Margaret's Fringe. Gilbert's Fridge.

Margaret Cabourn-Smith reflects on her old sketch antics and why you shouldn't use real meat in your shows. You can listen to the full conversation right here! shows.acast.com/out-of-chara... #Comedy #Chat #Podcast #Sketch #Character #VictorianTimes #Liver #Magic #EdFringe

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— Out Of Character (@oocharacterpod.bsky.social) 26 May 2025 at 10:54

 

 As "Jonah" turned from distant credit to looming "to do", I found these and other reminiscences about heading to the Edinburgh Fringe and making "magical worlds... trawling costumes around rooms above pubs" from fellow Finnemoreperson and rising star, Margaret Kaboom-Smith, both inspiring and grounding, and did not in the end use real fish. 

 

 Another reminiscence: Margaret, Carrie, Lawry and I independently tour our production of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "Мы" for ten seconds in 2019

 

 Margaret is often inspiring and grounding, and I happen to have also recorded a (far more meandering) Out of Character with Alex Lynch back in 2022, but never got round to putting it up here, so why not listen to both episodes now, and compare our differing accounts of, say, making Series Nine? (I did not think it might be shit.)

Simultaneously. That's right. Listen to them simultaneously. It's like being in the room with us!

 

 I remember enjoying myself a lot during the recording, and also the punishing heat – so today's actually perfect for a repost – I had just got back from "Bleak Expectations" in Newbury, and had no idea at the time the show would go on to the West End with an almost completely new cast, nor that Series Nine would indeed be the last series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme but that it would continue as a series of annual specials, and I'd certainly no idea I would be writing for Mitchell and Webb again in 2025, which I should definitely write about, I know. But I think that's all the loose ends tied up. Our next Silly Voices Day is Friday.

 

Yet another reminiscence: Mayfly Season, Newbury, 2022. Intense.

 

 Oh! The actor whose name I couldn't remember is James Callis, and Lillian Roth is the actress from "Animal Crackers". And I don't think that sound is me belching and rustling crisps, I think it's feedback. And it's a Newcastle accent Gilbert puts on as Len MacMonotony, not Birmingham, and Engelbert Humperdinck he mentions, not Sacha Distel. In fact, here is some "Gilbert's Fridge". They don't make kids' shows like etc.

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Laser Birds

 

 I've been giving a lot of thought to why the Arrested Development joke above, where Michael finds a bag in the fridge marked 'DEAD DOVE Do Not Eat!' opens it, looks inside, winces, but then says "I don't know what I expected" is so funny (outside of how well it's played and shot), and I think I've got it: People have an unhelpful amount of difficulty processing unexpected information through any medium other than personal experience.

 

  I've also been considering how much I may have overestimated people's desire to communicate with each other in general – or rather, be communicated to – and underestimated how much they might just rather be left to their own opinions, unruffled by information from other people, aliens, or pets. Here are some photographs of a man trying to teach a horse to count: Wilhelm Van Osten, whose work in the 1890's on or with "Clever Hans" spanned a number of moustaches...

 Their story graces the Extra Material of Helen Zaltzman's ever excellent "The Allusionist" podcast, specifically the second of two episodes about science fiction author Mary Robinette Kowal's apparently successful attempts to establish more nuanced communication with her cat, Elsie, through an increasingly large number of "button boards" (as shown below). While aware that no experiment ever showed an animal to be dumber than we thought, I initially approached these episodes with scepticism, but by the time I was hearing about a cat forming compound words – attempting to summon a light's reflection on the ceiling by tapping the buttons for "laser" and "bird", say –  I was asking myself, My God, why doesn't every pet owner have one of these?

 

 Source.

 

And it was this question which led me to consider that, maybe, people would just rather not know what other beings are thinking. Does any of this have anything to do with "Jonah Non Grata"? Not really, which is why I'm posting it. You guys deserve a break. For the record though, I feel that that night at Soho turned out to be both beautiful and useful, give hot thanks to everyone who came – including those who had to because they worked there – and am very grateful too to Rich Cline, for his lovely review which you can read HERE, but that's not much of a post, is it.  

 

Poster suggestion subsequently vetoed by PR. "Faces sell more." 

 

I will also just say that in, you know... these times...  while I may be writing to my MP quite a bit, and while I wish every friend of mine engaging with the Equality and Human Rights Commission's oppressive, ignorant, and unnecessary instructions on gender conformity every success in their consultation with MPs and hope to my core their consultation helps... that, as Rich writes in his review: "absurdity keeps us on our toes," and that we should, more generally, remember Michael and the dead dove and stop putting so much faith in the idea that, as long as we make sense, we'll be understood. I wish that were true. But, less dispiritingly, I'm also excited to start reaching out again to people through a work they won't have to understand.

 Here are tickets for Jonah at Edinburgh.

 And here are those episodes:

Spinach or Silence as Sources of Power

 "So, Art is something which is made when you use a material to change something... but it helps people to consider the Art which is in front of them if it is grouped with another set of Art, and it's very difficult to consider Art in isolation from other Art..."

 Born Yesterday has a great format: two twenty-four-hour-old clones of the hosts ask two guests to explain the world in terms of the only three things they've yet had time to learn about. Alexander Bennet and Andy Barr are its perfect hosts, digging down in just the right spots, and presenting perfectly packaged summaries, so no matter how a guest chooses to play it – as hilarious disruptor or dweebish stickler – it's almost impossible not to be entertaining. (Like Taskmaster.) As evidence, I'd like to submit this episode, in which I'm dropped in alongside Andrea Hubert (I'll let you decide which is which) to explain such topics as Cumbria and the concept of "The Ends Justifying the Means" with only Popeye, a Hog-roast, and Birmingham New Street Station as points of reference. Other topics also emerge during the episode, such as animal cruelty in early cinema, Insults, Joy, and whether or not – according to the mathematics of decapitation – Bradley Cooper's nose in Maestro makes him more alive. 

 I've been a fan of this podcast since it began, and obviously I'm always up for explaining the world to babies, so thanks to Andy and Alexander – an old Crystal Maze colleague – for inviting me, and thanks to Andrea for being such a great teammate/opponent and for showing me all her blades. (We appear nineteen minutes in. If you fancy a drinking game, down a shot every time you notice me avoiding saying her name because I get self-consciously stuck on whether "Andrea" has a long or short A, despite it being said numerous times during the record, and the way the name's always pronounced. I'll join you.)

 "So, in building our understanding of what a Mime is, we have been led to believe that, if a dog were to withhold from you its name, it would be able to pick you up..."

 

Wowee! An Official Film!

The Fifth Horseman

 

 

 I walked home from Hackney today, trying to think what Friday's Quiz would be about.

 

 The morning had been spent filming with old colleagues from The Crystal Maze, playing imaginary friends in costumes from Sophie Cochevelou, covered with toy cars and Mr. Men. It was lovely to catch up.

 Our old Maze costumes would have been hanging up, unwashed, on the top floor of the Trocadero for a year by now. I had no idea what to make the quiz about, or indeed today's post. The canal by Victoria Park was fenced off and drained for some reason. But these aren't pictures of that.

 

   These are pictures I took of a walk last Wednesday, March the 3rd, listening to a podcast about Chupucabra in the mist. I'll probably do a film-related round. A fortnight ago, the news was full of Mars. Sometimes when I write a blog, I look for the thing I've left out, and then put that down, and delete the rest. Sometimes it's not about finding a focus though, but providing a space.

 

 Nothing on the blog's been received more gratefully than my records of late night walks, so that's why I'm finally posting them, in place of another black square. I don't know if they're really what's wanted. I could always ask. This seems the place to do it. I just don't want to leave Sarah Everard un-named on here.

 

 And I don't want to leave unacknowledged the fact that the hopelessness voiced after her nightmarish abduction and murder – possibly by a police officer – has to do with more than just walking home alone, or being out after dark, but with sharing any space, any time, with the daily terrorism of men – heroes of their own story, keepers of the law. Top billed.

 

  And I want to acknowledge the hopelessness – both perceived and experienced – of reporting these acts of terror. Changing that is something to hope for at least, and demand, for a start. Actionable, structural change. "Inequality" seems too tiny word for a whole reality. I know what a person needs, because I have it. But it's mine, and I don't know how to give it. Again, I could always ask. And this might be the place to do that. And thank you for your company. Really, how are you doing?  

