of feminism and emotion on your sleeve. I feel masculinity needs to become synonymous with openness, But there is still this keeping-it-all-bottled-up masculinity; being ‘the man’.

“I bottled it up for so long because I felt it was a dent in my masculinity. That was the difficult part. But then, all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you realise: Jesus Christ! It’s just a word. It doesn’t exist.

“Your masculinity is as fickle as sexuality. These words that just cause people so much pain and don’t mean anything in the end, because boundaries are blurred. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is concrete. They’re just words, but they can cause so much misery.”

“It must,” I suggested, “have been scary to decide to talk about it openly.”

“I hinted about it in every single thing I did. Every single show I did, there were big overtones of it.”

“You seem,” I said, “very commendably serious about what you do as being art.”

“Yes, I am. I care. I kick myself if things aren’t good enough. I always try my best. If I’ve made mistakes, I will try to learn from them. I’m interested in the process of art and what it can achieve. And I’m interested in always doing things differently. You just have to keep staying one step ahead of what people expect you to do and expect you to be.”

“So what is your next step ahead?” I asked.

“I’m going to chop my cock off on stage and then eat it and regurgitate it and use it as a flute.”

“And,” I asked, “in reality?”

“I have ideas about what next, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them to you, Mr Fleming.”

“Would these new things,” I asked, “be like writing a different type of comedy drama or coming out of a totally unexpected trap like writing a musical?”

Breaking Gadd: “I wasn’t doing anything different”

“I did Cheese and Crack Whores. Then Breaking Gadd the year after… and Breaking Gadd was Cheese and Crack Whores in a different setting with a different group of characters but sort of the same. Despite the fact it did well and got well-reviewed, I realised that the buzz was elsewhere because I wasn’t doing anything different. So the next year Waiting For Gaddot was a big shift in a different direction and that got the buzz.”

“Some people,” I said, “equate arty success with low audiences.”

“Yes,” said Richard, “Some people think: I like being cult. I like being not for everyone. I’m too cool for mainstream. But it’s ridiculous to think I would write a piece of work so only the cool people can enjoy it. I would like to be as mainstream as possible. But I still like to bring these off-kilter themes into the mainstream and still be challenging. You can be challenging in the mainstream: you just need to figure out how to do it. To rebel against it is wrong. Charlie Brooker is a good example of someone who manages to be quite challenging in the mainstream.

“I don’t care about money. I was brought up better than that. I don’t care about that. I would like to expand my audience size but, at the same time, get my message over and do a piece of work in the best possible way it can be done.”

“We are having a chat,” I reminded him, “to plug your Monkey See, Monkey Do show at the Soho Theatre in London, so when is it on?”

Richard trying to keep one step ahead outside Soho Theatre

“We are doing a live recording for the DVD this Saturday at 5.30pm. Then the show runs 18th October to the 12th November. That run is completely sold out already, so it will probably be back in the New Year.”

“So this blog is completely pointless,” I said. “You don’t need the publicity.”

“No, I don’t,” agreed Richard. “But I like talking to you, so that’s fine.”

I do not think he was joking.

But who can tell with comedians and actors?

Mr Twonkey’s world of rubber pigs and blow-up women

Mr Twonkey’s selfie, taken at the Soho Theatre Bar yesterday

I met Mr Twonkey in the Soho Theatre Bar yesterday. He was on a two-day trip to London from Edinburgh to see the opening night of his play Jennifer’s Robot Arm, which is on for three days at the Bread & Roses venue in Clapham. I blogged about a read-through of the play in February.

Mr Twonkey wrote the play but does not appear in it.

He told me: “It’ll the the first time I’ve sat in the back of a theatre and watched people perform a play of mine without me in it. I think I’ll laugh because I’ll just be amazed it’s happening. – What am I putting these poor people through? – I’ve changed a few bits since you saw the read-through and it doesn’t have Auntie Myra in it any more. But we do have a guy who isn’t really a drag act who is going to dress up as a woman for us.”

“Isn’t a man who is not a drag act who dresses up as a woman a drag act by definition?” I asked.

“Mmmm…” said Twonkey.

Time Out has described his shows as “oddly entertaining and utterly bizarre” and my fellow Grouchy Club podcaster Kate Copstick says he “makes Edward Lear sound like the Six O’Clock News”

Twonkey’s Acid House Circus Tour poster

I had forgotten, but it turned out we were having a chat because he was plugging Twonkey’s Acid House Circus Tour – a fair title for two different shows in three different cities next month.

He is performing his new show Twonkey’s Stinking Bishop at the Brighton Fringe and last year’s show Twonkey’s Private Restaurant at London’s Soho Theatre and at the Prague Fringe.

“I was going to promote it as Twonkey Goes To Eastern Europe but they told me: It will be taken the wrong way.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” said Twonkey. “They said calling it ‘Eastern Europe’ might be offensive.”

He is appearing at the Divadlo na Prádle venue in Prague.

“Apparently,” Twonkey told me, “that means Theatre of Lingerie.”

