Hello From The Magic Tavern
Hello From The Magic Tavern
Andy's Podcaster Podcasting Podcast #37
Intro Music
Andy
It’s Andy’s Podcaster Podcasting Podcast - EPISODE 37
Garbage trucks in the ally behind the flat.
ANDY
Hello from La Jolla… ah, got a garbage truck in the ally, I know I don’t go for a studio sound… I prefer the real, with all its funky ambience. And yeah - I know sometimes it works better than others but hey, it’s my choice. But, the garbage trucks round here, ugh, it feels like they’re coming by every few hours. There’s a restaurant on the ground floor of the building. Sammy’s Wood Fired Pizza. And I guess the HOA makes them empty the trash all the time. And it’s not even like a super busy restaurant, there is a lot of great competition really close, but it’s pretty good, go at happy hour,you get half off a lot of their menu. From 3-5 sort of the elderly Blue Plate special times. They do these Crisp roasted brussels with some kind shaved cheese and walnuts. Delicious. But if you do go, just beware, if go during the early eating times, and this being La Jolla, millionaires playground… you might be eating close to old people who’ve had extreme plastic surgery…
SFX - Restaurant noise
Blaise
DADDY
Andy
Just a minute. Lets get the cheese pizza, with pepperoni on the side, some short rib tacos and some of the Brussel sprouts…
Blaise
DADDY
Andy
What son?
Blaise
Are they wearing masks?
Andy
Oh. Please. Stop staring.
Blaise
But are they?
Andy
No. Now. Stop staring.
Sierra
Very rude.
Blaise
ARRR. Stop acting like an adult…
Andy
Stop it. The pair of you. Or we’ll go upstairs and eat quiche.
Blaise
But are they masks?
Andy
No. Keep your voice down.
Sierra
They probably got burned or something.
Andy
Not exactly. It’s plastic surgery. It’s a choice.
Blaise
But why?
Andy
Stop staring at them. It’s a permanent operation to stretch and inflate their skin so that they look younger than they are.
Sierra
They do not look young.
Andy
No.
Andy
So yeah. I don’t know what’s going on with some of the old people round here… I just don’t know what they have done to their faces. It’s not a good look. It’s creepy. I think natural old age can be sort of beautiful. Real. Whereas having strange bloated doll faces is frightening on many levels. Literally frightening. - it happened to me - a couple of them scared the shit out of the me the other day. I was coming out of the elevator. And two of them just sort of appeared, hovering in my peripheral vision like the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I actually had a jump scare. They were lucky, I didn’t scream WALKING DEAD - and try and push them over the balcony. Instead I recovered and just sort of laughed and held open the elevator door for them. I think they knew what I was thinking though. How could they not? When you give a grown man a jump scare. With your face. I don’t know what their deal is. I can maybe understand one or two of them trying it, perhaps they got miss-sold the procedure with some dodgy before and after pictures - but there’s more than one or two of them in La Jolla. I’d say the best, most favorable description for you - if you perhaps squinted - in low light and you were really trying to nice, you could say the look is mummified cat… at worst case, if you want to be brutally honest - knowing the truth can set you free - they look like cannibal killers who are wearing the skins of their victims spread over random jello pouches they’ve inexplicably attached to their faces. Again, maybe one or two of them in isolation, wanting to convince people they were in the flush of youth and they got conned, OK I could understand. But why so many? What were they thinking?
GRACIE
Do I still look beautiful Herman?
HERMAN
Gracie, you are more beautiful to me than ever!
GRACIE
Did the plastic surgery really work Herman?
HERMAN
Gracie, you’re a knockout, you’re the belle of the ball, you look like a zombie Jack Benny!
GRACIE
Oh Herman - you say the sweetest things!
