The £1,000 publicity stunt worthy of a 2012 Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award?

Usually, each year at around this time, I lament the fact that good publicity stunts at the Edinburgh Fringe have been, in recent recent years, thin on the ground and I try to encourage people to pull their publicity finger out so we have some worthy nominees for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award – No need to apply. If you have to tell us your publicity stunt has happened it has, by definition, been a failure.

This year things are looking better, though, thanks to comedian Stuart Goldsmith.

I have blogged before about the publicity he gathered when the Fringe Programme went mad and started ludicrously censoring the title of shows like Richard Herring’s Talking Cock – The Second Coming and Stuart Goldsmith’s Prick while (quite rightly) leaving untouched Kunt & The Gang and Molly Wobbly’s Tit Factory.

Stuart cleverly posted a video on YouTube to reap the benefits of the Fringe’s mindless stupidity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TM_wyHgFdQ&feature=relmfu

This was not a stunt. It was intelligent marketing.

But now he has got a bit closer to a potential Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award nomination by posting on YouTube a cleverly thought-out stunt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs5hibkG0Fg&feature=relmfu

He says that, at the end of the Edinburgh Fringe, he is going to donate £1,000 of his own money to the Waverley Care HIV charity…

“…unless I see a single instance of the title of my show being used in a pun… If any puns at all based on the title of my show being Prick are used in any piece of comedy review or criticism, either in a magazine, in a paper or online then for every instance I will remove £100 from my charitable donation. So that’s my challenge to you, comedy critics. What’s most important to you? Looking a little bit clever? Or saving a life?”

I mentioned this yesterday to Kate Copstick, doyenne of Fringe comedy critics and a Malcolm Hardee Award judge and said I thought Stuart might be in line for a Cunning Stunt nomination because the stunt plugs his show’s title strongly and he will clearly never actually have to pay any money out (something that was close to Malcolm’s heart). It also publicises a worthy Scottish charity to non-Scots journalists.

She responded:

“Absolutely. I have offered to put ALL of the puns he mentions into one review if he will give me the money for my Mama Biashara charity…”

Copstick is on to a winner whatever happens, as 100% of any money the Malcolm Hardee Awards make in audience donations go to Mama Biashara.

This year’s Awards are announced during a two-hour variety show as part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival at The Counting House in Edinburgh on Friday 24th August. There are three Awards:

– The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality

– The Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for best stunt publicising a Fringe show

– The Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid’ Award

Stuart may or may not be on the shortlist for the Cunning Stunt Award. There is plenty of time for other even more cunning stunts to burst forth.

“Whisky Fir Dummies”: Why was this Edinburgh Fringe show title banned?

Before the lawyers: Whisky For Dummies

(A version of this piece was also carried on Indian news website WeSpeakNews)

Yesterday, I got sent a press release from Scots comic Alan Anderson. Last year at the Edinburgh Fringe, he performed a show titled Alan Anderson: Whisky Fir Dummies. This year, his show is billed in the Fringe Programme as Alan Anderson: Whisky Fir Dummies 2.0 with the come-on that there will be “free whisky tasting during every show”.

Except, Alan says, the show will not now be titled that because US publishers John Wiley & Sons have a series of ….. For Dummies books and they have threatened to sue him.

Alan claims in his press release that much of the terminology used in the show is from the Gaelic language and, in Scots Gaelic, the show title itself Whisky Fir Dummies means “Whisky, man pacifier”.

I have no idea if this is true or not. It sounds unlikely and potentially like a publicity stunt.

But, whatever the truth of the translation, Alan Anderson says John Wiley & Sons’ lawyers have accused him of “passing off” his comedy stage show Whisky Fir Dummies as one of their ….. For Dummies books. They claim it is “likely to result in serious confusion and result in dilution of Wiley’s trademarks”.