I checked Google Translate when I got home and it reckoned Divadlo na Prádle simply means Theatre on Prádle. But then I did a search for ‘lingerie’ in Czech and it turns out that the Lingerie Football League is “a league of American football played by women”. It does not elaborate on what they wear as their team strip. One must never forget that the actual name of Prague is Praha and it can be almost as bizarre as Mr Twonkey.

Yesterday he showed me his flyer for the Prague show.

Mr Twonkey’s Prague Fringe flyer, with fish

“Why,” I asked, “are you opening a can of tuna in the photograph?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been buying a lot of things from a prop store.”

“Specialising in fish?” I asked.

“I’m kind of addicted to the prop store,” he continued, “sometimes to the point where I buy the prop before I come up with the sketch or the…”

“Is there,” I asked, “much demand in the props world for half-opened tins of fish?”

“Not really,” he admitted, “and, to be honest, I haven’t been able to incorporate it into the show. But I suppose it suggests I’ve got a restaurant and the show is called Twonkey’s Private Restaurant. One of the problems in Edinburgh last year was that there was sometimes a bit of confusion because some people expected food.”

“What was the show’s origin?” I asked.

“I’ve always wanted to run a restaurant and a lot of my shows take place in outer space or in different dimensions, so I thought it would be good to just restrict myself to an actual place. Also it’s easier to do. You just need a tablecloth, some plastic food and a candle.”

“No cutlery?” I asked.

“It would be a bad idea,” replied Twonkey, “to give the audience knives.”

Mr Twonkey (left) with an unexpected red drag act yesterday

At this point, a drag artist wearing a bright red dress appeared in the Soho Theatre Bar; she had her own film crew following her around. Or him around.

“I like that show,” Twonkey told me.

“Which show is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Twonkey.

“Why,” I asked, “is your new show called Twonkey’s Stinking Bishop?”

“The idea,” he told me, “is I’ve been kicked out of the restaurant and I’m now been demoted to a…”

“Bishop?” I suggested.

“No,” said Twonkey, “I’m at the cheese and drinks counter of the log flume centre.”

“The log flume centre?” I asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “The log flume centre of a small hamlet. But it has a massive catchment area.”

‘Is the show built round props?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s got a big trick in it involving two cheese wheels an a chain and some pigs and some padlocks. It’s basically like an escape act, where a pig escapes from a mountain of cheese.”

“Can to do a re-cap here,” I asked. “… a pig?”

A Swedish farmer holds a pig, sometime before the outbreak of the First World War in Europe

“Not a live pig,” Twonkey re-assured me.

“A dead pig?” I asked. “So is it a bacon sandwich?”

“It could be seen as a bacon sandwich,” he agreed.

“Though,” I said, “I suppose any pig can be seen as a bacon sandwich.”

“It is a humorous pig,” explained Twonkey. “It is made of rubber. I actually have eight of them, because I’m predicting something bad is going to happen to them. They are quite fragile. Last year, at the Private Restaurant, quite a few things got damaged. People kicked the bag and my puppet’s faces imploded and a balloon burst. So I keep being paranoid about the rubber pigs bursting. I’m also worried about… Can you take a hot air balloon onto an aeroplane?”

“Surely,” I suggested, “if you have a hot air balloon, you do not need an aeroplane?”

“It is only about a foot wide,” explained Twonkey.

“The aeroplane?” I asked.

Mr Twonkey tries not to display his worries

“The balloon. I am worried that air pressure in the aeroplane will make it decrease in size or explode.”

“Can’t you deflate it?” I asked. “That’s how balloons work.”

“No. It’s permanently inflated.”

“If you have a permanently inflated balloon,” I suggested, “is that not really a ball?”

“Yes,” said Twonkey, “it could be classed as a ball. Have you ever known of exploding beachballs?’

“I have never,” I told him, “had exploding balls myself.”

“I am hoping,” said Twonkey, “that my balls won’t explode on the plane. The only reason I’m worried is that I have heard tales of women who have had breast implants… If they go on aeroplanes, apparently there is a chance their breasts will explode. I’m sure I have read that some woman blew up.”

“Could this be a new type of terrorist suicide bomber?” I asked. “Women with exploding bosoms.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Twonkey. “I suppose no-one’s going to check at security, are they?”

At this point, the drag act in the red costume left the bar.

Producer/director Simon Jay (left) & Mr Twonkey (right) after Jennifer’s Robot Arm show last night.

Malcolm Hardee Award winners Ellis & Rose rumbled in Soho Theatre ruse

The original James Hamilton photo with the rogue photograph directly above his head

In this blog back in December last year, I ran a chat with writer/performer James Hamilton. Included in the blog was a photo which had the (I thought) intriguing caption:

James Hamilton at Soho Theatre, London (connoisseurs of comedy & Malcolm Hardee Awards might appreciate what is also seen)

No-one asked why.

In fact, I had photographed him at the Soho Theatre Bar in London, sitting beneath one of the photos on a wall dedicated to the great and good acts who have performed at Soho Theatre.

