Trying to find a woman for comic Lewis Schaffer after the Hare Krishna temple

Lewis Schaffer at the Hare Krishna temple

Comedian Lewis Schaffer spent yesterday – New Year’s Day – at my home.

In the afternoon, we went to the nearby Hare Krishna temple.

“Women are finding me increasingly attractive the older I get,” Lewis Schaffer said soon afterwards.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because they think, if I’m on stage, I must be somebody saying something important.”

“Like a cult,” suggested my eternally-un-named friend.

“People think” continued Lewis Schaffer, “I’m going to pay attention to that person because other people are paying attention to that person.”

“I once asked (the late comedian) Malcolm Hardee why he was a babe magnet,” I said, “because he didn’t exactly look like a Greek God. And he told me Because I’m famous… but only in Greenwich. So they only find me attractive in Greenwich.”

“Yes,” agreed my eternally-un-named friend, “if he was in Scarborough or somewhere people didn’t know him, people would just see Malcolm as a weird man who was a bit rude. But, when you got to know him better… his actual persona… when I worked with him… there was something very relaxing about him.”

“When women met him, “ I said, “they thought Ugh! Never! Not with a barge-pole! but then, when they got to know him, I think they felt he was somehow sweet and loveable and I think they wanted to mother him… and went to bed with him.”

“Mmmm…” said Lewis Schaffer. “Am I likeable? Am I kind?”

“You do have a bit of kindness,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“I’m not interested in other people,” said Lewis Schaffer. “But I used to bring framed pictures of myself to people’s houses when I visited. I would give them as a gift.”

“Were they surprised?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Lewis Schaffer. “They thought it was funny, but they would keep the framed picture of me. Adam Bloom kept one standing on the top of his refrigerator for years and other people have kept them in their houses.”

“You didn’t bring a framed picture with you when you arrived yesterday,” I said.

Hare Krishna holy cow (left) with Lewis Schaffer yesterday

“That’s because Borehamwood is bleak,” said Lewis Schaffer. “There’s nothing to do here on New Year’s Day except go to a Hare Krishna temple. Anyway, I can’t find framed pictures here in London the way I could find them in New York, where they were dirt cheap.

“Here, they’re expensive,” he added. “I need to make money. This is the year I’m going to make money. This is the year. Nobody can do what I do. I can go to a place, do a show and be on stage for three or four hours.”

“Fidel Castro could do that,” I said.

“He could,” admitted Lewis Schaffer, “but I’m a Jew and Jews need to make money.”

“Can’t you meet a rich woman who’s got a house?” asked my eternally-un-named friend. “You could move into her place, then you rent out your flat and that’s your income.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” replied Lewis Schaffer.

“The dating sites look really good for men,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“Do they show rich women?” asked Lewis Schaffer.

“You just figure out which ones are rich and have a good wage and a good house,” explained my eternally-un-named friend. “Obviously, you’ve got to like them. But you could be quite happy, maybe.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” I said, “If he’s happy, it will screw-up his act.”

Lewis Schaffer and I discuss attracting women (Photo by my eternally-un-named friend)

“The thing about women,” said Lewis Schaffer, “is they’re reticent about giving away their money to loser men. And a bigger problem is I would have to show affection for these women and I don’t feel affection for anyone.”

“Except Lewis Schaffer,” I said.

“Especially not for Lewis Schaffer,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“My osteopath is gay,” said my eternally-un-named friend, “and his partner has a horse and he says the best place to meet women – thousands of them – is to join a horse club.”

“Yeah,” said Lewis Schaffer, “but then they fall off their horse and their neck is broken…”

“Ideal,” I said. “Insurance.”

“…and then you gotta take care of them,” concluded Lewis Schaffer.

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “You might fall off the horse, break your neck, be paralysed and then they’d have to look after you.”

“Anyway, I don’t need to hang out with horses to meet women,” said Lewis Schaffer. “I know lots of women in my local area.”

“But aren’t they a bit nutty?” asked my eternally-un-named friend.

“All women are nutty,” replied Lewis Schaffer.

“I mean in South East London,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“Are they better in North London?” asked Lewis Schaffer.

“There are more Jews in North London,” I said.

“In your blog,” said Lewis Schaffer, “don’t mention me being Jewish.”

“Can I mention you’re Lewis Schaffer?” I asked.

“I think there’s something in the water in South East London,” said my eternally-un-named friend.

“I just need money,” said Lewis Schaffer.

“They might have a house with two bathrooms in North London,” added my eternally-un-named friend.

“But I do feel,” said Lewis Schaffer, “like I need to do something new this year. Like actually make an effort.”

“You were doing four shows a week last year!” I said.

“Five if you include the radio show,” Lewis Schaffer corrected me.

Happy punters with Lewis Schaffer at the Bloomsbury Theatre

“They say you’re a comedian’s comedian,” my eternally-un-named friend pointed out, trying to cheer him up.

“Yeah,” said Lewis Schaffer, “there’s only one person who likes me and it happens to be a comedian. You know what they say… If you can make just one person laugh… you won’t be invited back… Am I comedian’s comedian? I look at some of these comedy bills with three comics on them and they’re all the same sameness. Every single show is the same type of comedian telling the same type of joke. Why wouldn’t someone want to put me on a show just to fuck-up the show for a little change of pace?”

“I’ve written about it in my blog,” I said. “You should read it; people do.”

“I read that blog,” said Lewis Schaffer, “about the samey sameness of comedy bills. You were right. And there are two ways to go. One is the alternative type of comedy which you champion. And the other way is me, who comes from another planet.”

“Well,” I argued, “you are alternative.”

“I’m gaining confidence,” said Lewis Schaffer, “because now I feel I can ask a booker to put me on a show in spite of any comedy limitations I have – and I’m pretty sure I have much fewer than I used to have. And when I come on a show, it adds variation: it’s What the fuck has just happened? Do you agree with that?”

“I think you’re the definitive alternative comedian,” I said, “because, when audiences see you, they think Is there an alternative to this? Can we go somewhere else?”

“Stop trying to be funny, John,” said Lewis Schaffer. “Do you agree with me?”

“Alternative comedy – as I’ve written,” I said, “used to mean you had jugglers, magicians, stand-up comedians and mad people. You’re not mad, but you come under that last category: you’re not a traditional stand-up. You are not eccentric or mad, but you’re… different.”

“I’m different? What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe you could rent a horse. Do you want a cup of tea?”

“OK,” said Lewis Schaffer.

Here is a video on YouTube of Lewis Schaffer performing at the Bloomsbury Theatre three months ago…

North Korea – a beacon of hope for the down-trodden masses of the wide world

North Korea: truly the ultimate Socialist people’s paradise

Last night my hotel, amazingly, had hot water.

But our young female North Korean guide had to sleep on a couch on a first floor landing, because no rooms were free. She has had a painful back for the last couple of days, ever since our coach hit a gigantic pothole in the road and everyone was lifted off their seats. She was standing and fell awkwardly, her back hitting the hard edge of a seat.

Yesterday, our older, more experienced male guide, told us of the devastating American Imperialist bombs which rained down on Pyongyang during the Korean War.

“I think you will understand a little,” he said. “My teacher of English told me there was a little bombing of London during World War Two. I did not know of that before he told me.”

Today, our younger, less experienced guide, a year out of college, asked: “In England, what is the main food? Boiled rice?”

The outside world is not just a foreign place to North Koreans, it is a planet in an unknown galaxy far, far away

This morning, we took the long drive along bouncy potholed roads to the International Friendship Exhibition at Myohyang-san.

I was there in 1986, on my previous trip to North Korea. It is clearly a bunker with a giant building on top of it, containing all the gifts showered on the late Great Leader Kim Il-sung by other world leaders who were/are all, of course, in awe of his charismatic omniscience.

Again, driving through mile after tens of miles of apparently desolate countryside, North Korea seems like a land floundering without direction. What is arguably the most controlled country in the world is floundering.

