What Is a QLAC and Why Do Longevity Annuities Matter?
Qualified longevity annuity contracts, or QLACs, allow an account owner to make contributions into an annuity contract and then defer income and distributions for years, with the intent of receiving an income at a future date. As a result of forfeiting access to the funds prior to receiving income, the contribution to the QLAC is not subject to the normal required minimum distribution rules associated with IRAs.
Do we project retirement income needs until a projected longevity, as stated by mortality tables? If so, we run the risk of outliving the "average" and running out of money too soon.
Alternatively, we can run retirement projections until age 100 or beyond. The risk here may not be running out of money too soon; the risk may be not spending enough. You may be leaving chips on the table (or an estate that is larger than what you had intended) because you spent less early in retirement in an effort to save for your late 90s.
QLACs, when used appropriately, promise to pay income to a retiree at this later stage in life. This is income that will last for as long as the retiree lives. They are one valuable resource that may be used to address the issue of longevity and retirement income planning.
What Is a QLAC (Qualified Longevity Annuity Contract)?
A qualified longevity annuity contract is an annuity where one contributes money now with the expectation of receiving income in the future. During the period in between, there is no access to the cash, and no income is received.
You contribute to a qualified longevity annuity contract.
You wait for a specified amount of time, known as the deferral period, during which you receive nothing and have no access to the money.
You turn on your annuity income, which pays you for the remainder of your life.
The amount of income you receive is subject to various factors, including how much you contribute to the contract, your age when you turn on the income, and your gender, among others.
Are QLACs a Good Deal?
There are several ways to evaluate whether or not QLACs are a good deal. The first evaluation assesses the value of the QLAC contract, calculating an internal rate of return on the contract over a number of years. Said another way, it calculates what rate of return you should expect.
To calculate the return, we must create a hypothetical example.
Let's assume a sample contract for a 65-year-old male who contributes $125,000 into a QLAC. Let's further assume two scenarios: one that begins delivering income at age 80 and another at age 85.
From a practical standpoint, here is what is happening.
This client is giving up full access to $125,000. In exchange, he will receive $27,433 for life (if he chooses to start income at age 80) or $54,399 for life (if he begins income at age 85).
We can see the rate of return of this investment, assuming that income starts being received at age 80, is positive beginning in contract year 20. It takes 20 years from the date of the initial contribution to the contract to eke out a positive rate of return.
It isn't until age 89 that the rate of return creeps above 4% and age 92 that it surpasses 5% (the average 65-year-old male today has a life expectancy of 84.3 years). Using life expectancy as a target (and rounding up to age 85), we see that the expected rate of return is calculated to be 1.59%.
So, back to the original question, is this a good deal or not?
To help answer this question, we should compare a QLAC to the available alternatives, one of which is an investment portfolio. If you would expect to earn a rate of return in an investment portfolio that exceeds the IRR's calculated above, one could suggest that it makes sense to consider investing as opposed to contributing those funds to a QLAC.
Using a historical perspective as our guideline, an investment portfolio has far exceeded the IRRs as stated by the longevity annuity. Using a balanced Vanguard portfolio as a reference point (assuming a 50% equity and 50% fixed income allocation), we see that the average rate of return between 1926 and 2015 was 8.3%.
With that in mind, would you prefer the certainty of annuity income and a 0‒4% rate of return? Or would you retain the investment risk to maintain liquidity and the possibility for a better rate of return?
Based on the calculations above, I could argue that it is not all that valuable. In fact, the benefit of delaying income would need to be HUGE in order to make up for the potential loss of earnings.
At age 70.5, the IRS mandates that IRA owners must begin taking the required minimum distributions from their IRA account(s). The specific amount required is a percentage of assets based on the previous year-end balance. With every year that passes, the percentage that needs to be withdrawn increases because the older you are, the greater the percentage of the account balance that you need to take.
For some retirees, the amount that the IRS requires to be withdrawn from the IRA exceeds the amount that they need to meet their living expenses. If this is true, it's possible that they would likely prefer to keep the money in the IRA (thus avoiding paying tax and continuing to let it grow tax deferred) rather than taking a distribution.
Unfortunately, this is not an option. In fact, the IRS even imposes a penalty on missed RMDs. The penalty is 50% of the amount that should have been withdrawn.
Let's assume that a retiree has $1,000,000 in an IRA.
If we assume that the IRA holder turns 70.5, we can assume that all $1,000,000 will be subject to a required minimum distribution. Using the IRS table for required minimum distributions, we can calculate that this retiree will be required to withdraw $36,500. All $36,500 will be taxable income.
For comparison purposes, let's assume that the same retiree contributes $125,000 to a QLAC just before the previous year-end. Because of this QLAC contribution, the previous year-end balance is now $875,000, not $1,000,000. Using the same RMD table, we can calculate the required minimum distribution to be $31,937, or $4,563 less than the first example.
If we assume a 25% tax bracket on $4,563, we can calculate a tax savings of $1,141 on the lesser withdrawal.
The question becomes "Does it make sense to contribute to a qualified longevity annuity simply to lower the required minimum distribution?" In this example, does it make sense to contribute $125,000 to the longevity annuity to save $1,141 in income taxes? Some suggest that answer to be no (and I tend to agree).
I personally don't believe that it makes sense to trade liquidity and future income guarantees for a low IRR product and a few dollars in income tax savings (stated more correctly, additional tax deferral).
Only 25% of a retiree's pre-tax retirement plan assets may be invested into a QLAC.
The cumulative amount invested into all QLACs must not exceed the lesser of 25% of all pre-tax retirement plan assets or $125,000 (in 2016).
Each spouse may contribute to the above-mentioned limits for their own retirement savings.
QLAC payments must begin by the time the retiree reaches age 85.
QLAC cannot have a surrender value. They can, however, have a guaranteed return of premium death benefit.
How Do Longevity Annuities Fit into a Retirement Plan?
Like all annuities, the longer you live, the more possible income you will receive from the annuity and the better "deal" it becomes. If you die sooner, you will receive less income from said annuity and "lose" (in an economic sense at least). Unfortunately, none of us know the answer to the longevity question.
Therefore, a true test of how QLACs fit into a retirement plan should include a rigorous analysis.
More than anything, qualified longevity annuities are another option to hedge against the risk of living too long and running out of money. Prior to purchase, they should be evaluated against other options, including a more traditional investment portfolio that has differing risk characteristics, such as a conservative, moderate, or aggressive portfolio.
Ultimately, it's the detailed analysis, coupled with personal decision-making, that will determine whether or not these are a good fit for your plan.
In reference to general account obligations and guarantees, such as is present with fixed annuities, the ability for the insurance company to meet these obligations to policyholders are subject to sufficient capital, liquidity, cash flow and other resources of the insurance company.
The above figures are for illustrative purposes only and do not attempt to predict actual results of any particular investment.


Under Florida law, Cocaine is considered a "Schedule 2" controlled substance. Under Section 893.13(6)(a), Florida Statutes, a person found to be in "actual" or "constructive possession" of cocaine commits a third degree felony, punishable by up to five (5) years in prison or five years of probation, and a $5,000 fine. A conviction for cocaine possession will furthermore lead to a two-year Florida driver's license revocation.
See Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim) 25.7.
As indicated above, Florida's cocaine possession laws prohibit a person from knowingly being in 'actual' or 'constructive' possession of a certain quantity of cocaine.
Actual possession means that the defendant has the substance in his or her hand or within a container being held in hand, or the substance is so close as to be within ready reach and under the defendant's control.
Has the ability to maintain control over it.
If cocaine is found in a place that is in joint control, rather than in the exclusive possession of a defendant, the defendant's knowledge of the cocaine's presence and the ability to control it cannot be inferred from the defendant's proximity (closeness) to the contraband. Rather, knowledge must be established by independent proof.
Moreover, where the only evidence of guilt is circumstantial, no matter how strongly the evidence may suggest guilt, a conviction cannot be sustained unless the evidence is inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.
Under the correct facts, Possession of Cocaine is highly defendable charge, and no person should attempt to resolve their case without first consulting with an attorney. The defenses available in cocaine cases may be legal and factual in nature.
It is often possible to attack a Florida cocaine charge by challenging the legality of the search, detention, or traffic stop that led to the arrest. If the police acted unlawfully, then it may be possible to suppress the evidence they obtained during the search or seizure of the accused. This is accomplished through the filing of a Motion to Suppress Evidence.
If a Motion to Suppress is granted, this may deprive the State of critical evidence needed to prove the case. Without the required evidence, the case will be dismissed, dropped, or the defendant acquitted.
Any other form of unlawful police conduct.
In addition to legal defenses, there are numerous "'actual' or evidentiary defenses available to contest a cocaine possession charge in Florida. In many cases, the prosecution may have difficulty proving that you were in "actual" or constructive" possession of the substance. If the State cannot prove that you knew of the presence of the cocaine, and that you exercised dominion or control over the substance, then the charge will not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Example: Police serve a search warrant at an apartment where a Defendant lives with his girlfriend. The girlfriend leases the apartment. Defendant and girlfriend share a bedroom. Police execute a search warrant at the apartment. Hidden in one of the dressers in the bedroom is a large cache of cocaine. Defendant and his girlfriend both slept in the bedroom. Defendant is charged with possession of cocaine.