The photo directly above his head was of Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winning double act Ellis & Rose. But they have never appeared at Soho Theatre.

So why was it there?

Because they put it up themselves.

I spotted it in November last year. I told Ellis and Rose that, if they managed to keep the picture on the wall until the start of the Edinburgh Fringe in August, I might well give them a special Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

The Soho Theatre’s Tweet yesterday

Alas, yesterday, Soho Theatre spotted the rogue photograph and took it down. The esteemed London theatre Tweeted:

HA! This lot have skipped the Soho show & put themselves ont’ photo wall regardless. 5* for Effort. (@jameshamilton).

Why was James Hamilton mentioned? Because the caption on the photo said:

Ellis & Rose (2014)
Photo J Hamilton

In fact, James had not taken the photo and had not even known about it until I told him last December when I, as it were, shot him underneath it. (The spoof photograph was actually taken by Charlie Dinkin.)

Obviously, today I had a chat with Ellis about all these shenanigans.

“We put the picture up in October last year,” he told me. “We met Steve Marmion (the artistic director of Soho Theatre) once at a party and he knew about our Edinburgh shows but said he didn’t think we were ready to appear in the Soho Theatre.

Ellis, shocked earlier today, with Wall of Fame behind him

“So we decided we would appear but we would skip doing a show and just go straight to appearing on the Wall of Fame. We had a bigger picture than Tim Minchin.

“We sat in the booth one day and, just out of curiosity, decided to see if we could take the pictures off the wall. We took Lady Rizo’s picture off the wall and measured up the photo using the Soho Theatre’s laminated menu.

“We had access to a photo studio rig and we took pictures and then they were edited to look like we were performing in a ‘black box’ studio theatre space and then we copied the style of the captions and got one printed.

“We went to Soho Theatre with it in a bag, ready to put it up but then realised they had replaced Lady Rizo’s A4 picture with an A3 one. So we grabbed another performer’s picture and replaced his photo.”

“Why,” I asked, “did you put James Hamilton on the caption as the photographer?”

Realising loss of a potential Malcolm Hardee Award

“We just wanted to put on the name of someone who would find it amusing. We told him he should go to the Soho Theatre and have a look around, but apparently he didn’t see it for a month.”

“Not until I showed it to him,” I said. “But, judging from their Tweet yesterday, Soho Theatre seem to have taken it all in good spirit.”

“Yes,” said Ellis, “And I see from their photo on Twitter that they’ve actually re-framed our picture in another frame. So they must rate it. Are they going to put it up somewhere in their office or what?”

“Probably what,” I told him.

The rogue photograph with face of Soho Theatre’s artistic director Steve Marmion drawn on balloon. (Photograph by Charlie Dinkin.)

And does that sardonic Mills walk upon England’s mountains green? Well, yes.

David at the Soho Theatre Bar last week

Shortly after chatting with American comic David Mills in London, I met my eternally-un-named friend, who is a fan of David’s sophistication.

For some reason, I said to her – it may have been some after-effect of the flu – “And did that dark Satanic Mills walk upon England’s mountains green?”

“Not Satanic,” she corrected me. “Sardonic.” And she is, of course, right.

“Americans!” I said to David when we met at Soho Theatre. “So appallingly upbeat, so depressingly, eternally optimistic.”

“Don’t tar me with that brush!” David shot back.

Have I mentioned before in this blog that I have a shit memory? And there is now the continuing post-flu vagueness to add to my innate vagueness.

“Have I never done a full blog on you before?” I asked David.

“No,” he told me. “I have sort-of flitted in and out your blogs. I have been a bit player in your cyber life…”

“When did you come to the UK?” I asked.

“2000… The point is I am not 22. I had other lives prior to the one I have at the moment. I was the only person who said I was going to leave the US if George Bush got elected who actually did.”

“So was that your reason for coming here?” I asked.

“No. I came over in a different career in a whole different world and just stayed.”

“What was your career before?”

“Different.”

“And it was what?” I asked.

“Too tedious to get into,” replied David. “So I’m not going to. It was literally another life. I was a different type of person. Do you know how long it’s taken me to put that behind me?”

“How often I have heard you say that,” I told him. “What were you into? Business? Sex? Espionage? Butter-sculpting? International drug-running?”

“None of those things,” said David. “It was super-uninteresting.”

“You are an international man of mystery,” I said.

“I’m not going into it,” said David.

“I can keep this going for hours,” I told him.

“I was doing something else,” said David, “and had a breakdown and stopped doing that.”

“You had a breakdown?”

“No. I was being hyperbolic… Alright, I went off the grid and lived in Lewisham.”

“You did?”

David is not a Lewisham man

“No,” said David. “Of course not. That is ridiculous. I certainly did not live in Lewisham. Anyway, I had been an actor and cabaret act and stand-up in San Francisco in the 1990s and then moved to New York to be a big star and was a huge failure and then stopped performing and got a professional job and that brought me to London and I did that career for about eight or ten years.”