HERMAN
Take my wife please - she’s been gaslit into getting a monster face in a vain attempt to cling to a sliver of self worth…
ANDY
So what else is going on, it’s mid November. There’s a bit more ocean fog in the mornings. Been running every day on the beach down to the pier - Really starting to get into my stride again. It’s been slow hard going, I’ve being doing this overweight mincing pseudo jog for a while but now I’m starting to feel good, like I’m legitimately running and covering ground. And it’s nice, barefoot, running, but you got to find that hard packed sweet spot between super soft sand and the surf, otherwise is really hard going. I see dolphins off the coast most days. It’s good but I’ve also been finding tar balls washing up from the Orange County Oil spill. There’s patches of it all over the cliffs at Torrey Pines too and lumps of it here and there. I don’t know if you’ve see tar balls from an oil spill. Well, this one is not Exon Valdez level - or what was that Obama one in the Gulf - what was it- Deep Blue Horizon, something like that - it’s not at that level of horror - but it’s still disturbing. You just get these tar lumps, varying in size from a quarter, up to like five or six inches. And they are hard and cold from the water temperature when they wash in but if you don’t pick them up right away, if they are deposited at high tide up the on the rocks and cliffs and the sun hits them later in the day it melts down like tarmac and it’s a nightmare to scrape off. Yeah, not great. Also had a few dead oil covered seabirds washing up as well. Again, you might not have experienced it. It’s not like Exxon Valdez. Just a few birds. Not a lot, Exactly 3 to be precise - two Cormorants and gull. But the Shores are supposed to be an ocean preserve Andy. Yeah I know. It’s almost like the ocean is all connected together or something in one big like planet wide eco-system. Crazy. Still, I’m sure the most powerful people on the planet and the world scientific community will figure out a solution at the big climate conference in Glasgow. What’s it called - COP26. Catchy name, not at all bland and mind numbingly obscure. Stands for Conference of Parties 26th annual meeting. It’s a Untied Nations thing. I’m not hopeful. But lets see - I want some good news for you… OK - I would like to report from this Millionaires playground here, in La Jolla that I’m seeing a lot more Teslas on the road - the electric car built by Elon Musk, but paid for by us all, because his companies have taken 4.9 Billion in funding from the government, 4.9 Billion. What a success story isn’t he. Son of an Emerald mine owner from Apartheid South Africa, gets 4.9 Billion dollar funding from the government. Now the second richest man on the planet because the system is built to just consolidate and increase wealth from wealth. It’s hard to conceptualize a Billion dollars. I’ve been thinking a lot about Modern Monetary Theory and defense Spending - which is huge part of the local economy here in San diego - the military. They never scare monger abut inflation when they increase the 770 Billion so called ‘defense budget’ every year - just printing new money for it… And just grasping what one billion is actually very hard - because if you were to think about it in terms of time. One million seconds is just 11 and a half days. One billion seconds on the other hand - is 31 and half years. Come on that’s mad isn’t it. Just let that sink in. It’s an insane difference. None of it is backed to tangible goods, resources or a gold standard or a deficit. It’s an arbitrary invented value, a thought experiment gone wrong. Musk has 270 Billion Bezos - 200 billion Since we allow them to have this money. But what would happen if they just decided to buy all worlds toilet paper and blast it off into space. They could end world hunger. Just one of them, with a fraction of their wealth could buy all the surplus housing, any house that comes on the market and just keep it empty. Huge number. The money system is broken. The free market was never really free. There’s one thousand millions in a Billion. Totally cool, imagine what would happen if you tried to spend that money. I’m going to listen to some Economic podcasts soon I think. But I guess it’s good to see more Teslas on the roads than Hummers. Maybe, if the resources to make the batteries don’t run out. So, yeah - electric cars - we have a few. But then again, too few to mention…
GRACIE
Will you buy me a Tesla Herman, I want to save the planet…
HERMAN
Anything for you Gracie - I’ll buy you five of them.
GRACIE
Oh, Herman You do love me!
HERMAN
Gracie, I love you like a wildfire consuming the world’s last tree.
GRACIE
Oh Herman, I was worried you’d let them put me on an iceberg and float me out to sea.
HERMAN
Don’t worry, they can’t Frankenstein us Gracie. Pretty soon there won’t be any icebergs left.
GRACIE
Shall I turn the light out?
HERMAN
Yes, Gracie, lets turn all the lights out, everywhere, all over the world.
