Flash Quotes

  Sure, another reason I haven't blogged so much might simply be procrastination. I didn't write much about Edinburgh, but as this year began with me wondering whether to take a show there, let's finish 2025 by sweeping up the spoils. I got a trailer out it for a start...

 

 

 

 Pow. Huge thanks to DMLK for making it look like there were more than eight people in. Audiences averaged around ten in the end (for a room that sat around eighty) and one of the many lessons I learnt from taking JONAH NON GRATA to the Assembly Rooms was stars on posters don't necessarily mean bums on seats, so bums on posters next time? Maybe stars on bums? I'll stick links to the reviews that the trailer quotes from at the end of this post, but purely in tribute to the unimpeachable work done by this show's hype machine – ie Madelaine at Gingerbread – not for my sake. This isn't about me.

  But I mean, look at that. It's not easy to PR a twenty-year-old show either. You're not up for any awards. Still, Madelaine worked actually literally round the clock to get me press even if I had to write it myself. I shared some of those think pieces back in July, but not the lot, so let me slip into italics now, as I present an article I wrote for Gareth Vile's Analogue magazine about why JONAH NON GRATA's a clown show...

I remember an old interview with Dylan Moran where he stated an ambition to do absolutely nothing on stage, and have the audience get it.

In a time of such social upheaval no-one even noticed it, Woody Allen made three comedies – in a row – about the assassination of a political leader: “Bananas, “Sleeper”, and “Love and Death”. In each, the ethical and religious arguments against taking human life were inextricably tangled with the protagonist’s solipsistic, Bob-Hope-inspired cowardice and laziness.

It’s a cliché that every comedian wants to play Hamlet. The assumption, I think, is they hope to be taken more seriously. But Hamlet’s one of them already: more existentially comfortable splitting hairs and taking the piss than defeating Evil. The prophet Jonah also – at least in the most famous incident from the short book of the Bible bearing his name – is an inaction hero, comically human-sized. Initially, he refuses outright to call down the Wrath of God upon Nineveh, escaping on a boat. But then a storm comes, and there’s not much to do once you’re inside a whale.

When people ask me what “Jonah Non Grata” is about, I say it’s about that story – “sort of” – but it doesn’t matter if the audience don’t know it. When I’m asked what it is, I say it’s “a clown show”, because that’s what all my friends were making when I first devised it in my bedroom back in 2005. And if they ask me what a clown is, I‘m stuck.

The word means something. It has to. But read any casting breakdown of an advert calling for a “funny bones” or a “Zach Galifianakis/Martin Freeman/Jack Black type” (I only get the male ones, sorry) and you’ll see it’s hard to put into words. “Yes!” is one I remember from a clowning weekend sometime last century given by the great Angela De Castro – head of the “Why Not Institute” – and if you only have one word with which to teach someone how to be a clown, “Yes” might be the best. But doesn’t that then run entirely counter to my opening? Yes. And Why Not? Harpo and Chico try to steal a painting. Chico hears someone coming and hisses at Harpo to hide. Harpo stands on his head in the middle of the room. He’s still saying yes, just to something else. “If thy mind dislike anything,” Horatio tells Hamlet, “obey it.” Yes. Exactly. No.

I had a good pandemic. I hadn’t performed Shakespeare in a while, but with all the theatres shut, I decided to try performing the Complete Works on YouTube in my pyjamas, using a range of radio sketch show voices to differentiate characters, and some home-recorded foley, because why not? I hope the tone didn’t read as taking the piss. Or at least, no more than Rylance at the Globe – who never winked at the audience, but always let them in fully onto how weird everything going was. I like it when actors pretend to be the audience’s friend.