“And that career was?” I asked.

“The other one,” said David. “But finally I decided I needed to get back on stage, because I was having a breakdown – a ten-year-long breakdown. So I got back on stage and the rest is herstory.”

“So,” I said, “you left the US, the place where all showbiz people dream of ending up…”

“I would like to have a career over there,” said David, “but it’s a weird, weird place. Super weird. Super fundamentalist. And, in terms of unspoken rules… You put a foot wrong in the US and they come at you.”

“But,” I said, “you’re talking about the middle, aren’t you? The coasts are more European. The East Coast, anyway.”

“Yes and no,” said David. “Compared to the middle, yes. But there are plenty of restrictions in comedy on what you can and can’t talk about. There’s a lot of consensus in the US. They talk about being divided. The truth is there’s tons of consensus. Anyone who has been there two weeks… they have all signed-up to this American vision. You can be in Britain for generations and you’re still not British.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “I think the opposite. You go down the East End in London and the son of some West Indian immigrant couple is talking like Hello, luv, ‘ow are you? to people and he’s become British after one generation. In America, there’s the Italian areas, the Swedish town, the German town, the Jewish thing…”

“There is that,” admitted David. “But they all believe the same shit. And, in the US too, no-one retains their accent. They become an amalgam of American. If they’re in New York for two weeks, they’re saying: I’m a Noo Yoiker! Here, when do you ever really become a Londoner?”

“That’s not true,” I argued. “Almost no-one in London was actually born in London.”

“Tell that to an East Ender,” said David.

“They’re all from the Indian sub-continent!” I told him.

“The point is.” said David. “The point is, let’s focus, John. I have a show happening here at the Soho Theatre from the 3rd to the 7th February. Me. David Mills: Don’t Get Any Ideas. Me and my band.”

David Mills: Don’t Get Any Ideas with edge

“Your band?”

“Yeah. Rock band. The Memes.”

“How many Memes are there?” I asked.

“Two.”

“Male?” I asked.

“One of them. I don’t see what gender has to do with it. There’s a guitar and a keyboard. We’re very stripped down.”

“That was my next question,” I said. “And this is what? A sophisticated 1950s Monte Carlo style cabaret show?”

“More 1970s scuzzy New York basement,” said David. “Because that’s me.”

“But you are Mr Sophisticated West Coast American,” I argued.

“There’s going to be sophistication,” said David. “Don’t worry. But I’m mixing it up. I’m sort-of bored with cabaret land. There will be some of that, but it’s gonna have an edge.”

“What sort of an edge?”

“Rock ’n’ roll.”

“You’re going to be wearing a leather jacket?”

“No. I’m going to look dynamite, don’t worry. The suit is the act, let’s be honest.”

“It’s a great act,” I said.

“It’s a great suit,” said David.

“And you are going to sing?”

“My version of singing. And jokes. Don’t worry.”

“Why is it called Don’t Get Any Ideas?” I asked.

“It’s a threat. I’ve got edge. Take a look at me. I’ve got edge.”

“When you started off in the US,” I asked, “were you always this sophisticated on-stage guy?”

Dave Allen was influencial in the US?

“I always liked Dave Allen’s style,” explained David.

“Dave Allen?” I asked, surprised.

“Well, a stool and a suit. That sort-of says it…”

“You saw Dave Allen in the US?”

“When I was growing up, they showed his old British shows on PBS. I was influenced by him. And people like Paul Lynde, who was a big US homo in the 1970s. He was like – I don’t want to say Kenneth  Williams, but… He had this sort of bitchy kind of homo humour that was not overt but was certainly there. And I liked Stephen Colbert a lot. He didn’t wink with the jokes. He just told them in character and the audience had to get the fact he was joking. In the 1990s, he was around being funny as an actor.”

“This Soho Theatre show Don’t Get Any Ideas is going to be your Edinburgh Fringe show this year?”

David Mills – always looking for an original angle – in Soho

“Edinburgh will be a version of this. I’m a topical comic, not political, so the topics change. Let’s focus, John. My show here at the Soho Theatre from this Tuesday coming to Saturday. David Mills: Don’t Get Any Ideas.”

“Your mysterious previous career was not selling double-glazing?”

“No.”

Performer Richard Gadd on ego, anxiety and why comedians are like strippers

Richard Gadd flyering his show outside Soho Theatre

Performer Richard Gadd played Macbeth in a school play.

“I enjoyed the nerves and the adrenaline,” he told me yesterday. “And the sense of accomplishment at the end. I liked that. I wanted that.”

Ten years later, he was playing Macbeth on stage at the Globe Theatre in London. But he is currently in his own show (categorised as comedy) at London’s Soho Theatre.

“Are you a comedian or an actor?” I asked.

“I’m difficult to pigeonhole,” he agreed, “but I like that. I am not a comedian, but I do comedy.”

“What does your agent say you are?” I asked.

“I think he’s as confused as I am,” he laughed.

“If you had to put your profession on your passport,” I asked, “what would you be?”

