Comedy performer Becky Fury in Berlin with the man who had had too much fun

Becky Fury… And this is the way the conversation went…

My last blog, a week ago,  was about What happened when award-winning performer Becky Fury went to Berlin for a week to create art but she only stayed for a day. 

It was not exactly clear why her stay was so short. And several readers of this blog have asked me (yes indeed they really have) why.

The only explanation in the previous blog was: “the guy that invited me to Berlin, who has taken way too much acid… didn’t really think about the logistics of inviting people to make art there. So I decided to get a plane back to London after I went into Berlin itself on a psycho-geographic ramble.”

So, obviously, a couple of days ago, I sat down and had a cup of tea with Becky (we are, after all, British) and asked her to be more specific. 

And this is the way the conversation went…

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BECKY: The guy read your blog, contacted me and said he had been wondering what happened to me.

JOHN: He didn’t realise you had left Berlin?

BECKY: No. I hadn’t told him.

JOHN: You left over a week ago.

BECKY: Well, there were a few things he didn’t notice and the fact that I had left Berlin was one of those things. 

JOHN: He had done too much…

BECKY: He had done too much… of something. He had had… erm… He had had way too much ‘fun’. That’s a nice way of explaining it.

JOHN: But he never noticed you had gone? Did you leave a stuffed dummy of a human body under your bedclothes?

BECKY: This was the thing. I didn’t have a bed to sleep in. That was mainly the reason I left. Because I was given a couch in a freezing cold warehouse in East Berlin in January. 

JOHN: We couldn’t afford couches in my day…

BECKY: Maybe I should have considered myself lucky… And I had a dirty sleeping bag to sleep under.

JOHN: Sounds ideal. This is the stuff of award-winning Edinburgh Fringe comedy shows.

BECKY: I know… I… err… I don’t want to get distracted by what you’re saying.

JOHN: Few people do.

BECKY: Basically, I went to Berlin to do some art. We had had this really, really interesting conversation, this guy and me. I had met him when I first started to do squatting and alternative politics in 2002. It was a really interesting thing to catch up with him and have a conversation about all the things that had happened since 2002. And he told me we could do a film in his ‘green screen room’ in Berlin. I knew that, over the previous 17 years, he had been taking a lot of… having a lot of ‘fun’.

“I can’t work in this space and I can’t work with you.”

When I got to Berlin, he took me up to see the green screen room and it was the size of… well, basically, you couldn’t stand up in it. Which is a bit of a problem for a green screen room. And he had a tent in the green screen room and he was sleeping in there.

I looked at him and he looked at me and he said: “Oh, no, no, well, we could do it like a rocket. We could film it like we were in a rocket ship in here.” 

And I was thinking: No, we couldn’t. We could only film it in here like we were two tramps living in a tent in a green screen room. There’s nothing else you can do in this space. You ARE actually like a tramp living in this tent in a room that you have green screened and this is fucking insane. I can’t work in this space and I clearly can’t work with you.

And he kinda knew there was something wrong, but this is the thing about people having too much… who have had too much ‘fun’. It is like you’re tripping all the time.

I wasn’t angry with him at all. He was in his dream and he wasn’t really seeing why there was a problem. In his dream, it was fine. We would absolutely make an amazing film with us in a tent flying through space.

He told me this guy from (a well-known cabaret music group) was coming down. And he did. But the date he had given the guy was totally wrong: it was like four days afterwards. I mean, you really can’t get people to fucking come from other countries to meet up and the two people who are meant to be doing the project together arrive four days apart!

He had not done the logistics and I was meant to stay on this freezing cold couch under a dirty sleeping bag for four days. He told me that is what everyone in Berlin does.

So I wandered off. 

There was also inter-personal politics with people in the house.

Basically, they had set up an art space in an enormous warehouse space.

There was the original Tacheles squat after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the squatters got evicted and it was turned into luxury flats. And these were the same (squatter) people who had moved and set up a new Tacheles.

That’s what he told me and it is, but there were two sets of agendas going on.

He has sort-of ‘arted’ all over the warehouse – like he has pissed all over the place, but with art. Art everywhere. So the people upstairs have to deal with him: this guy who is ‘arting’ all over their place.

JOHN: Is this not good? Whatever happened to the joy of anarchy?

“Like I had seen The Ghost of Anarchy Past and had to leave. and run away very fast.”

BECKY: Well, the thing about anarchy is it needs some level of organisation for it to function, otherwise it’s just chaos and a big mess. Which is fun. And it was interesting to go and visit it. But I think that might be why, in the picture you put in the last blog, I look like I’d seen a ghost: that I had seen The Ghost of Anarchy Past and had to leave and run away very fast.

JOHN: So, basically, you just left because you were a bit cold…

BECKY: (LAUGHING) Basically, that’s it! I could have waited to find out if the guy turned up from the (well-known cabaret music group) – which he did.

JOHN: So, at what point did this bloke who enticed you over to do art discover you had left Berlin? Only when he read my blog?

BECKY: No. When the other guy turned up four days later and I wasn’t there.