Weirdly though, I don’t like it when stand-ups do it. Maybe because stand-ups are pretending to be themselves. Every solo performer – or at least every solo performer with decent enough PR – is wildly outnumbered by their audience, which I find inherently, situationally funny. But stand-ups can’t acknowledge this power imbalance, because they’re not playing a character, so it’s just awkward. But Jonah is a character. And the audience’s friend, because – although he never uses the word “God” (or indeed “Jonah”) – they are clearly his congregation. The audience however, playing themselves, are under no obligation to be on Jonah’s side in return. That’s the motor of not just this show, but a lot of the work I was lucky enough to make with Shunt that inspired it: “Dance Bear Dance”… “Money”… The audience outnumbers the performer, but the performer knows the territory. I’ve made it sound like we’re at war. We’re not. But it’s nice if we’re strangers.

I assume most people know the story of Jonah, even if they’re not, like me, culturally Christian – or Jewish – and even if they don’t know that’s the story I’m telling. Old stories are good, because you don’t have to worry about making anything up, you can just get on with depicting people, and you can’t be blamed for the horrible things they want to do. And I’ve always thought Theatre was a good place to stage demons. But those attending have to feel it’s their own demons they’re watching, not those other fuckers’. They didn’t seem nearly so prevalent, even back during “The War on Terror”. So, I’ve added one line since which I hope will help keep us safe: “Waiting is also way of joining in."

 

Production shot taken during the technical rehearsal by John Scott. 

(I think I was thinner by the time we shot the trailer.)

 

 Back to the italics, as I present next an interview (by which I mean they emailed me questions and I emailed them answers) with the British Comedy Guide from the 10th of August, illustrated with more of John's production shots, which is why it's important to get production shots (and of course a press release, otherwise what are they going to ask me about, which is another thing I learnt)...

You describe Jonah Non Grata as "Hamlet, only sillier - or Tommy Cooper, only slower." What's the most ridiculous thing that happens onstage?

I don't want to give too much away, but possibly my entrance. And I'm not saying it's all downhill from there - my final exit's pretty ridiculous as well - but when you're presenting a solo immersive piece without any scenery, inspired by a three-thousand-year-old story about a prophet who lives in a fish, with self-penned soft techno songs (one of which is purely a three-verse summary of the Scrap Brain Zone of Sonic the Hedgehog) it's... Do you know, I think it's when I try to mime getting the air nozzle working on a plane. It's not good.

Is it true you've performed the complete works of Shakespeare on YouTube in your pyjamas?

No. But it is five thirty-eighths true. I performed - forgive the abbreviations, but they're long titles and I'm a massive wanker - Two Gents, Shrew, Titus, Julius Caesar, and Richard the Second, that last one twice because I didn't like the first version. I absolutely nailed the others though.

It was lockdown. Everyone was making stuff online, and I'd always been YouTube-curious, so I started reading aloud Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. When I finished that, I looked around for something else to read, and realised if I did a Shakespeare a week, I'd be done by Christmas - performing one act a day, with summaries and regular content warnings - but that didn't happen in the end, because it turned out to be a lot harder than just reading a book, and things were beginning to open up, and Black Lives Mattered so distractions became less useful. But I'm incredibly proud of both the quality and quantity of that work. I remember everyone making so much during lockdown. We thought it was the internet keeping us from having hobbies. Turns out it was pubs. Oh, and they weren't my pyjamas.

What's harder - writing an existential clown show or delivering legal advice in EastEnders?

Both are phenomenally easy, it turns out. In the first case, you just take a really old story everyone knows, make a mix tape to accompany it, listen to it while pissing around in your bedroom, and write down anything you might want to do again in front of an audience. Then you wait twenty years until you land a nice advert and can take it to Edinburgh.

In the second case, you send in a self-tape playing one of a million faceless interfaces with authority soap characters have to face daily, then get a phone-call saying you've landed the role of "seedy lawyer". You turn up knowing your lines. Everyone is brilliant. Danny Dyer's brilliant. Kellie Bright's brilliant. The director's brilliant. You're brilliant. Three cameras record it, and it never happens again. It's brilliant.

What's the most absurd line you've had to say in character?

That "had to" is interesting. So is "in character". I actually got to play Hamlet once. When Horatio tells him the ghost of his dead father has been sighted in a suit of armour on the battlements of Elsinore, his response is "This is very strange" which always got a laugh.

"You wouldn't shit on a bun" from the Shunt show Money also gets quoted back to me sometimes, but I wrote that one. The line I'll be declaiming on pavements in my final days though, like Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, is Sir Maxwell House's intro to The Monster Hunters podcast: "Take two elements. Any two elements. Say, electricity and water. On their own, perfectly harmless. But mix them together, maybe in a bowl... Dynamite!"

Who's your dream audience member for this show - and who would be absolutely baffled?

Exactly. Yes. Them.

 

 The following day, August the 11th, I did an actual interview in person, with Peter Green who was lovely and posted a slightly expurgated (ie minus me gushing about my PR) recording HERE. It's a good reflection of where I was two weeks into the run, and includes a few other lessons I'd learnt, such as how to describe the show when handing out flyers: it had become clear from the look of those walking out halfway through having clearly expected a Play about a Man from the Bible, that a stronger contract with any future crowd might be forged by abandoning the initial pitch "it's based on the Book of Jonah" in favour of "it's a mad show about nothing." I also reflect in the interview on having totally missed the "Art Comedy" bus: whether or not to bill the show under Comedy, rather than Theare, had always been a quandary, and it turns out – due partly to the brilliant and queer work produced that year by BigHead Comedy – that 2025 might have been the year to make that switch. Anyway, I hope Art Comedy remains a thing long enough for me to try and take some credit for it. There's more.

 

musical accompaniment

 

 Back to the press. My final piece was for a music magazine, Fame, published along with a few more production shots on August the 14th...

 While I make not claims for it as a "process", I went about making my first solo show the same way I would advise anyone to: I chose a very old story everyone knew as my starting point – in this case the Book of Jonah (of "and the whale" fame) – then, instead of worrying about how to tell it, built up a playlist of music which might accompany that story, and at my own leisure in my own bedroom, worked out things to do to it which I wouldn't mind doing again in front of an audience.

This may be a generational thing. When I was a student in the nineties, beginning to associate with people who were making theatre from scratch, we didn’t just put movie posters on our walls, we listened to carefully curated playlists of movie soundtracks. Trainspotting. Pulp Fiction. Romeo plus Juliet. Everyone had these CDs, and pre-existing songs beloved by a director were an integral – structural – part of work we found exciting. 

When I graduated, we didn’t disperse, and I started working with a theatre collective in a railway arch in Bethnal Green, called Shunt. Under this arch, behind the Oxo Tower, and finally, in a sprawl of tunnels beneath London Bridge station, we created absurd spaces around which the audience could move, which might change beyond recognition the moment spectators’ backs were turned. Losing your audience is normally considered a bad thing, but having an audience let themselves get lost is different, and essential to these changes were not only the extraordinary designs of Lizzie Clachan, but the versatile and hugely enjoyable soundscapes of Ben and Max Ringham. How, as a performer, could we accompany such compositions, and bring these spaces to life? That was the process I took into making Jonah Non Grata. (And it’s also why I can literally say I have more experience dancing about architecture than I do writing about music.)

 

The show I’m taking to Edinburgh this year I made alongside that work. It is in many ways a personal sequel to it, but as a solo show, it’s also far more suited to rooms above pubs, and – not wishing to give too much away – the audience pretty much stay in their seats (unless there’s a hymn). I wanted it still to have that what-would-now-be-called “immersiveness” though, and music was crucial for this. Nothing I chose for my soundtrack could be too “on the nose” though. The Ringhams’ work for Shunt, while highly evocative, was never generic, and what exactly was being evoked was part of a show’s mystery, something to play with, or against. So there’s no whale song in Jonah, for example. Trying to work out what’s happened once you’ve been swallowed by a whale is, I think, a far more interesting state to play than knowing you’re in a whale, and I’m very happy for the audience to share that mystery. Nearly everything I do onstage, nearly everything we hear, is about existing in the story, rather than telling it. 

 

And there are a lot of songs. An abstract space invites abstract text, something sparer than a monologue. Rather than lectures, I learnt working with Shunt that the audience might be better addressed by awkward questions, slogans, ritual, found text or invented catchphrases, language as part of the alien landscape. Or of course, lyrics. There’s an economy to lyrics. People receive words differently when they’re sung, and a performer delivers them differently too. Songs are time stretchers, time savers, and, as well as releasing words from their obligation to convey specific information, music releases an audience from its obligation to follow what’s going on. This can be essential when a public might worry they’re not “getting it”. All attention should be rewarded, but rather than demanding intellectual engagement, I think there should always be space for an audience to drift off, without fear of getting lost, especially if – as may happen at the Edinburgh Fringe – they’ll be seeing four or five other shows that day. 

I hope this helps.

  Hmm. Two "though"s. Not good. 

 Anyway, that's what I wrote. Just before I move onto the reviews: I lost or maybe I should just say spent ten thousand on the whole thing in the end, which is what I expected to lose, but I wonder if I'd have still lost it if I hadn't exxpected to. it was the most nerve-wracking show I have ever done which is probably a good thing, Edinburgh New Town's not what it was ten years ago in terms of passing trade, I was surprised how long it took me to be in the mood to see anything else, at least two weeks, if I return with a solo show I'll try to make sure it's still part of a larger group of people, every night saw somebody not like Jonah and somebody absolutely love it and with single-figure crowds there's only so much you can sway that, I felt like an artist, if not a working artist, and I finally want to make a next show, and if you came, thank you, and whether or not you did, let's shake off these italics, and happy new year!

 

 Here in France, it's just turned 2026, and a warm hello to everyone sticking around for the plaudits. So. PR's plan to do a second London preview at the Hen and Chickens in order to potentially have something to stick to the posters as soon as we were up, bore beautiful, juicy fruit, although I balked at turning Ben Moor's whales into stars...

 

 Still, long term readers of the blog will know how much those whales will have meant to me. As for the rest, here are the links along with any quotes that ended up electric-stapled to the flyer. That's how I'm celebrating. (I also have port.)

 

So, I already mentioned Rich Cline's review from June 22nd at the time but here it is again: "There's a reason why this show has such a following: it's a near-perfect display of surrealist comedy, brain-bending and utterly hilarious... a skilful performance that brings out hauntingly deep, dark ideas about humanity in unimaginably amusing style."

 

July 20th, The Reviews Hub     (This was a hell of a review. ) "A divinely commanded clown... absurd and profound... Kane's performance is extraordinary... He welcomes both laughter and awe... so thematically dense that you could discuss it for days on end, but it is also an absolutely joyous, in-the-moment experience." This was a hell of a review.

 

July 21st, Sarah Birch Hackney Citizen  (quality) "A virtually indescribable cacophony of humour and found language...  be sure not to miss this captivating five-star-quality production."

July 22nd, Malcolm Beckett Theatre Vibe DON'T DO STARS bless, and then we went to Edinburgh, to receive...

 

 

 But also – on August the 6th – from Bruce the Moose Bruce on the Fringe .5 and then...

 

August 9th, Erin Ross Edinburgh Guide  "The show is, yes, funny; it’s absolutely mad; but it has a startling poignancy. Perhaps it’s the sheer conviction of this writer and performer... The audience left dizzy, happy and connected having experienced something very strange together, something to think on and share when someone inevitably asks, “What did you see at the festival?” Don’t miss the chance to see something devout immersive and interactive theatre lovers have lauded for many years; it’s the fringiest thing at the Fringe."
 

August 11th, Kay Marquis The Wee Review  "Kane manages to be both alarmingly unpredictable and reassuringly genial... it may dwell on angst and be full of sinister shocks and disorientating requests, but it’s very funny... for anyone looking for something different, this is perfect."

