So Jamali, who I started stand up with – interviewed Stewart Lee, you can listen here https://play.acast.com/s/breakdownjamalimaddix/stewartlee

This isn’t a review site, it’s a daily blog where I put in whatever I’ve listened to, so anything below isn’t intended as criticism but rather thoughts. There was a lot of stuff I don’t really talk about below that I could relate to – the conversation about how comedians talk to each other, or how Stewart felt when he tried to get paid work at the Comedy Store and realised that wasn’t his world. But this blog is intended to be about the comedy counterculture, rather than that sort of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee veneration of stand ups, which I’m not really suited to.

Jamali at one point says ‘I don’t know if I could make it in stand up today’, which is hilariously humble of him. When we started, there were more comedians than audience members – there were thousands of people trying to do it and it was a real struggle to keep an identity as a performer or know how to navigate the system. Jamali wasn’t the best comedian or the worst when I first saw him at Jester Jesters, but he knew who he was and he knew what he was trying to get across. He didn’t really care (like I did) if he overran by a couple of minutes or if he rambled a bit, he had the natural energy of a comedian and in time his writing and persona matured. It would be a lot easier for him to make it today

There’s a bit in the podcast where Stewart talks about how British comedy is the best in the world, and Jamali agrees with him – the conversation started with Stewart talking about how he’d never really performed in the USA. So, I always saw Jamali as someone who watched a lot of Def Jam comedy, more than a British comedy fan – but I’m an American comedy obsessive, so the truth most likely lies somewhere inbetween. But as a fan of American comedy over British, SO MANY American comedians are influenced by Stewart Lee. Below is the most recent example I saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V97lvUKYisA

Sorry, my lack of technical skills mean the video isn’t in a block as far as I can see, but it’s Tig Notaro telling her Taylor Dane story and borrowing a few crowd control tricks from Stew. After Stew’s appearance on WTF with Marc Maron, he was hot shit on the alternative comedy scene in America and he’d be surprised how that younger generation of alt-comedians venerate him, I’d imagine someone like Kumail Nanjiani is a big fan, most SNL writers, there are a huge number of British comedy obsessives on that comedy scene.

On Political stuff, Jamali and Stew talk a lot about the perception that most comedians are left wing. Stew talks about how right wing newspapers write a story about this every year, and Jamali says something like ‘they’re not even alt-right, there’s just a couple of comedians that mention they vote Tory’. Stewart talks about how the festival circuit was built by hippies to celebrate a European identity. Stewart talks about Paul Nuttal complaining about Johnny and The Baptists making fun of him in publicly funded venues.

So the thing is, journalists like an easy headline, and what Stewart is saying is true but by countering their ideology he’s playing their game. So, every newspaper – whether The Telegraph, The Guardian or The Times are sending reviewers on an all expenses paid trip to Scotland each August looking for the next big thing. Leo Kearse, Geoff Norcott and Andrew Lawrence are a bit middle aged and pasty to fit that, so they get the ‘right wing comedians’ story as a sort of trickle down economics benefit, it’s their 15 minutes of fame. But every year these Newspapers will review Brexit: The Musical (a real thing), Brexit: The Play (there have been plays about it, not so unsubtly named as the musical), 1975 by Kieran Hodgson, Nish Kumar, Ahir Shah being anti-Brexit etc. etc. A young figure in the arts isn’t going to make a balanced argument on the Conservatives or the EU, and by balanced I mean one in which they can be against austerity and against the referendum being called by using historical context. The whole system is built for kids from theatre schools and English lit graduates because they’re the most taught public speakers, and the industry sees that as ‘natural talent’.

Stewart and Jamali talk a lot about Hate Thy Neighbour, Jamali’s show for Vice when he meets racists from around the world. These people are seen as insane by both comedians. I was taught in my degree that the system is always more dangerous than the individual. So Vice was started by Shane Smith, Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes. Gavin wrote the magazine, then left when it became an online and TV venture and Murdoch bought a 5% share, Gavin is now a leading pro-Trump alt-right figure. Vice has gone from being a magazine in Toronto to this multi-billion dollar company that major coporations have a growing stake in and has it’s own agenda. They are happy to give Jamali a chance to do a Louis Theroux, but is this really left-wing in and of itself? There’s just no historical context. Stewart and Jamali talk about the rise of the right in Sweden, but this isn’t a new thing. Sweden was the country that sent the refugees from Latvia and Lithuania back there after World War 2 to be murdered by the Soviet Union they’d fled from. It’s the country where Zlatan Ibrahimovich was treated as scum because he was a refugee from the Balkans living in a council flat. You can go to Stockholm and they’ll tell you everything about social democracy, but enacting it is another matter. Hate Thy Neighbour implies that the ruling centrist parties in Sweden have set up a system where whatever class, race, immigration status or religion people are living together side by side, but it’s not true. Immigrants in Sweden are treated worse than they are here.