In this scenario, the evidence would be insufficient to show that the Defendant was in actual or constructive possession of cocaine. The reason: the cocaine was not found on the Defendant, and there is no other evidence supporting the allegation that the Defendant knew of the substance or exercised dominion or control over the substance. See Hill v. State, 873 So. 2d 491 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004).
Given the numerous legal and factual defenses available to contest a charge of cocaine possession, no person should attempt to resolve their case without first consulting with a criminal attorney. Possession cases can be highly technical in nature, and must be approached from the earliest stages with proper negotiation strategies.
If you have been accused of possession of cocaine, contact attorney Steven Sessa for a free consultation. Attorney Steven Sessa handles cases throughout Southeast and Central Florida.


Levin Lauritson, Gary J. Nelson, Frank W. Porto. : "November 1979." : Includes bibliographical references.
John H. McElroy and Stanley R. Schneider. : Distributed to depository libraries in microfiche. : January 1985. : Includes bibliographical references (pages 15-17).


Malibu Kitchen is one of the Malibu local's favorites. The friendly and casual environment creates a place for guests to shop at the gourmet market or order from the Malibu Kitchen menu. Malibu Kitchen has a great variety of food options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Endless different sandwich and salad options are on the menu, along with all kinds of egg/breakfast options. A variety of beverages are available as well as an assortment of snacks, desserts and more.
Stop by Malibu Kitchen for easy and delicious choices for any time of the day. Open Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM and weekends from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.


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Eastman Grant Programs Help Musicians Tell Their Stories
Providing support for innovative musical projects, professional development, impactful research, entrepreneurial projects, and valuable internships is more than just boosting the careers of talented Eastman students and alumni. "These resources help our musicians share their stories, music and passions with a much a wider community, providing value to both themselves and their audiences", says Jim Doser, Director of Eastman's Institute for Music Leadership (IML).
Sungmin Shin (MM11, DMA18, guitar, Arts Leadership Program Certificate) is a member of fivebyfive, a modern chamber music ensemble, and the winner of the 2018 Eastman/ArtistShare New Artist Program. Their mission is to engage audiences in the collaborative spirit and creativity of modern chamber music. Supported by the Eastman/ArtistShare program, fivebyfive will commission, perform, and record music to accompany an exhibition of stained-glass artist Judith Schaechter. The ensemble will perform the work live at the University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery and the recorded performance will become a part of the installation as it tours museums around the country.
The Eastman/ArtistShare New Artist Program provides a worldwide platform for outstanding students and alumni to connect with fans by sharing their creative process, documenting their work, and allowing fans to participate directly by funding and observing the creation of new artistic works. Eastman alumnus and multiple Grammy Award winner Maria Schneider (MM85) was the first ArtistShare artist and continues to share her work through the platform.
Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble has been awarded a Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research grant to support their collaboration with the Tuvan throat singing group Alash. The collaboration will include a live performance at Old Town School of Folk Music, with additional educational performances in Chicago Public Schools presented in partnership with the Ravinia Festival.
Melissa Ngan (BM02, Flute, Arts Leadership Program Certificate) and founding member of Fifth House Ensemble describes the project: "After an incredible trip to Tuva this summer, we're thrilled to welcome Alash to Chicago for our collaborative program, titled Sonic Meditations. The show features video interviews captured during the tour, sharing stories from sheep herders, instrument makers, artisans, musicians, shamans, and families we met along the way. Centered on the idea that folk music is preserved through participation, the program includes opportunities for audiences to share in music-making with us, through ancient folk rituals and experimental new music."
Jing Tian Ngiaw (ESM19, MUE/MUA, Arts Leadership Program Certificate) is the recipient of an IML Grant and Mentorship award, which provides both financial support and mentorship for the development of a student entrepreneurial project. Her project, "My Musical Trip Around the World: A Children's Book Series" is designed to provide accessible, high quality, and easy to use multi-cultural resources in the pre-school and elementary music education classroom. "This project fits in with my personal vision and professional objectives in several ways. I strongly believe that multicultural music education enhances and enriches people's musical understanding. When music teachers and children are aware of multicultural music, it will significantly develop their critical thinking skills, which can develop values of acceptance, awareness, and open-mindedness, all of which are highly relevant qualities in the 21st century."
Starting a private harp school may seem like an unusual dream, but for harpist and ALP certificate student Amber Mecke, a southern New Jersey native (ESM19, MM), it is a project that she has considered ever since her mother drove her long distances to Philadelphia for harp lessons and ensemble rehearsal each week. Developing her idea in Eastman's Entrepreneurial Thinking Course, Amber then applied for a Special Opportunity Grant through the Arts Leadership Program to fund a visit to one of the nation's most successful harp programs in Mesa, Arizona, where she will meet and observe program director Dr. Charles Lynch.
The IML Grant and Mentorship Program, Eastman/ArtistShare Partnership, Arts Leadership Program, and Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research all play important roles in the lives and careers of many musicians, scholars and musical organizations. "More and more," IML Director Doser comments, "Eastman students are passionate about how their unique skills and talents can be utilized to provide creative and unique value to their communities."
For more information visit https://iml.esm.rochester.edu/grants/ or contact Jim Doser, Director, Institute for Music Leadership, Eastman School of Music; jdoser@esm.rochester.edu; (585) 274-1470.
Grant winners and their projects in 2018 include:
Institute for Music Leadership Grant and Mentorship Program
Daniel Kuehler Rebuild Wine Country Fundraiser Concert
Danny Ziemann The Low Down, Vol. III – Jazz Bass Instruction Book
Jason Hurlbut J.S. Bach, Partita No. 2, Music Video
Jing Tian Ngiaw My Musical Trip Around the World – A Children's Book Series
Eastman/ArtistShare New Artist Award
Sungmin Shin: fivebyfive Glass Works: New Music Inspired By The Stained Glass Artistry Of Judith Schaechter
Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Program Special Opportunity Grants
Benjamin Guerrero National Association for Music Education Advocacy Summit, Washington, D. C.
Matthew Nedvin National Association for Music Education Collegiate Forum and National Conference, Dallas
Amber Mecke Building a Harp Program: Learning From the Best
Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research Grants
Fifth House Ensemble Collaborative performances with Alash
JACK Quartet Multi-media performance at TIME SPANS FESTIVAL
Mivos Quartet 10th Anniversary Performance with Ekemeles and Yarn/Wire
New World Symphony Face-Off: A Battle of the Instruments
Nief-Norf Nief-Norf's First Year-Round Concert Series
Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble All Around Us – Developing a 3-D Soundscape Concert Experience
Transient Canvas Exposure: Chamber Opera Adaption of Thomas Hardy's "The Well-Beloved"
Anna Reguero DeFelice Research Grant: "The Aesthetics of 'Indie-Classical': Music in the Age of Post-Postmodernism."
Megan Steigerwald Ille Hipster Opera: Research on 'The Industry'
Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Program Summer Internship Awards
Andrew Bockman Third Coast Percussion, Chicago, IL
Julia Fedor Hochstein Expressive Arts Program, Rochester, NY
Sarah Forestieri Opera on the Avalon, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
Noel Holloway Third Coast Percussion, Chicago, IL
Taylor Kroma BassEurope, Lucca, Italy
Jarod Lau Nief-Norf Music Festival, Knoxville, TN
Ling-Yu Lee Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, Rochester, NY
Jennifer Nee Summer @ Eastman, Rochester, NY
Jing Tian Ngiaw ROCMusic, Rochester, NY
Ellen Robertson Nashville Symphony, Nashville, TN
Jacob Svendsen Eastman Community Music School, Rochester, NY
D'Jean Vasciannie Regalias Digitales, Lafayette, CA
Man-ho Brian Wong Hong Kong Philharmonic Society, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Seth Wright Foxface Rabbitfish, Inc. Seattle, WA
About The Institute for Music Leadership (IML):
Always at the forefront of educating musicians of the future, the Eastman School is dedicated to the comprehensive education of world-class musicians, scholars, and leaders. With a particular focus on the changing state of classical music, and with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Music Leadership was created in 2001: the first of its kind in the country. It serves as a center – and benchmark – for music leadership programs and activities, responding to and helping to shape America's changing musical and cultural environment.
The establishment of the Institute for Music Leadership, and the generous support of foundations and philanthropists, has allowed the Eastman School to create a unique atmosphere among music schools. Within the IML ideas flourish, and students are empowered to shape their own destiny by developing the skills and networks they need to adapt to the changing and challenging arts world. The IML is committed not to follow, but to lead, and adapts its curriculum to meet the needs of the musical world that our students will inhabit as professionals.
For more information about the Institute for Music Leadership and the Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research, please visit https://iml.esm.rochester.edu/
About Eastman School of Music:
The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman's dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training. The current dean is Jamal Rossi, appointed in 2014.
About 900 students are enrolled in Eastman's Collegiate Division—about 550 undergraduate and 350 graduate students. Students come from almost every state, and approximately 25 percent are from other countries. They are guided by more than 95 full-time faculty members. Six alumni and three faculty members have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and numerous alumni and faculty have received Grammy Awards. Each year, Eastman's students, faculty members, and guest artists present more than 800 concerts to the Rochester community.
Category: News Room December 14, 2018

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Warning: My favorite genres are historical fiction, informational, and memoirs. Just letting you know!
Five stars plus go to Laura Hillenbrand's (author of Seabiscuit) Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Although this true story is heart-wrenching; it makes the ending that much sweeter.


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Q: Using JShell to write application extensions at the moment I use Beanshell to write application extensions. I just use BshMethod.invoke() to integrate it with the java application.
Could this be done with JShell too? Load a script and execute a method in the script? Via a JShell API, not via cmdline...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


So instead I empty my purse of the coins I have and give them to a grandmother who holds out a brown and very hard hand. She is wearing an apron pieced together of many fabrics: plaids, stripes and flowers and a brilliant pink pocket. She looks into my eyes for a shy moment, dark eyes surrounded by a sea of wrinkles. Are you older than I am, I think.
I slip past a large group of young school children, first or second graders. I wonder why they are lined up two by two at the church door. But I have my own preoccupations.
As soon as I sit to calm myself for a moment of quiet reflection, the children burst into the church, singing, waving their arms, clapping. Someone up front is playing a guitar and I notice a priest standing down close to the front pews. All the children come and sit up front and their parents, grandparents and siblings sit back with me.
There is a lot of enthusiastic singing by the whole congregation and the priest speaks a few words, quietly and then he leads us in the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. He blesses the children and sends them off to find their families and in turn bless them. A little boy comes to his grandmother and tries to trace the sign of the cross on her. He makes a mistake and covers his face with his hands, giggling softly. It is a little hard as it is a mirror gesture of what the children usually do when they make the sign of the cross. She kisses his hands, chubby and innocent and sends him off to sit with his companions.
It is the second Wednesday of Lent and I suddenly realize that this must be the Communion Class. These children will receive first Communion around Easter time. Much as I rebel against bowing to pictures or statues, I think teaching children to bless others is a good lesson. This morning I showed, LIlly, the lady who cleans my apartment a video of the children singing and she confirmed that yes, it's the preparation class. She blessed my sign language and crippled Spanish with her laughter. Doubly blessed.
Beautiful and heartfelt. Thank you.


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Quentins. Maeve Binchy. 2002
The War of the End of the World. Mario Vargas Llosa. 1981
L.A. Confidential. James Ellroy. 1990
The Book of Ruth. Jane Hamilton. 1988
Billy Bathgate. E.L. Doctorow. 1989
The Mayor of Casterbridge. Thomas Hardy. 1886
Escape from Kathmandu. Kim Stanley Robinson. 1989
The Castle. Franz Kafka. 1926
The Double. Jose Saramago. 2002
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1). George R.R. Martin. 1996
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2). George R.R. Martin. 1998
White Teeth. Zadie Smith. 2000
The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins. 2008
Zorba the Greek. Nikos Kazantzakis. 1952
Catching Fire. Suzanne Collins. 2009
Mockingjay. Suzanne Collins. 2010
Lit. Mary Karr. 2009
Evening Class. Maeve Binchy. 1997
The Selfish Gene. Richard Dawkins. 2006
Peeling the Onion. Gunter Grass. 2007
American Wife. Curtis Sittenfeld. 2008
A Passage to India. E.M. Forster. 1924
Where Angels Fear to Tread. E.M. Forster. 1905
Eating Animals. Jonathan Safran Foer. 2009
Salem's Lot. Stephen King. 1975
Roughing It. Mark Twain. 1872
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Christopher Hitchens. 1995
The Lay of the Land. Richard Ford. 2006
Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. Christopher Hitchens. 2011
A Storm of Swords (A Storm of Ice and Fire, Book 3). George R.R. Martin. 2000
A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens. 1859
All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of Asia. James Fenton. 1988
Aaron's Rod. D.H. Lawrence. 1922
Death in the Afternoon. Ernest Hemingway. 1932
Circle of Friends. Maeve Binchy. 1990
Infidel. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 2007
The Phantom of the Opera. Gaston Leroux. 1911
Anthem. Ayn Rand. 1938
Notes from a Big Country. Bill Bryson. 1999
The Magnificent Ambersons. Booth Tarkington. 1918
Tree of Smoke. Denis Johnson. 2007
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. Richard Dawkins. 2004
The Jungle Book. Rudyard Kipling.1894
Midnight's Children. Salman Rushdie. 1984
The Greenlanders. Jane Smiley. 1988
Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism. Thomas Friedman. 2002
Collected Fictions. Jorge Luis Borges. 1998
Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Louis de Bernieres. 1994
The Stranger. Albert Camus. 1942
The Plague. Albert Camus. 1948


The University of St Andrews has achieved the highest possible ranking in a new assessment of the quality of teaching and the undergraduate experience at universities across the UK.
St Andrews has secured a Gold Award in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), published today, Thursday 22 June 2017.
TEF panellists found that "students from all backgrounds achieve consistently outstanding outcomes" in St Andrews and that there were "outstanding levels of satisfaction with teaching, assessment and feedback, and academic support".
"Very high proportions from across the entire student population progress to highly skilled employment or further study," said the judges.
St Andrews is one of five Scottish universities recognised for high quality teaching in the TEF, which ranks universities Gold, Silver or Bronze according to a detailed analysis of teaching practice, support measures, learning resources and outcomes.
St Andrews is currently the UK University of the Year for Teaching Quality, joint top of the UK National Student Survey, and 3rd top in the UK in The Guardian University Guide 2018 and The Complete University Guide 2018.
Issued by the University of St Andrews Communications Office. Contact Niall Scott on 01334 462244 / 07711 223 062 or proffice@st-andrews.ac.uk.


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Tag Archives: mental health
Aug 7, 2019 · 4:03 pm
Jonathan Hansler on being Basil Fawlty AND Peter Cook and what happened…
Jonathan Hansler spoke to me at Soho Theatre in London
Jonathan Hansler appeared in this blog back in 2012, when a blue plaque was going to be unveiled on the site of Peter Cook's old Establishment Club in London's Soho and when Jonathan was going off to the Cannes Film Festival.
This month, he is involved in two separate productions featuring comedy icons – he performs the John Cleese role in Fawlty Towers Live: The Themed Dinner Show throughout the Edinburgh Fringe… and his play about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – Goodbye: The (After) Life of Cook & Moore – plays six dates at Dingwalls in London, starting this Friday.
Pete & Dud, Cook & Moore: show this month
He usually plays Peter Cook but, because of his Edinburgh commitment can't on this occasion.
JOHN: So you can't be in the Pete & Dud show in London…
JONATHAN: No. but I'm thrilled because Kev Orkian, who plays Dudley Moore, has taken the reins of producer, which is lovely, because it's a play I dearly love.
JOHN: You're getting typed as an interpreter of comedy icons – Peter Cook AND John Cleese.
JONATHAN: How I got interested in the world of entertainment all came from seeing John Cleese and Peter Cook on a park bench doing the 'interesting facts' sketch at The Secret Policeman's Ball in 1979.
I was a little boy and I saw Peter just reeling out this stuff and I thought: That's what I want to do! Instead of asking for an Action Man that Christmas, I wanted a book of scripts.
JOHN: You co-wrote Goodbye: The (After) Life of Cook & Moore.
JONATHAN: Yes. Some young reviewer wrote: "Fans of Cook and Moore will enjoy hearing the classic lines re-deployed…" Well, we wrote the whole fucking thing. Every bloody line in that is ours.
JOHN: We…?
JONATHAN: Yes. I got stuck on about Page 30. I didn't know where I was going with it. It didn't seem to have a structure. Then I re-met Clive Greenwood at a party. He has this incredible knowledge of post-War comedy and he came on board and started to write it with me. He was the more logical one and I was typically like Cook, totally rambling and going off into spirals of imagination.
JOHN: It is set when Pete and Dud are dead.
JONATHAN: Yes. The whole thing is NOT a series of Pete n Dud sketches. Not one. It's our interpretation of how they are forced to become their characters after they're dead by a Divine Force that is 'judging' them for their Derek & Clive routines. Peter has had to wait seven years for Dudley to turn up and he is running a bar in the afterlife
JOHN: Why did you think: I wanna do a play about two dead comics after they have died?
JONATHAN: My father had died and I no longer had a father figure. Peter became a sort of father figure to me, because I loved his humour so much. I had this idea about all these comics kept in a Prisoner of War camp in heaven in the afterlife.
Peter and Dudley were the prime focus but other comics are there. I usually play Peter. Kev Orkian plays Dudley – he has been playing the piano since he was 4. And Clive Greenwood plays all the other characters – Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Leonard Rossiter, Frankie Howerd, Terry-Thomas… and Lord Reith of the BBC.
