Chris Lynam: "Actual visual comedy, there's not much about any more."

[00:00:32] So today's guest is the ex-street entertainer, the man once described by Eddie Izzard as the funniest man on the planet, the king of clowns himself, the one and only Mr Chris Lynam. Welcome to the show Chris.

[00:00:48] Oh, thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. Let me just tell you about the Eddie Izzard quote. I was doing a show at Soho Theatre quite a few years ago and they said, oh, Eddie comes in here, let's get a quote from him. And he said, oh, Chris Lynam, funniest man on the planet.

[00:01:07] And then they went back to him and said, oh, can we print that? And he went, put the most dangerously funny man on the planet.

[00:01:18] And I thought, because that, you know, at the time we were trying to go, oh, he's not really dangerous, you know, it's like, but it's not.

[00:01:25] So I edited the quote, the official quote that Eddie put out was the most dangerously funny man on the planet.

[00:01:31] And I thought, well, I'm just funny. Yeah, exactly.

[00:01:36] Funniest on the planet is a bit of a bloody, it's a bit of a thing to live up to, isn't it?

[00:01:41] It's a cross to bear, isn't it? So, I mean, we can take you back to the beginnings of your sort of comedy career.

[00:01:50] You started off really on the streets, didn't you?

[00:01:53] That sounded a bit poverty stricken, the way you described it there. You started out on the streets.

[00:01:58] That's right. Worked your way up in the doorways.

[00:02:00] So what are your jokes, Gav? Was it Covent Garden? Whereabouts was it? Where did you do it?

[00:02:06] Well, Covent Garden hadn't started then.

[00:02:08] And funnily enough, because I started Covent Garden as a buskish pitch, because when I started,

[00:02:13] Covent Garden was still just in the dying throes of being a market.

[00:02:20] And in fact, we used to go there at 6.30 in the mornings, a couple of mates.

[00:02:24] So I've lived in this big squat in Summers Town in Camden.

[00:02:28] And we used to go there at 6.30 in the morning when the market was packing up and pick up all the sprouted fruit and vegetables and take it back and feed 50 people every night for 5pm a meal, I think.

[00:02:40] That was in 72, something like that.

[00:02:43] And then in 73, I started performing.

[00:02:45] And Covent Garden was just moved, I think, around about in 73 or 74.

[00:02:53] And then it was derelict.

[00:02:56] It was nothing there.

[00:02:56] In fact, Friends Roadshow, another bunch of clowns that I became friendly with, were offered one of those warehouses there for a grand a year.

[00:03:07] Rent.

[00:03:08] I know.

[00:03:09] I know.

[00:03:10] And they didn't take it at the grand at the lock.

[00:03:12] And then quite a couple of years later, I used to go and play in Portobello Road and Camden Lock, the market, before it kind of expanded to how big it is now.

[00:03:27] And just odd bits of street.

[00:03:30] And then one day I went past the piazza and there was just workers there.

[00:03:36] And I thought, oh, look at this.

[00:03:38] Knocked his show off.

[00:03:39] And for the first six months, it was just mean.

[00:03:41] Nobody else knew about it.

[00:03:42] And it was great.

[00:03:44] I used to make so much money in those days.

[00:03:47] So you can lay claim then to be the first ever performer at the Cotton Garden?

[00:03:52] No.

[00:03:52] No, because in Victorian times, that's where Punch and Beauty were seen.

[00:03:58] So I wouldn't say that, you know, and I didn't look at what was going on with the market.

[00:04:05] But, you know, and I don't know which.

[00:04:07] It would be interesting to look at the history of the Cotton Garden market, actually, the fruit and veg.

[00:04:11] Because, I mean, wherever there's crowds of people, there's always performance, isn't there?

[00:04:16] But I wouldn't have thought that they, you know, someone's going to get up at five o'clock in the morning or three o'clock and say, oh, I'm going down to do a spot.

[00:04:28] Yeah, well, you know what comics are like, you know, three o'clock in the morning.

[00:04:31] Jesus.

[00:04:32] There'd be nobody willing to do that.

[00:04:34] I mean, what gave you the impetus to sort of go indoors, as it were?

[00:04:38] It was just, you know, it was quite funny.

[00:04:40] And people come up to me, will you come and play my festival, my theatre, my blah, blah.

[00:04:45] And in the early days of the comedy store, it was called the Comic Strip, wasn't it?

[00:04:50] So I went down with all that lot when it was in, at Madam Jojo's, what's that place called?

[00:04:58] Raymond's Review Bar.

[00:04:59] It used to be.

[00:04:59] That's right.

[00:04:59] And so maybe the second or third one that they had of those, I went in and did my stuff.

[00:05:07] And I was quite rude and brash and still clowning then.

[00:05:12] And they all kind of looked at me a bit sideways, you know, like, I don't know about this, you know, blowing fire and shit like that.

[00:05:18] And they were telling socialists.

[00:05:25] I mean, I remember seeing you in the very early days of the comedy store when it was in Leicester Square.

[00:05:33] Yeah.

[00:05:33] I mean, you came on and you did the ice cube thing.

[00:05:39] But there's one particular thing which I thought was really, really funny, was the, ooh, I love chocolate.

[00:05:48] Where you just said, hmm, does anyone else like chocolate?

[00:05:51] Because I really like chocolate.

[00:05:52] And then you started going, hmm.

[00:05:55] And still to this day, I mean, everybody was just falling apart.

[00:05:58] It was an amazing sort of thing to watch because it was very different to what was going on.

[00:06:05] As you say, a lot of it was straight white male stand-up, wasn't it?

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:09] Well, I'm a clown, you know.

[00:06:10] And the difference is in the early days, people like me would fit onto a bill, you know,

[00:06:16] the early days when Jonglers was just one venue enterprise, you know, down in Battersea.

[00:06:24] Yeah.

[00:06:24] On the bills there, they'd be fantastic.

[00:06:26] They'd always have a musician or a little band or trio or something.

[00:06:30] And there'd be a magician and a juggler.

[00:06:32] You know, Steve Rawlins used to play there and that lady was a poet.

[00:06:38] And, you know, so it's a lot more varied.

[00:06:42] So what happened to variety?

[00:06:44] I mean, because that's basically what you're saying,

[00:06:46] because it was the new variety thing that happened in the 80s.

[00:06:49] Yeah.

[00:06:50] And we seem to have completely gone from that.

[00:06:53] Do you think it's audience-driven or promoter-driven or...?

[00:06:57] Promoter.

[00:06:58] No, no, because whenever I'm on a bill, you know, well, me in particular,

[00:07:03] I do split an audience because, you know, it's a bit too wacky for some people

[00:07:06] and they're going, no, I don't get it.

[00:07:08] You know, perfect example, this weekend I was up near Newcastle at a magic thing

[00:07:15] and a group of four people, one bloke just didn't get it

[00:07:19] and looked sour the whole way through.

[00:07:22] And his partners were pissing themselves laughing, you know.

[00:07:25] But as an artist on stage, I was engaged with the people who were not enjoying it.

[00:07:32] I follow people who are leaving it off and go, wait, wait, it's got to be funny.

[00:07:36] You know, I'm trying to talk to them.

[00:07:37] You know, it's gags and messing about.

[00:07:41] But it's quite disconcerting having one bloke that's like, you know,

[00:07:45] angry about the material that's going on.

[00:07:49] And sitting next to him and someone picking them up laughing from it, you know.

[00:07:53] It's just like, ah-ah.

[00:07:55] Yeah.

[00:07:55] Yeah.

[00:07:56] I mean, we've talked about this with other guests as well,

[00:08:00] about the sort of, yeah, there was a sea change, wasn't there,

[00:08:04] around about the late 80s, early 90s when it sort of changed.

[00:08:09] The sort of punk aspect of, you know, alternative comedy,

[00:08:13] it became much more commodified into a sort of a business model, as it were.

[00:08:20] And people were, yeah.

[00:08:21] That was promoted to them.

[00:08:22] That was Avalon and off the curb, just saying, you know, this is who you can have,

[00:08:26] you know.

[00:08:27] And I used to work for both of them.

[00:08:31] Actually, Avalon were my management when they first started out.

[00:08:36] And they only had me and Jerry Sadowitz and a couple of other people.

[00:08:39] And Jerry fell out with him quite quickly.

[00:08:44] No.

[00:08:45] No.

[00:08:48] The mild man of Jerry Sadowitz.

[00:08:52] And then with me, they didn't show up for five meetings with Just for Laughs,

[00:08:56] who I'd been trying to get to for, you know, the Montreal.

[00:08:59] I'd been trying to get in there for about five years.

[00:09:02] And Avalon didn't show up for five meetings in Edinburgh with them

[00:09:07] to talk about me going there the next year.

[00:09:10] And I just went, when I got back to London, I just said, sorry, guys,

[00:09:13] I can't, you know, if you're not going to.

[00:09:16] I took on the gig and got it myself at Just for Laughs.

[00:09:19] And I went into Jonathan Thode's office and I said,

[00:09:22] I can't work with you guys if that's what you're going to do.

[00:09:26] And, I mean, I heard subsequent stories about how they rip people off and,

[00:09:31] you know, oh, it must be quite a good jeepers.

[00:09:33] They just sell out 400 seater or something and they owe them money at the end of it.

[00:09:38] How does that work?

[00:09:42] It's known as the new model of Edinburgh.

[00:09:44] What was it like performing in Canada?

[00:09:46] Did you find it any different from the UK?

[00:09:49] What was their attitude like?

[00:09:51] I don't notice differences in audience at all.

[00:09:53] I'm too stupid.

[00:09:55] You know, I just get up, do my shit and people laugh or they don't.

[00:10:00] Mostly they laugh.

[00:10:01] But the J-Ping was, wow, that was different because we flew over together.

[00:10:07] In fact, Air Canada was the first airline to ban smoking on their planes.

[00:10:11] And we were livid because I used to smoke a lot, 60 a day.

[00:10:14] Jerry was a very nervous passenger.

[00:10:16] He's quite a nervous bloke, actually.

[00:10:19] I mean, he's lovely.

[00:10:20] He went with his mum and his sister.

[00:10:25] And I devised this plan of how to smoke in the toilets when one of us was holding the thing over the fan light.

[00:10:33] The other one was flushing the toilet.

[00:10:36] So one arm was sharing a cigarette.

[00:10:39] One person's blocking the fan, the scent.

[00:10:45] And if you're not smoking, then you're flushing the toilet and running the water.

[00:10:49] So, you know.

[00:10:51] About four or five cigarettes.

[00:10:53] It's a long flight, man.

[00:10:54] It's like eight hours or something.

[00:10:55] Yeah.

[00:10:57] But have you been told the Jerry story about...

[00:11:01] Go on, you tell it because there might be lots of people watching and listening that haven't heard that story.

[00:11:06] Go on, you tell it, Chris.

[00:11:07] Oh, right.

[00:11:07] Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:09] So he's got up.

[00:11:11] There's a couple of warm-up gigs at what I think was the best club in the world, Club Soda, when it was just slightly off centre.

[00:11:19] It was a bit like the tunnel, if you ever went down the tunnel, Palladium, but a bit more kind of...

[00:11:27] Lovely room.

[00:11:29] He played there a couple of warm-ups and people just couldn't get the accent and stuff.

[00:11:33] Anyway, he's doing the gala thing for the telly.

[00:11:37] He gets up on stage.

[00:11:40] Oh, shit.

[00:11:41] How did it go?

[00:11:42] Good evening, moose fuckers.

[00:11:45] Good evening, moose fuckers.

[00:11:50] I quite like Montreal, but...

[00:11:53] It's about the fucking French.

[00:11:57] And I don't know if you did there, but it's a French...

[00:12:00] Of course.

[00:12:02] It's more than 50, it's about 60 or 70% French-speaking, I think.

[00:12:07] But the moose fuckers line, somebody had stood out, and it's a big theatre, it's like a 2,000-seat theatre,

[00:12:14] and someone in about the 15th or 20th row went on moose fuckers, had got up from his seat,

[00:12:20] and walked up to the stage, and he just got up on stage.

[00:12:24] By the time he'd done a bit of a pity about the French, bam!

[00:12:28] The guy decked him and knocked him flat on the floor.

[00:12:31] Wow.

[00:12:32] And the guy, you know, he didn't work anymore.

[00:12:36] But so, they can be a bit volatile.

[00:12:45] When did you first stick your hair up?

[00:12:48] Right at the beginning, I started doing odd stuff, you know.

[00:12:51] I think I had this length hair, and then cut short.

[00:12:54] And I had, like, seven early days, like in this 74 or 5, I found this hairdresser in Vienna,

[00:13:02] because I used to bust internationally as well, because there was more money to be made in Europe and America than here.

[00:13:10] And I had seven colours put in this kind of length hair.

[00:13:15] Actually, it's thinning out on top, which is quite good to know.

[00:13:17] I'm starting to look my age.

[00:13:23] I know.

[00:13:24] You don't look anywhere near your age.

[00:13:26] That is true.

[00:13:26] I know.

[00:13:27] I know, it's mad.

[00:13:28] And look, I had more grey there five years ago.

[00:13:32] It's got less.

[00:13:34] I suppose they're falling out.

[00:13:36] Can I just ask as well, when did the Firework Up the Bum first make its debut?

[00:13:42] I sort of feel sad to ask this question.

[00:13:44] I mean...

[00:13:45] Oh, no, no, that's fine.

[00:13:46] We have to, you know, because it's...

[00:13:48] If you've seen the act, I'd do a striptease and down to some Victorian women's bloomers

[00:13:55] and go, da-da, that's finished.

[00:13:57] And it looks like, oh, he's just got these women's bloomers on the front.

[00:14:00] And then you turn around because they split eyes and bend down pics on the arm.

[00:14:03] And they get a flash in my eye.

[00:14:04] A big laugh.

[00:14:06] And so I'd do that in the street and then blow fire and then say, oh, I'm finishing up with a small fantasy.

[00:14:12] And I had these Chinese fireworks, which unfortunately some thought they were bombs, not fountains.

[00:14:17] And I'd hold it like pissing a firework.

[00:14:24] And then in the early days at festivals, I think the first time I saw them was at Hood Fair in Devon,

[00:14:32] where they shone legs.

[00:14:34] And so they were South London as well.

[00:14:36] Malcolm, I became quite friendly with them and always thought, oh, I'd love to work with that lot.

[00:14:41] And then the opportunity came up.

[00:14:44] He was funny about how you got to work with Malcolm on March.

[00:14:48] It was kind of an organic thing.

[00:14:49] There wasn't auditions or anything like that.

[00:14:52] The third person they'd often just get from someone in a pub.

[00:15:01] The way it goes is then Malcolm said, no, don't hold it there.

[00:15:07] Why don't you stick it up your ass?

[00:15:08] And I went, oh, no, Malcolm.

[00:15:11] Do you know what?

[00:15:12] Because I'd already had a few accidents, the ones that thought they were bombs, which was about, I don't know, 10 percent,

[00:15:17] because they're very cheap Chinese.

[00:15:20] And if it's a bomb and you're holding it in your hand, it really sears.

[00:15:25] I mean, it burns your hand and knocks the skin off and everything.

[00:15:29] Anyway, so I said, oh, no, Malcolm.

[00:15:31] Because when they blow up, it's, nah, just put gaffer down.

[00:15:34] And Martin goes, oh, I'll do it.

[00:15:38] So, all right, Martin does it the first gig.

[00:15:41] And Vivian, his wife, took him aside afterwards and said, if you ever do that again, I'm leaving you.

[00:15:49] LAUGHTER

[00:15:51] So I went, oh, you know, it was kind of, it had come from, it had started off as my idea as a guy, you know, using a firework.

[00:15:59] Unfortunately, it's become my kind of trademark because, oh, you're the bloke that sticks a firework up the arse.

[00:16:03] It's not Chris Lyner.

[00:16:07] Yeah, I remember watching you decades ago and you'd stopped.

[00:16:11] You told the audience you weren't going to do it.

[00:16:13] You even told them at the start of the show you weren't going to do it.

[00:16:16] But by the end, they were just screaming for it and you relented.

[00:16:21] Oh, I don't do it anymore.

[00:16:23] And I'll tell you what, this is quite an interesting bit of debate.

[00:16:27] I wouldn't mind hearing what you guys think about it.

[00:16:29] It's that there's a bloke called Alan Anderson, Scottish.

[00:16:33] Yeah, I know him.

[00:16:34] Yeah.

[00:16:34] I think he's given up on me, but he was running quite a few gigs.

[00:16:38] He gave me one at this absolutely awful club.

[00:16:42] I mean, it's not a club, it was a disco in Bristol.

[00:16:45] And, I mean, there's quite a few of those where they've sort of sectioned off a part of a disco

[00:16:50] and there's loads of people coming in there.

[00:16:52] And it just hasn't got the atmosphere.

[00:16:55] And, you know, Serious was on, she was a good compere.

[00:17:00] And it wasn't going very well.

[00:17:02] They didn't really like me.

[00:17:03] It was one of those where I'd split the audience in half or going a year and half ago.

[00:17:07] And then I phoned him up a couple of weeks later to see about, oh, no, I saw that gig

[00:17:13] because he watched it.

