Emma

Hello there

I got up daft early this morning, with every intention of having some proper quiet time to go through some work, and was met with the news that an old pal had died.  It’s made me sad, of course, and – as we do with these things – I’ve just spent the morning thinking about her.  I’d not spoken to her for a year or so, and that time was after a couple of years.  She just called me out of the blue for no apparent reason.  I think there’s a chance she was meaning to call another Ian.

So we are gonna go waaaay back, to 2001 in fact.  My living situation was pretty poor, having ludicrously moved into a house in Wandsworth with an ex-girlfriend, where we both foolishly thought that would sort everything out.  It didn’t.  Quite the opposite in fact.  It was ghastly.  Meantime, career wise, Big And Daft is on life support, and whilst we are all still talking, it’s clearly not got long to go. I was trying to get some gigs in, which wasn’t so easy, but I was getting booked by the EDT (East Dulwich Tavern), which was a big feather in the cap.  There were tons of gigs above pubs in London, but the vast majority were pretty cobbled together.  It seemed that every pub landlord wanted to cash in on the comedy nights, thinking that all they needed was a microphone.  Most comics who were working in that era will be able to verify that we stood on beer crates a lot. It wouldn’t be long before these pub landlords got themselves a new squeeze in the form of restaurants, but for now it was comedy.

The EDT though was a whole different set up, and one of the most intimidating nights I’d ever had looming in my diary.  It was trendy, and credible, and there were celebs knocking about it all the time, which all fed into every imposter syndrome symptom you could imagine.  I wanted to be on there, I strongly suspected I had no business there.  Still, I was staggered by how easy it had been to get booked.  The lady on the phone had been proper encouraging for me to come do it, and said they would pay me what they could, and then they’d sort out some more gigs for me.

Now, this obviously meant they were going to see if I could actually do it before committing to booking me for more, but she didn’t say that.  That would have been way more pressure. As I got to know her more in the future, I found out for certain that there had been no wielding of power in that conversation.  She was all about the acts enjoying the night, and having events.  It was nurturing. A club where you could try stuff on stage without reproach. I doubt such a thing exists any more.

I’m on about the lass who’s just died at 54 obviously, Emma Emslie. Her husband Ron, who ran all the tech stuff was an equal part of the billing, for the record.

The first night I performed there, I was still doing the character of Ray Peacock when it was a flat-capped, shouty Yorkshireman. The confidence of that character fell in stark contrast to how unconfident I felt myself.  Emma and Ron had been so lovely and welcoming though, and after a scan of the room when the first act was on, I realised that there were actually two audiences.  So, when you were on stage there was a group of maybe thirty people to your left, in an alcove, and right in front of you in the long room there were maybe another hundred or so folk.  I may be remembering it as bigger than it was.  I decided I was going to play both audiences off against each other.  Which is what I did, and it worked out well.  I mean, there’s a good chance it was awful in real life, but it felt like it had been good in the moment.  I tell you this because when I got to the back of the room after leaving the stage, both Emma and Ron (and Steve Frost), greeted me like it was the greatest comedy performance of all time.  Emma was really gushing, and saying we need to put more gigs in.  I was expecting a call on Monday for it, but she did it on the spot.  I think she put in about ten gigs.  That’s a lot for one venue.

When I moved out of the house of horrors in Wandsworth, I deliberately moved to East Dulwich.  It was an awful loft conversion flat thing, and I couldn’t get any of my furniture up the stairs on the day I moved in.  I was a bit lost to be honest, but I’d moved to that area because the EDT club felt like a ‘home’ gig for me.  From the first one onwards, I honestly thought I could be booked there whenever I wanted.  I never felt like I was being booked for work either, I always felt – because of Emma and Ron – that I was just hanging out with pals and I had to go on the stage now and again. I’m not that bloke, not a social butterfly, but it genuinely felt like the only bit of security I had.