 

And then my first actual print review on August 12th, from Hamish Gibson in
Fest 

 

Never mind, let's check on those audience reviews (thanks, Morgan!) 

 So the show was, if not finding its audience, at least losing its non-audience, and trouble was being shot...

 

August 13th, Sean Greenhorn The List , a big one which we didn't use any quotes from, but I still enjoyed the writing: "It’s always tough to review a show like Jonah Non Grata; a show that consistently wrongfoots the audience, revelling in awkward moments where things don’t seem to be working. It’s tough because, to some, the lack of laughter is the point, and can perversely lead to the biggest laughs of all. Simon Kane’s surreal anti-comedy piece is loosely about dilemmas and decisions. Or a vengeful man who wants to stay at the Marriott. Or simply the slow unravelling of an entertainer. It’s honestly hard to tell." 

 

 The show was definitely better when people laughed though, I knew that by now. You can't let the audience know you're in on the joke however without breaking character, but I was getting better at it...

August 17th, Elise Mc Leod Ruby TV (who don't do stars)

August 19th, Oli Fuller Binge Fringe  "An hour of theatre that will have you on the edge of your seat and will keep you thinking about it for the rest of your life... It is artistic and beautiful and indescribably enticing... an absurdist masterpiece. Go see this show, do not put it on a list, do not see it if you have time, book it now." 

 

Oli stayed around afterwards. I loved Oli.

 

August 22nd, My Goddess Complex  "equal parts absurdist theatre, stand-up comedy, and performance art."

 

And finally...

August 25th, Ben Kulvichit Exeunt (who also don't to stars) "I like liquorice." And it should have turned 2026 in Britain too now so HAPPY THAT! No rush.

 

 

5th of March 2017

Big Spoon

artwork by Jon Stubbington

 

 Of course, I'm biased. But I think my mate Matthew Woodcock (Monster Hunters co-creator, "Roy Steel", and former Tweed Avenger of Mitre Square before the London Dungeons started giving us all scripts) has produced a genuine podcast Masterpiece in The Divide. Without giving too much away – and there is SO MUCH to give away – his new, twelve-part Cold War beast, is John Le Carré meets Philip K. Dick, with new episodes out every Friday, atmosphere you could cut with a piano wire, and me popping up all over the show as louche para-intelligence panjandrum Charles "A bastard for a boss can be quite the motivator" Spooner. Everyone involved has done incredible work on it so I won't mention any of them because I want you to stop reading this immediately and start catching up with it NOW: Here, look what a lovely length the episodes are...

 

 Power through the first four if you can for a NEXT LEVEL TWIST, and then bask in the even-nexter levelness of episode five...

  

 And then enjoy the wait. Cool some water, maybe, invite some friends round whatever you cooled that water with and talk and about it while you wait. Like! Subscribe! Sorry, I'm excited. I honestly reckon you'll be hooked though, I'm really proud to be involved, I've just shed a week-long fever, and you know how long it normally takes me to plug stuff. Here's another Grand Panjandrum...

 

 

 

 Fireworks and dogs. A different time. 

Meeting Your Heroes

The way to the bottom of my heart might be windy... prononunced wine-dy (I wish there were a way to disambiguate that as I've mentioned before)... but it's down there somewhere, and from that bottom I heartily recommend making one's friends one's heroes. 

 Look how many turned up to the show on Saturday night (Tickets here!) Some I hadn't seen offline since before the pandemic. Some I'd seen out Ripper Walking in the Summer. Two are getting married. One's just been confirmed as the new voice of Wallace. One's working on the fourth and final series of The Monster Hunters. One's going to be working at Heathrow Airport on Christmas Eve as a mime. One really liked Del Toro's "Pinocchio", and thought I would too – Sorry, Kevin. So I haven't witten more about that copy of the Daily Mail from 1946, Sorry. But of course you don't just stave off the darkness of this season by putting lights up, you also get busy reuniting.

 (I will let you read that story a little closer though, in case yesterday's image was too small. It's stunning to see how little time following the end of the actual Second World War it took some papers to see things from the fascists' point of view again... Also, an odd choice of defense of tactic from Goring on the right there...)

"Perfectly Buoyant" - further chronicling of the tosh

willoughbies.jpeg by John Finnemore

 We had tried all manner of things with "The Willoughbies" in previous series of JFSP at both sketch try-outs and live recordings. We'd tried it with John as the Dad, with me as the Dad, as a "runner" – catching buses, or winning points for spotting spelling mistakes in a menu – and as a standalone, but the clan never made it in. Also, I didn't really get them. I am, as should be clear from these posts by now, a lot slower on the uptake than most listeners, and as cold as any stone. Possibly the point was to show a generically happy, Ned-Flanders-type family in a less annoying light, and to let an audience – specifically John's audience – love something more commonly mocked. Or posssibly it was less pointed than that. Sometimes John just enjoys painting portraits. Anyway, I was surprised how doggedly he kept trying to do something with them.

 

 So when he first mooted over Zoom his plans for Series Nine, and for the family formerly known as Willoughby to take centre stage, I immediately considered how out of my depth I might be. This wouldn't be the normal rough trade John gets me to do, I'd need a buoyancy aid. That buoyancy aid turned out to be a fond memory of Jim Broadbent at his most "heigh-ho", augmented with Terry Jones' weak "R", and I clung to that aid for dear life when recording Jerry's first scene, the restaurant scene from Episode Two. As I said on twitter during the tweetalong: 

 "I reckon it might have been this scene that made me consider giving Jerry that voice. I was worried my own voice might sound a little too punching down. Among other things"

 You know. Bullying. 

 I'm making it sound like it was hard, aren't I. It wasn't hard, of course. I had John's writing to play, John and the rest of the cast to play off, Sue's tunes to sing, and Ed to tell me how much Jerry reminded him of his dad. But this was still unlike anything I'd done on the radio before.* Jerry wasn't a character in a sketch. He'd last a whole series, a series in which I'd also be playing quite a few other roles which we'd have distinguish him from. So whatever voice I used in that first recording of that first scene would have to stick. Fortunately, Jim Broadbent is a very versatile actor. 

 Oh, here's something about that restaurant sketch I didn't know:

 

 And this might be my favourite revelation of the week. 

 I've loved Willie Rushton ever since I received a copy of his comic The Gernaium of Flüt as a child, and I wish I could find it now. His son in that is called Toby, I think. His dog might be called Toby as well. I sang his praises here back in 2008. And here he is playing Watson opposite John Cleese's Holmes.

 

 

 

 But he wasn't just the dry, avuncular fantasist of my childhood. Ruhston was there at the beginning of Private Eye and That Was The Week That Was, a stalwart of the sixties' Satire Boom that Jerry fails the audition for in Episode Six. In real life there are people who remind you of people, and I love that Jerry had that too, whether I knew it or not. But what I remind myself most of, listening to Jerry again now, is my childhood friend, Tom of our number. He was big fan of Willie Rushton too.

 HERE is something great that William Shaw wrote about the series' approach to failure. And here, before I go – because, despite what it says at the top of this post, it's actually New Year's Eve tonight – is another thing John told me about the inspiration for Jerry when we first Zoomed:

 

  It goes up to 63, by the way. 

 Series Nine is still being repeated at 11pm on Radio 4, the final episode is tonight, if you have any questions you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here (I recognise that, despite all this talk about buoyancy aids, I haven't once mentined the lilo scene). Happy New Year, Unattendees!

*(I know I've played Sir Maxwell House over a few series of The Monster Hunters {who also taught crows to do tricks} but Sir Maxwell is a character from a sketch, which might be why the show outgrew him.)

O Sweet, O Sweet Content!

 

All set!

