The Leg Pulling "Tour" 1996

Hello there

This is a weird one really, because my temptation is to call it a retro post, but none of you will have been there the first time round.

I’m confident of that by the way.  Only 80 people were witness to the thing I’m about to tell you about, and I’m pretty sure that none of them will have been hooked into support of my career from it. It was, however, the first comedy show I ever put on down in fancy London, and 80 people was a complete sell-out.

Really, if we think about it, there should be a blue plaque there.  Last time I looked though, the venue had been divvied up as a Starbucks and Indian restaurant, but once upon a time it was the Torrington Arms on North Finchley High Road.  I appreciate that won’t sound like much, but it was highly regarded as an arts venue.  It was a pub, yes, but the back room was legendary.  Paul Young regularly played there till the day the pub was sold on.  

That sounded more impressive in my head…

Ok, here’s a better one; Eric Morecambe lived there for a bit.  I didn’t find that out till long after we had parted ways (myself and the pub I mean, not myself and Eric Morecambe).  I can’t even remember the whole story of it, I think a member of Eric Morecambe’s family ran it at one point.  It was something like that.  There was no mention of it in the pub itself.

Anyhows, if you are up to date with the Reboot podcast, you will have heard in the last episode that I found a fax that Rob had sent to me in the olden days.  If you thought I was making that up, then here is proof of that fax…

Are Fax’s still a thing?  Or have they gone completely now?  I’ve just googled it, and apparently it’s mostly the police who use them.  I can’t think of any good reason for that.  But I digress…

When I found that fax, I also found a few other bits.  You may have guessed from yesterday’s post that I found some pictures of me winning a rugby cup, but I also found the programme for the first comedy show I ever put on in London.  I thought I would show you that in my patreon post today, and tell you some bits about it?  I suppose I could have just faxed it to you…

There’s the front of it.  This is the original one I made that was then photocopied, and yes I am sat on the toilet in the picture with a cig on.  

Rob (Rouse), who was just a twinkle in his father’s eye and yet to meet myself and Jon at the time of this esteemed production, has spoken a few times about how he remembers me “cutting and sticking” to make posters and the like.  He thinks that my movement into podcasts, and art, and patreon and all that, is the natural progression from the days where I would stay up late in my bedroom making programmes and posters.  I mean, he’s got a point really.

So, Allan Aspel was the lead character in a play what I wrote at drama school called Toilet Humour!  In fact, truth be told, I actually wrote it in the summer break before my first year at Bretton Hall.  That’s Allan Aspel on the left, played by Alan Gibbons (who played him in the original play and it’s sequel).  Now, when we all moved down to London after drama school, the plan was for Alan Gibbons to do stand-up as Allan Aspel and for me to write it all. That was the big idea.  He actually did a load of gigs as Allan Aspel, and genuinely did well at them, but he got frustrated that I wasn’t writing a new act for every performance (let’s not judge, none of us had a clue how it worked), and we ultimately went our separate ways.

I sincerely still believe that Alan Gibbons should have been a comedy superstar.  Not as a stand up, but he remains the most charismatic comedy actor I’ve ever seen on a stage. He was effortlessly funny, and had a proper rare gift for taking the audience into his confidence with a look.  Proper Eric Morecambe glancing to camera skills.  So very funny too.  We completely lost touch but he is currently doing loads of ongoing YouTube videos with his husband Jamie in a thing called the Isolation Creations (I believe it started during lockdown).  Mostly dressing up and doing homages to things, and they seem to have garnered a bit of a following on there. I have actually spoken to Jamie a couple of times over the years, but Alan is sadly holding firm in not talking to myself or Jon (who was joint lead in Toilet Humour!).  We were all great pals once.

Anyway, next page…

So this is – as it says – an "Introduction", and reading it now is fascinating for me.  I didn’t write that. I may have knocked it into shape, but all the gags were Alan’s.  Or so I remembered, until I just read it.  There is a load of lifted jokes in that.  Victoria Wood, Les Dawson, Ronnie Barker.  I’m not – I hasten to add – saying this in a critical way. Myself and Alan really adored Les Dawson, and neither of us would have had a second thought about dropping a Les Dawson gag into anything.  As I say, this was way before any of us knew what we were doing, or knew how frowned upon using material of others would be.