 

Dancing Lessons From Lucy Maud (a note on risk assessment)

For "travel suggestions" read book recommendations, 
and for "dancing lessons" read book recommendations, again,
and for "Bokonon" read Kurt Vonnegut.

 Apologies for the tomorrowness of this post, but I think my body clock's running to a thirty-six hour day now, so look I'm just going to go with it. I walked up Parliament Hill yesterday at 4am, or the hill next to Parliament Hill, and I listened to Ken Campbell's Letter To Bob Anton Wilson. Pretty much all of Campbell's shows have now been released as podcasts now and subjects overlap, but I'd never heard him talk before about Anne Of Green Gables. There's a video of the "Letter" too, and here's a bit of it (or a lot, depending on how long you keep watching):

 A series of "redemptive vignettes" is how Campbell describes Lucy Maud Montgomery's series, capable of reducing the hardest of men to tears and forcing the maestro to finally confront his own "a**holery". Obviously I love a good children's book, the clarity and care and genrelessness, and so by the time I'd got home I considered this a recommendation, and I went to bed. But my body was having nothing of it, so I decided to sit myself down in front of the telly and finally watched Russian Doll on Netflix. I binged all eight episodes. I loved it. But...

 Natasha Lyonne's character Nadia, self-consciously but effortlessly hard-bitten and initially impermeable, turns out to have been anchored to humanity by the children's book "Emily of New Moon". For the second time that morning therefore, a narrative of fractured universes was recommending to me the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery. This actually didn't seem so weird given that in both Campbell's and Lyonne's world "clues fucking abound" to quote Nadia, and yet that thematic aptitude was itself a further coincidence, and probably should have made it feel weirder.

Footage of Ken and Daisy Campbell "astounding their selves into being" at Damanhur

(unavailable on the podcast).

 What I found more interesting, on a zeitgeisty level, was how Russian Doll toyed with an idea I'd seen come up a lot recently - in the Live, Die, Repeat machine from the Vat of Acid episode of Rick and Morty - or in the extraordinary, even more recent, choose-your-own adventure finale of Kimmy Schmidt (again on Netflix). You could call it "risk assessment", although the latter show offers more an opportunity for catharsis, impossible with any previous telly technology.* It seems decisions themselves might be the new monster, the new Atom Bomb. And television's extraordinary at the moment. And it seems a good time to stay in.

* UPDATE: Watching this Nathen Zed video on The Last Of Us 2 I realise I'd probably be less surprised by all these developments if I gamed more.

"MORE MEN ARE USING MUMBLING AS A STEPPING-STONE TO HONEST COMMUNICATION"

"orthographical banter" 

 Last year - I can't remember when but it was clearly hot - the writer Chris Power and I were invited onto the excellent podcast of Postcards from the Past curator Tom Jackson. You can hear it here, and can see which postcards we brought along here. According to Tom "this is a lively one", and I do appear to have a lot on my mind, but I had a lot of fun unloading it (and got a great introduction) so thank you, Tom and Chris. (I wonder if Chris has worked out by now who either Wayne or Wendy were.)

This Week's Drinks

 It's tax day today, and it's Brexit day, so Joel Morris and I met this evening for what turned out to be a responsible three and a half pints each. I brought Joel up to date with other drinks I'd had this week, and we both took notes. Joel noted, for example, that there should be a Liff word for the person in a group elected to explain the rules of a boardgame, an observation borne from me recalling how last Sunday I'd tried to explain the plot of the film "Cats" to John Finnemore. (I'd forgotten how easy it can be to make John weep with laughter.) Joel also noted how often he was hearing Tom Petty in pubs these days, and how effectively the pitch of his voice cut through the murmur of a crowd, like the tambourine in a Motown track that makes those songs so ideal for a jukebox. I passed on a Fun Fact I'd learnt in a bar from Mark Steel the night before, attending a recording of David Reed's outstanding podcast "Inside The Comedian", a fact for which I can find no evidence online... Actually before I tell you, think of the thinnest celebrity you can imagine. Okay. Now think of the widest. Okay, now here's the fact: John Cooper Clarke's school bully was Giant Haystacks.

Something else the "Cats" film reminded me of.
 

 What else? We talked about the background noise of vanishing coin, something I'd felt suddenly absent from the second series of "Fleabag" for example, and of the work of freelancers who constantly live with that background noise, and of the creative, commissioning and critical decisions of those who don't, and how so much British Cinema in our lifetimes seemed to be the work of the latter, telling stories that either ignore money completely or contrastingly find poverty fascinating, and I thought that might explain why so many British films are either Boring or Horrible. I was probably on my third pint by then. Cracking chat.

 And here's a neat place for plugs. Joel and Jason Hazeley's "Rule Of Three" podcast serves as lasting proof of just how good at talking they are, and is hearable here. David's podcast "Inside the Comedian", in which guests are not allowed to tell the truth, can be heard here, also if you can get over to one of the live recording at Kings Place I'd really recommend that too. David and I are of course both in Joel And Jason's scandi-nougat "Angstrom" which is apparently available on BBC Sounds forever here. Oh also, David has a scifi comedy pilot out next week here, "Napoleon Moon", which should be excellent. John meanwhile, though not credited as one of the writers of Armando Iannucci's "David Copperfield", is from what I've seen of the trailers absolutely all over it, so we should redouble our efforts to see that too. It looks neither Boring nor Horrible. The photo of Soho is from my Instagram. The image of the 50p coin celebrating the UK's joining the EEC in 1973 and depicting a Ring of Hands is from this video. And finally, not really a plug, but l wrote this post the day before the decision to leave the EU was taken three and a half years ago. I still think it's a dumb decision, and Europe, I love you, and we will be back. Bissous.

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.

As Many Stars as there are Ears!

 As you can see, it's been a fun winter apart from the gas leak and the prospect of having all of our floorboards ripped up and – Forget that. Why not enjoy some of the fruits of that winter down the side of your head? And forget about not having any heat, or floor – boiled eggs or floor, that's the deal – But don't worry about that! Here:

 The Monster Hunters Christmas Special! "The Rapping on The Mirror" – NOW with added SCRYING. And a whole Series 3 is on its way! I'm listening again to Series 2 as I write this. Much happy.

 North by Northamptonshire: Full Stop! A "bottle episode", which means I get to do a massive, long scene with Katherine Jakeways and Felicity Montagu and Penelope Wilton AND Geoffrey Palmer, AND Sheila Hancock, AND John Biggins, and TWO Kevin Eldons! All in a bottle! The kind of morning one files under "Christmas has come early", hence the jumper in the photo.

 And finally, this very evening on the BBC's own Radio Four, a BRAND NEW SERIES of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme will be broadcast at half-past six! And then HERE!

 Okay, enough fruit... I wonder if there's any pizza left for breakfast.

Smashing Time

Lemon and McCartney

"The Goliath Window" here.
The fourth in Jonn Finnemore's beautiful "Double Acts" series (industry secret: The fourth episode of a series is always the best). SEE how much sleep I got the night before the recording like a proper professional not staying up late all excited like a chancer. HEAR all the lovely stupid sounds John wrote for me to make. WONDER whose bare flesh that is actually being slapped. (It's not mine, I know that - I was holding a script). KEEP up, as six-thousand perfectly selected words are delivered in just under twenty-seven minutes - surely a record! LISTEN to the others too - they're no Episode 4 obviously, but they're still gems and have people in it who are excellent and famous and probably got some sleep.

And on the subject of double-acts, and male modelling, and slapping flesh, and a thinky one and a punchy one, the Monster Hunters return with brand new Hallowe'en webcast "The Doll's House" here.

Featuring me as Sir Maxwell House (no relation... although very possibly a relation to Mark in The Goliath Window, let's face it... voices) and perfect for a Friday the 13th, this beauty features Sir Maxwell posing for a waxwork, lots of unnerving snickering in the dark, Lorrimer Chesterfield's flat getting further annexed by idiots, and Roy Steel facing the very real chance he might be losing his lady powers. Well, I mean, time moves on, Roy. It's won't be the seventies for ever. And what would the Monster Hunters look like in the eighties, eh?

Eh?.......................................

The most off-putting opening credits ever? 

 (If any of you do fancy braving the pilot episode, let me know in the comments below 
where in God's name you think the ZANY first scene is supposed to take place.)

"I might have that little chair we were talking about now."