I’m rambling.

I saw Art Brut at the Garage last night, the smallest venue I’ve seen them in since they were a bit of a shambles back at The Barfly in around 2003. After that, Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll was released and they became the slicky oiled straightforward machine that overperformed at Reading Festival, Summer Sundae and made a lasting impression on me a lot of their contemporaries did not. In that short space of time, Eddie seemed more and more the consummate frontman. His ability to connect to the crowd, to tell a story and to help the audience buy into his dream elevated them beyond their influences. I saw Eddie’s theatre show at Edinburgh in 2013, wore a Fall shirt, sat in the front row, laughed a lot (genuinely) and he was very nice to me on Twitter afterwards.

I worked on a series of podcast demos last year called ‘Joshua Ross’s Comedy Vehicle’, the concept was that Stewart Lee had sold off his vehicle and upgraded to a Bentley, and I would take his format to combine stream of consciousness rants, interviews with artists and old stand up clips. The idea was too good to deliver! As soon as I started, I knew I didn’t have the technical skill to make this happen nor a decent editor/director type figure within my social circle willing to donate their time. I did have one idea, that everything from SLCV had changed the world a surprising amount. After he made fun of ‘rappers on the buses’ the Grime scene exploded, his material on ‘toilet books’ coincided with Waterstones merging with Foyles and Daunt and gearing their work towards more serious fiction readers and the Clegg/Cameron routine changed the dynamics of the coalition, where the Lib Dems tried to seem less subservient between then and the 2015 election. I liked the idea that Lee had spent so long talking to small groups of hipsters, that he now had 1m TV viewers and still couldn’t help but see himself as an underdog fighting against the system.

Eddie Argos, Art Brut’s frontman, is clearly a Stewart Lee fan. From the imaginary 10 minute telephone conversation with his Mum at the start of the gig about the Sleaford Mods and Slaves to the constant denial of playing Modern Art then ending with a 10 minute version of the song. What was interesting to me was how much vulnerability he has, I think the audience perceived his talk about his drinking, his financial worries, his insecurity about the 7 year gap inbetween albums as comedy material, and I probably took them too seriously (I brought the tickets for my now ex-gf, and between me and her we’ve each had all of the issues above, so I may be projecting some of this). The new Art Brut album, whether this is a criticism or compliment, speaks to something I see in comedy a lot – the arts encourage a permanent state of student living, and the recurring themes of partying, love and not fitting in speak of how hard it is to break out of a sucessful aesthetic and how much that lifestyle is encouraged in the arts. Eddie still has that skill of being able to connect with a room and the band’s professionalism is now inbetween the Barfly and the 2005 peak, showbiz lives by ‘let’s get this show on the road’, and this was essentially a warm-up gig on their way to bigger things.

Where I felt uncomfortable was on the political side of it. The chants of ‘the record buying public shouldn’t be allowed to vote’ and the labelling of Morrissey as a far right racist. Following the death of Mark E Smith, I started seeing MES, and Morrissey has it as well, of knowing how to get his name into the news agenda by bullying half-witted journalists and keeping himself relevant. Morrissey is a musician talking about politics, I come from a Political background that makes me blame systems ahead of individuals – but I don’t think his views are necessarily right wing. The Morrissey quote I’d apply to Argos, and the one I apply to myself, is ‘has the world changed or have I changed?’ The way Argos feels about Morrissey, I feel about artists on the Argos/Lee political spectrum. I want to shout at them ‘YOU’RE ACTING LIKE THIS IS WORLD WAR 3! DIDN’T YOU NOTICE IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED? 9/11, IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, SYRIA, LEBANON! WHAT DID YOU THINK THAT WAS?’

I’m a left-wing Eurosceptic (I didn’t vote Leave btw), and I see Morrissey’s perceived racism as his drawing a parallel between his experiences from the Irish immigrant community in Manchester to how cheap labour is exploited in the UK now under a phony mask of social liberalism. When I say this, I was taught at University that Liberalism was economically to the right of Conservatism, so to me the EU is a superstate there to make pretty speeches and direct all the money to the centre. That’s why Spain has 50% youth unemployment, Greece is bankrupt and there’s a brain drain and rising social issues in Eastern Europe. I think the EU has been falling apart since the French rejected the European Constitution 10 years ago, and it’s that British arrogant self loathing that makes us think we’re spoiling the party.