[00:17:15] Somebody was filming it and he watched it.

[00:17:19] He said, there's nothing sadder than seeing a 60-year-old man naked sticking a firework up his arse.

[00:17:25] It's a really sad thing.

[00:17:26] And I went, I don't think that's all right, actually.

[00:17:31] You know, to be an ageist thing like that, you know, I'm in fairly good nick.

[00:17:36] And it's kind of, you know, it's not like I get my cock out and swing it around.

[00:17:42] No one's ever seen that when I'm on stage naked.

[00:17:46] It's always kind of discreetly tucked between my legs and my arsehole or whatever it goes.

[00:17:53] I don't know.

[00:17:53] I can't see.

[00:17:54] I don't know what it gets up to.

[00:17:59] I don't know.

[00:18:01] Yes, I've got a few wrinkles and everything.

[00:18:03] You know, I've got it.

[00:18:04] If you are watching someone stick a firework up their arse and what you're really looking at is the firmness of the body that is attached to the firework,

[00:18:14] you've got it wrong, haven't you, really?

[00:18:16] It's the spectacle is the firework.

[00:18:20] You shouldn't really.

[00:18:21] It's a bit like if you go to the theatre and you're looking at the curtains at the side.

[00:18:27] You've got it wrong.

[00:18:29] You should be concentrating on what's happening in front of you and not looking at the window dressing.

[00:18:36] That's that.

[00:18:37] Yeah.

[00:18:37] So I wouldn't.

[00:18:38] And anyway, Alan Anderson, and even if he does listen or watch this, knows he's an arsehole.

[00:18:45] So I wouldn't particularly worry about what he says.

[00:18:49] No.

[00:18:50] Well, he's given up anyway.

[00:18:51] So I think what's he doing cycling shit now?

[00:18:54] Yeah.

[00:18:55] Well, there's nothing worse than a 50 year old man in Lycra.

[00:18:58] Let's put it that way.

[00:19:02] Which I did.

[00:19:04] Didn't it go wrong for you?

[00:19:05] I think I was at a gig at the Albany Empire in Deptford when it went wrong.

[00:19:09] Didn't you have to.

[00:19:10] I'm glad you saw that.

[00:19:11] But yeah, I do remember the Albany Empire in Deptford.

[00:19:14] But you had to be.

[00:19:14] Didn't you have to go to hospital?

[00:19:17] Actually, no, I didn't go immediately.

[00:19:19] But I just remember the immediate details.

[00:19:22] I think that was the first time I'd ever blown up.

[00:19:25] Oh, God.

[00:19:28] And I remember running off the stage because it just, boom.

[00:19:33] And you've got this ringing in your ears and your arses going, oh, what have you done?

[00:19:38] And just off the stage, drum.

[00:19:44] With a big drum with ice in it and drinks and everything.

[00:19:47] And I remember just going, oh, oh, oh.

[00:19:50] Chucking ice into the basement and sitting in going, oh, oh.

[00:19:55] It's like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, wasn't it?

[00:19:59] And then this is typical Malcolm.

[00:20:01] So Malcolm finishes up the show.

[00:20:03] Well, that was it.

[00:20:05] And thank you very much.

[00:20:06] And we'll see you again.

[00:20:07] He walked into the dressing room and I'm going, oh, oh.

[00:20:11] He says, that's your curry, Chris.

[00:20:17] That is typical.

[00:20:19] Yeah.

[00:20:19] Oh, my God.

[00:20:20] He heard something else.

[00:20:21] I love him so much.

[00:20:22] Yeah.

[00:20:22] Hey, I've got to tell this quick story, Chris.

[00:20:25] I'll never forget a gig I did once with you at Keele University.

[00:20:29] It's a few years ago now.

[00:20:30] But we were driving back to London and I was in the car with you.

[00:20:34] I think it was a good video.

[00:20:36] So it was me and Brian and I think John Maloney and someone else.

[00:20:39] So there was five of us in the car, three in the back, two in the front.

[00:20:42] And you were in a hurry to get back and you hadn't taken your stage stuff off.

[00:20:48] So your hair was still up and you had the black makeup.

[00:20:51] I don't know if you remember this.

[00:20:52] So we get into the outskirts.

[00:20:54] It was in Walthamstow and we got stopped by the cops.

[00:20:57] And you were driving your brother's car.

[00:21:00] And the cop goes, excuse me, sir, is this your car?