A couple of months later Emma called me to say that they were shutting down.  She was really upset, and said the landlord of the pub wanted to convert it into a restaurant.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Lordship Lane in East Dulwich, but I’ll tell you what it’s never been short of…

It was crushing for everyone.  I was obviously now in a panic because I’d lost my home gig, Emma and Ron were gutted because they’d lost their pride and joy, and all because of some unscrupulous landlord who didn’t know what a brilliant thing they had there.  I can tell you that I never set foot in that venue again after the comedy finished, despite it being a five-minute walk from my house, and I can tell you that the restaurant really didn’t do well when it opened.  The local community shunned it.  It’s maybe all fine for them now, but right at the turn, it was a damp squib.

Meantime though, a pub down the road, the Magdala, had a back room in disrepair.  It wasn’t being used, because it couldn’t be, but Emma and Ron managed to get them to agree to rehouse the comedy night.  For a few weeks I went down there daily and helped them renovate it.  When it eventually opened, I would often point and things and say “I painted that”. It was a wider room, with a bigger stage.  The whole thing was much brighter and airy than EDT, which had always been dark and boxlike.  EDT was the better room, but we made the Magdala work.

There was a purple backdrop at the back of the stage at the EDT, with EDT painted onto it.  I think Ron wanted rid of it for a fresh start, but Emma loved it.  One of the last bits of renovation was changing the T to a C, and from then onwards it was EDComedy. I became the resident compere there, and also started hosting the pub quiz on random Thursdays. It was Steve Frost’s Celebrity Pub Quiz, and there were lots of proper celebs who would host it…and me.  I really went above and beyond in the launch of the Magdala, self-serving because it would re-establish some security, and more agreeably because I felt I owed it to Emma and Ron.  It wasn’t big of me, I was gladly repaying loyalty. That’s what this is all about really.  Me being sad that somebody who gave me a confidence and career boost, who put faith in me and understood what I was – at least trying – to do, is now away.

The Magdala was where an ex-Eastenders actor heckled me, which directly led to him being on The Ray Peacock Podcast. That even led to him being booked to host the Celebrity Pub Quiz, which delighted me as it meant I was no longer the least celeb host of it.

It was inconsistent though.  It was maybe just a touch too far down Lordship Lane and stood on its own rather than surrounded by other venues. Some nights were rammed, some nights were poorly attended. I used to refuse payment on those nights, and we had a tradition of Emma pushing money into my pockets, like your Grandma saying “don’t tell your mum” at Christmas. There was only one occasion when she agreed to me not being paid, and I can still see her face now.  They’d lost a fortune.  I was skint but I couldn’t take the money, and Emma sort of teared up a bit.  You can’t really judge anyone for taking the money in that situation, but I do recall at the time being annoyed that the other acts did.  Mainly because I knew quite how many gigs they were doing, and there was no way that hundred quid was life or death.  Maybe it was though. I wasn’t party to their real life, and they had done the gig.  I dunno, just felt a bit mercenary, when it was clearly breaking the bank.

I think, from memory, the Mag only lasted a year or so.  Once again, an unscrupulous landlord suddenly had clientele and felt they could have themselves a restaurant, bringing the total of restaurants on Lordship Lane to a million. This one didn’t survive, and the pub eventually shut down (it’s reopened with a different name now, and I presume/hope, a different landlord).  A different venue was found, which I can’t even remember the name of because it was so short-lived.  I think it was over in Vauxhall or something, and it really wasn’t great.  I only remember performing there twice.  Everyone was just feeling a bit downhearted at being kicked about.

Then came The Hob.  A large pub opposite Forest Hill station, just outside of East Dulwich.  It had a nice room upstairs, and once again I did some painting for them.  It felt far more like the old EDT room, and it really felt like it would work.  Which it did, for a long time. I carried on being essentially resident compere (usually doing two Fri/Sat a month), and we had some joyous, occasionally rough-and-ready, nights there.  Whenever it was touch-and-go, I’d fix my eyes on Emma at the back of the room and see her encouragement.  I probably made life harder for both Emma and Ron with my boisterousness on stage, but they always, always, had the acts back.  That is hugely uncommon.  Like, a tiny percentage of clubs will support you when there’s been a furore.  It’s the complete opposite in most places and was always one of the things I found frustrating doing gigs.  When some berk in the audience had ruined the gig, you’d dealt with it on the stage, and then the venue wouldn’t be looking out for you and your safety. Once again, you’ll be getting an idea as to why they, and their gigs, were treasured.