Music - I’ll never smile again by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
Music - Rise of the Black Centipede - Mario Rom’s Interzone
Andy
It’s… Review… Time…
ANDY
Today I’m reviewing HELLO FROM THE MAGIC TAVERN - a long running improvised comedy show out of Chicago. This podcast - Begun in 2015, tells the story of host Arnie NeeKamp, and his life after he accidentally fell through a portal at the back of a Burger King into the land of Foon - a fantasy realm of magic, elves, monsters and butt hole obsessed talking badgers. Arnie fortunately had his podcasting equipment with him when he fell through the portal and with a weak signal from the Burger King he’s been slowly documenting his exploration of Foon in a weekly podcast broadcast back to earth from a tavern called the Vermillion Minotaur. Most episodes comprise of Arnie engaging in banter with two bar regulars and boon companions - Chunt, a shapeshifter who pretty much stays as a randy talking badger, and Usidore a pompous and incompetent Wizard in the mold Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind. New people and creatures of Foon pass through the bar and Arnie and his chums interview them as the core meat of each show with Arnie trying to discover more about this strange world, the fish out of water Arthur Dent in Middle Earth, Usidore trying to recruit people for a quest to defeat the dark lord and Chunt attempting to get laid and have a good time. It’s a classic good time comedy at the bar, Arnie explores and tries to understand the the world as a fish out of water and the cast come and make fun of him as they build and described the world of Foon week on week. With one of major rules of the game being that anything anyone mentions about Foon on the show becomes cannon that is set in concrete into the lore of the world, so long time listeners get the bonus fun of hearing them scramble around the sometimes ridiculous and hastily made ad-libed universe. So for example, when Chunt makes a joke about Elves having three butt holes, from that moment on the Elves on Foon have three butt holes. And if an improvising guest comes on the show and references elves he may have to account for their anatomy. And yes, as you can tell - its a riotous spoof of the fantasy genre, very much descending from the original satirical spoof of the genre - the 1969 book - Bored of the Rings and like that book the show ridicules the genre and revels in it with humor that spans dick jokes to more subtle and well developed comedy delivered with more often than not… perfect timing. So the show is IMPROVISED which means it’s unscripted, beyond the rules of the world built on the show and certain plot points they have sketched out within the loose arks of their four season run. SO I guess I should ask do you know IMPROV, do you know Chicago? I have a passing acquaintance with both having lived in the windy city for eight months when I first emigrated here and in a previous life I dabbled a bit in performance comedy for a few years in the UK. SO Chicago has been this a superb incubator of storytelling and performing talent for a good 30-40 years now. Theatre, comedy, drama, music. WBEZ Chicago - birthplace of This American Life. Second City, Improv Olympics. And for a time it was an affordable place to live and rent in one of it’s many cool neighborhoods which bred a really vibrant and active art scene. When I moved there I remember writing to people in England that Chicago was like having an Edinburgh Fringe festival on your doorstep 365 days a year. And within that carnival of arts, across the cities many small independent theatre stages and back rooms of bars there is a thriving IMPROV scene. Do you know IMPROV? Maybe, maybe not. You probably have come across Improv from TV shows like Who’s Line is it Anyway. That’s probably most widely know example. So that’s one type of IMPROV, that is geared towards quick gags. And you may even have seen that type attempted at a local comedy show. That’s what’s known as the short form of IMPROV. This is what I saw when I was occasionally doing stand up in the UK from the late nineties through the early decade the naughts. Comedy improvised in the moment, quick wits trying to mine funny material from various types of random input from audience suggestion or just basic crowd work. Some Comedians would occasionally build reputations for getting in the flow and improvising on stage or doing a Billy Connelly and improvising within their material - from set up to punchline - and finding new laughs and connection with every performance and keeping it fresh. Sometimes mixed up in this is the artful theatrical tradition of appearing to improvise - which is a mixture of earned stage craft and memory for jokes material and phrasing. Eddie Izzard is the master of the spur of the moment improvised adlib but if you see see his tour multiple times in a run, the mastery is not so much in the improvisation of material but the selling of deeply practiced and scripted material as improvisation. Equally so, brilliant character comedians like Al Murray’s Pub Landlord - who can effortlessly work an audience in character - having a pre written response for every persons name and occupation in the English language within the boundaries of his outrageous bigoted pub landlord. SO when I emigrated to Chicago, I found an IMPROV scene unlike anything I’d seen in London, Birmingham or Edinburgh - a much bigger and deeper IMPROV scene than I’ve seen anywhere. And within the scene I discovered there are cliques and an industry of IMPROV education had grown up, pulling from the profitable continuing tool development classes that actors take to try develop their craft and keep going while trying to get roles. And in the classes where IMPROV is taught various purist attitudes are adopted techniques to create comedy IMPROV have built practices and disciples as fervent as any cult around Second City, Improv Olympics and random long running late night shows like Too Much Light Makes the baby go Blind… with the quantity and variety of the scene naturally raised the bar really high and this podcast is a piece of fruit grown in that fertile Chicago improv hot house. SO that’s a very quick overview of the scene - just to set the stage to say that this podcast - Hello from the Magic Tavern is as superb product of the Chicago comedy scene as you will find. Because it is the product of performers who have been improvising in this this scene together for decades. And their chemistry is excellent. They all know when to play straight man to set each other up and the world they are building in the show is deep and interesting with quick gags echoing out into long form humor as catch phrase are sowed, resowed, mocked, changed and harvested once more. And the guests they get on, drawing from the deep bench of Chicago talent, keep things fresh and funny and stop it from getting stale. Now, there is a kind of humor in IMPROV - that I call - secondary laughs - they are the laughs that are easily harvested from a willing audience, when they are sufficiently cajoled into playing along with an arbitrary set of constraints - Like for example - ‘We must perform the entirety of Hamlet in ten minutes while eating a piece of cake every time someone says ‘Foresooth’ or they performers of a show have begun a listing or rhyming game or pun game and can mug to the audience that its a struggle to accomplish and a slick performer will harvest a laugh and even a round of applause by feigning to flounder but recovering just within the arbitrary constraints of the format. The live show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind - was an absolute master at this, they just built the goodwill of the audience so well - as soon as you stepped through the door and it almost didn’t matter if half material was weak or the delivery subpar because you wanted them to succeed and you wanted to have a good time. And Magic Tavern does have its fair share of these secondary IMPROV laughs at play - but even in this the handle it with such a light touch you barely even recognize it’s happening. Their secondary laughs are like - can this new Elvish character who’s just shown up in the Tavern actually speak Elvish, how far can we push this improv performer - with the IMPROV KAYFABE that everything is conjured at the moment and not privately rehearsed at all all the culmination of extensive performance character work and stagecraft - how far can we push this guy to make Elvish up on the spot up, creating a language convincingly. And it’s fun to be in on the joke to see how he could possibly wriggle out of suddenly intense scrutiny of hastily improvised Elvish phrases. Look, the show is an absolute pleasure - utterly contrived but artfully done so get onboard and enjoy it. Hello from the Magic Tavern - gets - 5 stars, two thumbs up, an Ibble Dibble and bit of LARP and a Grab-Thars Hammer!
ANDY
It’s Andy’s voicemail… leave a message.
HEDGE
Hey, Andy, Sorry to interrupt the beach you lucky prick but since you haven’t responded to my emails I guess I’ve got to call you… Look. It’s Movember, and I’m taking part this year and raising awareness for mens health issues, bum cancer and suicide and I’m growing a mustache this year - hoping to get a big fucking handle bar going and I’m asking for people to sign up and sponsor me for a few bucks every quarter inch or something. I was hoping you’d take a full part and grow a stach with me but clearly you’ve got better things to do. But the least you can do is chip in. OK.
voicemail beep a bleep a blurp
ANDY
MOVEMBER - what a joker. Not going to get me again. MOVEMBER. as if. Growing mustaches to highlight the prostate. Come on. Makes no sense. FLANUARY was much better. This is just weird. Oh poor men, we want a pink race too but more sedentary and hipsterish. I’ve grown a mustache, give me a dollar! What a joke. I’ve admitted, it he got me good with Flanuary. But MOVEMBER? Who does he think I am? Fuck off.