After the lawyers: Whisky Fir Dafties

Alan says: “The legal advice given (to me) is that the show title does not infringe Wiley’s For Dummies trademark, nor do any of their UK/EU trademark registrations cover the fields of live whisky tasting or stand up comedy. However as an act of goodwill towards Wiley’s – and to prevent a lengthy and costly legal battle – it was decided to change the show title. This also opens up the possibility of publishing a series of books, CD or DVD of the show titled Whisky For Dafties or better still Copyright Law For Dafties. Sadly however the name change means that the Edfringe.com URL has been changed making it difficult for customers to purchase tickets for the show online.

“As for causing confusion or passing off,” continues Alan, “if you think a large corporation like Wiley’s would put on a whisky tasting show in the basement of an Edinburgh student pub at 9pm during the Fringe then you probably need to read Marketing For Dummies. If having seen the show you still think Wiley’s is responsible then you should probably write How to produce an award winning Edinburgh comedy show for Dummies.”

If true, this tale is yet another an example of a large American company taking leave of its corporate senses and personally I think they should publish Wanking For Dummies (a sure-fire hit for small children in the UK). They obviously know a lot about the subject.

If untrue, Alan’s press release is a contender for the increasingly highly-esteemed Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

Either way, he is on to a winner in publicity terms.

Christmas with Malcolm Hardee: a pint of strange-tasting beer and falling fish

(This was also published in the Huffington Post)

I will be spending a quiet time at home on Christmas Day.

I asked ‘Digger Dave’, a friend of the late ‘godfather of British comedy’ Malcolm Hardee, if he had any memories of spending Christmas with Malcolm.

Perhaps this was a mistake.

“Most of the stories are still far too embarrassing to the living for me to tell,” Digger Dave replied. “And we won’t mention shows where the box office take got lost!!!

“Malcolm once lured me to some country house for a Boxing Day sexual extravaganza with some game show hostess and then asked me to reglaze the broken glass in the patio doors. He also ensured that another member of The Greatest Show on Legs crashed in the same room – well flaked-out across my legs, making movement or undressing impossible. It’s quite an impediment to romance – having a Greatest Leg unconscious on your own legs. No leg-over is possible.

“You can ask someone else about their memories of the Great Christmas Can Can Tour of London’s East End pubs. It was his sister Clare’s idea to do the dancing and I did the promo and posterwork (which I had to pay for myself, as the ‘free’ service at Goldsmiths College couldn’t).

“Some of the pubs had secret handles that couldn’t be opened by unwelcome persons. Most of the audiences would have looked good in a movie like your Killer Bitch, but the cast usually outnumbered them. Sometimes it wasn’t possible to get across the room. It’s quite difficult doing dance-centred performance when the play area is only two feet wide.

“It was the normal Greatest Show on Legs routine – the Scotsman striptease, the dustbin lid clog dance,  the beer mat dance and spinning the dirty old men plus Malcolm doing his impression of French President General de Gaulle using nothing but his genitals and a pair of spectacles… with a Can Can dance added at the end.

“I once had to relieve myself in a pint glass and hide it behind the music player. I never saw Malcolm wash his harmonica in anyone’s beer for quite a while after that night.

“There is one Christmas story that I never actually checked out with Malcolm. But two anarchists who knew him maintained that he had a hand in planning it.

“It happened in Exeter Prison, on the Friday before Christmas, when Malcolm was doing time there. As it was a Friday, there was supposed to be fish for dinner – in this case, mackerel, which had been caught off Cornwall, shipped to a very dodgy fishmonger in Truro in an un-refrigerated van and then delivered to the prison gates in another un-refrigerated van during the Thursday night. But that’s where the fish stayed – outside the prison gates – as the staff were on a Christmas rota and there was no-one to take them in. So the fish were well and truly past any relevant sell-by date by the time they arrived.

“Devon and Cornwall are not being famous for snowy Christmases, so the Friday before Christmas was nice and hot and sunny and the fish sat there until someone eventually took them in.

“The inmates always used to eat in their cells. So they were unlocked and marched one wing at a time to collect their meals on a tray from a central servery. It took an age because of the Christmas staff cuts.

“No-one wanted inedible rotting fish in their cell for the next 23 hours and there were no warders to notice what was being done, so the stinking fish contents of the trays were tipped over the landings. The falling fish hit the anti-suicide netting between the floors and stayed there.

“Rotting mackerel has a strange clingy consistency… but only for a time. After that, the warming oils make it quite fluid.

“So, after a while, the fish fluid dripped down – slowly at first – and then a really big flush hit the ground floor where the just-arrived Salvation Army band were playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen!”

I do not know if Malcolm was involved in this merry incident, but it does sound in character and the sort of festive fun he would have enjoyed. He liked to entertain.

It is also a typical Malcolm Hardee story – it sounds improbable or impossible but then turns out not only to be true but to actually be understated.

I do not know why five people fired guns at the owner of the Comedy Cafe

I never remember my dreams. I wish I did.

Well, maybe I remember them once every couple of years.

I got to bed at around 3.45am this morning. Don’t ask.

The alarm went off at 8.30am.

I remember a dream if I am woken up during one.

This morning, when the alarm woke me, I was dreaming that an act had fired a gun past Noel Faulkner’s head. He owns the Comedy Cafe in London and was auditioning potential performers. He ducked, rushed off sideways and said: “They’re deafening me!”

“That’s very insensitive,” I told the man with the gun. “You’re the fifth person who has shot at Noel today.”

Five performers had walked in and shot at him, thinking it was a good attention-grabbing opening to their act. I partly know where this dream comes from.

It is partly connected with custard pies.

I used to work as a researcher on the children’s TV show Tiswas, which was known for custard pies and slapstick. When I went to see potential acts, they often thought it would be hilarious to ‘pie’ the man from Tiswas. They were, they thought, bound to get on the show that way. To tell the truth, it was a bit wearisome.

I used to smile appreciatively when it happened.

But there are worse things.

Auditioning children near puberty is one of them.

One year, too many – far too many – children –  especially slightly-off-key girls – were singing the song Tomorrow (from Annie) at me in auditions. It was appalling. They were well-meaning and enthusiastic. But that made it all-the-more ghastly. It was like having your teeth drilled while someone sticks a screwdriver in your ear.

And we all know what that feels like.

Presenter Chris Tarrant told me he had had a worse year, when lots of twelve-year-old boys with their voices in the process of breaking were singing Bright Eyes at him – because it was the song of the moment and because their parents thought it was cute.

“It was horrible,” he told me. “You never, ever want to hear a boy, at puberty, sing Bright Eyes.”

Getting repeatedly shot at with blanks in a small room by people trying to impress you would probably run this pretty close in a contest, though.

I did once try to persuade the producer of Channel 4’s The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross that, just to get publicity and to create what I thought would be an Andy Kaufman-esque moment, during an interview and immediately before a commercial break, someone should run on-set with a blank gun and shoot Jonathan in the chest. He would have exploding blood capsules under his jacket.

The shots would be fired, blood would spurt from holes in his jacket and the director would cut to the commercial break. After the commercials, Jonathan would re-appear in a duplicate jacket without any bullet holes and make no reference to what had happened.

“The regulators would not like it,” I was told.

The producer was probably right.

I was telling this story to someone yesterday.

Which must be why guns with blanks made an appearance in my dream.

How poor Noel Faulkner got involved, I have no idea.

There was a smell of cordite in the air, mixed with the smell of highly-whipped shaving foam.

On Tiswas, the ‘custard’ pies were actually made of highly-whipped shaving foam and other ingredients. The little bubbles of air in the highly-whipped shaving foam made the ‘pies’ stick to people, but it could be wiped-off quickly and cleanly.

People never used that formula when they ‘pied’ you as the visiting researcher from Tiswas, though. They used real custard pies.

Dreams are less messy.

You can wipe the blood away.

I wish I could remember them.

A whole world of surrealism is passing me by.

The night comedian Malcolm Hardee urinated on a member of his audience

Legends grow in the telling and re-telling of them.

When comedian and club owner Malcolm Hardee drowned in 2005, The Stage called him “a larger than life character whose ribald behaviour and risqué pranks were legendary”.

I told one definitive anecdote about him in yesterday’s blog.

But one of the most famous stories told about Malcolm was the night he pissed on a member of the audience at his legendarily rowdy comedy club The Tunnel.

Comedian Mark Lamarr was there that night. He says:

“Jerry Sadowitz was on stage, very loud and noisy and, while he was on, this bloke was fast asleep in the front row with his head down, just absolutely gone. And Jerry rants, There’s this fucking bloke fell asleep here!… but at no point did he wake up.

“After Jerry finished, Malcolm walked on and said, Oy Oy There’s a bloke asleep and the audience – who were a vicious Klan Rally of an audience – all started shouting Piss on him, Malcolm! Piss on him!

“And he said, Yeah, alright.

“But he didn’t do it immediately. He had the most perfect comedy timing. He just started telling jokes and drinking to fill up his bladder.”

Ben Burke, who was also there in the audience that night, says: “It was Stuart North… sadly demised now, though not from being pissed on.”

Mark Lamarr remembers well what happened: “The audience is yelling: Piss on him, Malcolm! and he’s saying, Yeah, alright, and for five minutes he’s saying this and the bloke is still fast asleep.”

Ben Oakley, who was also in the audience that night, says: “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Malcolm looked down at the bloke and nudged his boots which were up on the stage. After no response, Malcolm casually whipped it out.”

Ben Burke says: “As I recall, Malcolm took Stuart North’s furry Russian hat off and pissed in that.”

“Then,” Ben Oakley says, “Malcolm continued to drink his beer whilst streaming full pelt onto the bloke’s head.”

“He pissed all over this bloke,” Mark Lamarr recalls, “But it wasn’t a dribbly piss. From where I was standing, no-one could have lit this better. There was a big arc of piss coming over and dribbling down this bloke’s face and the crowd, as a man – 300 people – stood up and yelled: Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!! And the bloke still hadn’t woken up.

“For a minute or so, there’s this stream – like a waterfall of piss – just going down his designer clothes. He’s there asleep and it’s going on and on and on.

“Eventually, Malcolm zips himself up and says, Alright. That’s it. See you next week. Goodnight, and that’s the end of the night and everyone leaves and there’s this bloke who’s sat there, covered in piss, still fast asleep and eventually his mates nudge him and wake him up and, from across the room, I saw his mates were miming to him how Malcolm pissed on him and he looked down and looked up and opened his mouth in happy excitement. He was over the moon that he’d somehow been a big part of the show, just as a piss recipient.”

Ben Oakley remembers is differently. He says, when Malcolm pissed on Stuart North, “The bloke woke up slowly at first by licking his piss-covered lips and face, then wiped his hand across his cheek and looked at it, at which point the whole place erupted. He got up and ran/staggered out the place.”

When Malcolm told me the story of what had happened, he said that, the following week at The Tunnel, he saw the same guy in the bar. The guy walked up to him and Malcolm thought, Oy Oy He’s going to hit me but, in fact, he beamed at Malcolm, shook him by the hand and thanked him.

“I’ve been dining out on the story all week,” he told Malcolm.

I asked Ben Burke if he thought it would be OK to name Stuart North in this story.

“Please do,” he told me. “It would make Stuart’s family very proud!”

Legends grow in the telling and re-telling of them.

Day Five of Malcolm Hardee Week – the perils of publicity stunts

Well, at last night’s Malcolm Hardee Award Show, there was a change of plan when we found out we had been successfully conned by Bob Slayer who masterminded the ‘Cockgate’ publicity stunt for Kunt and the Gang – in which Kunt’s penis stickers were put on other acts’ posters throughout Edinburgh…..

Personally, I never rated the basic stunt itself. If you are trying to raise awareness of an act called Kunt… really, do not spread penis stickers all over Edinburgh, especially if they do not have the name of the act/show on and just one of those little square things which smartphones can read but which, in fact, no-one noticed. It’s like promoting 101 Dalmatians by putting blank stickers of the outline of a cat all over the place.

