"Yes, that woman dressed as a comedy buffalo may well be in charge of the next big campaign to rid the North West of discarded blobs of chewing gum...”
When I first came to Manchester in the late 1980's I had the idea of being a comedian. I wasn't so mad as to give up the day job, but by night I did make a few forays into the world of comedy. As well as being part of an alternative magic combo (so alternative we didn't have any tricks), I was also one half of an act involving blow-up dolphin and a woman who'd been in Coronation Street at least twice. Then I teamed up with Emma Clarke (now - as well as many other things - famous Voiceover artist and Voice of the Tube) and together we were the hilarious (so we thought) Brassrubbings.
Back in those days 'alternative comedy' had just arrived and was really shaking things up, but strange though it seems now, there were nowhere for alternative comics to perform in Manchester. It was Bernard Manning and co or nothing. Me and Emma were somewhat different - our interpretation of 'alternative' was to perform a series of duologues based on the side splitting notion of combining shop lifting with beauty treatments (eg nick a broom and stick it down your jacket to improve your posture. No, no one else thought it was funny either). Anyway because there wasn't anywhere in Manchester we had to go down to London to perform. It's touching, but strangely chilling, to think of the two of us, prancing about with brooms down our frocks in front of a club full of drunken cockneys who didn't have a clue what we were on about. It was there that I learnt never to use the word 'die' in an act. It's an open invitation for someone in the audience to shout out “Yeah, and you just have, so XXX off and go home.”
Anyway, eventually we did just that, but back in Manchester I clearly remember thinking that there was a real gap in the market. The new wave of comedy was rising up. It was massive in London and surely it was only a matter of time before it came up here. I could see the potential but I also remember feeling helpless: I didn't have a clue how to go about setting something like that up. A few months later Agraman, a comic around on the local scene, set up The Buzz Club at the Southern Pub in Chorlton and the rest, as they say, is history. Many big names had early gigs there - Caroline Aherne, Steve Coogan and Peter Kay amongst them.
Anyway 21 years later (2009 in fact) I had it again - I had the urge to do some performing, and wanted to create a space for like-minded people. Also for people who don't always get a fair hearing on the comedy scene, we've had a range of ages, a good cultural mix, lesbian and gay, lots of woman.We even tried people without a sense of humour, but that wasn't such a good idea ...
Anyway the difference was that this time I knew what to do. Clearly I was more experienced (note: another word for 'older') in the ways of the world. By this time I also knew my way around Manchester, but the biggest change in the intervening years I think is that things generally are much more possible. People set things up - creating organisations, movements, groups - all the time. Of course the web and social media have a lot to do with it, also demarcation lines are far more fluid than they used to be. Today someone running a bar, theatre or a club will talk willingly talk to someone with a couple of comedians and a band on their books. You don't have to be an official 'promoter' to get a hearing, or indeed to get a booking. Things were much more formal in the past - and people were much more 'fixed' in their roles.
The upshot was that early last year I got in touch with a group of friends and colleagues with an interest in theatre/comedy, and that group eventually morphed into Mish Mash Cabaret. We have since put on a number of shows in and around Manchester, and will be appearing at Manchester Pride on August Bank Holiday. Amazingly it has also been the vehicle for me and Emma to meet up again - after a gap of 20 years - and she'll be performing with us at the Big Weekend. In the meantime she's become a highly regarded Voiceover artist (Voice of the Tube is but one), and is still one of the funniest people on God's earth.
So - it was in this spirit of setting things up and stengthening our potential for doing the sort of work that we wanted to do - that Frankie Mullen and I got together to form Dovetail. We'd worked on numerous projects together over the years, we shared very similar drive and values, so we thought why not ? Why not do the work we'd like to do, and do it for the sorts of organisations we like and admire, in the way we want ? So when the opportunity arose to work more closely with Reason Digital and share an office with them, it made real sense. We could swap skills and resources and be able to offer our clients added benefit, and when we come together to work on joint projects, we have the potential to not only be stronger, but to be greater than the sum of our parts.
And it was in this spirit (... so many spirits, is there a seance going on ?) that me and Frankie and Reason Digital came up with Lunchworks: a series of thought-provoking lunchtime talks. We wanted to find a way of bringing the sorts of organisations we work with and want to work with- charities, third sector, creative industries and other social enterprises - together to discuss some of the issues of the day, particularly the economy, the cuts, and 'The Big Society' - whatever that may be. The first speaker (Friday August 27th) is Scottish journalist and 'Scotland's main public intellectual ' (The Sunday Herald) Gerry Hassan. The next speaker (September 24th) is non other than Emma Clarke, who as well as doing an extraordinary range of voices, is also a very canny business woman and master of diversification - something we all need to do in these fast changing times.
So it seems to me that though the future does look bleak and uncertain in many respects, there are also ways in which things have democratised and opened out. Nowadays people are much more likely to have a range of persona as well as a range of work interests, whether that is all at once or in quick succession, we are no longer fixed in one single line of work. The lines between work and play are also much less defined, so that friends may be morph into your work colleagues/ your boss/your assistant/your contributor/ your commissioner .... and back to just your friend again. We also need to come up with ideas and get things going as it's becoming increasingly clear that no one else is going to do it for us. It is this sort of spirit that we are aiming to engender.
It's no surprise then that I have done cabaret shows with people who I then work for or who do work for me. Yes, that woman dressed as a comedy buffalo may well be in charge of the next big campaign to rid the North West of discarded blobs of chewing gum..... Yes, I think that Lunchworks will express some of this spirit, and I hope it will be an inspiration to everyone involved. Comedy buffalos included.