When Morrissey says ‘Tommy Robinson has been martyred’, I think Robinson did a lot to stir up the White Working Class Luton voter, as a Jew myself I see Muslims as the new Jews, and he definitely picked a fight with the Muslim community as a way of stirring his base, getting in the news and blaming immigrants for problems I’d blame on the finance guys in London and Europe (Merkel has always been to the right of Thatcher in terms of economic policy), the multinational companies allowed to not pay tax by Osborne (wiping out the High Street and allowing Amazon to print money) and austerity (austerity implies we’ve saved money, when the national debt has actually doubled and outsourcing has led to greater expenses for the NHS etc.), but in another way I hate to say I think Morrissey is right. Robinson was jailed and the media reported it in a way that did martyr him. The media also used social liberalism as a way not to report on the child-grooming practices that Robinson was addressing. Since the 60s, London has always been well ahead of the world on social liberalism – to a Muhammed Ali or Jimi Hendrix it was a place they said they could live as equals – but it’s a city completely dominated by money. The newspapers here are all owned by billionaires, the BBC has been outsourced and privatised beyond belief and – based on a temp job I did on London Bridge Station (during which I saw a £1bn project be used as a political football for HS2, and nothing of substance get done) – Eddie’s cry of ‘Where’s Crossrail! It’s supposed to be here by now!’ will have fallen on deaf ears. Where Morrissey and Robinson blame immigrants, I look at all the ugly new skyscrapers in the old City of London and think we’ve built a city based on that naive Victorian ‘Brittania rules the waves’ crap. They’re cubicles for bankers to work in before they go back to those ugly new flats in Finsbury Park or Tottenham to sleep in, they’re earning and spending a lot of money when they might as well be going from a council flat to a cell centre.

I didn’t mean this to be so political and ranty, next week I’m focussing on George Orwell on this blog, and I do empathise with how the system gets you in the end (as in 1984) – Eddie did everything he could to be an objective cultural outsider, and made great sacrifices to do so in terms of commercialism – but as MES spoke of in Just Step Sideways, you can leave the mainstream – but it will get you in the end. Art Brut now have their own Middle Class Revolt, and where an Orwell type privileged wannabe-Marxist like myself would blame the political class, and say that voters – whatever music they listen to – can’t be blamed for Trump and Brexit when they were offered two bad choices – it is the fact that Argos and Lee are more industrious than me, have fought harder and achieved more that leads them to preach to a choir in their own Middle Class Revolt. It’s the paradox of the arts, it rewards blanket statements and clear truths an artist’s audience agree with when great art by it’s nature is full of paradox, ambiguity and can speak to anyone.

So, from what I’ve outlined in the the first three parts of this, I’m getting towards the point below.

The Mafia, like Showbiz, was built to support minority cultures. Jewish comedians, black comedians – female starlets in Hollywood and chanteuses in cabaret.

Following the corporatization of Vegas in the 1960s (hello Trump hotel!) it started moving to a model where everything became controlled by money, and the acts were expected to have less of a voice.

In British comedy, that path led from Jerry Sadowitz to Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr. Sadowitz didn’t get banned from TV because he was saying bad words, he got banned because he had something to say, and replaced in a ‘free’ market by acts who were willing to be just as offensive, say it was ironic, and follow a path of panel show appearances that would put $$$ signs in their agent’s eyes.

It’s the old paradox of showbiz, like One Froggy Evening – the cartoon from the 50s by Chuck Jones. The Frog sings and dances in front of the agent, but won’t in front of an audience. That’s symbolic of how an act that asks questions is far harder for the system than one that says thank you.

It’s not on YouTube, but it’s well worth clicking the link below to watch the whole cartoon. Work of genius.

https://gloria.tv/video/nDmaPjYdUyFf1PMFhrSURB3k2

Today I had a very negative experience with a Charity helping people with bipolar disorder.

I won’t name the charity, because together we managed to find a way to resolve it in a way where naming and shaming them would be really unfair.

I had booked an appointment with their employment consultant for next week, then received an email from her in which she told me the service had now moved to a volunteer service that would be opening in April.

I called up and spoke to a Manager, and we were able to have a constructive and protracted (45min) conversation in which I was able to express my views, both from having worked for a charity that had to be closed due to government cuts and from being a service user. I explained that a dedicated employment officer, even part time, could provide a service to someone with complex needs* like myself in a way a volunteer couldn’t, and she was receptive to that.

