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That time Malcolm Hardee stole the contents of an entire toilet…
BEWARE! Toilet humour ahead! In December 2021, Barry Ferns interviewed me for the Angel Comedy Club’s podcast. Back in April, I posted three blogs of transcripts from that chat – largely about the...
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The changes in UK alternative comedy because of agents, Malcolm Hardee etc
This is Part 2 of a chat from December 2021, when Barry Ferns interviewed me for his Angel Comedy Club podcast As with Part 1, it has been slightly tidied up to reduce my wittering incoherence. JOHN:...
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The 1980s… when UK comedy WAS bizarre on stage and sometimes TV…
In December 2021, Barry Ferns interviewed me for the Angel Comedy Club’s podcast. This is a transcript of the start of that chat – largely about the changes in UK comedy since the 1980s – slightly...
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Jeremy Murphy – The Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie years…
Jeremy – the highly-esteemed New York PR man Yesterday’s blog was about outrageous US PR man Jeremy Murphy’s new book: Too Good to Fact Check: Flying the Skies with Stars, Scotch, and Scandal (Mostly...
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Jeremy Murphy – The New York PR man too outrageous to be fact-checked
Jeremy Murphy: the owner of “a respected US PR agency”. But does he want to be respected? In this blog two years ago, back in June 2022, I chatted to American PR man Jeremy Murphy about his book F*ck...
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RIP pirate radio and mainstream TV broadcaster Keith Martin, 1934-2024
I was at a book launch in London tonight. A comedian’s first novel. A new beginning, perhaps. So inevitably – because real life is badly plotted – about five minutes after I arrived, I found out via...
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What are we going to do about Julie Samuel, actress and much much more?
Julie starred in the movie Ferry Cross The Mersey with Gerry and The Pacemakers. (Photograph by George Elam/ANL/Shutterstock -1355671a) Julie Samuel has been around a bit, done most everything in...
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How to find the best experts and eccentrics for television shows…
(Photograph by Glenn Carstens-Peters via UnSplash) In my last couple of blogs, I asked AI to explain Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics. In both cases, I think the clearest...
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How and why surreal Wavis O’Shave avoided becoming a household name…
In my last blog, a man with no settled name talked about his life in music, comedy and surrealism. One of his names was/is Wavis O’Shave and he became/remains a cult figure from his appearances on...
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The mystery of The Prisoner’s No 6 badge from the cult TV series solved?
(Photo from The Prisoner episode 4: Free For All) About a month ago, Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award designer John Ward got in touch with me about cult TV series The Prisoner. He thought he might have the...
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Does John Ward have THE No 6 badge from cult TV series “The Prisoner”…??
Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award designer John Ward has got in touch with me about the cult TV series The Prisoner, which starred Patrick McGoohan… John Ward wrote: Patrick McGoohan made The Prisoner down...
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John Ward and the stupid TV people…
John Ward in a photograph where it is probably best if you supply your own caption… I first worked with mad inventor John Ward – designer of the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards – on the TVS/ITV series...
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What happened when I produced a Jerry Sadowitz TV comedy special…
WARNING! THERE ARE MULTIPLE USES OF THE ‘F’ WORD AND THE ‘C’ WORD IN THIS PIECE… PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL IF YOU ARE OF A NERVOUS OR EASILY-OFFENDED DISPOSITION… OTHER BLOGS ARE WIDELY AVAILABLE TO READ...
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PR, lateral thinking, political porn and Channel 5 TV’s new Tractor World…
A tractor attracter… Even if you are on painkillers and muscle relaxant drugs for a sore spine/hip/leg/ankle… when you get an email from an unknown person called Xander with the heading TRACTORS: BIG,...
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David Mills on the difference between US and UK comedy clubs… and more…
Every week, British-based US-born comedian David Mills posts online an extraordinary 5-point bulletin called Quality Time, a smörgåsbord of societal snippets, curated curious comment and interesting...
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Ariane Sherine wants to live to 100 and write 100 books, starting with this one
Ariane Sherine has had a busy week. It’s her birthday. And she released the first episode of her weekly podcast Love Sex Intelligence. And she has published her first novel, Shitcom, about two male TV...
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Paul Darrow on cult SciFi show “Blake’s 7” – its fans, scripts and BBC cutbacks
In the third, concluding extract from my 1980 chat with actor Paul Darrow, who died earlier this week, he talks about starring in Terry Nation’s TV series Blake’s 7, fans, writing and…. Blake’s 7 is...
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Life on a cult TV show – Paul Darrow on “Blake’s 7” scripts, squabbles and...
Yesterday’s blog was the first part of a 1980 interview with actor Paul Darrow, whose death was announced this week. In August 1980, I interviewed him for Marvel Comics’ Starburst magazine. He was...
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Ricky Gervais –“I haven’t really watched comedy for two years”
“Live long enough to punish the world…” A couple of nights ago, I went to a preview of the first two episodes of After Life, Ricky Gervais’ new series for Netflix – available from next Friday (March...
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Political Correctness has not gone far enough! – Ban Baldism and Beardism!
We have lived long enough in a world where women are constantly undermined in favour of men. For hundreds of years, women have been seen as ‘not as important’ or ‘not as good’ as men. Recently, it was...
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