I can't be Peter this time because I'm in Edinburgh doing the Fawlty Towers dinners at the Carlton Hilton on the North Bridge twice daily – 48 shows throughout the Fringe. That ends on 27th August and the last two performances of The (After) Life are on the 30th and 31st August, so I'm going back to London to watch those – and very proudly so.
'"The only one that does the original scripts."
Our 'official' Fawlty Towers show – sanctioned by John Cleese – is the only one that does the original scripts – so, for the first time in 40 years, people can hear those live.
JOHN: As an actor, you must be frustrated at having to copy someone else's interpretation so closely?
JONATHAN: No, I'm not, actually. When John Cleese put the Australian show together, he said he didn't want a carbon copy of himself; so I have a very Cleesian performance, but with my own twist on it.
JOHN: Which is?
JONATHAN: (LAUGHS) I'm not absolutely sure! There's a lot of improvisation involved, because it's a dinner show.
JOHN: With the audience sitting as if they are in the Fawlty Towers dining room…?
JONATHAN: Yes. We have to improvise round the tables with my own words and we put the script on top of that.
JOHN: What else do you have in the pipeline?
JONATHAN: One of the biggest things is an initiative I helped set up (with Andrew Eborn) called Canned Laughter. A lot of comedians and people who drink have this false laughter or they play games so we don't know what lies behind. So I opened up an initiative with Equity with the slogan
IT'S OK NOT TO BE OK
The nervous energy which performers have is anxiety – and that's where the problems start… Depression and all those things that lurk underneath and I've been through them all and, coming out the other side of booze, you start to realise where you have been and what you've come to and what you have to do to stop other people going down the same path.
Jonathan's drinking days are behind him…
JOHN: How long have you been off the booze?
JONATHAN: 5½ years. And off sugars. I used to be: I'll do every pill in the world! I'll do every cigarette in the world! I'd do every drug in the world! I'd go to every club in the world!
JOHN: And now you have taken up knitting cardigans?
JONATHAN: (LAUGHS) No! My revolution and my rebellion comes in my writing, I think.
JOHN: You are writing other things?
JONATHAN: I am writing, but I am terrified. I am going to eventually do an hour's stand-up on anxiety and about my childhood. I don't give a fuck if people know now. I was abused. That's why I wear blue chakra round my neck – because I was orally abused twice. at different times, I was in a school which had a paedophile headmaster and…
JOHN: What's a blue chakra for?
Jonathan's blue chakra with its healing sodalite stones…
JONATHAN: The blue chakra is the throat chakra, which is about the art of communication. This is a stone called sodalite and it actually gives… whether you believe it or not; a lot of people don't and that's fine… but I need something to believe in because of my past so I can't help but believe in it and I'm happy to believe in it. As mad as it gets, that's what I have to believe in, because they tried to hang me twice… Once when I was in my prep school and once in my senior school.
JOHN: Who tried to hang you?
JONATHAN: The kids. Y'know. Just brutal kids. Really brutal kids. There is a huge court case going on about my old school and paedophilia. There were boys who had it far worse than me.
There was one guy who forced me orally to do what I had to do. I think he was probably being abused himself. I think the kids who were being abused were picking on other kids who weren't being abused. It was horrendous. Just horrible, horrible, horrible.
That's another reason why I've done Canned Laughter.
JOHN: Peter Cook drank a lot.
JONATHAN: A director once said to me – after I got sober: "The reason why you can play Peter so well is because you were both on similar paths of self-destruction."
Peter Cook (left) and Jonathan Hansler: very parallel people
We are very parallel. Very parallel people. That sense of loneliness. I was sent away to a boarding school at 9 years old like Peter. My parents went to the Middle East; his parents were in Gibraltar. He had asthma and, in those days, they didn't have inhalers, so he was injected with ephedrine which sent you to the ceiling. He must have been floating around on the ceiling every night. No wonder his mind became the mind it did because he was being given these strange drugs to stop his asthma.
JOHN: Presumably talking about what happened to you at school is, to an extent, cathartic.
JONATHAN: I've got to a point where I don't give a shit. I also want to explain why I've been maybe so awkward over previous years.
"…the anxiety it takes to play Basil Fawlty…"
Why is it – and it's a stigma – that people say: "Performers are difficult to work with"? Have they ever asked why? God knows what happened to them earlier in life. And they still have to keep their teeth smiling and their tits up in this industry and bow down and cow down to all these people who… Y'know?… It's wrong. People should know each other more and understand each other more and, by understanding each other, we grow together and we become real.
JOHN: I know comedians rather than actors but, to an extent, it IS true that all comedians are mad. You wouldn't want to do it otherwise. There has to be something in you that needs the fulfilment of applause and acceptance.
JONATHAN: People say: "Oh, you're so lucky to be playing Basil Fawlty…" But do you know the anxiety it takes to play Basil Fawlty?"
Filed under Acting, Comedy, Mental health, Psychology
Tagged as acting, alcoholism, Canned Laughter, Clive Greenwood, comedy, Dingwalls, Dudley Moore, edinburgh fringe, Fawlty Towers, Goodbye: The (After) Life of Cook & Moore, John Cleese, Jonathan Hansler, Kev Orkian, mental health, paedophilia, Pete n Dud, Peter Cook, psychology
Edinburgh Fringe latest – BBC Studios slag-off live comedy + a secret new gig
Up at the Edinburgh Fringe, anything and everything is possible…
Michael Livesley – after and before
I am not up at the Edinburgh Fringe, but feedback is starting to trickle in.
First-timer Michael Livesley, Half The Man in a comedy show at The Free Sisters about how he lost half his body weight and much else, emailed me, saying:
"The first night went well. No idea what to expect but my hope is to emerge from the Fringe battle-hardened and ready for the next chapter next year."
Doyenne of comedy critics Kate Copstick released the first of her Slaughtered podcasts at this year's Fringe…
The original President Obonjo cast a pod
…In it, she interviewed controversial man-of-the-moment President Obonjo (Goodbye Mr President at the Voodoo Rooms) and she revealed that a BBC Studios executive – not unconnected with ripping-off President Obonjo – speaking in his official role as a BBC Studios producer – told her: "Live comedy isn't as important as it thinks it is".
More of this in a future blog.
Meanwhile, blonde bombshell (she will hate that) and social/sexual campaigner Samantha Pressdee – according to the aforementioned Kate Copstick, "almost certainly the most uninhibitedly entertaining proponent of female empowerment you will see" contacted me to say: "The recruitment campaign for the Barmy Army has started."
Samantha's dossier aims "to ignite potential"
When I saw the last of the London previews for Samantha's Fringe show Covered (directed by award-winning Phil Nichol), she gave me a 'Dossier' aimed to "ignite potential in the 1 in 4 people who will experience mental health issues."
At that point, she had already signed-up comedy performers Juliette Burton, Dave Chawner, Laura Lexx, nutritionist Michelle Aucutt and life coach Andrea Bradley.
Now, at the just-started Fringe, Samantha tells me: "On my second night, I am proud to say every audience member signed up and received their copy of Uncovered: The Dossier.
Tony Slattery and Samantha Pressdee bonding in Edinburgh
"I also met my hero Tony Slattery. He is so inspiring. I told him, "I'm bipolar too," and he replied: Nice to meet you both.
"He was even more lovely in person than he is online which is VERY lovely. He gave me loads of cuddles and his email address. I hope to get him involved in my Pulling It Together project. I am also adopting him as an uncle."
The gaffer-taped Fringe shoes
She continued: "I brought 13 pairs of shoes to Edinburgh (none of them sensible). So it was not as big a tragedy as it might have been that I broke one shoe on arrival at my venue's press launch (PQA Venues @ Riddle's Court).
"You cannot," she says, "even tell that it is now secured thanks to the magic of gaffer tape."
The preview of her show which I saw in London was preceded by a video which included – blink and you miss it – a clip of her yolk-covered appearance in the annual Russian Egg Roulette Championships at the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards show.
Until 2017, this show took place annually around midnight on the final Friday of the Fringe in the Ballroom of The Counting House (programmed by the Laughing Horse Free Festival).
Bizarrely – and surely a coincidence, given that the Malcolm Hardee Awards ended in 2017 – I hear that there has been a sudden change of schedule at midnight on the final Friday of this year's Fringe with an un-named potentially two-hour show being shoe-horned into the Counting House Ballroom.
The Edinburgh Fringe is always full of surprises and there are another three weeks to go…
Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh
Tagged as Andrea Bradley, BBC Studios, comedy, Counting House, Dave Chawner, edinburgh fringe, Juliette Burton, Kate Copstick, Laura Lexx, Malcolm Hardee Awards, mental health, Michael Livesley, Michelle Aucutt, Phil Nichol, President Obonjo, Samantha Pressdee, Tony Slattery
Jul 31, 2019 · 2:02 pm
Juliette Burton: Defined as an erotica-reading introvert extrovert performer
"I have now moved to the label of 'single'…"
Juliette Burton's new show Defined has just opened at the Edinburgh Fringe. So…
JOHN: What's it about?
JULIETTE: How we define ourselves and the labels we use. I was labelled as 'engaged' last year and I have now moved to the label of 'single'.
JOHN: But not 'vacant'.
JULIETTE: (LAUGHS) No. Certainly not my mind. There's too much to think about. I started using a dating app after I broke up with my fiancé and, when I was filling out the dating profile, I realised they tend to ask you to tick either/or boxes:
Straight/Gay
Left/Right politically
It got me thinking about the extremes we sometimes get pushed towards – optimism/pessimism – introvert/extrovert – whereas we are maybe somewhere in the middle or are both at various times.
In the past, I have been defined by a whole list of mental health conditions and sometimes, in previous shows, I may have defined myself through the mental conditions I have, like a 'mental health comedy girl'. Whereas, in fact, there's a lot more to it.
Juliette Burton: in last year's Butterfly Effect
I have been writing this show for ages and the main thing I want it to be is… well, I did a national tour of the previous show Butterfly Effect and, in that, I started testing out material for this show.
I genuinely think the new show is the funniest I have ever done and the only thing I want to be defined as now is funny.
JOHN: Do the dating apps ask what you do for a living?
JULIETTE: Yes. And I always wonder: Am I Theatre or am I Comedy? I used to think I was Theatre, but now I think I'm Comedy.
JOHN: So what do you put on the dating apps as a job?
JULIETTE: 'Journalist' usually. (LAUGHS) I'm a journalist at heart. My shows are truthful and I don't like dishonesty generally. One of the problems in saying you are a 'comedian', of course, is that you get asked: "Tell us a joke, then!"
JOHN: How do you react?
JULIETTE: I usually tell them that's like me asking them to act out their job.
JOHN: You also do voice-over work.
JULIETTE: Yes. I have done educational language tapes and sung songs for people learning English as a Foreign Language. I've done corporate training videos. I've done audio books for children and adults. Usually I do newly-published books.
JOHN: And for the blind…
JULIETTE: I used to do audio books for the RNIB. That's how I got into voice-over work.
JOHN: Why did you start?
"Do you do all the voices in the erotica…?"
JULIETTE: Two reasons. One is I used to work as a newsreader for BBC Radio, which led into voice-over work. And I also got into audio books because my granny had gone blind by the end of her life but her mind was so sharp and she just used to devour audio books. The local library had to ship in audio books from across the country because she kept getting through them so quickly. I always tried to think about her when I was recording audio books… (LAUGHS) except when doing erotica.
JOHN: You do all the voices in the erotica?
JULIETTE: All the voices.
JOHN: So Lady Chatterley AND Mellors…
JULIETTE: Exactly. (LAUGHS) Everybody needs to experience the full kaleidoscopic beauty and glory that is being alive.
JOHN: Is it mildly embarrassing?
JULIETTE: Oh yes. Especially when the studio engineer is your ex-fiancé.
JOHN: That happened?
JULIETTE: Yes, And I talk about it in my show. The last erotica book I recorded was just about a month after we broke up, in the middle of the heatwave last year. It was very awkward and we started having arguments about how you pronounce words like EE-THER or EYE-THER in the now-infamous sentence: "He could have licked either of my lactating nipples"… That's a genuine sentence I had to read.
That book was actually – for erotica – very well researched. But, in all the books I've done – maybe 50 or more – I have only done 2 or 3 erotica.
JOHN: Has the voice-over work impacted – a horrible American word – on your stage performances?
JULIETTE: Yes. It has forced me to really get better at my accents. My repertoire has got much stronger with accents in general. Also, when you record audio books, you are speaking to just one person, you are not speaking to a whole audience in a group.
I now like thinking about that when I am on stage. Although it is a whole audience, you are really still just appealing to that one person who is experiencing your show. So it teaches you how to be a bit more personal and personable.
"Shows CAN change your perception…"
I want every single person in the room to feel special. It sounds saccharine. It IS saccharine. But shows CAN change your perception of and perspective on the world and your attitude towards yourself. I have been to shows like that and I want every audience member to leave my shows feeling like they can take on the world and they have more fortitude, more resilience because of the show.
This last year has been a hard one for me. The break-up with my fiancé was the right thing, but it was hard. And I've had quite a few recent deaths in my family – and friends – A friend passed away earlier this year. Even my therapist for the last ten years passed away, which I thought was hilarious at the time.
JOHN: Why?
JULIETTE: Because she was the one person I could actually turn to.
The thing that kept me going was the fact I had to perform a show at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. I had to do all my previews before that and there would be audiences out there who needed to laugh about dark things in their lives.
JOHN: You are very likeable, bright and bubbly on stage… Sally Sunshine.
JULIETTE: I hope I'm not too TV kids' presenter any more because I don't feel like that any more. I am trying to move away from saccharine stuff.
JOHN: You've changed?
JULIETTE: I think so. I think I was quite naive. Now I've come down to earth and I'm a bit more grounded. But I still want all my audience to feel like they're part of a community. When I did that national tour last year, it made me realise the value of a comedy show to help unite groups of complete strangers. If they can laugh about things like mental illness and grief, then they become a kind of community on that one night. Especially in these times when people feel quite divided politically and socially.
JOHN: You were involved in the recent Pride events. Why? You're not gay.
JULIETTE: Well, sexuality is fluid.
"…where no-one will talk to me…"
JOHN: Fluid is definitely in there, yes.
JULIETTE: I was invited to join in by someone who works for the mental health charity SANE. I ended up wearing an amazing feather headdress on the SANE float and I look completely blissed-out in the photographs – not because I'm feeling super-confident but because I'm thinking, on that float in this crowd of people, Finally I have found somewhere where no-one will talk to me.
JOHN: Why is that good?
JULIETTE: Because I'm a very introverted person.
JOHN: So you don't like people talking to you…
JULIETTE: Why do you think I stand on stage and hold a microphone for an hour talking at them?
When I am flyering in the street, I think I feel more naked than when I'm on stage. You are more prone to rejection when you're flyering. I am a very introverted extrovert.
That's part of what the new show is about. You can be an introverted extrovert. You can be an optimist AND a pessimist. You don't have to be one thing or the other.
JOHN: But you tend to stand next to the door and chat to the audience as they come in…
JULIETTE: Yes. Because then they are individual, special people who are there for their own experience of the show. They are individuals, not a whole big collective. I want every single person to know they matter because, without those people coming to my shows… It's all about finding other people who want to hear what I have to say and can relate to what I have to say…
JOHN: You are working on a book. What's it about?
JULIETTE: How to be relentlessly positive and how to find the light in dark times.
Filed under Comedy, Psychology
Tagged as audio books, comedy, dating app, Defined, edinburgh fringe, Gay Pride, Gilded Balloon, Juliette Burton, LGBTQ, mental health, performance, psychology, RNIB, sexuality
How to perform a comedy show to an audience with dementia in a care home
Ben Targét (left) & Pope Lonergan are working on a project
So I chatted to comedy performers Pope Lonergan and Ben Targét…
"The two of you have this joint project," I said. "Does it have a name?"
"At the moment," Pope told me, "it just has the banner title of The Care Home Tour. One thing we are doing is a three-hour Alzheimer's benefit Forgetting But Not Forgotten, organised with Angel Comedy at the Bill Murray in London on 2nd October. Lots of different comedians."
"It's a great line-up," said Ben. "Richard Gadd, Lou Sanders, Robin Ince, Candy Gigi, lots more."
"And," said Pope, "we are doing two Work In Progress shows in the lead-up to that. We are doing those with Fight in the Dog, which is Liam Williams' production company. The whole thing is being supported by NextUp and they're partially funding it."
"And these shows lead to?" I asked.
"A performance that is specifically tailored for an audience with dementia in a care home. I mean, anyone can enjoy it, but the feed line/punch line of a conventional joke is too complicated. They can't follow the logic of it. Instead, they respond with a visceral, limbic response to visual comedy and physical comedy – the slapstick stuff."
"What is limbic?" I asked.
Cross section of the human brain showing parts of the limbic system from below. (Illustration from Traité d'Anatomie et de Physiologie, 1786)
"The limbic system," Pope explained. "When we process music. It's an emotional response, a visceral response; it's like our primitive brain. It's what develops early in children. There's a correlation between child development and mental deterioration."
"So the humour," I said, "must not be too sophisticated."
"A perfectly-structured joke is not gonna land," said Pope.
"It's got to be driven," Ben added, "by the visual rather than by words. How the residents are stimulated is no longer through wordplay or story."
"But they can," I checked, "be stimulated through sound and music and audio effects?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Pope. "100%. Even when they have really advanced dementia, if you start singing something like Knees Up, Mother Brown, they all know the words."
"Is there," I asked, "a difference between dementia and Alzheimer's?
Pope explained: "Alzheimer's is a form of dementia. Dementia is the umbrella term. There's Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's… My nan and David Baddiel's dad both had Pick's Disease – frontal lobe dementia – and that made my nan very libidinous. She was having sex with a lot of the men in the care home."
"At what age?" I asked.
"About 85. She done well. Every time we went in, one of the carers would come over to my dad and say: Mark… A word? And my dad would come out pale, saying: Yer nan's been at it again."
"Is anyone going to be offended if I print that?" I asked.
Ben Targét & Pope Lonergan take afternoon tea
"No, no," said Pope. "Good on her, you know? People with dementia obviously have diminished responsibility. They don't really know what they're consenting to etc, so there's a line. But we have a husband and wife in the home who have been married 60 years. We have caught them in flagrante having sex and some people have said: We need to stop them. But that was not policy. It was just some people projecting their own discomfort. They are a married couple. They are adults. They are married. Why on earth would you stop them?"
"At a certain age," said Ben, "we stop seeing people as adults and they become infantilised in our eyes. I don't know if we are trained to or whether it is innate."
"And that's where it's tricky," Ben added. "Infantilised means dehumanised. The efficacy of their brain is not what it used to be but they are still adult, complex human beings."
"I can say," I checked with Pope, "that you work in the care industry?"
"Of course you can," he told me.
"I am always wary," I explained, "about saying comedians have a 'proper' daytime job because punters want to think of them as full-time professional comics."
"Most of us have proper jobs," said Ben.
"But sometimes don't want to admit to it," I suggested.
"We should, though," said Ben. "I think it makes us way cooler. You get far more respect from people if you are grounded in reality."
"Yeah," said Pope. "Some comics think they are de-legitimised by it – Oh, my God, I'm actually part of the real world! I actually have a real job!"
"So you work in a care home," I said to Pope, "but Ben, how did you get involved in this?"
"I used to work in care homes as well," he told me, "as a teenager – when I was about 16 or 17. And recently Josie Long introduced me to Pope because he was looking to work with people who do physical and visual comedy. So I am trying to assemble a troupe who are willing to embrace the project.
October 2nd Benefit before the gig on 9th
"We are building to this first gig on October 9th in the care home and we do think of it as like the first exploration vessel that's been sent out. We are hoping to reassess afterwards and then, in the New Year, do more gigs across the country in care homes."
"There are," Pope said, "loads of comedians who have expressed an interest. Sara Pascoe used to do theatre productions for people with dementia in care homes."
"And there's David Baddiel," Ben added. "And Adam Riches – who has a lot of experience in his family of dementia and caring for people. And Phil Nichol. I'm interested to see Phil because, every time I have seen him, he's got naked on stage and yelled at the audience!"
"Then," said Pope, "there's John Kearns. And Deborah Frances-White has been very supportive: she was the one who got David Baddiel interested. And Josie Long has been vital in putting it all together.
"I had done some of Josie's gigs at the Black Heart. I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate my experiences in the care home into my stand-up act.
"Josie said: I'd love to see you bring your authentic experience of working in the home to your act. I told her: The problem is there's a bit of dualism there. The way they act is not like the normal way 'we' behave. So you love the residents, you're compassionate, you really care for them, but there is also a day-to-day blackly comic streak that you can't put on stage because it would just sound horrible: that you are laughing at vulnerable people.
"The first time I done it, it was a bit too nasty, really. I didn't intend it to be like that, but I hadn't honed the material and it just came across as a bit mean-spirited. Afterwards, this woman who was apparently a High Court judge was shouting at me about it. It's sort-of a tight-rope walk."
"Even more so," I suggested, "when performing to people with dementia?"
Josie Long said: "I'd love to see you bring your authentic experience to your act."
"There are so many different types of dementia," said Pope. "With some, the language centre (in the brain) has really diminished. Some have still got linguistic capacity – really good – they can process it. But still the normal, conventional joke is a bit too convoluted for them. So I always do things like shit gymnastics or shit karate. Anything that's a minor spectacle they really respond to and laugh at."
"Surreal," I said, "rather than verbal."
"Oh, absolutely," said Pope. "Anything that is a minor spectacle and visual and silly. If you do wry observational comedy about Donald Trump, it won't work."
"Will seeing comedy," I asked, "actually help them or is it just passing the time?"
"It is definitely better for their welfare," said Pope, "in that there is a deficit in certain types of stimulation. When it comes to interaction, they don't want to get up and be physically active, but they do want to be engrossed in something. They do want to sit there and watch something.
"We have told the comedians who are involved that they will have to re-calibrate their idea of what a successful gig is. There ain't gonna be uproarious laughter. There ain't gonna be the energy of a comedy club. But, even if the audience are not outwardly laughing, it doesn't mean they are not stimulated and enjoying what they are watching. They always feel better after they have experienced some kind of entertainment."
Filed under Comedy, Mental health, Mental illness, Psychology
Tagged as Alzheimers, Ben Target, care homes, comedy, dementia, humor, humour, Josie Long, laughter, mental health, Pope Lonergan, psychology, uk
'Queer As Jokes' – The new LGBT comedy night starting this weekend
Simon Caine, begetter of Queer As Jokes night
So, this Sunday, I am going to a new monthly LGBT comedy night – Queer As Jokes – at Angel Comedy's Bill Murray venue in London. The evening is being organised by Simon Caine, who runs the comedy industry Facebook group The Comedy Collective and the interview-based Ask The Industry Podcast.
"You are full of ideas and projects," I told him. "What do you do in your 'day job'?"
"It is probably," he told me, "60% or 70% writing jokes for brands for Twitter and Facebook and then 15% I do stuff for clubs and stuff – helping them out with their social media – helping them, basically, build a community around what they're doing."
"Do you work from home?" I asked.
"It depends on the job," he told me, "but I have an office at home. I have psychological problems which mean I am so used to living in one room that I have put the bed in the kitchen along with a cupboard where I keep my stuff in. It's a one-bedroom flat. So, in the room that is meant to be a bedroom, I have put a desk in the middle and do my work in there."
Simon edits his prestigious Ask The Industry podcast at home
"I just like having all my stuff in one room so, when I cross the corridor, I feel like I am travelling to work. A girl who came there was a little taken aback.
"She asked me Why have you put your bed in the kitchen? and I told her Because I like all my stuff in one room. She asked me: Doesn't that get confusing? I told her: It's more comfortable for me. Why would it be confusing?"
"Does this one-room thing," I asked, "go back to your student days?"
"Well," Simon told me, "I lived at home until I was at university. I lived in one room at uni and then I moved back to my parents' house and, when I moved in with my girlfriend, we lived in one of the rooms in a one-bedroom flat because her mum was living in the living room… It's a long story… And then I moved back to my parents' place and then I moved out and now I just like being in one room. I'm sure I will slowly edge back into having a bedroom separately."
"Anyway," I said, "why are you starting an LGBT night? You are not gay. What do you know about such things?"
"I am," he explained, "running it with Tom Mayhew, the gay comedian. I put myself down as an ally for LGBT stuff but, no, I can't properly relate to it, cos I'm not in that and never really been in that. For a long time, I was pansexual."
"You are attracted to woodland creatures and play a flute?" (Photo by Viktoria DeRoy)
I asked: "You are attracted to woodland creatures and play a flute?"
"No," Simon said, "you are attracted to someone personality-wise. You can see their sexual attractiveness but you very rarely find them sexually appealing until you've got to know them.
"That was how I defined my sexuality for about four or five years but, in the last three months of last year, I met two girls who I immediately found sexually appealing which was weird, because I hadn't found that for ages. So that was interesting. I am straight, but it's kinda complicated. I find men attractive, but I've never found them sexually appealing. It's kinda weird like that."
I asked: "You mean you find men aesthetically attractive?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I dunno. I've got a weird relationship with my gender at the moment. I've got a lot of polyamorous friends and a lot of kink friends and all of them say regular comedy nights are very heteronormative and very geared towards straight people."
"So," I asked, "that is why you're starting this monthly LGBT night?"
Simon's comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe
"It's more because I realised I was bored of the comedy circuit. It's awful at the moment. There are a lot of straight white men talking about Tinder and their failed dating lives. I've got a lot of friends who are in LGBT or another minority group who don't get booked as often as they maybe should. Why not? And does it mean they don't get to develop as much as other acts who get more stage time?… How many clubs have you been to in the last two weeks where they've had a person overtly talking about their sexuality who wasn't straight? I just thought I would put on a new gig where I would actively look for new voices I had not heard."
"But," I suggested, "is having gay people talking about being gay in an LGBT night not restricting them in their own niche pigeonhole?"
"Everyone," suggested Simon, "gets pigeonholed at some point when they get to a certain level."
"So," I said, "you are going to run these Sunday night LGBT shows every month?"
"We are going to do the first four monthly nights as a charity thing and then, after that, depending on how it goes, we would run them as a monthly pro gig (i.e. paying the acts)."
"They are themed?" I asked.
"Yes. The themes we have down for the four shows are… January – New Years… February – Anti-Valentines… March – Anti Steak and Blowjob Day… And, for April, we will probably do April Fools."
"Anti steak and blowjobs?" I asked.
Simon Caine strikes me as a glass half full man
"Yes," said Simon. "Some men got together and said they hated Valentine's Day because it was 'for women' and they wanted 'a day for men' so they started a steakandblowjobs website for men. Ours would be an Anti Steak & Blowjob Day night."
"Ah," I said. "And, given that you are always full of new ideas…beyond the monthly Queer As Jokes nights… any other projects?"
"I have," said Simon, "briefly talked to a friend of mine – a black comedian – about starting a black gig later in the year. Obviously, I would not be performing in that."
"You could black up?" I suggested.
"No," said Simon.
Filed under Comedy, Gay, Mental health, Sex
Tagged as Angel comedy, Ask The Industry, Bill Murray, comedy, gay, LBGT, mental health, PC, Queer As Jokes, sex, Simon Caine, steak and blowjobs, Tom Mayhew
Apr 27, 2016 · 11:02 pm
How to become a comedy promoter? – Tim Rendle stripped for a policewoman
Tim Rendle in London's Leicester Square, near the Lion's Den
Last night, I went to the weekly Tuesday night Lion's Den Comedy Club (aka Comedy Car Crash) in London's Shaftesbury Avenue, run by Tim Rendle.
How do you become a comedy club promoter?
If Tim Rendle is anything to go by, then fuck knows.
He has been a painter, barman and baby sitter, web designer, magician and spy hole fitter. He has sold windows and doors, installed security systems, flipped burgers, busked with a drum and his first ever self-employed job was as a car washer when he was nine.
There is also a bit of controversy, because the Lion's Den is a pay-to-play club. Acts have to pay to appear on his comedy night and there is no quality control at all.
"So," I said when I met him, "pay-to-play. Terrible idea. Why do comics have to pay to perform? Why can't you just make money from punters paying on the door to get in?"
Johnny Vegas (left) with Tim at the Den
"It's really hard," he told me, "to get an audience for open mic nights. We have an open door policy. We don't require videos or CDs in advance for acts to perform. I'm happy to have first-timers and, as a result, on the circuit now, some of the biggest names did their teeth-grinding at the Lion's Den and the Comedy Car Crash."
"You are getting money out of comedians who can't afford it," I said.
"If you want to be a swimmer," Tim replied, "you go to swimming classes. If you want to be a gymnast, you go to gymnast classes. All of them charge more than we do. It's a spot. It's a stage to work material out on. It's not a bad thing. We're not… what's the word…"
"Exploiting?" I suggested.
"Yeah, that's the word," said Tim. "We are not exploiting anyone. They can get a spot anywhere else if they want."
I told him: "I saw an act a few weeks ago at the Lion's Den and I thought he might be slightly… deluded?"
"Yes," said Tim, "But he has a right to play, same as anyone else. The club is a massive part of my life. I've never been so loyal to any thing or person. I've been doing it for ten years now, which is a quarter of my life."
"You were brought up Amish," I said.
"Yeah. Amish-ish. The Hutterian Brethren, down in Robertsbridge in East Sussex."
"There is a community of Amish down there?" I asked.
Hutterian women return from working in the fields at sunset. (Photograph by Rainer Mueller)
"Yeah. When I was 1½, we moved from Lincoln to this Amish commune where my grandparents lived. My mum was brought up in a different commune in Shropshire. I stayed there until I was five, then came out into the real world, which was an eye-opener."
"Did the Amish start to your life scar you?"
"No. I think it gave me a really good set of morals. Maybe a bit too unrealistic in the real world."
"Being too honest?"
"Yeah. It's just how honest, isn't it? Knowing when not to be honest. Or knowing when to shut up. It's the tree that grew inside me, so I do try to be nice and honest."
"What did you want to be when you were aged 16?"
"I'm not sure. I didn't have the happiest of family lives. When I was 16, basically, I wanted to get the hell away from home as soon as possible, so I joined the Army. I was accepted by them, but they said I had to do my GCSE exams.
"Then, on the way to sit my second GCSE, I got run over. I was riding my motorbike to school and a car smashed into my leg. That upset the Army. They said: We don't want you any more. That was a bit sad, because it meant I had to stay around home a bit more.
"Then, a couple of years later, I got run over again. That time, I put my face through a car – the window of a car."
"Because the driver was an idiot. He signalled left but did a U-turn. I tried to overtake him, he cut me off, so I went through his windscreen. My girlfriend went under the car."
"She was OK?"
"She bruised her ankle and got a bit of petrol inside her. I ripped my neck open, got 35 stitches plus a few in my chin. I did pass out through lack of blood. That was just the start of it, really. Then the Crohn's Disease kicked in just after that second crash and I started to think: Why the fuck does God hate me so much?"
"What does Crohn's Disease do?" I asked.
Tim developed Crohn's Disease when he was younger
"Fucks your life," replied Tim. "Makes you skinny."
"So you had accidents and disease rather than a career start?" I asked.
"I don't think I've had a career ever. I wasn't able to think about the future. Every time I did, I got gazumped by Fate at the last minute.
"We had moved down to Hastings when I was 5 and, when I was about 20, I was being hassled by my mum to get a job. I was getting so much nagging by my mum to get a job and I saw an ad to be a stripogram and my mum said Go on, then! so I did.
"It was the weirdest job interview I've ever had – having to take my clothes off and bend over in front of people who then told me: You're gonna have to shave your arse. Women don't like it and there are times when you need to bend over."
"Can you make a good living as a stripogram around Hastings?" I asked.
"At the time – 1994-ish – yeah. £11 per minute."
"An anecdote?" I asked.
"Loads. I was getting ready in a police station and they had sectioned off a toilet just for me to get ready."
"This," I asked, "was to pull a surprise on a police lady?"
"Yeah. I was actually technically sexually assaulted by that woman in front of about 150 police people."
"Any tricks of the trade?" I asked.
"Basically," explained Tim, "when male strippers warm up, they have to… eh… punish… erm…"
"Fluff?" I suggested.
"Yeah. Fluff. But, with my bad back from the car crashes, there was no way I'm going to bend down there. So I just had to punish it a bit."
"A bit of slap and tickle?" I suggested.
The police station – lots of slap, a little tickle and elastic bands
"Yeah. More slap than tickle. And then you get an elastic band and you tie it off. Halfway through doing it in the police station toilet, a policeman opened the door. It was a weird situation with me halfway through slapping myself into position. He asked: Are you going to be long? I told him: I am trying, sir; I'm trying."
"What's the elastic band thing?" I asked.
"You tie yourself off," explained Tim. "Once you have achieved a good… eh… state of being, you tie it off to preserve that state of being."
"Keeping the blood in…" I said.
"Yeah," said Tim. "It just makes it took great inside a g-string or banged against a tea towel."
"But you gave all that glamour up," I said, "for what?"
"Many years later, I moved to Colchester and did a full-time 2-year engineering course. I wanted to take that further and do industrial design."
"You were still interested in erections?" I asked.
"No. I wanted to be an inventor, basically, because that's the way my mind works. I've got an engineering mind, but I find engineering very boring – working out how much force a bridge can take is really boring. I wanted to make things and make the world a better place. I did the degree and found out they are just painting the wheel a different colour.
"But, while I was doing the degree, a friend I was staying with suggested I try his job out and that's when I started working with people who have learning disabilities and in mental health. I became a support assistant."
"I couldn't do that," I said. "Too depressing."
"No," Tim said, "not at all. It was one of the best jobs I ever did. I found the learning disabilities not particularly challenging. I tended to veer more towards the challenging behaviour and that led to the mental health work."
"What do you mean by 'challenging behaviour'?" I asked.
Where mental health meets comedy and kick boxing
"Getting beaten up, basically. They were quite angry and violent people. A lot of the job was pacifying behaviour and basically being a target."
"Trying to avoid them beating you up?"
"Yeah. Which I was pretty good at."
"Because you are good at psychology?"
"Good at psychology and because I used to do kick boxing. There was nothing that I had not had worse."
"So," I said, "you are the ideal comedy promoter. You deal with mad people and can kick them."
"I've had a few hairy situations. We have only ever had two violent incidents in ten years at the Lion's Den.
"I once walked into a situation where six people were trying to pull an act off an audience member who he was beating the crap out of. They couldn't get him off. I walked up and just managed to put my hand across his face and pull him backwards, which separated them instantly."
"What was the problem with the act?"
"It was an act just assassinating every woman in the audience – being really horrible. Nasty. It wasn't comedy."
"And is the act still around?"
"I've not seen him since and I think he's lucky, because the police were after him."
Tim Rendle has had an interesting life, which continues.
There is a video on YouTube of Darius Davies introducing a performance by Sweet Steve at the Lion's Den.
Filed under Comedy, Mental health, Psychology
Tagged as Amish, comedy, Comedy Car Crash, Crohn's Disease, Hastings, Hutterian Brethren, Lion's Den, mental health, pay-to-play, psychology, sex, stripogxams, Tim Rendle
Apr 21, 2015 · 9:02 am
What is it like to expose your psychotic hallucinations, live on a comedy stage?
Some say you can never be too intrusive when recording…
In the absence of comedy critic Kate Copstick, who is cyber-trapped in Kenya by a malfunctioning computer and an eccentric mobile phone, I recorded our weekly Grouchy Club Podcast in London yesterday with comic performer Juliette Burton at King's Cross station.