Then there was the racing certainty that it would annoy all the other acts, promoters and venues which had paid for and put up the posters. I was told that one promoter has spent £36,000 on Edinburgh Fringe posters for a particular act. If you deface their posters, it ain’t surprising they are going to be a tad pissed-off.

To my mind, the whole concept of ‘Cockgate’ was cock-eyed and against the basic spirit of the Fringe. The acts (who ultimately pay for everything) are having a bad enough time at the Fringe already without some plonker coming along defacing their marketing tools.

There is much truth in the idea that the posters festooning Edinburgh are promoting promoters not acts but, ultimately, they are building awareness of acts even if they are not putting extra bums on seats; and every act – even one perceived to be successful – is struggling in some way. Showbiz careers are frail facades of mirrors and smoke.

So why did Kunt and The Gang get nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for best publicity stunt promoting a performer or show at the Fringe?

Basically, because – as the nomination said – Kunt (or, rather, Bob Slayer) managed to push the basic sticky penis stunt way beyond what seemed possible. There were tales about agents, managers and promoters threatening people legally, physically and financially; there were humorous quotes from Edinburgh Council officials about seizing and pulling off cocks; there were tales of the outrage caused; and there were photocalls with comedians far more famous than Kunt sporting the iconic penis stickers.

The stunt itself was a load of balls. The handling of and the spin put on the stunt was a work of art.

There was talk among the Malcolm Hardee Award judges of awarding the Cunning Stunt trophy to Bob Slayer instead of Kunt, but the’ Cockgate’ publicity stunt was no different to PR men Mark Borkowski or Max Clifford creating a buzz about an act. Any prize or box office credit goes to the performer not the PR man/woman.

So the nomination went to Kunt and was only slightly wobbled when Kunt sacked Bob Slayer as his PR man in this e-mail which Bob Slayer posted on his website and which I included in my blog yesterday:

Kunt has sacked me

___________________________________

Dear Bob

Sorry to have to tell you by email but I don’t want you doing anything else on the cock sticker campaign. As much as I appreciate the other comedians turning out for the photocalls that you organised, I didn’t want to be in the photos and you convinced me against my better judgement that it would be a good idea. I’ve seen the resulting photos and I look more awkward than Jade Goody’s mum on a juggling course. Also I’m getting grief off my bird after you made me put that sticker on Kate Copstick’s jumper and some cunt took that photo which is now doing the rounds that looks like I’m titting her up.

I know you were doing what you thought best but the reason I don’t do any press releases is because I know who my audience is and they find us naturally through the internet or word of mouth. They are proper people like bricklayers, carpet fitters, shop workers, central heating engineers, students and drug dealers. Since you took it upon yourself to ‘help’ with my cock sticker campaign, coverage in po-faced luvvie mags like The Stage has meant the shows have been increasingly full of pompous, middle class, chin-stroking ponces. For fuck’s sake, the poxy Culture Show have even been in!

In the last seven days since you helped ‘mastermind’ the cock campaign I have had more roll-necked twats in cuntish berets sat there with a glass of red wine and laughing ironically than in the previous seven years of gigs. Fuck knows how this has happened because I’d hardly call your act highbrow, I was there the night that bird stuck her finger up your arsehole and pulled it out leaving a rubber glove hanging out your brown eye.

I will buy you a beer when I see you to say thanks for helping us get nominated for the cunning stunt award. But I don’t want you doing anything else. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before Michael fucking MacIntyre turns up covered in cock stickers shouting ‘Where’s the party?’.

Cheers

Kunt

P.S. I seriously think you are liable for Daniel Sloss’s agent losing her sense of humour and invoicing us for 900 quid. I told you in confidence that I overheard someone saying that he didn’t have pubes yet, there was no need to go and blog it.

___________________________________

When I first read this, I thought it might be another brilliant piece of spin to keep the ‘Cockgate’ saga spinning even longer but, no, I spoke to Bob Slayer and it was genuine; he was very upset.

Except that he was not.

None of it was true.

The e-mail was a fake and was, indeed, written just to stoke the spin on ‘Cockgate’ even more.

Malcolm Hardee judge Kate Copstick and I were totally taken in. We did not realise we had been conned until we were told by Bob immediately before the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show last night.

His reason for the fake e-mail?

“We wanted to confuse Daniel Sloss’s agent so she didn’t know which one of us to sue.”

What was our reaction?

We gave Kunt his Cunning Stunt Award, but we also gave another Cunning Stunt Award to Bob Slayer for fooling us.

This is a one-off extra award and only because somehow, by accident, I had an extra Cunning Stunt Award made. I do not know how this happened. Clearly senility has hit. I cannot count. I cannot spot PR cons.

Yesterday afternoon was also the deadline for bids on eBay from anyone wanting to buy last year’s Malcolm Hardee Award from winner Robert White, who could do with some hard cash. Yesterday morning, I got an e-mail from Robert:
______________

Dear John

Malcolm came to me in a dream last night and got me to stop this obvious sham of a self-promoting non-real auction and as such the item is no longer for sale. Although I believe you can acquire one of your own by doing the Edinburgh Festival and being mental enough.

Yours with best wishes and God’s blessings,

Robert

Day One of Malcolm Hardee Week – and only one bit of genital exposure

The first ever Malcolm Hardee Week at the Edinburgh Fringe has started and yesterday was a strange old day.

For most of the day, things went well.

I saw the funniest show so far at the Fringe – Johnny Sorrow’s The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society, which made me laugh-out-loud – a rare thing (television production experience, luv).

Having lost two helpers who were no longer coming to Edinburgh as planned, I had offers of help from several sources.

Ever-enthusiastic science-comedy star Helen Keen of Radio 4‘s It Is Rocket Science!) may be able to help me Wednesday to Friday, as can my chum Dr Sophia Khan, formerly of NASA and Harvard and assistant professor of Astrophysics at Shanghai University (Helen’s co-star in last year’s Fringe science comedy show Starstruck!)

From Thursday, I will also have Sophia’s chum Dr Andrew Bunker, former Head of Astronomy at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Oz and now Reader in Astrophysics at Oxford University.

With help like this, surely there will be no problem keeping pasta in the air during Wednesday and Thursday’s spaghetti-juggle contests. Indeed, we should surely be able to get the cooked and aerodynamic strands into low Earth orbit.

On Friday, at the Malcolm Hardee Awards Show – really a two-hour anarchic variety show – I have also been offered help by comic Gill Smith who inspired the original Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award with a cracking Fringe publicity stunt in 2008 – she sent me an e-mail nominating herself for the main Malcolm Hardee Award and saying that, by doing so, she would be justified in putting Malcolm Hardee Award Nominee on her posters.

OCD is a wonderful thing.

Last night’s first Malcolm Hardee Week event went well: it was allegedly a debate on the proposition that “Comedians are psychopathic masochists with a death wish”. I think it went well, anyway. It was due to run from 6.15 to 7.00pm but over-ran by an hour to 8.00pm with no walk-outs when panelist Bob Slayer (whose show followed ours) decided that everyone was enjoying themselves so much, we should just carry on and the continuation of our show would become his hour-long show for the night.

That is what large amounts of drinking can lead to.

As I said, I do not think there were any walk-outs; in fact, of course, the audience swelled.

There was, surprisingly, only one incident of genital exposure during the show – when Paul Provenza did a Malcolm Hardee impression – and there were some interesting, if unprintable stories told in the over-run.

Scotsman critic and ITV Show Me The Funny judge Kate Copstick told a story I can’t possibly repeat about the origin of the Mrs Merton character – and a story about one promoter’s reaction to Kunt and the Gang’s current ‘Cockgate’ stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was more Godfather anecdote than comedy story.

And comedienne Janey Godley told a true tale about Jerry Sadowitz performing in her pub in the East End of Glasgow to an audience which included real-life (now dead) Glasgow godfather Arthur Thompson. The largely-English audience I think missed a detail about Arthur Thompson which Janey mentioned in passing and which I do not think is generally known. Though true, I am most certainly not going to repeat it.

Thompson died in 1993, but I think waking up to a severed horse’s head might still be a possibility.

So yesterday – apart from the distant possibilities of horses’ heads and crucifixion on a wooden tenement floor – was good.

With Miss Behave now very sadly unable to compere Friday night’s two-hour Malcolm Hardee Awards Show at The Counting House because of her meningitis, Scott Capurro and New Comedy Act of the Year 2011 winner David Mills have stepped in to the breach by agreeing to be co-comperes. Scott even cancelled a party on Friday night so he could do the gig.

He told me that, after the first gig he played for Malcolm Hardee, as an American new to the London circuit, he was given his money in a brown envelope. When he got home, he found there was £20 less in the envelope than Malcolm had promised.

“Well, of course there was,” his comedian friends told him. “It’s Malcolm.”

It is extraordinary but true that Malcolm was always – and remains – held in such high esteem by his fellow comedians.

How often was the sentence uttered, “Well, it’s just Malcolm being Malcolm, isn’t it…” ?

But the one bad bit of news yesterday late afternoon was that Rab C.Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison cannot be on the panel of tonight’s 6.15pm Malcolm Hardee comedy debate at The Hive – allegedly on the proposition “Racist or sexist jokes? It doesn’t matter if they’re funny!” – because Ian has injured his back in Glasgow and cannot get to Edinburgh.

So, at the moment, the panel are Viz magazine creator Simon Donald, BBC TV One Show presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli and Laughing Cows‘ international compere Maureen Younger plus A.N.Other.

It was a bit of a downer when I heard that Ian cannot join us.

But yesterday ended well when I was told that the wonderful Doktor CocaColaMcDonalds has had a son called Oscar… the first Malcolm Hardee Award winner to have an Oscar…

Has no-one at this Edinburgh Fringe got the Hardee balls for cunning stunts?

I have had BBC Scotland asking me about this.

Where are the worthy contenders for the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award?

All I’ve seen so far is Kunt and the Gang’s guerilla stickers – which are arguably promoting the wrong organ.

There must be something more stunning at the Edinburgh Fringe this year than just Kunt?

Malcolm was known for his balls. Has no-one got any now?

Did Malcolm Hardee write a review for The Scotsman under their own comedy critic’s name and drive a tractor, naked, through another performer’s show… for nothing?

Did Fringe performers’ penchant for getting vast publicity and column inches for outrageous publicity stunts die with him?

Oh lackaday.

Oh lackaday.

Oh dull latter days of the Fringe.

Have the cunning stunts of yesteryear dried up?

Lewis Schaffer stunt scuppered; Charlie Chuck fights back with ducks in his hair

A few days ago, I wrote a blog which basically lamented the lack of decent publicity stunts at the Edinburgh Fringe. This is of particular interest to me as I organise the annual Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for best Fringe publicity stunt. I started it because the Fringe seemed to have lost part of its original irresponsibility.

In 2009, American comic Lewis Schaffer won the Cunning Stunt Award for a fake press release in which he claimed he was sponsoring the former Perrier Awards for £99 and they would henceforth be named after him.

But once is never enough for Lewis.

A few weeks ago, he was going to issue a list of the Top 20 comedians not to have appeared on television and he was going to put himself in the No 7 position “because I don’t really believe in myself”.

I thought this was an interesting self-publicity idea. But his plan was accidentally scuppered when, a couple of days later, Malcolm Hardee judge and doyenne of Fringe comedy critics Kate Copstick, coincidentally published a list in the Scotsman newspaper of her 20 Comedians to Catch at the Edinburgh Festival. As she put Lewis in third place on this ‘proper’ list of good comedians, it tragically undercut his self-deprecation schtick.

Still, I have hopes he will come up with another unexpected publicity stunt. I have always fantasised about him dressed as a chicken. But any Schafferian avian stunt may have been scuppered too.