“A writer-performer. If someone introduces me as a comedian, I think Oh fuck! Don’t say that! Comedy is limiting. I am not a comedian in the purest sense – I can’t tell jokes.”

“And you don’t play the comedy circuit,” I said.

“The circuit is a circle,” said Richard. “You need to figure a way to get off it, otherwise you keep going round and round and then, all of a sudden, you’re 40 years old and what the fuck have you done? I was not mainstream enough and I was not good enough to make it as a full-time circuit act.”

“Which is?” I asked.

Richard Gadd – Cheese and Crack Whores – not mainstream

“A circuit act is a good, reliable, dependable act who can earn money and knows where to get the laughs. I wasn’t like that. I would go on with a wig and a stuffed parrot and stuff my face with cake and whip myself with a belt. You can’t guarantee that’s going to go well every single time.”

“So what is your schtick?” I asked.

“Heightened surrealism.”

“Your show last year,” I said. “Cheese and Crack Whores. What was that about?”

“That was about a break-up I had with a lady and I stalked her and my life spiralled out-of-control. It was more-or-less a veiled truth. I never stalked her. I would never stalk anyone.”

“It was heightened reality?” I asked.

“Yes. I was going through a break-up and I teased it out. You know when you go through a break-up and you sort-of go insane and you think those thoughts: I’m going to do this… I’m going to do that…?  But you can’t do them, because no sane person would. So I did a show about What would I have done if…? But, in fact, I don’t like cheese and I don’t like crack whores.”

Breaking Gadd – Richard’s calming current show

“You’re halfway through your current show – Breaking Gadd – at the Soho Theatre. The Guardian called it a comedy of relentless degradation.”

“Yes. Up until 20th December.”

“What is this one about?” I asked.

“In this one, I lose my memory after getting attacked in an Edinburgh street and then I have to piece my life back together, because nobody comes to my bedside in hospital. I piece my life back together only to find out that my life probably wasn’t worth remembering.”

“That’s most people’s reality,” I said. “What was this fabricated truth based on?”

“A fractured family,” said Richard. “Not that I had a fractured family. There’s no reality. I’m from a place in Fife called Wormit, which sounds like what you do to a dog. Kids from St Andrews had their teddy bears. I grew up hugging a bottle of Buckfast.”

“You told me you got drunk on Buckfast after the show last night,” I said.

“That’s what I do,” said Richard. “A bottle of Buckfast before bed. It’s got a lot of caffeine in it, so it doesn’t really work, but I pass out awake.”

“Why did you shave your hair off?” I asked. “You used to have long hair.”

Richard Gadd talked calmly yesterday of comics and strippers

“So I look more like a psychopath on stage.”

“Are you interested,” I asked, “in damaged characters?”

“Yeah. All comedians are like strippers.”

“You’ve been preparing your quotes,” I said.

“I don’t even think it’s my quote,” said Richard. “I think it’s a bastardisation of some well-known quote, but it’s a good analogy. In comedy, you strip your emotions in front of an audience. Good comedy is always revealing and truthful. You emotionally unravel in front of an audience, like a stripper physically unravels in front of an audience. The difference is a stripper is attractive and a comedian is often ugly and neurotic.”

“And the difference between comedians and actors is…?” I asked.

“Comedy is, at least, interested in pure art,” said Richard. “Comedians create something which they then tell an audience. Actors are very much conduits of someone else’s text: they are an echo of someone else’s work. They probably require the biggest egos and the biggest inflated sense of self-worth. But, in reality, they’re the least important part of the artistic process. Their art wouldn’t exist unless there was an original creator and actors are not original creators unless it’s improvisation. I get more annoyed at actors than I do at comedians.”

“Why annoyed?” I asked.

“Because comedy is creativity and ego, whereas a lot of acting is solely I want to be an actor because I want to be adored. It’s pure ego a lot of the time.

“I think I used to chase that and, when I realised I was chasing it, I decided I wanted to step away and wanted to write and want to create stuff. I was chasing ego and adoration and I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that leads to happiness.”

“Being adored doesn’t lead to happiness?” I asked, surprised.

“No it doesn’t,” said Richard. “You need to learn how to self-critique and not chase your own ego. You need to learn to appreciate what you have, not what is waiting for you in the future because you’ll just keep chasing your own ego. The ego inflates and inflates and inflates and never pops; it never bursts.”

“Sounds a bit Buddhist,” I said.

“Well,” said Richard, “I do meditate.”

“What type?” I asked.

“Transcendental meditation,” replied Richard. “Two 20-minute sessions a day.”

“Maharishi?” I asked.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – unlikely role model?

“Maharishi, yup,” said Richard. “It’s very important, transcendental mediation. I used to have so many performance anxieties, so much anxiety in life. I still have in certain cases, but I’m a lot better than I was. It teaches you to focus your mind on one thing and not let it run away with itself. The second I did it, I realised my life was getting better. It’s like being given the keys to a secret truth. It genuinely is.

“And I’m not spiritual. I’m not into the hokey-pokey spiritual side. I don’t believe in that side to it. But I believe there is a practical, extremely useful, scientific, proven methodology behind transcendental meditation.”

“So you’re not doing it for philosophical reasons,” I said. “You’re doing it for physical reasons?”

“Yeah. It takes your anxiety levels down. I used to not be able to get on public transport. I used to hate the tube. I used to not be able to make eye contact with people. Once, I would have found talking to you quite difficult.”

“What was the problem with the tube?” I asked. “Too many people?”

“A mixture of claustrophobia and the fact you are forced to be in other people’s gazes. The public’s gaze can be quite hard sometimes – if you catch eyes with someone. What are they thinking of me? I used to very much care how I was coming across in every single situation.

“Everybody makes a faux-pas every now and again but, if I made a faux-pas back then, it would stay with me for days. I would think about things I did when I was 16 that still made me embarrassed. I would ruin a day. It was affecting me professionally. I wasn’t performing well on stage or when I went to auditions. I was too anxious.

“Meditation has really helped me. I’m still a long way from being perfect, but it helps. I’m very manic on stage, but that has to come from a place of stability. The one tool I lacked was mental stability. I have not got it yet, but at least I’ve got the hammer and chisel towards getting my full tool box.

“I don’t have inner peace, but performance is something I do because I think it’s important.”

“Do you enjoy performing on stage?” I asked.

“I’m still not sure,” said Richard. “It’s not something I enjoy particularly. I don’t enjoy it like I used to when I was a kid. But I enjoy writing and putting stuff out there that’s different.”

“What you’re telling me,” I said, “is you used to enjoy it when you were terrified. Now you are less terrified, you don’t enjoy it so much.”

“Yeah,” said Richard. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? I don’t want to play the stereotype of the suffering artist, but I definitely feel like I’m sometimes one of those awful fucking guys saying I dunno why I do it; I hate it so much! but then can’t stop doing it.”

“Adrenaline?” I asked.

“Adrenaline,” agreed Richard. “Fear of failure. Fear of What if in 20 years time? Plus the fact of those rare instances when you do enjoy it and you do feel proud of yourself or you meet someone who says they were touched by your stuff. That is a priceless feeling.”

Casual Violence no-show at Ed Fringe + new Malcolm Hardee Award concept

James Hamilton at Soho Theatre, London (connoisseurs of comedy & Malcolm Hardee Awards might appreciate what is also seen)

“Why have you changed your hairstyle?” I asked James Hamilton at the Soho Theatre Bar.

“I’ve going for the shit Wolverine style,” he replied.

“I have a shit memory,” I told him. “Why am I meeting you?”

“Casual Violence Live!” he said.

Casual Violence are one of my favourite acts at the Edinburgh Fringe. They have been twice nominated for a Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award.

“Ah yes!” I said. “Casual Violence. How long have you been going? I’ve forgotten.”

“Fucking ages,” said James. “In our current post-studenty form, almost five years now.”

“And this is your first DVD?” I asked.

“Yes… Well, we don’t have the money to make it a DVD, but we’re putting it online as a download. It’s uploading as we speak”

I think I have seen all the Casual Violence shows – in Edinburgh, Brighton and London – except this year’s one The Great Fire of Nostril. At the Edinburgh Fringe, its show times clashed with my own Grouchy Club shows.

Casual Violence’s 2014 Edinburgh show

“You’ve done four different shows and a Best Of show?” I asked.

“Yes,” said James. “But the most recent show – The Great Fire of Nostril – is not really a sketch show. So the DVD is a mix of stuff from the first three shows plus a few sketches that didn’t fit into any particular show. Well, it’s not a DVD; it’s a download. Maybe a third of the material in it wasn’t in any Edinburgh Fringe show but stuff which we’ve occasionally done out-and-about. “

“There must,” I asked, “be some sketches which work live but not on a screen?”

“Yes, we found that with the seven web series sketches we did. The one with the Human Defence League guys in a shed… We spent 16 hours in a normal-sized garden shed with five people. It was horrible and then the sketch wasn’t as good on screen as it is live. The three sketches I wrote specifically for the web work very well on screen but can’t be done live.”

There are several Casual Violence taster sketches on YouTube.

“So,” I said, “at the Edinburgh Fringe next year…?”

“Casual Violence are not going to do a new Edinburgh show next year,” said James. “But I may be doing a solo show. We’ve done five shows in a row together. We’ve basically got Edinburgh fatigue and, by developing what we do, we found ourselves… confined is probably the right word… by that particular style

Casual Violence – not appearing at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe

“We love doing stories because, when it works, it’s better than doing a ‘normal’ sketch show. But it’s so much more difficult and we don’t realistically have another one in us. We could say: Oh, let’s just churn out an hour of sketches, but that’s lazy and none of us really wants to do that. So, instead, we are filling our time with all the projects we always wanted to do but can’t do because Edinburgh takes over all our time.”

“They’re solo projects?” I asked.