Next page…

So the use of the word “Tour” is an interesting one.  This wasn’t a tour.  It was a one-off.  To this day, new comics can be found promoting their “tour” all around the internet, and it’s just their club gig list, but at least they have more than one date (admittedly rarely on consecutive dates).

Them characters bring back some memories though.  Allan Aspel remained a toilet attendant, Fanny Abbot was this terrifying filthy old agony aunt character, and Richard Jism (Oh. My. Word) was a little boy who did a string of double entendres about being in the scouts.  I’ve literally just remembered that yeeeeears later, Ed performed him in one of the Emergency Broadcast shows.  The exact same script.  We must have been struggling for stuff to do…

Jocky Presley was a drunk Elvis impersonator and Stinky was another little boy who was looking for his dad at the pub but not rude in any way.

In other notable bits, I have no memory whatsoever of Samantha Roberts but apparently she did Dolly & Vera with Alan, which was adapted (lifted wholesale) from Les Dawson’s Cissie and Ada.  The lighting and sound was done by Matt Wilde (again, I will need to check that with Jon because I have zero rememberance of such a thing).  Matt Wilde went to drama school with myself and Jon, and he played Frank in a production of Rocky Horror I directed and Dan Aykroyd in an adaptation of Bob Woodward’s Wired that I devised and directed.  He was also the waiter in that episode of Alan Partridge where he has a breakdown in the BBC restaurant and shouts “Smell My Cheese”. I think he’s a respected director now (again, Jon will know), and doubt he has ever done lighting and sound since.

Also, there's plenty of mentions of B.A.D in this programme, but not one mention that it stood for Big And Daft. I did keep that secret for years.

Next page….

That’s pretty self-explanatory.  Alan’s bio. That was all just true.

Next page…

WOAH. WHO IS THIS HOT YOUNG BUCK????

See, bottom line, look.  I told you I was 23.  Actually was as well.  Oh Father Time…such a cruel devil…

So, this is mostly true I guess.  I did write a play called "Stranded without change for the phone" but I definitely didn’t write a play called “Rack Up and Slash”.  I had started work on the Les Dawson biopic, but I definitely wasn’t a “regular” writer at Newsrevue (I wrote one song one time). Those performer credits were all true except I didn’t have my own stand-up comedy show called “I live with my mum”.  I’ve a feeling this was an in-joke, as that’s a line from a song Rik Mayall used to do in his stand up…

Next page….

So these are again bios.  I lived with Martin at the time, and I worked behind the bar of a rival pub to the Torrington Arms (The Tally Ho – still there I believe) with Matt Whelpton. I just googled Matt and the IMDB page had Eastenders on it (which he did do an episode of) and a short film which was on YouTube and appears to be a different bloke.  Looked a bit like him, but unless he’s had major surgery to make him 40 years younger, then I am pretty confident it wasn’t him.  Might be his son though?  Maybe.

What I can tell you is that he got absolutely leathered on the night of the performance and threw a pint glass over his shoulder like Begbie.  It was on stage and narrowly missed Martin who was playing guitar behind him.  There was quite a row after the show about it.

And then we have the last page… again, this was more interesting in my head…

The two funniest things about this page are that I thanked the girl at the printers despite getting no discount or anything, and that I spelt Jon’s name wrong.  

Last week, in a pretend text row with Jon, where I was typing in all upper case to shout at him, I sent him a picture of that and told his I was "glad" I spelt his name wrong.

Also, can someone remind me to talk about Tony & Donna at the Tally Ho on a Cabin Fever at some point please? They were my bosses and absolutely crackers.

There we have it, the programme for my first “professional” “comedy” “production” after moving to London.  My contribution on the evening itself was doing about four minutes of compering at the beginning of the second half which was – verrrry predictably – dealing with hecklers.  They were locals from the pub, who I knew, and they were all gang connected.  It’s totally true that normal rules don’t apply when you’re on a stage.  Absolute miracle I wasn’t shot.

Very sexy Loopholes podcast on the way tomorrow – it’s proper blue.

Hope your week is going grand so far.

Much love

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx