How I Kicked Heroin

One night after a gig in Nunhead, SE London (Pull The Other One cabaret night) I went back to play chess with a now dead comedian (yes that fella – RIP) who chased the dragon through the night as I drank stella…
After declining a few offers to have a go, I thought hell, why not give it a little toot and so I did just that.

What really struck me was just how innocuous heroin was, there was no great orgasmic high that I expected, just nothingness like a very clean marijuana mong out with zero paranoia… how bizarre…

The next day I was chatting on the phone to another comedian friend (one who is still alive), I knew he had been a user of the bug H for some time in the past and so I told him about my experience.
I asked him how it could ever be addictive.
He put the phone down and came straight around to my flat.
He told me in no uncertain terms that by being so unthreatening is exactly how heroin grabs people.

Drugs like Acid, Ecstasy, mushrooms etc. which produce the biggest high are quite an event and yet are not really addictive. Whereas Heroin feels so harmless that it seeps in like a sneaky little fecker!
That massive low of nothingness becomes the most desirable thing in life, both physically and mentally.

As my friend told me, using heroin is the happiest you can possibly be… but when heroin starts using you its beyond the biggest depression that you can ever imagine.
I hadn’t planned to get back on the horse and my encounter was a one off.
It is shame that my late friend who gave me that toot isn’t able to say the same.
Just say no kids!

Sign Up – Join Bob Slayer’s Happy Drunks!

OR

Includes details of BOB SLAYER’s secret show – “BRING YOUR OWN BOOZE”

Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality Nomination & Cunning Stunt Winner

I got nominated again for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality – last year was for anarchy – this year is for taking Comedy into uncharted OTT areas… I wont win cos Doctor Brown will (Update: He didn’t Johnny Sorrow was a worthy winner)…

But Kunt and the Gang will win the Cunning Stunt Award for his cocks and I will take that as mine cos I did all the hard work before he fired me… (Update: Kunt won it but they also gave me a Cunning Stunt of my own for convincing them that Kunt had fired me… but then he really did fire me! Although I was never hired by him? Yes, I have completely lost track of what is going on as well!)

Kunt has sacked me

Dear Bob
Sorry to have to tell you by email but I don’t want you doing anything else on the cock sticker campaign. As much as I appreciate the other comedians turning out for the photocalls that you organised, I didn’t want to be in the photos and you convinced me against my better judgement that it would be a good idea. I’ve seen the resulting photos and I look more awkward than Jade Goody’s mum on a juggling course. Also I’m getting grief off my bird after you made me put that sticker on Kate Copstick’s jumper and some cunt took that photo which is now doing the rounds that looks like I’m titting her up.

I know you were doing what you thought best but the reason I don’t do any press releases is because I know who my audience is and they find us naturally through the internet or word of mouth. They are proper people like bricklayers, carpet fitters, shop workers, central heating engineers, students and drug dealers. Since you took it upon yourself to ‘help’ with my cock sticker campaign, coverage in po-faced luvvie mags like The Stage has meant the shows have been increasingly full of pompous, middle class, chin-stroking ponces. For fuck’s sake, the poxy Culture Show have even been in! In the last seven days since you helped ‘mastermind’ the cock campaign I have had more roll-necked twats in cuntish berets sat there with a glass of red wine and laughing ironically than in the previous seven years of gigs. Fuck knows how this has happened because I’d hardly call your act highbrow, I was there the night that bird stuck her finger up your arsehole and pulled it out leaving a rubber glove hanging out your brown eye.

I will buy you a beer when I see you to say thanks for helping us get nominated for the cunning stunt award. But I don’t want you doing anything else. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before Michael fucking MacIntyre turns up covered in cock stickers shouting ‘Where’s the party?’.

Cheers
Kunt

P.S. I seriously think you are liable for Daniel Sloss’s agent losing her sense of humour and invoicing us for 900 quid. I told you in confidence that I overheard someone saying that he didn’t have pubes yet, there was no need to go and blog it.

