It has been said Malcolm Hardee’s claim to fame was helping so many comedians in their formative stages - Jo Brand, Jenny Eclair, Harry Enfield, Paul Merton, Vic Reeves, Jerry Sadowitz, Johnny Vegas et al. But let us not beat around the bush, Malcolm’s other claim to fame was that had the biggest bollocks in showbusiness. He said that, at puberty, they did not drop - they abseiled.

Everything about Malcolm was larger-than-life except his bank balance because he did not care about money; instead he took an almost schoolboy delight in pranks, wheezes and escapades. More happened to him in a short walk to the Post Office than to the entire population of Rome during the Emperor Caligula’s reign.

His friend comedian Arthur Smith called him “a South London Rabelais” and Stewart Lee said “in any decent country he would be a national institution”. Yet his influence remained almost totally unknown outside the Comedy and Media worlds. At one BBC party in the 1990s, a Head of TV Comedy was heard to say: “He’s not going to get on television because he keeps taking his willy out.”

He was most widely-known for performing the naked balloon dance with his chum Martin Soan’s ensemble The Greatest Show on Legs and his impression of President Charles de Gaulle using no props other than his own spectacles atop his semi-flaccid penis was unsettlingly realistic. He also turned up in Comic Strip films, often cast against type as a policemen and he appeared in the first “Blackadder” series,

From the 1970s onwards, Malcolm was famed for stunts at the Edinburgh Fringe and, during his annual appearances at Glastonbury Festivals, he would wistfully reminisce: “I remember this when it was all fields.”

Everyone who saw him perform thought they knew him: outrageous, shambolic, disreputable. But, despite his image, he was a highly-intelligent grammar school educated boy who was, briefly, at public school (he got ejected). He loved knowledge. He was very good at figures. But he tended to show off. He set the Sunday School piano on fire so he could make a joke about Holy Smoke and he burned down two cinemas for reasons never entirely clear, as he liked watching a good film.

He once arrived on a stolen white horse to impress a girlfriend and graduated to car theft - including a politician’s Rolls Royce - which led to him spending most of the 1970s in various prisons

In his youth, leaving one of Her Majesty’s establishments unexpectedly early, he found his girlfriend with another man. Before that, he was always faithful to women; after that, he told me, he was not.

A rather dishevelled, shambolic figure with a mumbled conversational style he was, astonishingly, a ‘babe-magnet’. Women’s first reaction was “not with a barge-pole” but Malcolm’s underlying nature - gentle, kind and generous - then became apparent and resolve soon melted. He was incapable of sexual fidelity yet attracted enormous devotion and his several long-term relationships (often overlapping) were usually with strong, intelligent women. Although sexually rampant, Malcolm was never sexist.

He was arguably the greatest influence on British comedy over the last 25 years. Almost every significant new comedian was agented, managed or promoted by him or passed through one of his clubs - notably the Tunnel Palladium in Deptford (1984-1988) and Up The Creek in Greenwich (1990 onwards).

The Tunnel was a baptism of fire. Beer glasses were plastic as they were thrown at the acts. I saw blood drawn on more than one occasion. From the audience viewpoint, they were firm but fair; from the stage, it looked like Custer’s Last Stand. The reason acts - especially new acts - kept going there was that they knew if they could play the Tunnel they could play anywhere. It sharpened up their act; it sharpened up their performance; and Malcolm would and did help everyone.

I once asked him how he would like to be remembered. “I’d like to be thought of as a good bloke,” he told me. “Someone who won’t let you down. I’m loyal. I’m unfaithful to women. But nearly everyone I meet I keep in some sort of contact with.”

He was much-loved by everyone who knew him well and, tellingly, remained on good terms with almost all of the many women he had serious relationships with.

Malcolm drowned in Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, which he had often visited as a child with his father, a Thames tugboat captain. It adjoins his beloved River and he probably died in the wee small hours using a dinghy to travel back from the Wibbley Wobbley pub which he owned to his home ship The Sea Sovereign, drunk, with horse-race winnings in his pocket and very happy. He was found two days later and identified by a policeman - not for the first time. His own reaction to his death would probably have been: “Fuck it! That’s the catchphrase tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Fuck it!”.
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Malcolm Gerrard Hardee, comedian, agent. manager, club-owner; born Lewisham 5 January 1950; partnered Pip Hazelton for thirteen years (one son Frank, one daughter Poppy); married Jane Kintrea Matthews (separated); died Rotherhithe 31 January 2005 leaving behind a legend and an autobiography: I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake..