John Dowie talked to me near Euston, London
John Dowie is difficult to describe. Wikipedia’s current attempt is: “a British comedian, musician and writer. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969.”
His own website describes him as: “Not working. Not writing. Not performing. Not Twittering. Not on Facebook. Not on Radio. Not on TV. Not doing game shows, chat shows, list shows, grumpy-old whatever shows. Not doing quiz shows. Not doing adverts. Not doing voice-overs for insurance companies/banks/supermarkets/dodgy yogurts.”
The synopsis of his up-coming autobiography starts: “If you’re thinking of becoming a stand-up comedian (and who isn’t?) then here’s some advice: don’t start doing it in 1972. I did, and it was a mistake.”
I know John Dowie because he contributed to Sit-Down Comedy, the 2003 anthology of comedians’ (often dark) short stories which I edited with the late Malcolm Hardee.
A foul mouth, a foul mind and a bomb
John’s was the story of a Northern comedian who has a foul mouth, a foul mind and a bomb. The Daily Mirror called it: “a wrist-slashingly brutal account of a Bernard Manning-esque comic who plans blood-thirsty revenge. Disturbing? Very.” The Chortle website called it a “breathlessly entertaining yarn”.
Now he is crowdfunding his new book The Freewheeling John Dowie.
“How long are you crowdfunding for?” I asked him.
“They reckon the average book takes about six weeks or two months.”
“Have you started writing it?”
“I’ve already written it!”
“So the crowdfunding is just for the physical creation of it?”
“Yes, you have to reach a funding target for the printing process to begin.”
“So what have you been doing,” I asked, “since the triumph that was Sit-Down Comedy?”
“I have been riding my bicycle.”
“Where?”
“France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Ireland which is horrible, Wales, up and down England.”
“I like Ireland,” I said.
“Bad roads,” said John Dowie.
“And you are publishing your autobiography by crowdfunding…?”
The Freewheeling John Dowie, crowdfunding and bicycling
“Well, it’s not actually an autobiography,” John corrected me. “It’s like an autobiography, but with the boring bits cut out. There is no stuff like Birmingham is an industrial town in the heart of the Midlands. It’s got autobiographical elements. But, if you are a nobody such as I, then the only way you can tell a story about yourself is if it is a story that stands in its own right.”
“So how do you want The Freewheeling John Dowie described?” I asked. “A bicycling autobiography?”
“Yeah,” said John. “Well, if you ride a bike and you’re in a quiet piece of the world, what do you do? Your mind is free to wander and, as it wanders, you find yourself going from place to place in your mind that you were not expecting to go.”
“So why,” I asked, “did you decide to write your autobiography now?”
“I’m 65 and I’ve been retired for 15 years,” explained John. “And, if you’re 65, you’re fucked. So I thought: If I’m fucked, I’d better spend my time working because I’m of more use as a fucked-up performer than I am as a fucked-up retiree.”
“You were born in 1950?” I asked.
“Yes. Just in time to miss Elvis Presley and just in time to get the Beatles.”
“Did you approach a ‘proper’ publisher for the book?” I asked.
“No… Well, I think Unbound are more proper than publishers, because they care about the things they make. A friend of mine has a client who’s a comedian who went to a voice-over studio to record her book and was regaled by the engineers with all the comedians who came in to read the books they ‘wrote’ but had never even read yet – and finding mistakes in their own books – Ooh! My mother isn’t called Dorothy! Those are books done by ‘proper’ publishers.”
John Dowie – a living legend from the early alternate days
“Is there what they call a ‘narrative arc’ in your cycling autobiography?” I asked.
“Well, it begins and ends with a Spike Milligan story.”
“I met him once,” I said. “I think he must have got out of the wrong side of the bed that day.”
“I think,” John said, “that he got more crotchety as he got older. When I met him, he was very decent to me. I was hanging around backstage after one of his shows. He was touring a play which he wrote with John Antrobus – The Bed-Sitting Room. People talk about taking LSD for the first time and how it changed their life. Watching The Bed-Sitting Room changed my life. It was like a door had opened.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I had not experienced anything like it before. Live comedy. I was 15 or 16.”
“So you didn’t know what you wanted to be?”
“No.”
“And you decided to be Spike Milligan?”
“Yeah. That’s more or less it, yeah. I became Spike Milligan for a period. Apart from the talented bits, obviously.”
“What happened when you stopped being Spike Milligan?”
“I got my friends back.”
“Why? Because you were rude as Spike Milligan?”
“No. Just not funny.”
Naked Noolies and I Don’t Want To Be Your Amputee
“And then, I said, “you became one of the living legends of the original Alternative Comedy circuit.”
“Well,” said John, “I’m living. That’s halfway there.”
“But you are,” I said, “one of the originators of Alternative Comedy.”
“I don’t think so,” said John. “I don’t think I’m one of them and it’s not as if it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been there. I was coincidental more than anything. It wasn’t as if anybody saw me and thought: Oh, let’s start a movement. I considered myself to be in the same field as Ivor Cutler and Ron Geesin.”
“Wow!” I said. “Ron Geesin! I had forgotten him!”
“Yes,” said John. “He was great. He was a John Peel discovery. Ron played Mother’s Club in Birmingham where John Peel’s Birmingham audience used to go religiously to see the acts John Peel played on the radio. Ron Geesin came on and did his first number on the piano and the place went fucking barmy and Ron Geesin said to the audience: Listen, nobody is THAT good.”
AOK Factory Records’ first release: FAC-2
At this point, farteur Mr Methane, who was sitting with us, piped up: “Weren’t you involved with Tony Wilson years ago?” he asked. “On Factory Records.”
“Yeah,” said John. “The first one. The first Factory Records release. FAC- 2… FAC- 1 was the poster. I was on the same record as Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and the Durutti Column. It was a double EP.”
“Ah!” I said.
Then he said to me: “It’s all very good if you know everything about comedy, John, but, if you don’t know about pop music…”
“Why should people crowdfund your autobiography?” I asked.
“Because I’m fuckin’ fantastic,” he replied.
I tend to agree.
If you want to crowd fund the book: https://unbound.co.uk/books/the-freewheeling-john-dowie
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