In Defence of Kunt and The Gang – The Full Cockgate Story

This is Kunt and the Gang’s third Fringe. For the last two years he performed at the relatively small meadow bar, building a word of mouth following and packing it out each night. This year I persuaded him to step up to the 150+ capacity Hive where we also have Phil Kay doing a free show, plus Frank Sanazi, John Robinson, my own Marmite Gameshow etc. Kunt is having no problems filling the room every night, people are loving the show and he is doing a very healthy trade in merchandise and cash in his bucket.

This year Mr Kunt had the idea of using cock shaped stickers as flyers for his show which he has been handing out to fans. These have since been appearing on other show posters all over Edinburgh and landed Kunt in a little hot water. As the person who booked hi this year I feel more than a little responsible for this (as well as proud of his success at the fringe).

Read Kunt’s appology here:

http://www.bobslayer.com/2011/08/16/never-mind-the-bollocks-sorry-about-the-cocks/

I have spoken to lots of comedians about the cock stickers and opinion is divided into two camps:
= “Its very funny…” – this has come from established Comedians such as Stewart Lee (who yesterday came to see Kunt for the second night in a row and laughed like a drain throughout) and Dave Gorman as well as newer comics and acts on the free shows who are perhaps also impressed what impact Kunt has made with just £50 worth of stickers.

= “It’s not very funny” – this has mostly come from comics on paid shows who are still establishing themselves and I think that the unnecessary commercial pressure that the fringe industry puts on the is causing them to take the cocks a little too seriously. Their comments have usually included the observation that they have spent £3000+ on the posters that were defaced. Maybe the relevant point is that they shouldn’t have spent so much on posters that don’t do a great deal to sell tickets and are often more to benefit the profile of the promoter.

The question is has there been any actual negative effect due to the appearane of cocks on posters? Serial prankster Lewis Schaffer was asked what he thought about it all and he said: “Well I was thinking of going to see Russell Kane’s show but when I saw his poster I was worried that he might be a cock sucker and so have decided to give it a miss.” However Kane himself was unconcerned and said: “I actually found it fucking funny! Keep printing cocks and saying it too. It’s proper funny.”

This all reminds me of a story Simon Donald used to tell in his show about the early days of Viz: IPC Media showed an interest in publishing the magazine but told them that categorically “Farts were not funny”. Viz quite rightly ignored IPC and the magazine went on to become the third best selling mag in the UK with Johnny Fartpants as one of their most loved creations. As soon as you start policing what is and isn’t funny then you have lost the point of comedy.

In another anecdote an agent at Avalon asked comedian Ian Fox what was the funniest thing he had seen at the Fringe Ian replied Kunt & The Gang. The Avalon agent was intreagued and wanted to know more but after Ian had described Kunts show the agent said: “Oh I don’t think we could do anything with that.” to which Ian replied well that wasn’t your question! I would go further and say that if one of the largest comedy agents cannot do anything with the funniest act on the fringe then it is the agent and perhaps the industry that needs to change and not the act.

The Awards judges are coning to see Kunt this week so maybe the industry is going to change? All I would like to say to them is that he is a maverick, don’t censor him…

Alternative Fringe
Laughing Horse @ The Hive (313), Niddry Street
6:15pm – Frank Sanazi – the beautifuclly wrong songbird
7:15pm – Bob Slayer – “Good natured bad behaviour from a very funny man…” Copstick, The Scotsman
8:15pm – Phil Kay – multi award winning Scotsman and one of the most experienced and unpredictably hilarious performers on the fringe
9:15pm – Kunt and The Gang – a cult superstar, do not miss and also do not be late – it will be packed!
Also throughout the day at the Hive: Devvo, Desiree Burch (SMUT), Jody Kamali, John Robertson, Tony Bournemouth (aka Jimbo), Ivan Steward, O’Farahan & Keith, Napi Lewis, Spring Day, Eric Hutton & Ben Elwood, Malcolm Hardee Comedy Debates

Never Mind The Bollocks SORRY ABOUT THE COCKS

Here follows an apology from Kunt:

Kunt and the Gang would like to apologise to anyone who is upset about the ‘crudely drawn cock’ stickers that have been appearing all over posters in Edinburgh. When we had 5000 of the cock stickers printed in the run up to the Fringe Festival we just thought it would be a light-hearted alternative to flyers. The plan was to give them to our audience each night so they could go out and vote with their cocks by sticking them in amusing places on posters. It was intended to be one big jolly jape that everyone laughed along with. This I now know was a badly misjudged joke that horribly backfired.

Unfortunately it was brought to our attention that some comedians were extremely angry at seeing their posters adorned with an effigy of a male member. This culminated in myself being physically threatened by one irate comic who failed to see the funny side of his poster being decorated by a member of the public with a crudely drawn image of a man’s winky.

Further to this, after only four nights of the audience being handed stickers at the end of my show, I received a warning from the Fringe Police and was told that Underbelly had threatened action should any more of my stickers be handed out. I suspect the cock that broke the camel’s back was the penis that ended up in Christine Hamilton’s wine glass on their flagship poster on Bristo Square. The same night I received a visit at my venue from Edinburgh Council Environmental
Dept. who told us that they had spent the day pulling off over a hundred cocks. They showed us examples of cocks they had found on posters, including the one of Russell Kane with his mouth open, the one of Richard Herring lying on a bed and the one of the Spank Comedy Club with that bird bending over. I gave them my assurance to that no more cock stickers would be given out.

I would like to take this opportunity to say my cocks were not meant maliciously or designed to annoy anyone and I sincerely apologise if one of my cocks got up anyone’s nose. Admittedly I didn’t think it through properly. I mistakenly thought everyone would share my enthusiasm for seeing Edinburgh covered in crudely drawn cocks for a month. In retrospect I realise I was like America selling Weapons of Mass Destruction to the Middle East without a thought for who my cock shaped missiles would be affecting. Furthermore I would also like to apologise to any of the performers who have had a cock removed and are now left where the sticker once was or a ‘ghost cock’. I’m sorry if my cock cheesed ayone off.

Kunt (Kunt and the Gang)

Alternative Fringe
Laughing Horse @ The Hive (313), Niddry Street
6:15pm – Frank Sanazi – the beautifuclly wrong songbird
7:15pm – Bob Slayer – “Good natured bad behaviour from a very funny man…” Copstick, The Scotsman
8:15pm – Phil Kay – multi award winning Scotsman and one of the most experienced and unpredictably hilarious performers on the fringe
9:15pm – Kunt and The Gang – a cult superstar, do not miss and also do not be late – it will be packed!
Also throughout the day at the Hive: Devvo, Desiree Burch (SMUT), Jody Kamali, John Robertson, Tony Bournemouth (aka Jimbo), Ivan Steward, O’Farahan & Keith, Napi Lewis, Spring Day, Eric Hutton & Ben Elwood, Malcolm Hardee Comedy Debates

The Young Ones and Bob Slayer @ The Royal Festival Hall

Many years ago, when I was a wee nipper in rural Shropshire, something came on the TV that changed my life: “The Young Ones”. I had no idea at the time what a seminal moment in the rise of Alternative Comedy I was witnessing. All I did know was that it was unlike anything I had ever seen or heard before and that I loved it. I would never have guessed that 30 odd years later I would be performing on stage at the Royal Festival Hall with many of the stars of this anarchic show including: Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planner, Pauline Melville, Mark Arden and Stephen Frost (aka The Oblivion Boys) etc as part of “At Last The 1981 Show” curated by Stewart Lee (who coincidentally was born in the Shropshire town of Wellington).

