Extract #5 From Simon Donald’s ‘Him Off The Viz’

Him Off The Viz

Extract from ‘In the next two hours …’

The term ‘alternative comedy’ hadn’t reached Newcastle in 1981 when Andy Pop told us he had a new exciting venture. He’d seen an opportunity for getting crowds into the rather forlorn Jesmond Cinema, standing at the end of Sunbury Avenue, and in which I’d spent so much of my childhood and adolescence. Putting live entertainment on there would pose a problem, as the cinema wasn’t licensed for music, but comedy bypassed this issue. Andy had become aware of a touring comedy troupe called The Comic Strip and showed me an unbelievable photocopied press pack with scores of five-star reviews. They’d also sent wonderful posters depicting a falling bomb, with space at the bottom for Andy to write the gig details in with a marker pen.

Chris, Jim and I were sceptical about the possibility of stand-up comedy being funny. Stand-up was old hat: it was for outdated working men’s club comedians who appeared on TV shows like The Comedians, telling predictable and often racist jokes. Or so we thought.

The event was very well attended – everyone who was anyone on the Newcastle scene was there. As the show opened we were hit with the astonishing, lightening-paced, aggressive, political and foulmouthed Alexei Sayle, compère. His material and attitude hit me like a cricket bat. It was apparent from the word go that there was actually someone else out there who saw the world the way we did. The acts and comedians that followed beggar belief from the viewpoint of hindsight, and I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve never since seen a comedy show with such impact. It comprised Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Ade Edmundson and Rik Mayall, then there were French and Saunders, the first women to make me hurt with laughter, and finally Arnold Brown … and why not?

‘The Dangerous Brothers’ was possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. When they lined up Ade’s final act of dangerousness, headbutting the mic out of the stand, I thought I might die laughing. It was truly wonderful.

In those two or so hours we had, in one fell swoop, witnessed the backbone of British television comedy for the next two decades and more. It was the most remarkable live event I’ve ever experienced, and it all happened on the street where I was born.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet any of the performers, and I never have since, with the exception of Arnold Brown at a book launch – a very nice man indeed. I would have loved the chance to thank the others too for one of the best nights of my life.

For your information … For your entertainment

The Viz receptions became more organised over the next few issues. They would always take place in the afternoon in rooms that we were able to hire free of charge. These included the back room of the Baltic Wine Cellar, the function room of the Grosvenor Hotel in Jesmond and Dingwalls on Waterloo Street. Unfortunately, when Viz became a regular publication these parties came to an end, but they really were a big part in the comic’s early history and I will always have very fond memories of them.

We were still very young and driven at the time and Viz was, of course, a home-grown product. We did our best to make these parties as professional as we could, but with a cottage-industry, Viz-signature, openly cheesy feel.

We recorded cassettes to play during the receptions, mix tapes of our favourite tunes – lots of Motown, northern soul, Dexy’s, The Jam and so on, sprinkled with obscure favourites and some good comedy tunes. I used to record pieces as a comedy DJ in between the tracks. He was based on the graveyard-shift DJs on Metro Radio at the time, with a bit of Alan Robson thrown in. He was your classic shit local radio presenter, the type inescapably associated nowadays with Alan Partridge. I don’t remember the character’s name, and I don’t believe any of the tapes still exist, although I may be wrong. His catchphrase I remember very well: it was based on that random horseshit DJs talk when they need to fill in ‘dead air’ while they’re thinking. ‘Never the mind … the none the nevertheless!’

I also recorded a very serious-sounding voice artiste character who only ever had one line, delivered in the style of the bloke who always used to voiceover the really cheap local TV adverts. He was basically a shit actor trying to sound like Richard Burton or something. The wording of his line was, ‘Viz comic reception, for your information … For your entertainment.’

We had fun inserting this announcement rather too often into the tapes, which was a great test of people’s humour. With very repetitive jokes some people begin to find it even more funny at the exact same moment that other people begin to find it absolutely intolerable.

For one recording Steve Nash, guitarist and later trumpet player in Arthur 2 Stroke, better known at the time as WM7, introduced us to the outrageous 1940s recordings of Spike Jones and the City Slickers. He invited Chris and me to his flat in the west end of Newcastle specially to borrow a Spike Jones LP and a Kenny Everett compilation of the worst records ever made. Two significant things happened on our journey, one being that in the particularly rough end of Benwell where Steve was living I spotted a shop called The Community Shop, which didn’t seem to sell anything, but appeared to be more of a liberal-thinking community drop-in centre. Chris and I filled our journey walking through the streets of Benwell with images of an unshaven man in a vest and slippers trying to buy cigarettes there. At the time we were particularly amused by what we called ‘woolly liberals’ trying to enforce their middle-class hippy thinking on the less-than-receptive working-class people of the area. Chris later turned the imagined unfortunate man trying to buy his tabs from a woolly-jumpered ethnically aware non-profit-making shopkeeper into an absolutely brilliant cartoon called simply ‘Community Shop’.

The other significant moment, possibly more significant to those of us who were fans of Arthur 2 Stroke at the time, was Steve Nash showing us the packet of washing powder from which he had taken the stage name WM7. It was a 1960s pack of Omo, which proclaimed to contain the ingredient WM7, which was revealed in the small print to be the wonder formula Washday Miracle 7.

It would be years later that Phil Branston revealed to me where he took the name Arthur 2 Stroke from. He was sitting in a pub in Clapham and an old fella walked in. The locals all said hello to him, and he was introduced to Phil as Arthur 2 Strokes. Phil discreetly asked why the man had such a name. He was told that it was quite simple: his name was Arthur and he’d had two strokes.

There was little in the way of organised entertainment at the Viz launch functions: they were little more than an excuse to get drunk in the afternoon whilst celebrating the creation of another comic. One thing we did was to run little competitions and we made special prizes to give away to the winners. At the reception for Viz issue 7 or so we gave away as prizes two bottles of beer for which Chris and I had made our own one-off labels. His was called Britain’s Brew and featured early Viz favourite Billy Britain. Mine was called Parkie’s Piss, and not surprisingly featured The Parkie. More than ten years later I was in a friend’s house in Gateshead. Davey Whitaker had played in the aforementioned not-insignificant band The Hostages, who in 1985 they were signed to EMI for the very short time it took them to spend their entire advance on drugs. On Davey’s mantelpiece I spotted the Parkie’s Piss bottle. I was very touched that he had considered it worth keeping after winning whatever competition it was we ran that day, but he was outdone by Davey Bruce, who had won the Britain’s Brew by doing the best impression of Billy Britain. Davey Bruce to this day has the Britain’s Brew bottle, but unlike Davey Whitaker’s bottle, it still miraculously contains the original beer. Which, it has to be said, was not looking particularly appetising the last time I saw it, about ten years ago.

Simon Donald’s autobiography ‘Him Off The Viz’ will be released on October 7th – that’s this Thursday! – and is available from Amazon, Tonto Books and all good book stores. Simon will be performing tonight at Long Live Comedy in Newcastle – tickets are priced at £2. He will also be promoting his book tomorrow evening at a talk-in at Waterstones in Newcastle. Tickets are available from the store and are priced at £3.

Our final extract from ‘Him Off The Viz’ will be online tomorrow. Enjoy.