 I am seriously considering a review of the two-hundred VHS tapes I keep in the cupboard to replace Frankenstein Wednesdays. I started on tape #1 last night, containing Flash Gordon, The Man With Two Brains and The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition (or as my Dad put it, the version where they put all the acting). It's interesting to note that Hobbiton, supposedly the most backward, unchanging community in Tolkein's world, appears to be centuries ahead in its influences of the Medieval-inspired civilisations surrounding it. Boom! Blog done. I'd also been considering blogging about Ming's daughter Princess Aura for a while: She seems to have been to Flash Gordon creator Alex Raymond what Satan was to Milton: entirely and unintentionally heroic.

 Boom! Another blog. Really though today's post is all about flagging up some of the beautiful ways others have been using their time. The magnificent Andy Stanton, for example, has been reading aloud all of a Mr. Gum book, so we can finally know for certain what everyone was supposed to sound like:

 His fellow Nincompoop, and my own colleague and definite future Dr. Who, Carrie Quinlan, has initiated The Wild Freelancer Blog, and also this: 

 The writers of Mitchell and Webb's "Remain Indoors" sketches have remained indoors to bring us this episode of Rule Of Three (no way of embedding that, sorry) while Mighty Fin impresario Robbie Hudson has set up his own Emergency Broadcast System over on Spotify, on which I can occassionally be heard bellowing songs. Seasoned Science shut-in Helen Czerski (six weeks aboard a ship studying bubbles at the North Pole is nothing to her - she's like an astronaut if space had bears) joins the ranks of Science Shambles' Stay at Home Festival:

 More fictionally, Monster Hunters co-creator Matthew Woodcock has created a surprisingly prescient submarine-based thriller for Definitely Human called Down, its presience almost exactly matching that of Avenue 5, if anyone's seen that. No spoilers. Avenue 5's shuttle pilot John Finnemore meanwhile, perhaps most heroically of all, has gone and shaved his beard just to give us this wonderful thing:

 And obviously I've been rebranding procrastination as "social isolation" from pretty much ever since this blog went daily last Christmas (April the first will be the hundredth straight post) but, Oo! My second pilot to Time Spanner, The Dan in the High Castle, is being repeated on Radio 4 tomorrow if anyone fancies a huddle. Huge thanks and love to all these makers and partakers. Be well, everyone.

For when I run out of VHSes.

A Salute to the Many Excellent Drunk Women Portrayed in "Werewolf of London" (1935)

Apologies for the low resolution, I tried to put this on youtube but it all got blocked. 

Featuring:

    Spring Byington as Ettie Coombes ("Shh.") whose work in this film is as good as anything out of Lee Strasberg. 

     Charlotte Granville as Lady Forsyth ("Please don't yank me, Paul.")
     Maude Leslie as Mrs. Charteris ("I simply jitter to go to Java.") or, at least, I'm assuming that's who this character is. I'm not sure she and Lady Forsyth are that drunk, either.
      Jeanne Bartlett as Daisy ("Give me a nice kiss, Alf."). Definitely meant to be drunk, but again I'm only assuming from IMDB that this is "Daisy".
     Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Whack ("Is your tripe tough, Mrs. Moncaster?") and Zeffie Tilbury as Mrs. Moncaster ("Spear the canary with a fork.") These two attributions I'm sure about; they're very good about saying each other's names.
     And Tempe Pigott ("I want two gins for two ladies") credited simply as "Drunk Woman" on IMDB, which is a bit rich in this company.
 

 Parenthetically, in contrast to all the superb character work above, the film's two werewolves – Warner Oland and Henry Hull – appear to have been genuinely paralytic for most of the filming, making their many conversations about the fictional plant Mariphasa Lupina Lumina particularly nail-biting. (It is a mouthful.)

"Mariphasa... Lupina... Lumina..."

 Screenplay by John Colton, from a story by Robert Harris. Direction by Stuart Walker. Second viewing by means of the Wolf Man boxset at Peter Davis and Laura Marshall's, where I finally gave this film the attention it was due. Excellent party. Peter's just extended his horror podcast output, by the way. "Horror Movie Maniacs" pleases me greatly, and might please you too, and the Hellraiser-inspired audio guignol that he and fellow maniac Phil wrote and produced – Piercing The Veil" – in which I get to play an absolute rotter, is still audible here.