The new club got a good footing and Emma and Ron became the landlords.  They were no longer just running the comedy, they were running the whole thing.  We would do the pub quiz downstairs in the main pub, which remained a pleasure to do, and the weekend gigs were expanded to include Thursday, and almost always full. Well, not the Thursday.  That was threequarters at best, but it was where Emma could book loads more open spots to have a look at.  Never did somebody do well and not get a paid spot (again, a lot of promoters drag that open spot process out for ages to save from paying people). The patch was as purple as the banner on the stage, and I was there a lot.  I was even there in the daytime because they gave me the room to rehearse one of my Edinburgh shows.  They were just very kind.  That’s the word.  Not just supportive, but kind.

I eventually moved out of the area to Hertfordshire.  It was no longer a case of nipping up the road, it was quite an ordeal to keep travelling down.  I still did for a long time though. I remember once getting a speeding ticket on my way to host the pub quiz, and that’s when I thought I’d have to start pulling back on how many I did.  I eventually got to the point of doing one gig a month there, which was mainly to see Emma and Ron, before I moved even further away and didn’t go back.  Not in a horrible way, we did discuss it and it was all fine.  A while later, they lost the pub, and I had a brief chat with Emma at the time because I couldn’t make the final night.  I have a feeling it was a P&G/Here Comes Trouble tour date that clashed with it, but it may have been just a regular gig.  I know I was upset about it, and I know that Emma seemed very down about the gig stopping.  Once again, they’d put everything into it, and once again, been stiffed.

Generally speaking, she was brave-faced about this sort of stuff, but occasionally in the conversation you’d see a vulnerability to how unfair it was.  To work so hard and be rewarded a bit but not in the long run.  It wasunfair too.  Really unfair. You end up running out of philosophical arguments for it.  Waking up to this news is unfair as well.  Not on me, on her.  On Ron.  I don’t have a platitude.  It’s shit.

I haven’t got his number either.  I’ve got hers, because she did the bookings, but not his.  I don’t really know what I’d do with his number anyway, I hadn’t seen either of them in four years.  That out of the blue phone call last year was the only contact I’ve had.  Apparently, they moved out to Kent and set up a gig there, but I didn’t get to paint any walls there.

You do lose touch with people, especially when you move around living in different areas, and even more especially when you stop doing the job that meant you saw them, but I’m so very aware of what a life saver they were.  Of how precious that support at really vulnerable times was.  It may be putting importance in the wrong things, but having somebody say they backed your talent, and filling your diary because they enjoy having you around, isn’t really something I’ve experienced much.  I mean, I thought I was special, but having read some other folk on social media it seems they did that for loads of people.  Which is brilliant.  They really backed underdogs, and that’s maybe because they were underdogs themselves.  There were enough glory days to probably make it worth it, but they still deserved better.

I should say, just in closing, that there were loads more people around that area who were involved and important.  Steve Frost I mentioned in passing, and his brother Simon ran the desk for the quiz which provided literally hundreds of hours of bald jokes for me.  The most notable exclusion is Janet Prince, who ran the original EDT with Emma and Ron but bowed out when it shut down.  They all remain brilliant, arty, and fun people. I obviously wanted to focus on Emma though, and had to do that from my experience with them.  There’s a bigger story to tell about the band of East Dulwich artists, but that can be another day. Maybe.  Dunno.

What rubbish news.

Anyway, that’s that.  Just wanted to throw some words out for them.  Hope that’s ok, and that you are ok too.

Much love

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