She asked me how I would change the service, and I expressed a wish to see a charity have a website that is objective and accessible to service users, politicians, mental health professionals and the general public. I explained that issues like taking a medication, seeing a psychiatrist and holding a job – there’s two sides to it. I was diagnosed in 2008, and I used to see GPs before then who couldn’t spot my condition but would be able to now. This means that the research is there to help make an effective change. On the other hand, it won’t be solved just be an app, a newspaper article, a website or a volunteer. I do understand how difficult underfunding has been for charities, but the new NHS mental health service will go down the Jeremy Hunt NHS path unless someone can find a clearer way to help people now.

She offered me volunteering opportunities, or to talk to the new peer review team but I asked that I could email her and address it to the company director, make it eloquent and brief and see if we could engage in some kind of constructive dialogue first.

I would love to one day tour schools with a psychiatrist, and try and explain how they can help people and how people can help themselves.

JRo

*in and out of employment, strange behaviour traits, issues with anger, family history, mistreatment in the past, CV full of zero hour contract jobs and empty spells inbetween

http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/

“Be ready for vast depression on Tuesday. Black clouds will gather and there is nothing you can do about it. After what seemed a promising start on Monday, when you first got over your nerves and realised things could be done, people in fact took you seriously and carried out your suggestions. Tuesday will be Big Doubt City and nothing’s going to change that. What stuff you have got down is sounding like total crap. It’s not just your paranoia that’s telling you its crap. It is crap.

There is no way out and you will have to plough on.

The cynic in you must, by now, be thinking, “What are these dick head Timelords on about? They haven’t told us one concrete thing to do since we’ve been in the studio other than, ‘Leave it to the engineer and programmer!’ If it was that easy, everybody would be having sodding Number Ones. This manual is a con. Just like all those ‘get rich quick’ and ‘keep young and beautiful’ books. Just another part of the late eighties sham. The fag end of Thatcherism. Full of patronising prose and cheap metaphors. I mean, for God’s sake, The Timelords! They’ve only had the one hit and that was pure fluke. A pair of ageing fakers and now they’re trying to take the piss by writing this load of crap.”

We don’t think we could argue our way out of the above other than to say that some time between mid-Tuesday evening and late Wednesday afternoon something will happen and everything will start to make sense again. The track will begin coming together. By Wednesday evening you will know you are on to a winner. There is nothing more that we can tell you, even if we were there with you in the studio. Just hold on to your fantasy. Roll around on the floor and scream if need be, because it’s all too late now. Ideas will come out of you that you never thought were there, just let them flow. Don’t get too ahead of the game. Don’t get carried away thinking your record is going to change the face of pop music.

Watch desperation bear fruit and keep making cups of tea for the team. Every second of the track has got to grab your attention and never let go. Always go for the hookiest hook, the lowest common denominator, the one you can’t believe you’re using. Take it and shake it and cry when you hear it.”

I tweeted so much in 2016 that I gained 600 followers through sheer persistence.

I topped out at about 1200 or so, the best conversation was a frenemy argument between Phil Gould of Level 42 and Jess Philips about Brexit, with mild flirting from the former and an admission of being a teenage fangirl from the latter.

I think comedians who have 10,000 followers plus have built an audience, and those that have 1-10,000 have an agent that gets them a lot of industry followers and even more random bitcoin accounts and a few fans at gigs.

I’m not 24 anymore, I can’t get everyone I studied with to give a shit. Thank god.

This is a blog to gain material for a website that can showcase my comedy work, my current youtube presence is an open mic gig from 2012.

They filmed my winning gigs at Up The Creek and Leicester Square Theatre but the content strangely was never uploaded.

WHAT REALLY WENT ON THERE? WE ONLY HAVE THIS EXCERPT.

Unfortunately, I’ve crossed lines in the past and am scared this blog will now be seen as a deranged stalky thing rather than me trying to be creatively relevant whilst accepting I am not commercially relevant in the 18-24, 40+ commercial landscape where the BBC has been gutted out to make money out of BBC America commercials.

AUTHOR’S NOTE, THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN IN A SORT OF ALT LEFT STYLE, SO IF THIS WAS A COMEDY SET I WOULDN’T SWEAR AND WRITE IT PROPERLY, BUT AS IT’S A BLOG I’M SPEAKING MORE IN MY ANGRY VOICE AND IN A WRITING STYLE THAT TAKES A FEW PARAGRAPHS TO SETTLE DOWN

‘ I hate Bill Cosby, “Black people, pull your trousers up. I had a successful sitcom in the 80s.” Yeah but you used to rape women bill cosby’ Hannibal Burress, 2014

2014! It took 3 years for #metoo to happen from Hannibal doing that routine. And when it did, even Hannibal’s social circle had offenders. TJ Miller, the slack jawed yokel cunt from that sitcom Silicon Valley, google ‘TJ Miller victim allegations’ if you want to feel sick to your stomach.

The older generation of Chris Rock types will defend Louis CK. Some do it because he’s their friend, but most do it because they miss his comedy. I don’t. Louis just followed the Woody Allen model, guests on the Joe Rogan podcast (which I watch clips of on YouTube because it is often funny and speaks eloquently to the public on other social issues) will defend Louis CK for not being a sociopath or a rapist and blame snowflake culture for dragging him down

OK FIRSTLY, FEMINISTS GENERALLY AREN’T FUCKING JOURNALISTS FOR CNN, NEW YORK TIMES OR WHATEVER. JOURNALISTS ARE JUST CUNTS FROM POSH UNIVERSITIES WHO SAY THEY’RE A FEMINIST ON A RESUME TO WALK INTO OVERPAID JOBS TO STEAL ARTICLES OFF TWITTER BY COPY AND PASTING. THE AMERICAN MEDIA IS ALL OWNED BY LIKE RUPERT MURDOCH AND OR 3 OTHER PRICKS JUST LIKE OURS IT’S NOT A FUCKING BASTION OF THE LEFT.

Sorry, too angry.

Secondly, for the sake of argument, let’s say that Louis CK is a fucking sociopath. What about the following:

• He changed his name, like Woody Allen. That way, when he was a 19 year old comedian and playing colleges or whatever, he could fuck blackout drunk chicks after gigs and if they reported it to the police they’d sound ridiculous.
• He couldn’t make it in the mainstream with Lucky Louie so he hired a cinematographer and took all the credit, like Woody Allen. It’s impossible to make a TV show by yourself, like he claimed he did.
• All his work is about him fucking younger, hotter women, like Woody Allen. If you’re 45 and fat and a piece of shit, why do you want to date 27 year old skinny girls? Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of deep pseudo-intellectual?
• He used female actresses to claim he was a feminist icon, like Woody Allen. He was Executive Producer for Tig Notaro’s show, but took a paycheck without doing any work then when she asked him about the communications he refused to speak to her.
• He shows no remorse for his actions, like Woody Allen. A year later he’s back talking about how ‘they’ fucked him over, meaning journalists etc. but he doesn’t talk about how he denied the stories for 20 years! I remember when Gawker published them in 2012
• He manipulates his social circle, like Woody Allen. Listen to the Louis CK interview on WTF with Marc Maron where he guilt trips Marc and explains why it was Marc’s fault that Louis never responded to his emails.

With Dave Chappelle, there’s Chappelle material online in which he says to a comedy club something like ‘Martin Luther King wouldn’t have given up his dream if he’d seen a dick’, mocking the CK victims.

FUCK YOU CHAPPELLE, YOU HAD A SUCCESSFUL SKETCH SHOW, CAME UP WITH A FUNNY VOICE AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A SECOND RATE BERNIE MAC BLOWHARD.

Like seriously, imagine Dave Chappelle was in prison, and a 6ft7in tattoooed neonazi came in and said ‘wanna see me jerk off’ and Chappelle said ‘um’ and the guy just came in front of him in the cell. That’s what CK did to his victims. Chappelle would go home crying to his mummy. There’s always a bigger dog than you.

Ari Shaffir, the Joshua Ross of American comedy in that he’s a lame ass pathetic little jewboy who has a routine online where a heckler goes ‘oooooh’ in a shocked way at him calling India a garbage country onstage and who he then calls a whore for 20 minutes to go viral, he has crying fits on the Joe Rogan podcast about how Louis CK deserves a comeback. No one’s trying to stop him. But when people like me say, he’s a cunt, that’s not us being offended. That’s us having a fucking opinion. Comedians are all snowflakes

I went to a trial shift at a pub today, I could still pull a pint but the moment I walked through the door I knew I was done for. Everything’s a young man’s game, if I was 22 and full of beans and had just graduated from the arts it’d be suit me. Why do I jump around from thing to thing? More jobs than the village people put together.

On the way I saw a man called Mark at that metal pub inbetween camden and kentish town. too tired for capital letters. 6 weeks not smoking then one fucking pub trial shift and i’m on a pack a day. mark looked exactly like bowie, he moaned about being stood up by a girl last week, scared she’d turn up that evening and it’d be awkward. He asked if it was because he was bi or a marxist or part jewish, still stuck in his 70s student against academics or 80s teacher who could teach in a school full of teachers who couldn’t teach like they all are. I can get someone’s life story out of them in 2 minutes flat. I told him ‘Mark, you’re 51 and she’s 39, firstly, you’re too old to be a 14 year old moaning about being stood up. fuck her, either you deserve better or she only said yes to be nice cos you were too intense. fuck it, she’s a 39 year old woman she probably has the hormones of a 14 year old boy if you’re in a baby panic like you said, like maybe you could be a dad, maybe she has that pre-menopause panic, i don’t know, just when you see her keep yourself to yourself, don’t talk at her and if you’re cool she’ll be cool. it’s like the lecturer lecherer hippy academic lying-about-being-feminist guys you told me you hated at uni, that’s why you didn’t go into academia. You look like David Bowie, you seem cool, be proud of who you are and love will come – and me, I’m in love and she loves me back and it’s a fucking nightmare for both of us. Real love is just trying to help someone else with their problems and yourself with your own and visca versa and none of it’s easy’. 

I wrote the pub this email afterwards, I know I’m insane to think someone’s going to reward me acting like a bigshot. I know I’m enabling my condition. I know my parents are right that I probably should be medicated. I know I’m 32 and have no pension fund, no career prospects, an hour of comedy written in my head that if I perform will either a) i won’t have the money to put it on b) i won’t have the audience c) it’ll be a big hit and i’ll be famous and fucking hate it. Let’s take this show off the road.

I went to a bipolar support group this week which cheered me up, getting the job trial cheered me up, seeing a temp agency cheered me up, the idea of working cheers me up but EVERY DAY I send job applications I don’t hear back from and IT’S BEEN GOING ON FOR A DECADE. I’m not upwardly mobile. I think I have all the answers, which is what fucking idiots do. I never learnt to sit and be patient and let my boss make his mistakes and bide my time, but also the system’s clogged. Every job I’ve ever done has made promises to me they haven’t kept, mismanaged staff, had a high staff turnover, had no worker’s rights. It’s middle class prison –

Hey Tim and Matt,

Firstly, cheers for today. I wanted to put what I said to Matt at the end of the shift into an email that was a bit more constructive and balanced, otherwise from my experience there’d be some crossed wires. 
Secondly, everything that makes me a good comedian makes me unsuitable for the advertised role. Yeah, I can pour a pint and run an EPOS til, but if you were to hire me as a barman you’d spend 6 months training me up as a cocktail maker and then I’d leave. I don’t really understand why you need a new member of staff, the three times I’ve visited I’ve seen 9 of you in total and it’s January. I have positive skills in terms of talking to staff, customers, things like knowing Javier (the MC downstairs) from the old days, but I have a strong personality. On one hand, I don’t expect you to rewrite the rules of your business to make me a better bartender, on the other I am willing to tell you below how I could help you run your business better, knowing that it will be ignored (this isn’t my first rodeo)
So, literally – feel free to ignore these emails as the rantings of a madman with a Jesus complex if you want, but at the end of the day what I’m about to tell you is a quicker, rougher, better version of what recruitment consultants charge £5k-£10k for (their recommendation at the end of the day tends to be a chalkboard with a funky slogan just like every other idiot). Also, if you don’t respond to me and take my ideas onboard, do it! You can’t do it as well as me, but give it your best shot.
When I have met both of you, Tim socially and Matt tonight, I have expressed discontent with how comedy, bars and restaurants are run these days. I think, whether you take this email seriously or not – the bottom line is you need to understand your competition better. Places like the Metal Bar in Camden, Angel Comedy/Bill Murray, Boogaloo are doing what you’re doing on a grander scale. If you understand the catering and entertainment sector and the level of recession it’s in, they have bigger venues than you, bigger marketing budgets, bigger star power for the venue (Bill Murray has Daniel Kitson and Eddie Izzard every week, when I was one of the many young upstarts that ran the door for free, got stagetime for the odd £20 and got forgotten about a few years later – ask Javier). But they also have unmanageable overheads and are in serious, serious debt. In time, if you were able to fill your downstairs venue, and take their audience the world would be a better place (marginally). 
To do that, you need someone who can help you run things without it being 6 months of pointless meetings. Things like a real poker night (with proper stakes £20-£30 and advertised on the right sites), a live band karaoke night (like Victoria in Walthamstow), how to run a door of a comedy club, how to book famous comedians (you know how many Noel Fielding types live within 2 miles of you?). Like these days, I have a girlfriend, I don’t drink more than 1-2 pints, all my friends have kids or have serious careers – to get the 32 year old disposable income people like me who don’t drink much these days to your pub who have realised that a cocktail is just sugar and paint thinner in a glass – that I can help you with.
If you are serious (why would you be? I don’t sound like I am), invite me in to discuss this week with a sense of a reasonable budget and timeplan, but at the end of the day I’ll likely be in temping the week after, in Edinburgh in August, and in Soho Theatre and Melbourne Comedy Festival next year. 
See you at the top,
Joshua Ross
Company DirectorJongleurs 2UnLimited
(I’m setting up my own club comedy chain in 2020-2022ish depending on how long it takes for the market to recover, so now I own a brand of Jongleurs, who went bankrupt, which means legally I can write off all my debts for the next two years under start up costs and I own the intellectual property of their brand – I’m thinking West London, a comedy club in Ealing would be a piece of piss.)  