“Yes. But also group stuff. We’re making a podcast. You came to see the Obsoletium read-through a year ago. We’re going to do that as a podcast and we’re currently writing the second episode. We’ve re-titled it Hector vs The Future because no-one could spell Obsoletium.”

“You’re writing that alone?”

“I’m co-writing it with James Huntrods, our co-producer. He’s got a very good handle on story structure, which I tend to be weaker at.”

“Is that why you’ve done sketches within a single situation in the past, rather than a single linear narrative?”

“Pretty much, although The Great Fire of Nostril had one complete narrative even if it’s a very weird narrative – a bizarre, surrealist one. We’re performing it at the Soho Theatre in the first week of February.”

A picture painted by William Frederick Yeames in 1878

“How’s your father?” I asked. “Is he no longer trapped in the depths of the London Silver Vaults in Chancery Lane?”

“I don’t know where he is,” said James. “Since leaving the depths, he’s been gallivanting around the… I dunno… I dunno… I tend to leave him to it… He’s just working in…I dunno where he goes… Wherever he goes… God knows where he is.”

“And you?” I asked.

“It wasn’t planned,” said James, “but, over the course of the next couple of months, we have so many projects all happening at the same time. Casual Violence are doing the podcast and the Soho run and I’m developing my solo project and there’s the Casual Violence Live! DVD… erm download. We filmed it at the Brighton Fringe in May which was advantageous, because we won an award specifically for the show we filmed.”

“Which award?” I asked.

Argus Angel Award

“The Argus Angel Award. I think they used to do trophies, but now they just e-mail you a PDF of the award certificate, so it’s an award that actually costs you, because you have to print it out yourself if you want a physical version.”

“That’s quite a good idea,” I said. “Perhaps I should do that with the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards. In 2007, I had trophies made for every year up to 2017. After that, I could just send people PDFs of photos of the trophy they might have won if I had bothered to have one made.”

“Or,” suggested James, “part of the prize could be that the winners this year have to design and make trophies for next year’s winners.”

“It would be in the spirit of Malcolm,” I said, “that the winners lose money. I did originally have the idea that part of the prize for each winner would be that they had to buy the judges drinks. But, as I don’t drink alcohol or spirits, it seemed a rather pointless idea… and it doesn’t really work as a concept if they have to buy the judges tap water. It would somehow diminish the award. Although there did used to be the Tap Water Awards. Perhaps I should reconsider the idea.”

On YouTube, there is a trailer for Casual Violence Live!

Rape performer Adrienne Truscott on a gimmick & the tawdry Wau Wau Sisters

Adrienne Truscott kisses her Soho Theatre poster yesterday

New York-based Adrienne Truscott is performing her show at London’s Soho Theatre until the end of the month. She performs naked from the waist down. The title is:

ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT’S ASKING FOR IT – A ONE-LADY RAPE ABOUT COMEDY STARRING HER PUSSY AND LITTLE ELSE!

“I understand,” she told me at Soho Theatre yesterday, “some people could see the title and think Who is this gimmicky, cheeky woman trying to make light of rape?”

“Is it a gimmick?” I asked.

“It’s a gimmick,” said Adrienne, “but one which has some weight to it because, in theory, if I’m on stage with my pants off and my make-up on and I’m two or three gin & tonics in in a roomful of people then – on a certain level by the logic that it’s discussed in our culture – I am ‘asking for it’… And it HAS happened that someone’s got raped in a room full of people and no-one did anything to stop it.

Wau Wau Sisters’ image for their new show Death Threats

I saw the show’s first night at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

This year, Adrienne is taking it back to Edinburgh for a limited 8-day run at Bob & Miss Behave’s Bookshop as well as performing as half of the Wau Wau Sisters in a 17-day run of their new show Death Threats (and Other Forms of Flattery).

“Your mother came to see your opening night at the Soho Theatre last week,” I said. “Had she seen Asking For It in New York?”

“I’ve barely done it in the States.”

“How did she react last week?”

“The best part was I could hear her laughing during the show. Afterwards, she said: I thought it was brilliant, love.”

“She’s American?”

“She’s from Exeter.”

“So you’re half English?”

More than half English, part wild West Country girl Adrienne

“I’m more than half English. My father’s American, but his father is from Cornwall. My mother moved to the States when she was 20.

“I lived over here for a little bit when I was seven, after my parents got divorced – St Austell in Cornwall, but I spent most of my time around Exeter and Devon.

“My grandfather is from Fowey and his father was a ship’s captain. My sister is a writer. She’s currently working on a historical novel. She’s written a lot of poetry in her time.”

Adrienne’s father is an academic specialist on the writings of the Italian poet Dante.

“My family,” Adrienne said, “are not showbiz. They’re not chomping at the bit to get on the stage.”

“Your mother has seen the Wau Wau Sisters presumably?” I asked.

“Yes.”

There is a video on YouTube of the Wau Wau Sisters performing their show The Last Supper in Australia.

“So your mother is used to nudity and dodginess and sexuality?” I said.

“I wouldn’t say she’s used to any of that. She’s seen the shows and she sort of gets I’m doing it from a different place than that other tawdry version.”

“The Wau Wau Sisters are tawdry?” I asked.

“I feel that we’re insistently tawdry. It’s not that we’re called tawdry. We announce that we’re tawdry, though we have a lot of slyly political fun with being tawdry and being naked. My mother sort-of gets that this Asking For It show is smart-tawdry but that doesn’t mean it makes her any more comfortable. My mum is not entirely comfortable with me running around taking my clothes off, but she sort of understands the reasons.”

“Had you decided you’d had enough of the Wau Waus?” I asked.

“Not at all. We’re still Wau Wauing.”

The Wau Wau Sisters – both Vow & Wow

“You pronounced that with a V,” I said. Vau Vau not Wau Wau.”

“Yes,” said Adrienne, “Vow-Vow Sisters.”

“It’s German?” I asked.

“It comes from a Brecht character named Mr Wau. We were given the name because someone watching us found us to be somewhat Brechtian and because this character Mr Wau is a strongman in a circus and is followed around by a band of freaks. So we, with the help of this friend, sort-of imagined us like the bastard daughters of Mr Wau.”

“So what’s the point of writing a one-woman show on rape?” I asked. Because it’s going to have an effect?”

“First and foremost,” said Adrienne, “I thought it was interesting material. I’m not saying, Right! That’s my show! We can put rape to bed. That won’t be happening any more. I just wanted to contribute to a conversation that I felt was lacking.

Adrienne Truscott in Soho Theatre bar in London yesterday

“It started writing itself in my head and then I realised it was quite topical. I was writing it before all the rape show shenanigans started last year. I had been thinking about How can you use comedy to talk about rape in a smart way? and then, as I was working on it, it became as much about What are the rules and pitfalls and structures of comedy? and then, while I was working on it, all this Rape Joke controversy blew up last year.

“In the States, it turned into an election year, so there was a lot of crazy politics going on. It was getting kinda zeitgeisty and that’s when I thought Fuck! I’m going to take it to Edinburgh NOW – Now is the time to comment on this!

“Because?” I asked.

“I’ve never been satisfied with the way rape is discussed. Even organisations and ad campaigns I still felt took the wrong approach and still talked about it in an annoying way.”

“Annoying in what way?” I asked.

“Talking about victims. One origin of the show – but not the only one – was I was in a very small class at university: it was sort of a race gender class.”

“How very American,” I said.

“My professor was a man and he was trying to get us a bit riled-up by shocking us with statistics. Amongst many statistics about race and pain inequity, he said 2 in 5 women are sexually assaulted or raped. There were about 13 or 14 people in the class – about 10 women. He said: Doesn’t that get you riled-up? It means in this class at least 4 women have been raped? How does that make you feel? and he asked why we weren’t responding. I told him: Partly, we’re not responding because we’re shellshocked and feel weird and uncomfortable. I would like to know – because there are two male students and you in this class – which one of you is a rapist? Let’s talk about you guys. Literally if, statistically speaking, you’re talking about a closed group and you’ve announced some of us got raped, then one of you three had to partake in it. So you’re fucking guilty. Let’s talk about that instead of the ‘victims’… And I think that’s a really potent conversation to have.”

“How did he react?”

“He found himself at a loss for words, just like we had been.”

Adrienne Truscott’s one-woman bottomless show

“The interesting thing in Edinburgh last year,” I said, “was that the word got round very, very quickly that it was a serious piece of work.”

“I had never done solo stuff before,” said Adrienne, “and had never had an interest in it. I found it really challenging and thrilling – doing solo work as well as stand-up. Both were new to me.”

“It was a big leap,” I said. “First solo show. Small room. Nudity.”

“Yeah,” said Adrienne. “And make it about rape. What could go wrong? I knew I’d made a show that basically had a shape and an arc and was basically what I wanted to say. But I had only done that exact version of the show in front of an audience once – about four days before I left for Edinburgh.

“I was hoping to make a little bit of a splash with Hey, maybe you can talk about rape this way, I also just wanted to perform 30 nights in a row because I knew, by the end of it, I would have something better than what I arrived with. I would get all that feedback from an audience and sort it out.”

Adrienne, winner of Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award 2013 (Photograph by Keir O’Donnell)

As it turned out, Adrienne won the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality and the Panel Prize for whatever the Perrier Awards were called last year.

“I have,” Adrienne told me, “never yet got a review saying: This is an outrage! Why did she do it?”

“Would you say you were a feminist?”

“I’m absolutely feminist. But I want this show to be understood as a comedy show. It’s really fun for me to watch the audiences’ eyes when I do my show. “

“So, are you going to do a Rape 2 show next year?”

“No. But I was talking to (promoter) Bob Slayer over one too many bourbons last night about doing maybe a one-off in Edinburgh this year about some material that’s come up from doing the show.”

“A show about the show?”

“A night about the show.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.