SFX Bar Noise, ambience, door opening
ANDY
Memories. Hey, come here, sit down, join me for a pint? Thinking about IMPROV has really spun me out down memory lane… to Birmingham, England, late 90’s into the first decade of the new Millennium. You see, if you ask me, what was hands down best IMPROV I’ve ever seen. Then I would have to say it came from that time and one man. My old friend Ian McDiarmid. No. he wasn’t exactly famous. Local legend for sure, amongst the midlands comedy scene. Not a slick, headliner either, A grafter, probably was actually called a ‘New Act’ a endlessly doing opening spots at gigs for decades. But for sheer fun, for the quantity of laughter I experienced from a stage act. From the memories I have now of him, at the Midland Arts Centre, on small stages at back of pubs. Then hands down. Of everything I’ve seen. I would have to say the best laugh I ever had was watching him. And yes I’ve seen great stuff all over, Edinburgh Fringe, many times, Professional big name comedians of all type and stripe. Hen and Chickens in London back in the Day, I’m even acquainted with Chicago - and all those great Harold teams they produce. Yes, I’ve seen probably more than my fair share of IMPROV. I’ve seen nights of glory, with everyone smiling, glowing with the moments they’ve witnessed. Laughter echoing off the walls fit to wake the dead. Connections cutting as deep as the best art, Shakespearean in its beautiful reflection of the human condition. And then of course, the other times. Dull nights. Empty rooms. The eyes of your finest friends and lovers dodging to the corners of the curtains. Nights of pain. Stillborn inspiration. Desperate chuckles dragged from bored punters, or worse, the terrifying big crowds, loud and obnoxious, drunk and too full of themselves, a room of Medival kings screaming for a jester and kind of annoyed you’re not famous, and therefore maybe not worthy of their attention or respect but also unwilling to even give you a chance… 50/50 wether you can win them over… do you have the balls, can you intimidate and soothe and spellbind them with you words. It’s a weird alchemy at times. Performance. Comedy. But the best IMPROV I’ve seen? Well it was stuff from Ian - I’ll tell you about it now and maybe you might argue what I saw wasn’t really IMPROV at all, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but it was still some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen on a stage. And by funny, I mean really funny. Almost piss your pants funny, I was literally rolling in the aisles sometimes. I remember laughing so hard once that my jaw hurt the next day. Mad. Crazy. Helpless laughter. Rare old times. And in this it was unique. Of all the comedy I’ve seen. And I am talking about the stage performances of an old friend of mine, Ian McDiarmid, from Birmingham. A real salt of the earth Brummie. You’ve probably never heard of him. Well, that’s sad. Truly your loss. But then again, maybe not. Because he honestly could be a bit marmite… and sometimes worse, to some small troubled people he was considered a sort of village idiot. But he was nothing of the sort. And I think they only felt like that because he scared them, in that way that some mundane people become unhinged when looking at modern art and being told that what to them is a combination of paint scribbles is a masterpiece that moves people and is worth millions. I think Ian just unravelled their sense of self and order. He challenged their operating assumptions and scrambled their pretension. He was unconventional in a sly sort of way, that could appear like a sort of dangerous contagious idiocy, that people who woke up at seven and brushed their teeth and marched in line through their well ordered lives saying their prayers wanted no part of. But he was very real. Like Richie Edwards scratching 4 real into his arm with a razor blade, but obviously nowhere near as grim or depressive. Just a genuine dude, a one off. To me and those who were lucky enough to count him as a friend he was a sort of wonderful Holy Fool. At times he could make you feel like you’d fallen into a sitcom or something. You know how Andy Kaufman would do a bit and take it too far until it became uncomfortable? Well, it sometimes could feel uncanny like that with Ian, like he was doing a bit, all the time. Non stop. And the bit was called Ian McDiarmid. And sometimes, you’d catch a twinkle in his eye and you’d swear he was a genius and you and the whole world were just his straight men, in this surreal routine of his own invention…
Andy
How to explain Ian to you?… Well, lets try this - one of his long running routines was that he could speak French. It was brilliant. He was so totally committed to the idea that he could speak fluent French and read it that you’d see him wandering around Birmingham City Centre on a weekend with a rolled copy of Le Monde - the French broadsheet newspaper - tucked under his arm. I like to know what’s going on he said. I like to get a different perspective on the world… And so you would find him. In the corner of a pub. frowning at the paper, trying to read it, as if undertaking a chess match with a grandmaster. Because he couldn’t read French. Brilliant. ‘What’s the news Ian, ‘The European perspective is bigger’ he’d say or some other wildly vague generalization. Mad. He visited me in Paris once. We had a long weekend going round with him seeing the sights, sampling cafe culture. Everyone he tried to speak to, ‘had different dialect’ or something as every communication he attempted crumbled and disintegrated into a farce of mutual bemusement. And yet his committed certainty that he was a fluent French speaker - and the only one in the whole of Paris apparently - was untarnished. And if you wanted to settle the matter in plain terms, assert that it was clear he could not actually speak French - well then you were just falling into his trap - and he would continue to proclaim his French fluency with a calm fanatical certainty that would splinter your reason to pieces, like a stone gargoyle flattening a straw hat. I can still remember him now, wandering up to Parisian women in cafes in the Le Marais - and he was bullet proof, unsinkable. Quite shockingly, beautifully mad with confidence that he could converse with them. Which of course he couldn’t. And it would inevitably fail. Hopelessly, and then he’d come joyfully bounding back to the table - ‘I think she must be Italian or something. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying!’… What can you do with that? You just had to laugh. You just had to enjoy him. When you were with Ian it could be like you were in your own little Beckett Play, an unknown original. Of course people did dismiss him as a weird mentalist, all the time. It was their loss. And just when you were thinking yourself, ah he’s just a clown, a bit touched, he’d do something kind of knowing with a twinkle in his eye that made you think he was crafting it all. I had gig once, down the West country, middle 20 for a bit of cash, Anyway Ian got himself on the bill as one of three or four open mic newcomers and he was always up for a drive if he had the slimmest chance to perform. He did a lot of that, driving comedians around, trying out material. Well, it was a long drive into unknown territory and before we set off, I asked him if I needed to get maps printed and directions and the like. No he said - I’ve got a good A-Z of the British Isles. I was busy with a day job - so fine, I left it at that. Of course we got lost. Where’s you’re map Ian? - I thought you said you had one? ‘Oh I do…’ he said deadpan ‘it’s at home on the kitchen table. I don’t like bringing it in the car in case it encourages thieves!’ And then the look and then the twinkle. What can you do with that? So how to explain Ian’s performances. The ones I count as the best belly aching laughs I’ve ever had. I’ll describe it now and you can decide whether they count as Improv or not. Well, he’d take the stage quite timidly. He would come out and announce he was doing some IMPROV and try to take a couple of audience suggestions. ‘Give me a place and an occupation…’ and he’d be so unsure of himself, so awkward - that the audience were cringing for him already, sensing his utter failure and embarrassment and the feeling would be so acute they’d even be unwilling to provide him with a minimum of interaction. … but he’d persist and he’d eventually get some suggestions but then it sort of turned an he wouldn’t take the suggestions - someone would say - reluctantly ‘London’ - and he’d say No, not that - give me another one - Rochester - No sorry - Philadelphia - No - Berwick on Tweed - No and he’d keep doing it and he rile them up - really piss them off - they’d go from fearing for his incompetence and embarrassment to active hostility - and he’d push them - act as if it was the audience that was failing - Milk man - Traffic Warden - Brick layer - No - done that - try again - something else - and he’d keep this going for what felt like a painfully long time until he would eventually and begrudgingly accept a place and a job - lets say a Plumber in York… and then he would pace up and down, telling us - like we were idiots that he was now - beginning the scene - repeating ‘ Plumber from York - Plumber from York’ and of course he didn’t have