 

I saw Leo Kearse do his latest Work In Progress show for Right Wing Comedian at Top Secret Comedy Club last night.

 Reviews are the worst, but I’m a natural critic. I write better but get paid worse.

The show is Leo talking about how he is socially liberal, believes in small  government and thinks the left has lost its way from the social movement that provided the real victories it won in the early 20th Century.  

I arranged to record a podcast with him afterwards, completely at my insistence and with next to no planning and this resulted in me following him on a  walk from Drury Lane to that Hari Krishna food stop off Soho Square with a  dictaphone, a manic love of my own voice and an absolute determination to  power through. The audio recording is a swirl of background noise and monologues that could be used on torture victims. to quote mes: WE ONLY HAVE THIS EXCERPT

LEO KEARSE: The publisher said to Bukowski ‘We’ll publish your novel, we’ll give you an advance and stuff. So he wrote the book in like a fortnight. Post Office, it’s not a huge book, it’s not War and Peace. He had this pressure on his back, he needed to get it done.

JONGLEURS JOSH: I read this Bukowski story, he had a benefactor. He wasn’t making real ‘quit your job’ money. Then this benefactor came along…

LK: The publisher you mean?

JJ: No a benefactor, like George Harrison paid for Life of Brian so he could watch the movie, some guy paid for Bukowski to quit the Post Office he worked in so he could write all day. And Bukowski got Cable TV, and he turned it on and Eraserhead was on, and he watched this dark, twisted movie and thought ‘Wow, this is cable’. Then ten years later he was like ‘I’ve only ever seen bad daytime TV since, quiz shows, soap operas, romcoms. I just got fucking lucky the first time’

LK: He wrote Post Office back in the 60s or something before Eraserhead would have been made.

READER, YOU CAN GOOGLE ‘ERASERHEAD BUKOWSKI’ OR ‘BENEFACTOR BUKOWSKI’ IF YOU WANT TO WORK OUT THE CORRECT TIMELINE AND QUOTES

JJ: But he was 50 when Post Office came out, it shows that life starts again when you make it. People think have this image of him as a bitter, young angry man but he thought he was past it and knew how to make an impact

LK: That’s why everyone has jobs rather than being self employed, as a writer he had to put himself out there, it has to be a constant pressure.

JJ: Like when you read Ham on Rye, you read about his childhood it’s like ‘actually, he had a sensitive disposition’

LK: He had a fucking brutal childhood. Those beatings, the warts on his back, those brutal beatings from his parents

JJ: And he wrote those beautiful poems and as soon as he died they were in fucking Levis adverts, in the cinema when they read out the Wandering Heart ‘Your life, is your life, know it while you have it, there’s not much light but it sure beats the dark’. That’s the dream isn’t it? One day you’ll be dead, turning in your grave, selling out

LK: He was never precious about himself, I don’t know if he’d have minded so much

JJ: This pub here, I was in there about a year ago and met a guy who was an old Rockabilly telling me he used to play Hamburg with Ray Charles in 1960, and he used to see Hendrix in Chinatown years later and he said ‘I didn’t know he played guitar, just used to mope over his noodles we were like JIMI JIMI COME HAVE A DRINK WITH US’, he found out I’d done comedy and he was more interested in that, he was like more interested in asking me questions and I just wanted him to adopt me and tell me his stories of Soho in the 60s

LK: There’s this guy Aggroman in Edinburgh, a promoter who used to work with Joy Division and all these amazing bands I grew up on

JJ: I once worked in a kitchen at Uni for the chef from the Hacienda at an Ian Brown gig, and Andy Rourke from The Smiths was on bass and sneaked the chef a line of coke….. But the people who talk most about Bukowski are the ones that read Post Office and gave up, the people who define left wing as a haircut or cool taste, it’s like the fucking Alt Left

LK: I thought he’d be everything the left hates

JJ: But those students in the 60s and 70s were even more snowflakey than anything now, students talk shit about politics, what’s happening at the moment is I think our right wing media doesn’t give intelligent left wing voices a platform, you’d probably blame the left for being stuck up academics who when given a platform can’t speak to ordinary working people

LK: The left wing stuff is idealism that without a right wing society there’d be some frictionless way of apportioning everything, but in reality centrally controlled economies are more inefficient

JJ: I’ve written all this new material about why you’re wrong but I can’t give the new stuff away!