I had a phone call yesterday from Charlie Chuck whose girlfriend, as I blogged a couple of days ago, has 21 ducks in her back garden, some of them small chicks.

Ducks are occasionally mentioned in Charlie Chuck’s act and he had a cartoon character of himself created years ago which has ducks in its hair so, on the phone, he suggested that… yup… He suggested I should go up to Leicestershire and see him in his girlfriend’s back garden where I could take photographs of him with ducks in his hair.

Or, at least, ducklings.

“There’s this little one that’s up for it and probably more,” he told me. “This one’s only four days old and it’s well up for a bit o’ adventure. It loves being in me hair.”

This idea was so obviously insane and pointless that I immediately said Yes.

I’m driving up in a couple of days time.

As there are not and never will be any hard-and-fast rules for any Malcolm Hardee Award, I see no conflict of interest in taking the photos myself and then, if they are any good and get any publicity for the show, nominating Charlie Chuck for the Cunning Stunt Award.

But, in fact, I’m not convinced one publicity photo taken in a back garden in rural Leicestershire counts as a publicity stunt.

If he were to walk down Princes Street in Edinburgh during the Fringe with 15 birds in his hair, yelling out details of his two shows, that would be a stunt.

But, if it works as a photo – which it may not – it gives an idea of the area we’re interested in for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

I think mad, bad and dangerous to know is almost always good.

Pity about the price of petrol.

How can you describe the indescribable in an Edinburgh Fringe press release?

The evil deadline is upon me of getting a press release together for August’s Edinburgh Fringe.

As well as a general press release about five days of shows celebrating the late Malcolm Hardee, I have cobbled together an A4 sheet giving background information on Malcolm. But how on earth do you describe the indescribable? Well, all I’ve done is try to Edinburgh Fringe-ise the start of his Wikipedia entry which, as it happens, I mostly wrote anyway:

MALCOLM HARDEE

1950-2005

Malcolm Hardee was a South London comedian, author, comedy club proprietor, compere, agent, manager and “amateur sensationalist”.

His high reputation among his peers rests on his outrageous publicity stunts – often at the Edinburgh Fringe – and on the help and advice he gave to successful British alternative comedians early in their careers as “godfather to a generation of comic talent in the 1980s”. Fellow comic Rob Newman called him “a hilarious, anarchic, living legend; a millennial Falstaff”, while Stewart Lee wrote that “Malcolm Hardee is a natural clown who in any decent country would be a national institution” and Arthur Smith described him as “a South London Rabelais” and claimed with some justification at Malcolm’s famous funeral that “everything about Malcolm, apart from his stand-up act, was original”.

Though an accomplished comic, Malcolm was arguably more highly regarded as a ‘character’, a compere and talent-spotting booker at his own clubs, particularly his Tunnel and Up The Creek clubs in Greenwich which gave vital, early and (in the case of the infamous Tunnel) sometimes physically-dangerous exposure to up-and-coming comedians. One journalist claimed: “To say that he has no shame is to drastically exaggerate the amount of shame that he has” and, in its obituary, The Times wrote that “throughout his life he maintained a fearlessness and an indifference to consequences”.

Malcolm regularly appeared in his own shows and promoted others at the Edinburgh Fringe and arguably his most infamous stunt was in 1983 when, performing at The Circuit venue – a series of three adjoining tents in a construction site with a different show in each tent – he became annoyed by what he regarded as excessive noise emanating nightly from American performance artist Eric Bogosian’s neighbouring tent. Malcolm ‘borrowed’ a nearby tractor and, entirely naked, drove it across Bogosian’s stage during his performance.

Rivalling this stunt in Fringe infamy, in 1989, Malcolm and Arthur Smith wrote a rave 5-star review of Malcolm’s own Fringe show and successfully managed to get it printed in The Scotsman under the byline of that influential paper’s own comedy critic. At the Fringe in 1996, he attempted to sabotage American ventriloquist David Strassman’s Edinburgh show by kidnapping the act’s hi-tech dummy, holding it to ransom and sending it back to Strassman piece by piece in return for hard cash. The plan failed.