ONLINE BLOG
2011-2015, I wrote a daily blog - So It Goes - about interesting people doing creative things - mostly, but not exclusively, in the comedy industry. It continues sporadically.
LIVE ON STAGE
 .  .  
Surreally, I won
a 2010 Fringe Report Award
as "Best Awards Founder" for the Malcolm Hardee Awards, started
in 2005.
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Until 2017, I organised three annual Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe: The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality, The Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for the best Fringe publicity stunt and the Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid award.
2012-2017 the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards were presented during a 2-hour variety show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
At the 2011 Fringe, as well as staging the Comedy Awards, I chaired two debates about the comedy business and arranged two spaghetti-juggling contests. At the 2013 Fringe, I hosted a 5-day chat show and, 2014-2017 at the Fringe, a daily chat show The Grouchy Club.
At the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I produced two separate comedy shows by Helen Keen: It is Rocket Science:V2 and Keen & Khan: Starstruck! plus Free Until Famous with Lewis Schaffer.
In 2009, I produced two Fringe shows: Helen Keen's The Primitive Methodist Guide to Arctic Survival and a 90-minute charity event Aaaaaaaaaarrghhh! - It's Bollock Relief! - The Malcolm Hardee Award Show. I was also Fringe consultant on Aindrias de Staic's award-winning The Summer I Did The Leaving and the show Bigger and Blacker by Lewis Schaffer.
2007-2010 I was consultant to two off-Broadway theaters in New York - the Bleecker Street Theatre and the Green Room venue. Since 2010, I have been UK consultant for US entertainment company Inbrook and via them, since 2012, to off-Broadway venue the Gene Frankel Theatre. |
NEW MEDIA
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I write a blog and, with comedy critic Kate Copstick, 2015-2017 recorded a weekly Grouchy Club podcast. I occasionally contributed feature articles to the Indian news website We Speak News (2012-2014) and the Huffington Post (2011-2013). I wrote comedy
reviews from the Edinburgh Fringe for
the chortle.co.uk website (2004-2006) plus a 2005 Fringe blog and a Fringe
feature for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. I have built and webmastered sites for, among others, Scottish comedians Janey
Godley and Ian
Watt, Cardiff-based comedy scriptwriter Nigel
Crowle, London-based comedian Ricky Grover, eccentric inventor John Ward, and a tribute site for the late comedian Malcolm
Hardee. I also designed, built and webmastered the original Cass Pennant website and
a now defunct website for imprisoned artists called ConArtists.
PRINT
 . .. . . .. .. ..
I edited and advised on Handstands
in the Dark, the non-humorous, pre-showbiz autobiography of comic Janey
Godley,
a No 3 hardback bestseller in 2005 and a UK Top Ten paperback bestseller in 2006. Previous books include Sit-Down
Comedy, an anthology of specially-commissioned writing by 19 British
and Irish stand-ups (now also available in Apple iBooks and for Amazon Kindles); I
Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake, the autobiography of 'godfather of alternative comedy' Malcolm Hardee; and I contributed three
chapters to Anatomy of The Movies (other chapter contributors included
Martin Scorsese and Donald Sutherland). I have also written for various magazines, newspapers
and partworks including Halls of Horror, House of Hammer, The Independent, International Times, Mensa Magazine, Metro, The Movie, Screen International and Starburst. I wrote a weekly column for Three Weeks magazine during the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe.
TV PROGRAMMES
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In 2008, I production managed a series of Underground Boxing events transmitted on the TWC Fight channel. In the last few years, I've also researched a TCM documentary The A-Z
of Crime Movies, was script consultant on a TCM documentary The
First 100 Years of The Western, a consultant on promo/script/style
elements within the Granada/ITV series This Morning and gave
an alleged 'script masterclass' to the production team of Trisha.
My credits in various production capacities include Tiswas, Game For a Laugh, Surprise Surprise, The Last Resort With Jonathan Ross as well as Jools Holland's The Happening, The Last Laugh with Jerry
Sadowitz, Prove It (with Chris Tarrant), Jack Dee's Saturday
Night and, well, you get the general idea......comedy, punters &
jollity. I've also produced a couple of Gong Show style pilots.
TV PROMOS & CORPORATES
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I've written, produced and directed promo trailers for all the major
ITV companies and many others in places as diverse as Amsterdam, Dublin
and Prague as well as in languages I didn't understand (Czech, Danish,
Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish). Oh and I've also produced-directed multi-language
corporates in England, Wales and the Czech Republic. And managed promotion departments at Anglia TV & Granada TV in the UK. Oh! And I worked in the News Depts at Anglia TV, BBC TV, Granada TV and ITN.
FACTUAL DVDs
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2002-2010, I advised on and production managed 48 UK titles and 8 North American titles for Gangster Videos.
FEATURE FILM
 ...
I financed the highly controversial 2010 British gangster film Killer Bitch. Its Facebook page has extensive links to reviews, features and photos. You can read a Sunday Herald interview with me here and see the trailer banned by YouTube here. Click on the logo above to buy the DVD. |
WEEKLY PODCAST
From February 2015 to February 2017, comedy critic Kate Copstick and I made a weekly Grouchy Club audio podcast mostly, but not exclusively, on the comedy industry.
TWITTER FEED
ME TALKING
I have occasionally been interviewed by other people...
October 2022 - YOUR MIND MATTERS - 1-hour interview by Jongleurs founder and psychoanalyst Maria Kempinska broadcast on the Women's Rado Station.
August 2022 - LBC: ANDREW CASTLE SHOW - What I told LBC Radio about Jerry Sadowitz’s Edinburgh Fringe show being cancelled.
August 2022 - GB NEWS TV: MARK DOLAN TONIGHT - Is Comedy Dead or Dying?
September 2021 - THE COMEDIANS PARADISE - - Podcast by Marvin McCarthy.
February 2021 - REAL FOLK - Podcast by Jo Burke.
November 2020 - IF COMEDIANS RULED THE WORLD - Video podcast by President Obonjo aka Benjamin Bankole Bello.
August 2016 - THE SCOTSMAN - Feature on me a propos the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards.
June 2014 - BROADWAY BABY - A Q&A with me about Malcolm Hardee and the Edinburgh Fringe.
March 2014 - NUNHEAD AMERICAN RADIO WITH LEWIS SCHAFFER - An edited version of my appearance on Resonance FM, 10th March 2014, talking about comedy reviews, the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards and the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe (10mins 48secs).
August 2013 - WE'RE ALL WAITING FOR THE COMEDY BEATLES - The Skinny magazine claims I am "one of the most influential figures in British comedy"
August 2013 - CASTLE FM RADIO INTERVIEW - A truly awful piece by me about my shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Interviewer Ewan Spence is very good. I am truly, truly awful and oddly sound nervous, though I was not. Odd and awful.
July 2013 - WHAT DOES 'ALTERNATIVE' COMEDY MEAN TODAY? - interviewed by Fest magazine for a piece on the future of comedy
April 2013 - KING OF THE FRINGE - 16 year-old Glasgow comedy fan Lyle Russell asks me about comedy and the Edinburgh Fringe.
March 2013 - AN IRISH PODCAST IN A LONDON PUB - Irish comic Christian Talbot talks to me for the Seven 2 Seven site. (62 minutes, unedited)
August 2012 -THE BUMPY ROAD TO THE EDINBURGH FRINGE - Hayden Cohen interviews me for his series of Royal Mile podcasts. (8 minutes)
May 2012 - WHO EXACTLY IS JOHN FLEMING? - Interview about my past by Ian Fox, author of How To Produce, Perform and Write an Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show.
August 2011 - ON MALCOLM HARDEE - I am interviewed on camera, half-asleep, after the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show.
May 2010 - HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD'S WORST MOVIE - Scotland's Herald newspaper interviews me about Killer Bitch.
OTHER INTERESTS
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I've holidayed in Albania, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia,
China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Italy, Kosovo, Laos, Lebanon, Mongolia,
Montenegro, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Serbia,
Siberia, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. I have eclectic
interests....In music, I like Bach, Randy Newman, Stereophonics
and Kurt Weill. In writing, George Eliot, James Joyce, Richard Matheson and Terry Southern. My favourite films include The Wild Bunch, It's
a Wonderful Life, Once Upon a Time in The West and Fight Club. Television: Quatermass and The Pit (1958-1959), Talking to a Stranger (1966), The Cops (1998-2000) and Doctor Who (2005-2009)
AND FINALLY...
In its early days, I worked as a features researcher and news sub-editor on the BBC's CEEFAX teletext service. I have done a little bit of radio (promos
and programme) and written questions for a Basque-language children's
TV gameshow. I like new projects and the unexpected. The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" has always seemed a rather attractive option to me... |