The Friendship Exhibition seems even more guarded than last time I was here. Armed guards on the building, One-man military outlook posts in the hills surrounding it. Armed guards blocking entry to nearby side-roads. And what appears to be the roof of another underground structure.

Inside the marbled building, expensive gifts from China and, as expected, less expensive gifts from Eastern Europe – what used to be the unwilling dregs of the Soviet Union.

Some of the gifts – rather good gifts, in fact – were from Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. When someone in our group mentioned that Colonel Gaddafi was dead, overthrown and killed in a revolution six months ago, and there had been revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and currently Syria, our younger guide’s mouth almost visibly dropped open. She knew nothing about it and – clearly – did not want to know anything about it.

One of the gifts we saw was a vase given to the Great Leader, she told us, by the people of Cyprus. “It is a million years old,” she told us.

Whether this was a mistranslation, a misunderstanding or simply because the North Koreans make up impressive facts on the basis that anything which is said becomes true… there is no way of knowing.

There is a new, second building, containing gifts given to the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. One of the rooms contained gifts given by shocked, stunned and saddened world leaders on the death of Kim Jong-il.

We were told to smarten ourselves up before were taken into that room. There was a large statue of Kim Il-sung (not Kim Jong-il) in front of a brightly-coloured rural tableau. We were all lined-up and bowed to the waxwork, then were taken out without being shown the gifts.

Our two guides had preceded us into the room and had bowed deeply to the giant waxwork, like two people going into a Roman Catholic church and bowing to a crucifix of Jesus.

We were taken to a mountain cafe to have a pre-packed picnic by a river. A few locals were having picnics here too. A little away along the riverbank, a girl was sweeping the rocks and the earthen paths with a Wicked Witch type broom so they looked clean.

Then we were taken to a Buddhist temple.

Our older guide told me a few days ago that there are 20,000 Buddhists in the country and 20,000 Catholic Christians. The two figures seem a bit neatly similar.

Today, our younger guide told us: “The Party allows us to believe in religion.”

We are taken to the Buddhist temple which, we are told, was destroyed by the Japanese in the Great Patriotic War and later destroyed by the Americans in the Korean War, but which the Party had faithfully re-built twice. The one monk on display seemed a little sad-eyed and the temple’s official guide seemed a little more over-zealous than most on unsubtly pushing the Party line.

Walking on the wooden floor, I hear a gigantic sharp crack behind me. I turn round. One of our group has his ankle stuck in a gaping hole. One of the floorboards has cracked and collapsed under him.

On local television (which I watch in the hotel) there is, of course, no foreign news. It is like living in the self-contained bubble of a medieval village with no transport and little outside news. It is, in fact, like living in The Village in the 1960s TV show The Prisoner. Everything is happy and good and free and clean and smiling and caring within the village.

In North Korea, as far as I can see, there is no Orwellian Doublethink in ordinary people, because Doublethink means that you know the truth but you choose to believe or discipline yourself to believe the untruth.

In North Korea, really, we are talking about Igno-Think. They know only what they are told. What they have been told since they were born. Nothing exists outside the North Korean bubble. Life continues, self-contained. Only the country exists. In these circumstances, it is entirely reasonable to believe that, in England, the main food must be boiled rice.

If someone in the UK were to read no newspapers, hear no radio, see no television except the Party channel and everyone they met lived in the same way…. Imagine that… Imagine that all they knew, all they had ever known, was what the parish council told them had happened and was happening… then that would be some hint of what life is like in North Korea.

From that viewpoint, the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, the Dear Leader Kin Jong-il (and now the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un) have led and inspired the country into great social and technological leaps the like of which other countries can only dream of. It has made North Korea an icon for the forward-thinking peoples of the world and a beacon of hope for the down-trodden masses living under the yoke of elitist capitalism. North Korea is a centrally-important country in a world where other leaders and Juche study groups pay homage and give grateful presents to North Korea’s great leaders in awe-filled tribute.

Tonight, my tooth, damaged in Beijing, is giving me very slight pain.

I take some oil of cloves.

I wonder if our younger guide has a bed tonight and how her back is.

… CONTINUED HERE …