JOHN: How had you left?

BECKY: I said: “I’m going to go for a walk.”

JOHN: To the guy who had had too much fun?

BECKY: No. To the other guys upstairs. They said to me: “We don’t really know what you’re doing here.”

And I was thinking: I don’t really know what I’m doing here either.

I could have won them over with my natural wit and charm and – obviously – the opportunity to be mentioned in your blog. But I thought: I don’t really want to be here and I’ve got other shit to be getting on with. So I said I was going for a walk and was thinking I’d get an AirBnB or something but, by the time I had left and got a bit of food and was near the station – I hadn’t eaten since I got there because the guy didn’t have any food…

JOHN: You had only been there for like half a day! That’s hardly hardship…

BECKY: (LAUGHS)

JOHN: So you said you were going off for a walk like Captain Oates?

BECKY: Yeah. “I might be some time” and they never saw me again. I did my Captain Oates bit and bowed out disgracefully.

JOHN: Though, unlike Captain Oates, you went to a warmer place.

BECKY: Though we don’t know what happened to Captain Oates, do we?

JOHN: No we don’t. But you left because…

BECKY: I had thought it was going to be a really functional space with loads of people. Not just three cold and very irritable hippies and a man who had taken too much fun.

Although, to be honest, that is a better audience than I’ve sometimes had at the Edinburgh Fringe…

So I came back to London and learnt the script for Political, my show at the Leicester Comedy Festival on 22nd February.

JOHN: Well promoted.

BECKY: I try.

JOHN: And you’ve succeeded.

Edinburgh Fringe, Day 21: Tampons and how obscenity can be subjective

WARNING: USE OF EXTREME LANGUAGE IN THIS BLOG

Helen, sitting in a room with a Periscope and 1,200 visitors

In the afternoon, I took the plunge and went to Helen Wallace’s Up Periscope at Southside Social.

She claims it is the only Fringe show which can (and has) had one member in the audience and 1,200 people watching.

She livestreams it on Periscope, interacting with the live audience in the room (today, well into double figures) and with the online audience. More complicated than it sounds. Very well handled by her. And ripe for development in future years.

Being a woman of taste, she then packs up every day, leaps out and races to get to the increasingly prestigious Grouchy Club round the corner to The Counting House.

Today, the audience there included five of the people involved in Malcolm Hardee – Back From The Drink… a comic play to be put on by ex-squatters who were evicted from the late Malcolm’s Wibbley Wobbley floating pub. Nothing to do with me.

Kate Copstick (left) and Jane Hill in the lively Grouchy Club

Also there, was performer Jane Hill whose show is titled Cow.  I learned a lot in the ensuing discussion between Kate Copstick and Jane in that – something I had not known – calling someone a “cow” is, it seems, much more offensive in Glasgow than elsewhere in the UK – more severe, even, than in Edinburgh.

It seems – and I can only pass this on as discussed – that the word “cow” is a far more offensive word in Glasgow than the word “cunt”.

In Glasgow, as has oft been noted, the word “cunt” can be used almost affectionately just as, in Australia, the word “bastard” can be affectionate.

The Australian sentence “Ah, yah bastard, I love yah! Yer ma best friend!” can be almost directly translated into Glaswegian as “Ah, ye wee cunt, yer a lovely wee cunt, so y’are…”

But the use of the phrase “Yer a cow” in Glasgow is liable to lead to the use of cut-throat razors and the infliction of Glasgow Smiles.

These are the sort of useful life tips you can only hear amid the comedy industry chat at the Grouchy Club.

Jane Hill had actually arrived to clarify exactly how she had once made tampons, as I had mentioned it in a blog two days ago.

She was keen to point out that, rather than knitting condoms as part of a cottage industry, as I had fantasised, she had been employed in the “tampon hand assemblage” business in Portsmouth.

After that, I should point out, she pursued a highly prestigious career in independent radio and the BBC.

Sarah Morgan-Paul with a local body guard

Coincidentally, in the evening, though, I saw Tales From a Tampon, in which Sarah Morgan-Paul does straight old-school stand-up (that’s not in any way a criticism) about the history of the tampon while dressed as a tampon. As it is straight stand-up in a costume, it neither counts as Malcolm Hardee Award Comic Originality nor a Cunning Stunt… I vaguely remember someone wandering round the streets of Edinburgh a few years ago dressed as a tampon. Or it might have been a dildo. The memory plays visual tricks after too many years at the Fringe.

Suggestions for Cunning Stunts are, strangely, now coming out of the woodwork despite the fact the Malcolm Hardee Awards shortlist was announced on Monday.

Later tonight, I got a call from the director of the aforementioned squatters’ play Malcolm Hardee – Back From The Drink – with unlikely cunning stunt possibilities to publicise it… Alas, simultaneously too late for the Malcolm Hardee Award nominations AND too late to get any media publicity before tomorrow night’s performance.