anything. He’d seemingly reach into the bag of inspiration on stage and come up with nothing and then after another long feeling couple of minutes he’d just shrug and bail on it. And he just stand there sort of waving his arms a bit, maybe in strange approximation of a Plumber from York, a hint of a wrench, a gesture of plunger - and then he’d say - ‘why-i - lads I’m a plumber from York’ And it would be in a Geordie accent - which would in itself just push more buttons - because we’d all just seen him reject Newcastle and Sunderland not two minutes before from some begrudging punter on the second row. And then with the crowd definitely against him and if the compare hadn’t pulled him forcibly off the stage by that point, you might be in for a treat - and he might go into one of his classics - like the Gibraltar Monkeys bit or Woody Allen searching for Osama Bin Laden. The Gibraltar Monkeys was one I particularly liked - for in this bit he would attempt to improvise an interview between himself as a tv news journalist and a monkey on the rock of Gibraltar about whether they felt more British or Spanish. It was watching the way he would hunch over, on stage, doing the monkey response, barking out Spanish sounding words that made me lose my shit more than once. You see the best way to see and appreciate this performance was side on, you weren’t watching just Ian - you were watching Ian attempt solo Improv - while watching the audience getting angry and bemused attempting to understand Ian doing solo Improv. The looks on their little audience faces as the social pact as an audience member was totally obliterated before their eyes was priceless. Watching all their expressions of confusion, and becoming active hostile bemusement and then sometimes barely contained teeth clenching rage and fury was sublime. It was as if his Improv was insulting their very being. It was too much. I think, he was way ahead of his time. We watch Borat or Eric Andre today - do stuff to innocent punters, street pranks and it’s understood that we enjoy the spectacle of their outlandish humiliation and the upheaval of social expectations as the performance piece. This has made their names and built their careers. Ian was doing this naturally, ten years ahead of them, without even knowing what he was doing. Sometimes, there would be a bunch of us comedians, sitting side on, enjoying the Ian gig - watching the performer and audience and mainlining his mad and brilliant chaos and it was also a sort of extreme catharsis, for us, a Magnus Opus of failure, seeing all your worst fears as a performer looking for laughs come true for our friend and we would all be laughing so hard in the wings and on the stairs that sometimes we would turn the audience, the mirth and joy would spread and then they would start laughing too. And he would somehow, impossibly kill it. The social group therapy of laughter kicking in. Filling the room. The best medicine. Superb. The best stuff I’ve ever seen… No, sadly he’s not still going. He died. Heart Attack 2009. Found out he’d had a lot of stress put on hm at work that was added to by an evil woman who was trying to make him do things that were not legal. So it goes. He wasn’t equipped to deal with evil. You can’t bumble around being silly and trying to ‘Yes- And’ your way out some situations and relationships, including work situations under the grind of efficiency drives and profit maximization which always comes at the cost of the worker. But he also didn’t look after himself. He’d be the last in the pub. Good lad. Always up for a curry. I once left him in one Balti house early one evening and found him in another one several hours later at 2am after some show. It was our lives then at that time. And honestly, who can resist a curry, especially in Birmingham. But for those of us who saw him perform. He’ll always be up there. A man. A myth. A legend. Improv Beyond Improv. Comedy Beyond failure. Dismantler of the fourth wall. Crafter of Funnier moments than anyone I’ve ever seen. Ian McDiarmid. Rest in Peace mate. Whenever I think of Improv, I think of you and start laughing.
ANDY
That’s a wrap…
Music - Everything is Permitted - Mario Rom’s Interzone
ANDY
Thanks for listening. Please share the show. Help me get a few more listeners, and if you really want to help buy me a coffee by clicking the link. The Jazz is provided by Mario Rom’s Interzone. I don’t know who’s providing your Jazz but I think you should switch to these cats. Andy’s Podcaster Podcasting Podcast is sponsored by the American Shoe Council. Celebrating Over 40,000 years of bi-pedal history. Shoes - its how you protect your feet. Take it easy. BBBBBB- BYE.