No use hiding behind the sofas, it's all in your ears!

 

 The Monster Hunters released another Special on Christmas Eve! I'm not in it, but it's The Monster Hunters so that really shouldn't matter to you by now. If your nerves are not already too shredded by whatever seasonal horrors you've ingested thus far then - musty tomes, greasy mirrors, that weirdly toothy rocking horse - here's a clip!

 You can hear "The Vampire Tree" in its entirety for free HERE, and if you hit that link you will also see that thanks to a splendid turn of events not yet heralded on this blog, you can now hear every single other episode of "The Monster Hunters" either beautifully remastered or engineered from scratch (screech, tapping and slurp) by the loft boffins at Definitely Human, and I'm in loads of those! The Definitelies bravely took the show under their wing ealier this year and have done incredible things with it since, creating beautiful artwork for each series (not this header, that's one of scrapnick's awesome tumblr contributions - oh yes, there's tumblr art now!) along with a host of "Steel Got It" extras on soundcloud, which is a thing (they even let me do one), as well as additional fireside chats at the end of each old episode from the creators themselves, Matthew "Woke" Woodcock and Peter "Dirty" Davis. (Not their real nicknames of course. Matthew's is Bishop, and Peter's is, if I remember correctly, Tiny Mook the Woodsman, although I'm not sure he still has the hood. Maybe he never had a hood. Maybe I dreamt Peter's hood.) So even if you already heard all these when they first went out, listen again! My sister's in them too! And Series 2's Beast of Albion now reads like a massive metaphor for Brexit! Boo! Here's another beauty from scrapnick, illustrating "The Box of Desires":

Ear Plugs

But first, a belated...

Or not. We'll see. I'm going to try and use the blog a lot more this year at least. I wrote nothing last year, not just here but in general, unless you count the slew of comments about The Last Jedi I posted on Joel Morris' f*c*b**k page over the Holidays (WHY EVEN BRING BB-8?) so in 2018 I hope to be less reactive in my internet activity, and more... I don't know... hermetic?

Before I get to work on that insomniac mind-punch however, this week sees me clowning around NOT ONLY in London's glittering and highly monitered West End BUT ALSO in TWO consecutive pleasings on the Radio 4, so let's rinse out that bin and FISH OUT THOSE PLUGS!

THIS EVENING, at half past six, you can hear Angstrom... pronounced "ARNGstrom", and narrated by ME! Half of the retakes were because I pronounced it wrong. I also play Angstrom's boss "Bols Aashol" - a further third of the retakes were me buggering that name up too. Here is a picture of the Swedish Meatball Hot Wrap I bought in the lunch break to research my accent:

And TOMORROW EVENING at half past six you can hear the second episode of series SEVEN of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme. Go on, kiss your ears! Here is a picture of the effect episode one had on the internet:

("Stinkkalk"?)

And if twenty-three and a half hours is too long a wait between those two doses of me, why not ALSO buy a ticket to tomorrow's as-yet-unsold-out matinee of our London run of The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Or, if you can't get a ticket, why not listen to all SIX episodes of the Wireless Theatre Company's Adventures of Drayton Trench, recorded at London's Museum of Comedy which is smaller than the Radio Theatre?

OR download my appearance on International Waters back in September recorded in a big egg on Dean Street?

OR listen to the thrilling latest episode of the now AWARD-WINNING Monster Hunters - "Queen of the Yeti Men" (which I'm not in)? Here is the award!

Yes! I won an award! AND why not vote for Time Spanner over on the British Comedy Guide and give me another one? EH?
WHY NOT? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU? AND WHAT THE HELL WERE THESE?

End of plugs. Heartfelt details to follow.

Wireless photo by Mike Tomlinson

Happy New Year image care of this.