Despite allegedly having done a lot of research on types of cunning stunt, said director had not realised I was involved in the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards. But he said they had been discussing a (non-destructive) stunt at the Awards Show (two days after his show, so hardly going to help publicise it.)

I am not sure which of us was more confused at this point.

I then opened my email and there was a message from the US highlighting, once again, the importance of advance research. It said:

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Hi John,

I’d like to invite MALCOLM HARDEE to be featured on our TALK BUSINESS 360 “Industry Innovators” TV program which airs on American Airlines during the entire month of December 2017.

Our in-flight TV show is available to millions of business and leisure travelers, presenting one-on-one interviews with profiles of business leaders.  Recent guests include P&G, Dell, PwC, LG Electronics, Verizon, Bayer, Hilton Hotels, Stanford University, Suzuki and more.

The good news is we’re extending a remnant rate this week of only $3,995 (normally 11K) for production, distribution, and re-usage rights for a 2-minute video, making this an affordable vehicle to communicate your message and grow your brand.  Please contact me as soon as possible for more details as space is limited.

Sincerely,

Michael Smith
Producer
TALK BUSINESS 360 TV
TV That Means Business

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I replied:

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Wow, Michael,

Great rate and a real honour to have Malcolm recognised as one of the “Industry Innovators”!

Where would the recording take place and what date? I will then arrange to have Malcolm’s ashes shipped to wherever is best for you.

He drowned in 2005, so there will be a lot to catch up on in the recording. Will there be an interviewer?

Best wishes,

John

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So far, no reply.

Malcolm Hardee’s Wibbley Wobbley boat has re-appeared somewhere else

Malcolm and his girlfriend Andree Jenni standing by the Wibbley Wobbley in 2002

A brief fortnight ago, anarchy was celebrated

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog in which Malcolm Hardee Award winner Becky Fury and I went to Malcolm’s old floating pub/comedy venue The Wibbley Wobbley.

It was moored in Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, by the River Thames in London.

There were some very amiable squatters living in the boat, putting on monthly performances. They had been there for several months.

Suitably anarchic slogans adorned the sides of the boat.

Today’s Pantomime Horse Race in Greenwich was interrupted

Today, while watching the annual Pantomime Horse Race in Greenwich, I got a message from Evening Standard comedy critic Bruce Dessau telling me that the squatters had been evicted; the Wibbley Wobbley had been towed away from its berth and would be broken up.

Two sad gangways (left) lead to where the Wibbley floated

Bruce asked me for a quote which he could add to the news item he had written on his Beyond The Joke website. I gave him a quote but suggested he should just make up a much better one and claim that I had said it – something of which I think Malcolm would have approved.

Alas, he just quoted the load of old cobblers I had thought of:

The Wibbley Wobbley (orange marker) in its old berth in Greenland Dock. Malcolm Hardee drowned there in 2005.

“I thought 2016 was bad enough with Bowie, Prince and Manuel from Fawlty Towers dying, but this has really pissed me off.”

It’s not a great quote, is it?

The moral to this part of the story is:

If someone or something snuffs it, don’t ask me for a quote.

After the Pantomime Horse Race finished in Greenwich, I went to Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe, where the Wibbley Wobbley had been moored and where Malcolm had drowned in 2005.

The boat was, indeed, not there.

But I spotted it in the adjacent South Dock Marina.

Wibbley Wobbley tonight, in a new berth: South Dock Marina

Coincidentally, before he bought the Wibbley Wobbley, Malcolm had lived in another boat in South Dock Marina and, ironically, I had fallen in the water there and almost drowned, myself, while carrying Malcolm’s vacuum cleaner onto the boat.

As always, it is better not to ask for too many details.

The banners which had been adorning the Wibbley Wobbley two weeks ago had, tonight, been removed.

Now under more secure lock and key in South Dock Marina

But the boat itself looked perfectly OK; not ready to be scrapped.

As I left, I heard two people connected with the dock talking about the Wibbley Wobbley.

“The thing is,” one said, “if you get rid of squatters, they’ll just find somewhere else.”

A bit like memories, in that respect.

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ADDITIONAL STUFF

The Shipping Press account on Twitter posted an image of workers removing the Wibbley Wobbley from its original berth in Greenland Dock with text which said: “So called pirates left #wibbelywobbley after trying to sink her! They converted upstairs into 7 bedrooms-and left a big mess.”

The Cockney Rebel account on Twitter commented: “Pirates on #WibbleyWobbley resisted removal by order of LBS ( @londonLabour )again! 2 make way for yuppie eatery!”

Leigh Miller replied: “How did this happen without notice? Admiralty Writ necessary- did anyone investigate?”

Cockney Rebel: “Don’t know yet. LBS very good at smash & grab doing what they want & abusing rule of law…to please developers!”

Leigh Miller: “There must be a worldwide shortage of brown envelopes by now….”

Cockney Rebel: “…mountains of used empties in every Labour/Tory Town halls also rumour has it massive stash at GLA/County Hall!”

https://twitter.com/theshippingpre1/status/807217946644856832

THERE IS AN UPDATE ON THIS STORY HERE.