LK: You got gigs booked?

JJ: I’ve applied for the Fringe but don’t miss just saying the same 10 or 20 mins on repeat

LK: Think how bad it would be for the audience

JJ: But that’s why we never fell out Leo, because we were never friends. Like the same books, like the same bands, never compliment each other, I have no memory of us having a pleasant interaction or taking an interest in each other’s work, which makes it harder to fall out

LK: Did you fall out with anybody you were actually friends with?

JJ: Yeah but, my view is on my own mental health is that sometimes when I’m having a lot of life problems, personal, creative, jobs, relationships… I’m so hard to deal with and persistent, I can really piss people off and get under their skin. It’s life isn’t it, you cross a line with someone and you can go back to being friends or saying you are but they’re not going to be there for you next time you’re in the shit. Can’t blame em.

I am Jongleurs. [2022 edit, this was before Jongleurs restarted and was deliberately hyperbolic]

I worked in the Jongleurs call centre for a short spell in 2014, they’re bankrupt now. That makes me Jongleurs.

If you think that means I owe you money, you’re wrong. I checked Companies House and there are 5 active businesses still registered to the bankrupt Jongleurs, hiding behind the shell of an electricians firm in Nottingham. They owe you money. Go to them. Ask for your blood money. Just like you called me shouting at me asking for the money you hadn’t been paid a year. Your £300 a gig for terrible shows that had 40 audience members in Brighton, most of whom had used Groupon to buy 2 tickets for £9, of which Jongleurs received a £6.80 share, that’s a £1200 bill on bad comedians for an audience that had mustered up £200 tops between them.

You did your deal with the mob then moaned at me about your problems after shouting at me about your problems whilst I was earning £8 an hour to deal with your problems.

You are the problem, failed comedian.

Here is my letter to my rival Jongleurs asking for their intellectual property, and their cursory reply

Dear XXXXX,

As discussed in our phone conversation, I am inquiring about the Intellectual Property relating to the brand name of Jongleurs Comedy. This is not in relation to the Commercial Property, such as debts accrued by previous owners of the company. I would also like both parties to keep these conversations confidential, as it is in both of our interests.

I am a comedian, and worked in the Jongleurs Office in Marble Arch in the summer of 2014 answering the phones. During this time I was lucky enough to be critically successful, and won New Comedian of the Year in 2014, but left the stand up comedy circuit the following year as I found I was unable to make a living from live comedy.

My working relationship with the senior figures at Jongleurs at the time, such as Anas (who ran the office) and Julia and Donna (who managed the bookings) was very healthy. They would go to every effort to keep the business afloat. However, the company ran in an environment of controlled chaos. From my understanding, it had been heavily invested in before the recession, and had never created a viable business model that would make the business sustainable going forwards.

I am now interested in using the brand name Jongleurs. From my understanding of comedy history, the original model of the club is now viable in the current market and was significantly ahead of its time. It was the only model of club comedy that represented women (both onstage and in the running of the company), it provided Cabaret and Live Music as well as a traditional comedy night, and it catered for customers and consumers of Comedy in Central London and urban areas across the country.

With a rebrand, and by creating a business with lower overheads – I believe Jongleurs could once again become a sustainable business. This would not be recompense to past acts, but to create an honest living for comedians of any age, gender and race who do not fit into the current model which means that artists need to go through other Media Channels (TV, Radio, Podcasting and Fringe Festivals) in order to make comedy a viable living.

My suggestion for how this should proceed is that we should have a conversation about me starting a Podcast called Jongleurs Comedy Podcast. This podcast would be not-for-profit and could be recorded and produced by me for no cost. It would be about how the comedy club circuit has changed since Jongleurs’ inception – and have a sense of humour rather than being a place to bring up old wounds. If this were to be successful and build an audience, we would then be in a position to discuss whether Jongleursis a viable business and the ownership of the brand. Of course, if you wanted it off your hands at a reasonable price- I would be open to that too.

Kind Regards,
Joshua Ross

RESPONSE

Thanks Joshua,

Will forward to my chairman.

Regards

XXXXXXX

Finance Manager

Email: xxxxxxx@pressac.com

Tel: 0115 93653XX