[00:21:03] You wound the window down looking like you were.

[00:21:06] And he went, no.

[00:21:08] And then he goes, have you got your driver's license?

[00:21:11] And you went, no.

[00:21:13] And he said, get out of the car and give us a breath sample.

[00:21:17] And you gave him the breath sample.

[00:21:18] And it was like that.

[00:21:19] It wasn't over, but it was like on the edge.

[00:21:22] And you're like, right, down the station.

[00:21:26] And there was four of us in the car.

[00:21:29] And we said, well, what are we going to do?

[00:21:31] And he said, well, you can all fuck off and make your own way home.

[00:21:35] And don't you remember, you said to the guy, there was a big Black Mariah.

[00:21:40] I'll never forget this.

[00:21:41] And he goes, right, come on, down the station.

[00:21:43] And you said, but what am I going to do with my Sousa phone?

[00:21:46] And the guy said, the policeman just went, what's a Sousa phone?

[00:21:49] And you opened the boot and there it was.

[00:21:52] And you said, this is worth like however many thousands of pounds.

[00:21:56] You said, I can't leave that.

[00:21:58] And he goes, oh, God.

[00:22:00] And you could see it in his face.

[00:22:01] So the two of them had to pick the Sousa phone up.

[00:22:04] And never forget the picture of you in the back of the van.

[00:22:07] There's one cop driving and the other cop to the side of you with the Sousa phone on his lap.

[00:22:13] And you were sort of smiling, going like this.

[00:22:15] And then you drove off.

[00:22:17] And when you got back to the station, it was like that.

[00:22:20] And they had to let you go.

[00:22:22] But you had to find your own way back to the car as well.

[00:22:25] And we wandered around in Walthamstow for about an hour trying to find a cab place.

[00:22:30] This is pre-mobile phone days.

[00:22:32] You know, cursing the cops, basically.

[00:22:36] But I just loved the idea that you said, what about my Sousa phone?

[00:22:39] And the policeman was like, oh, God.

[00:22:42] I suppose.

[00:22:43] I mean, what was it worth?

[00:22:45] It was worth a lot of money, wasn't it?

[00:22:47] No.

[00:22:47] But my aunt lied.

[00:22:50] Oh, you lied.

[00:22:53] Yeah, you said it was worth something like five grand.

[00:22:56] Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:57] Oh, God.

[00:22:58] It was only worth 150 or 200 quid or something.

[00:23:00] Oh, right.

[00:23:01] Okay.

[00:23:01] I was going to ask you about the French school of clowning.

[00:23:06] French?

[00:23:07] Yeah, because of this.

[00:23:08] Was it Philip Guglier?

[00:23:11] That's his French clowning school.

[00:23:14] I've never done him.

[00:23:15] Yeah.

[00:23:16] In fact, he's the only teacher I kind of admire.

[00:23:19] When I decided, I was 20 when I decided I wanted to be a clown.

[00:23:22] And the only opportunity to study was with Lecoq School in Paris.

[00:23:29] So I wrote off for a place there and got accepted, one of 80 places out of 3,000 applicants.

[00:23:37] Wow.

[00:23:37] I wouldn't pay the demand for the first year's fees, which was 2,000 francs.

[00:23:42] So I spent a month trying to get that together now.

[00:23:44] And that's why I went out on the street.

[00:23:46] And the Oval House used to run some tumbling workshops and a clown workshop.

[00:23:53] So I went to those.

[00:23:56] But the main school was doing it, you know, just getting out there.

[00:24:01] And there was, in fact, the first ever gig, there was three of us.

[00:24:07] And I put it together.

[00:24:09] An actor called Chris Fairbanks, who you might or might not know.

[00:24:13] He does quite a lot of voiceovers, but he made most of his money out of Alveda's scene pet.

[00:24:18] He was one of the blokes in that.

[00:24:21] And the three of us, him, Kim, an American female trumpet player.

[00:24:28] And me.

[00:24:30] That was called the Maestro Barney Complex.

[00:24:33] And we played on the King's Road.

[00:24:36] Our first ever gig was to three kids and their father.

[00:24:43] Oh, shit.

[00:24:46] That sounds like the ideal Edinburgh audience, doesn't it?

[00:24:49] Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:50] Because I've started teaching as well.

[00:24:53] And just the stories and methods that Guglia uses, I think I'd love to have seen them.

[00:24:59] It looks like I do on stage go out of control, angry, violent.

[00:25:06] But I'm not really.

[00:25:08] And my workshops are fantastic.

[00:25:11] I mean, they're so much fun.

[00:25:12] People really get a lot out of it.

[00:25:14] But it's a clown workshop, you know.

[00:25:16] And quite a lot of stand-ups are doing that to get better timing or right material.

[00:25:22] I don't know what.

[00:25:23] But Guglia actually is, he's horrible to people.

[00:25:27] I mean, really horrible.

[00:25:28] Yes, that's what I've heard.

[00:25:30] He's destroyed.

[00:25:31] You know, some people come out of there and never want to do anything about performing ever again.

[00:25:37] Yeah.

[00:25:37] Because he's so brutal.

[00:25:39] It seems like a lot of the new clowns, their inner clowns, seems to be them pretending to be autistic.

[00:25:45] Which I find quite weird.

[00:25:47] Yeah.

[00:25:49] There's a lot of clowns coming out now.

[00:25:51] I mean, if you look at Soho Theatre, I've seen some pretty good stuff in there, you know.

[00:25:58] And in fact, you mentioned Dr. Brown.

[00:26:01] My son knows him.

[00:26:02] I've met him.

[00:26:03] But I haven't seen him work.

[00:26:05] I think I just saw a 10-minute thing he did once.

[00:26:07] I thought, oh, yeah, he's good.

[00:26:09] So I'd like to go and see that show.

[00:26:12] Every night of the week, there's like two or three clown shows on at Soho Theatre.

[00:26:17] So do you think then, in the future, that we're going to get some variety back into comedy clubs?

[00:26:22] Or do you think it's just two separate circuits now?

[00:26:25] I'd really like to think so.

[00:26:26] But, you know, as well as I, it's in the hands of the bookers.

[00:26:32] I think sometimes it's audience-led in the fact that they expect a comedy night to be solo acts,

[00:26:39] spouting words at an audience that will make them laugh.

[00:26:42] They don't see the variety anymore.

[00:26:45] They've grown up without that variety.

[00:26:47] And they assume that comedy is this one thing.

[00:26:51] And that's the shame of it.

[00:26:52] Yeah.

[00:26:53] I mean, your type of comedy is not really on the telly anymore either, is it?

[00:26:57] No.

[00:26:57] Whereas it used to be, the 70s, going into the 80s maybe, it's quite common to see.

[00:27:03] You mean, clowning is a huge part of Tommy Cooper's act, isn't it?

[00:27:07] I know.

[00:27:07] Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:08] He was definitely a clown.

[00:27:09] Well, exactly.

[00:27:10] I mean, you know, that's it.

[00:27:11] The other thing is that you're getting gigs these days.

[00:27:14] And when you're booking them in, they go, you know, on these forums.

[00:27:19] It's Facebook forum, a professional thing.

[00:27:23] TV credits.

[00:27:24] Man, I've got loads of TV credits, but there's nothing newer than 25 years ago.

[00:27:29] So, you know, I did people on Bossa Tricks, which, funnily enough,

[00:27:32] I was at a gig this weekend and they asked me to do a lecture.

[00:27:35] And the guy flipped up that.

[00:27:37] I went, oh, my God, that was, you know, ridiculous sketch.

[00:27:41] Bursting out of a bag and doing a costume change in a brown paper bag

[00:27:44] and got something out of the order.

[00:27:46] And coming out as a ballerina and then flipping around as a ballerina,

[00:27:50] pouring water into a jug, climbing up on a ladder and diving as I'm going to dive

[00:27:55] into the bucket of water.

[00:27:56] And then I've been hooked up and I fly across the studio.

[00:27:59] My sousaphone comes down and you meet the sousaphone.

[00:28:01] So you're flying up and they're playing Yellow Bird way up on Bona Bona Bona.

[00:28:10] I don't know where these sketches come from, but, you know, sorry,

[00:28:14] but it's hilarious.

[00:28:15] And people do go, wow, what is that?

[00:28:17] You know, there's no creating that kind of stuff.

[00:28:20] Well, they are creating pictures with words, you know,

[00:28:24] but actual visual comedy, it's not much about anymore.

[00:28:28] Let's hope the circuit changes.

[00:28:31] So any promoters watching, I'm going to say book, Chris,

[00:28:36] always good addition to any bill.

[00:28:38] And I will say, when's your, if you're doing the teaching,

[00:28:41] when are you doing this?

[00:28:42] So I haven't got anything planned right now, have I?

[00:28:48] No, I've just done one.

[00:28:51] I teach with Ben Keaton sometimes.

[00:28:53] He's a comic actor.

[00:28:54] That works really well because my stuff's a bit impromptu and it's fun,

[00:29:01] but he actually knows a lot and he's quite good at structure.

[00:29:06] And so it's quite a good mix having the kind of bumbling whatever and getting

[00:29:13] good results from people, you know,

[00:29:15] and getting them to be fun.

[00:29:17] The stuff that comes out in the classes is hilarious.

[00:29:19] It's, I can't understand why it just goes like that.

[00:29:24] Well, I mean, there's so much laughter and fun in the room,

[00:29:27] but Ben quite succinct in going, oh yeah, what about this?

[00:29:31] And then, and besides,

[00:29:33] because I'm not very good at criticizing people and they like that,

[00:29:37] you know, you know, in a workshop situation,

[00:29:39] people like to go, no, if you go, I mean,

[00:29:43] I sometimes take them back and redo and try what about if,

[00:29:46] but I'm not very good at analyzing and saying, oh,

[00:29:50] wouldn't it be great if you try this?

[00:29:54] So that was a bit of a contradiction there.

[00:29:56] So I don't know what I'm saying really.

[00:30:01] That's, that's one of the, the, the skills you teach contradiction.

[00:30:09] I'm still got a couple of things bubbling around,

[00:30:12] but I haven't got specific dates or venues booked in for teaching.

[00:30:17] And gigs wise, see you at Glastonbury.

[00:30:21] I do remember seeing you one year.

[00:30:24] You were there that year that Malcolm, for a bet,

[00:30:28] I'm sure you were there,

[00:30:29] painted himself in the luminous paint that one of the acts was using.

[00:30:33] And he painted his dick in luminous yellow paint.

[00:30:38] There was absolute, absolute fucking uproar.

[00:30:42] People were going, ah, boo.

[00:30:43] And then lots of people, yeah.

[00:30:47] Malcolm was on stage smoking a faggot.

[00:30:49] I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:30:50] What's the matter?

[00:30:53] I think that might have been the same year that Keith Allen was secretly booked

[00:30:59] to heckle people.

[00:31:00] Do you know him?

[00:31:01] He was a really good act when he was.

[00:31:03] That was the same year.

[00:31:05] Because he heckled Malcolm.

[00:31:07] Because Malcolm went, whoop.

[00:31:08] He was doing a thing.

[00:31:09] And Keith Allen was going, I'll be into prison as well, Malcolm.

[00:31:12] You bastard.

[00:31:13] And Malcolm didn't know.

[00:31:15] He didn't know who it was at first.

[00:31:17] I didn't.

[00:31:18] Do you know what?

[00:31:18] To this day, that's news to me.

[00:31:20] Because I thought that Keith Allen was just being a bit of a dickhead.

[00:31:23] I didn't know he'd been paid to do it.

[00:31:25] Malcolm was comparing.

[00:31:28] So I started up there and said, Mal, Keith Allen's here and he's doing all this kind

[00:31:32] of weird shit.

[00:31:33] He had a bottle of amyl nitrate around his neck.

[00:31:36] So he was sniffing that all the time.

[00:31:43] As you do.

[00:31:45] Yeah, yeah.

[00:31:46] And just being nasty to everyone.

[00:31:49] So I can't, we've got to get him.

[00:31:51] So I can't remember the exact details of it.

[00:31:54] But anyway, Mal found him in the audience.

[00:31:58] And he picked on Keith Allen and was going, oh, come on, Keith.

[00:32:02] You know, what are you on about?

[00:32:03] You got done, yes, for stealing your car.

[00:32:05] What was it?

[00:32:06] A mini.

[00:32:07] Roller.

[00:32:14] Oh, that's brilliant.

[00:32:15] That is brilliant.

[00:32:17] Oh, God.

[00:32:17] I will thank you for bracing us with your appearance on our podcast.

[00:32:23] Nice to see you guys.

[00:32:24] I'm glad you're doing this.

[00:32:24] Well done.

[00:32:25] Thank you.

[00:32:26] Thanks for being here.

[00:32:27] See you later, Chris.

[00:32:28] See you, Chris.

[00:32:29] Bye.

[00:32:30] Bye.

[00:32:47] This show is part of Podomedy, the podcast comedy network.

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