As a kid I devoured anything remotely alternative comedy shaped on the TV and later on in the 80′s, when I was old enough, I went down to that London specifically to go to The Comedy Store. I have strong memories of two of the acts: Jo Brand because she was magnificently rude to me (I recently gigged with her her and we had a lovely chat – this may be getting a little bit name dropping heavy but I claim it is relevant because coincidentally she got married in Ludlow, Shropshire) and Chris Lynam because he stuck a banger up his bum (he has recently stuck one up my bum in Shropshire (he didn’t)). But back to the point, it was the inclusion of bands on the Young Ones that initially had more impact on me – All I can remember having in the house at the time was some recordings of Pam Ayres (most notably one titled “Some more of me poems and songs”) and the Barron Knights – and so Motorhead’s Ace of Spades on the first episode of the second series in particular was a huge revelation. They literally blew my mind and so after a few years as a Jockey (I got too heavy) and then a string of jobs I hated, I ran away with the Rock & Roll Circus. I touring with bands as crew, Tour Manager and Manager. I even got to hang out with Lemmy the amazing warty frontman of Motorhead on a couple of occasions who was more than happy to discuss appearing on the Young Ones and what that meant to him.

When touring with bands I frequently ended up getting on stage to deal with problems and chat to the audience. This led to me being shoved out on stage to entertain 1500 Bloodhound Gang Fans while the band, not impressed with the new smoking laws, went for a mid show cigarette, although not before a parting comment along the lines of: “Feel free to throw something at our tour manager while we go for a quick smoke”. This became a regular occurrence on the tour and kicked off my on stage career – not so much trial by fire but trial by bottles of piss. Another band that I toured with all over the world and also managed was (and still is) Electric Eel Shock (EES) from Japan. On a tour of Ireland the support band didn’t turn up and so I stepped up to fill in. After that I increasingly looked for opportunities to get on stage with EES until after one gig where I had maybe bigged up my role a little too much, frontman Aki turned around to me and said: “I think it is time for you to get your own stage…” which was of course a polite way of telling me to fuck off! So in 2008 I went to Edinburgh for the first time. All my early comedy influences came back to me and I had a wonderful week. I have been back to the Fringe every year this year booked the Hive for Laughing Horse where we have amongst other great shows Phil Kay doing his main show, Frank Sanazi, Kunt & The Gand, Devvo etc.

I have also gigged all over the UK, Ireland, France, Netherlands and even Hong Kong and at one gig I was very lucky to meet a man called Martin Soan, who along with the late great Malcolm Hardee formed he creative heart of The Greatest Show on Legs. Martin seems to like my alternative influenced anarchic approach which is coupled with a naivety and excitement that comes from doing something I have often thought about over the years but never thought would become my day job. So last year Martin asked me to join him on stage in the Balloon Dance at Up The Creek’s 20th Birthday, we got drunk, got naked and had a right laugh in front of the great and the good of comedy! When Stewart Lee asked Martin to put together The Greatest Show of Legs for the Royal Festival Hall I was very pleased to again get the call – which led me to sharing a stage with not only afore mentioned Young Ones and Stewart Lee but also John Cooper Clarke and Norman Lovett.

The backstage highlight was hugging Pauline Melville, who was Vyvyans mum in the episode that Madness played in the Kebab and Calculator, and telling her how excited I was to meet her and that she had been an important part of my sex education: In the 1981 episode Mike is told to stop talking to Vyvyans mum about his Herpes and I had to ask my dad what herpes were, much to the embarrassment of my older brother. This is the only time I can remember my dad telling me anything remotely close to sex and what he told me is seared in my brain: “It is small sores that you can get on your mouth or your willy… and never get rid of… so just be careful around women.” try working that out as a child – terrifying! However I seem to have dealt with any issues of repression because the hug and conversation with Pauline all went on while I was totally naked…

Martin Soan’s Mime Sketch that was described by the Guardian, Evening Standard or Spoonfed as the stand out part the Royal Festial Hall gig will feature at:
HEROES OF ALTERNATIVE COMEDY @ Leicester Square Theatre on Sat July 2nd
Phil Kay, Martin Soan (Greatest Show on Legs), Frank Sanazi and Bob Slayer (MC)…
http://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/126512667/events/126589488

What do we want? Not Sure… When do we want it? Um…

So how are you going to vote???
I just had a little debate with a friend who is a staunch supporter of the Greens and the Yes vote…
At the start of the discussion I was undecided – lets see how it all turns out…

Greeen – remember to vote, wanky torys will all be voting NO tomorrow so the more YES votes the better

Bob – so if I were to vote NO would that make me a tory?

G – no but they will gain the most from it if you do

B – but I find that the proposed AV system is deeply flawed – and perhaps even more so than FPTP

G – AV isn’t great but its a step at least – you kinda have to agree its better then the 2.5 main parties getting all the votes

B – it seems to me that what we will gain is a system where the 2nd choices of people who vote for the losing parties gets to decide who gets in – is this right?

G – But FPTP fucks people over, making them have to tactical vote – I think a lot of people dont vote for who they want but instead dislike the main parties so much that they vote for a party they half heartedly agree with just to get them out

B – but what is the difference with that and their second choice – which may be “for a party they half heartedly agree with just to get them out” – Didn’t you start this discussion by saying that a YES vote is anti tory – by voting for a system that you half heartedly agree with just to get them out

G – your the first person to stump me on this so far

B – How about this from John Fleming: “The outcome of Proportional Representation is to elect not the candidate whose policies and personality are most admired by most people, but to elect the candidate whose policies and personality are less disliked by more people.”

G – yeah thats a tough to argue against

B – compromise and bland

G – but its not right that a party gets 30% of the vote and wins

B – no but under AV the third party – by its very nature of being less well known will do proportionally better – which will lead to more situations like we have now where a government is breaking its election promises – that is not democracy – people who voted liberal are not getting what they wanted – or indeed were promised

G – true

B – even people who voted conservatives do not have the government they voted for (Oh and labout have beaker from the muppets in charge!)

G – hehehehe

B – I think that Liberals fought for a referendum instead of promises which were more important and then the conservatives have allowed them a shitty little compromise. I dislike the conservatives – but recognise that whatever we do we aren’t going to get rid of them – and in any case they have a place to balance politics – What use are the liberals? They have have broken promises and allowed themselves to be shafted for what?!! Yes we need to change the system but maybe we should use this opportunity to marginalise the Liberals and allow another third party like the greens to come through? Voting “No” could well assist that.

G – congratulations dude i dont know if im yes or no anymore

B – Nor me – I think it might be best to stop in bed?

Guff of the day

I find that by never reading a newspaper or consuming news in any form at all then I can be sure that all my opinions are always my own – admittedly they are ill informed and ignorant – but they are my own

When it comes to discussions about football it seems that women are almost always ‘off side’, and yet they can never seem to work out why…

I have always found the whole idea of the Geneva convention very odd… when men are killing each other it seems bizarre to have a set of rules that guide the process and turn it into a game… should killing someone nicely win more points than killing someone in a more painful way? And war crimes? Surely the the whole losing side are guilty of these? And quite probably the winning side too?

Musical Comedy

The only funny musical comedy I have ever seen:-
The performer walked out onto the stage with a guitar and a trumpet, both in their cases. He carefully laid both of these down on the stage, opened them and took out the instruments… He lifted the guitar into the air, cleared his throat and proceeded to smash the guitar over the head of a man in the front row. As he did this he simultaneously curled a great big Mr Whippy shit into the horn of the shiny brass trumpet… When he had finished his production, he handed the trumpet to the man with the now dented head, bowed deeply and left the stage.
He was given a standing ovation – and I think we all know why x