"The Box of Desires" – a chilling new episode from The Monster Hunters – is now up, and that is a line from it. A particularly unsettling tale this, in spite of my Sir Maxwelling, and the obvious influence of M.R. James – Wait, not "in spite of ". Sorry. I meant "because of the influence of M.R. James" obviously. M.R. James is very scary, sure. What's more scary than basically nothing?

Although, now I think of it, while your headphones are up, draw your curtains and get your looking-at-stuff gear round this below, from the beautiful and talented Joel Morris and Will Maclean. Its young star, Susy Kane, is also tremendous and definitely one to watch. You will jump.

Brilliant stuff. There's a bit I want to freeze-frame just to accustom myself to the terror.
But I daren't. Like that bit in "Mulholland Drive" – Oh wait no, not that bit in "Mulholland Drive", the bit with the monster round the corner. Not the bit with the – Not the – Not Laura Harring and Naomi Watts in the – I don't freeze-frame –
Anyway, that's loads of bits.
Susy can also be heard playing Griselda Promegrew in Monster Hunters' Series 2, of course.
And now I think of it, I can be heard playing the aforementioned M.R. James in a super fun sketch written by aforementioned Will Maclean in the new series of "Before They Were Famous", recorded last July, and going out – When? What? MAY?!
Oh.
Brrr...

How I Plug

Well, "Exciting Space Adventures" are all well and good, but what have you been up to?

What do you mean? Who are you?

You did another series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, didn't you?

Oh! Yes! Yeah, but I assumed anyone who read this blog would already know about –

 

Can that still be heard?

Yes. Absolutely. It's up on, erm – Oh, some episodes have gone now – but there's still some left on iplayer. Yeah, it's great. So good. Listening back, I feel I could have maybe toned it down for some of the sketches, but –

 

You're not happy with your work on it?

No no no! It's – Not at all. It was really – Oh, and the Quasimodo sketch is up now on something called Radio 4 in Four.

 

The Jake Yapp thing!

Oh. No.

 

Have you heard the Jake Yapp thing?

 

Yes. 

 

It's great.

Uh-huh.   

Nice picture.

Oh yes! We got pictures done.

 

What was that like?

 

What? Um... Yeah. It was really fun. I think the original shot of John drawing a beard on his own reflection is maybe more original, and better suited for press, but it –

 

You'd rather not appear in the publicity?

No! No, it's great! A huge compliment. And if you buy the CD you can see some of our feet. No. I just –

 

You didn't post a link to the CD.

Oh. Sorry.

 

HOW much?!

 

I mean, it's probably cheaper on amazon, but I didn't want to –

 

And I presume it's also available in the BBC shop.

Apparently not... But yeah, no, I was so lucky. Nice to feel part of a gang.

 

And you did another shunt show?

 

What? Oh...

 

Is that right?

 

Sort of. Ow.

 

 

The Boy Who Climbed Out Of His Face – The Build by Floro Azqueta

 

Okay. You've written a lot about shunt on this blog. Want to talk about it?

Um. Wouldn't you rather hear another Exciting Space Adventure?

 

Do you not want to talk about theatre any more?

No! No no! Actually there's a few interesting things from the rehearsal I'd like to put up. And I did Ring. Again. And I've done – er, actually I've done a couple of shows, as a part of the London Horror festival. Just one-offs.

 

Where can we see them?

Um. They're – They've – They happened. Back in October. Yeah! But no, I had great fun doing –

 

Okay. Where can we see you next?

What? Oh! I'm in a panto. Well, it's more of a musical. A company called the Mighty Fin do one nearly every year or so, and Susannah Pearse writes the songs, and John Finnemore's in it as well, which is actually how we met, and it will be brilliant. Yes. You can get tickets... Oh wait, you can't. It's sold out.

 

Okay.

But there's 17 tickets still available for the dress rehearsal.

 

Should I bother to ask what it's called?

I mean... It's in the link. I just thought –

 

Okay. Well, thanks very much –

Oh, AND, I've popped my panel show cherry! Yes, I was invited to take part in the excellent transatlantic comedy podcast "International Waters". It went online on Monday, and you can hear me laughing my "dad laugh" on it, and plugging stuff even more poorly than I've just done here. Thank you, and MERRYCHRISTMAS!

 

 Fredandsharonsmovies.com  are still open for business, don't forget.