Last month, Juliette started a 'new material' comedy club in London – Juliette Burton's Happy Hour. It is billed as "a night of positivity and happiness guaranteed to leave the audience uplifted". She is the compere and, in the first show, she described what she saw when, as a teenager, she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and had psychotic hallucinations.
Although she has mentioned these in this blog, she had never before described them on stage in front of a live audience.
Here is a brief extract from this week's 39-minute Grouchy Club Podcast:
Whenever comedians expose themselves, as it were – psychologically – they feel very nervous about doing it. But I always tell them the person doing it feels empowered and the audience feels uplifted in some way – because someone else has survived something worse that they have experienced. At the first Happy Hour, you did a piece about your hallucinations, didn't you…
… and you had never done that before. I think you said you felt nervous about it, didn't you?
I felt terrified.
What is it like to, as it were, expose yourself? Because all comedians, by and large, are insecure and there's nothing more insecure than exposing your actual deep psyche when people may reject you. People may laugh at you rather than with you. So what was it like to expose yourself or know you were going to expose yourself… and then do it?
Yeah, I went naked in my last show and this time I'm actually going psychologically naked.
When you say you went naked in your last show, that was a magazine thing, wasn't it?
A magazine thing, yeah. I did a body confidence naked shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine.
It (the recent Happy Hour show) was weird. It was the first time ever that I had stood on stage and said: Right, this is what I hallucinated and I've spoken to friends about it and actually this whole experience (the hallucinating) was what eventually, I think, led me to comedy. Because I realised, if I wanted to talk about these hallucinations, the only way people would listen was if I could get them to laugh about it – because conversations with laughter last longer.
I was really nervous because they are very 'out there'. I talk about seeing God and the Devil and these are big words that are terrifying anyway – I don't know if I even believe in God and I've seen him – him/her, whatever.
You are right inasmuch as the audience seemed to really, really like it. I would say that actually it turns out that people want to talk about these things or want to listen about them now. It took me 13 years since the experience to want to stand on stage and talk about it, but it took Society about 300 years to want to listen.
Somebody came up to me after the show saying they, too, had been sectioned. Somebody else e-mailed me saying they, too, have had hallucinations – and that was in a relatively intimate audience. It was a packed-out room, but it's not a huge room and, out of those people, already two of them had felt able to open up to me about their experiences and they had had similar ones.
I think people want to listen now; it's just we need to be brave enough to actually stand out there and be more honest and truthful and I think the comedy I like most is the daring stuff – talking about things that people might not want to talk about in everyday conversation. I think it's the most real and most truthful and the most raw and the most interesting because it's honest and people respond to honesty.
On YouTube, Juliette has started to post a monthly video called BAHH – Backstage At Happy Hour.
In the first, she talked to performers Doug Segal and James Hamilton:
She also posts a weekly blog called TWIL – This Week I Love. The latest is HERE.
Tagged as comedy, Depression Awareness Week, Doug Segal, Grouchy Club podcast, hallucinations, Happy Hour, James Hamilton, Juliette Burton, Kate Copstick, mental health, psychology, psychotic
Apr 6, 2015 · 10:36 am
Comic Lewis Schaffer on his time under a psychiatrist in Marilyn Monroe's clinic
I talked to Lewis Schaffer at Five Guys in London yesterday (Photograph by Rose Ives)
Yesterday, comedy critic Kate Copstick was ill in bed with vomiting and dizziness.
Possibly too much detail.
But the result was that she was unavailable for the weekly Grouchy Club Podcast. So I talked to UK-based American comedian Lewis Schaffer, a regular in these blogs.
This is a 4-minute extract from the 27-minute podcast which you can hear in full at Podomatic or iTunes.
At what point did you suddenly decide I'm not going to be an advertising person, I'm going to be a stand-up comedian? And why?
Lewis Schaffer
Why? Because it was the early 1990s and I was trying to get a job selling advertising space and no-one wanted me, because they were sensible. They could see the desperation; they could see the insanity. And I was flat broke. I was going to a psychiatrist in New York at the Payne Whitney Clinic, part of New York Hospital.
(NOTE: The US poet Robert Lowell wrote about his hospitalization at the Payne Whitney Clinic, Marilyn Monroe was hospitalized there in early 1961 and Mary McCarthy based her book The Group, on her in-patient experience there.)
I was paying $10 a session – I was going to a discount psychiatrist (he was a trainee) and I couldn't even afford it. I was paying it on credit cards. I had like twenty or thirty credit cards that I was maxing out.
The psychiatrist said to me: Lewis, you're depressed and, if you want, I can get you $800-a-month. You just have to go and I will sign the form for you to say you're depressed. I said: Of course I'm depressed. I'm not working, I have no girlfriend, I have $100,000 in credit card debt and I'm going to be evicted from my flat. Of course I'm depressed!
If that had happened today, I would have said: I wish I had an airplane to fly into the side of a mountain. But I said to him: No. At that moment, I could have been labelled as a depressive.
Why were you going to the psychiatrist – apart from the fact you're an American and all Americans do – if you did not want $800-a-month for being depressive?
I just wanted someone to talk to.
Thus your career talking to audiences…
Yeah. Well, I wasn't doing comedy at the time, so I would go and talk to him and I would try to make him laugh. Or I would try to see the inconsistency of his advice – whatever he said – and I would try to drive him crazy. I reached a point where he was so fed up with me that… There was a really pretty girl who was working as a receptionist there. Girl/woman. She was a woman. And I would hit on (i.e. flirt with) her and she made a formal complaint against me because I was flirting with her.
When you are in a psychiatrist's office and you're not famous and it's a discount psychiatrist's office, women do not like to be flirted-with. Now I can flirt with anybody because – Oh! Lewis Schaffer, the great performer! – but, at that time… That was the lowest I had ever been, when a woman who was a receptionist – There's nothing wrong with being a receptionist but – this woman made a complaint and the psychiatrist said to me that I should stop that. He got quite angry with me and I thought this was really inappropriate because I'm here for psychiatric help and I'm obviously mental, so he shouldn't criticise me for acting mental. I'm mental – He treated me like I was a normal person!
I was so low.
I had a friend of mine who I'd met a few years before in real estate school, who was very successful. And he would goad me every single day because I was home during the daytime and he was home trading. I was his friend. He would talk to me every day and he would say to me: What do you wanna do? and he did more good than the psychiatrist, cos he found out that I always wanted to be a stand-up comic but I was afraid that, if I did stand-up comedy and I wasn't successful, then the one thing I thought I was good at I would not be good at.
Tagged as comedy, depression, Grouchy Club podcast, Kate Copstick, lewis schaffer, mental health, new york, Payne Whitney Clinic, psychiatry
Jan 14, 2015 · 3:17 pm
Kevin James Moore: Stand-up comedy, books, drugs, creativity, mental health.
Kevin James Moore talked to me via Skype two days ago
Occasionally, people suggest blogs to me – like today's.
A couple of weeks ago, Kevin James Moore contacted me from Greenwich, near New York. He used to be a stand-up comic. Then he gave it up due to drug and mental problems. Recently, he has started the comedy again. And he has written a novel.
Comedy, books, drugs, mental health. How could I resist? So we had a Skype chat on Monday.
"I'm on my third stage name," he told me. "I started off as 'Alien Brain'. It was a really secretive thing. I never got into comedy to become famous. I was a 20-year-old college student and I was writing jokes and I didn't know what to do with them and it was a way to get those thoughts out of my mind.
"When I got more confidence, I performed as Kevin Moore and, when I re-started stand-up comedy last year, I had already published the book under my full name, so now I perform as Kevin James Moore.
Great Gatsby and Big Sleep meet Nadja
"Your novel," I said, "is The Go-Go Girl."
"Yes, it's basically about heroin," he told me, "but I made it a type of crime/adventure novel. It's about a guy who goes to help an ex-girlfriend who's a go-go dancer in a club in Rome and she's stolen a bunch of money and a bunch of heroin and they go on the run across Europe to a few cities."
"It's your first novel," I said. "So it's bound to be autobiographical?"
"The emotions are real in the book," explained Kevin, "but the plot I made up. To me, it's a mix of The Great Gatsby, The Big Sleep and Nadja (by the French surrealist André Breton). I think of it as a kind of surrealist crime novel. I wrote it when I was in rehab and mental hospitals. It was the only outlet I had other than staring out a window."
"And," I asked, "your second book is Blue Snow?
A book for kids with learning disabilities
"Well," said Kevin, "that's for kids with reading problems and learning disabilities. I did it for a contest. I don't count that as a novel."
"But you are writing a second book?"
"Yes. It's basically about the mental illness, being bi-polar. Again, the emotions and the thoughts will be real, but the plot will be constructed and fiction."
"When you quit comedy," I asked, "what did you do?"
"I was in and out of hospitals and was really determined on having a 'normal' life. I was going to get a regular job and get on with what you're supposed to do: wife, kids, job. I was a substitute teacher – you guys call them supply teachers. And I worked at the UN for about a year as a reporter. It's been like a 4-year process to recover from my low-point and now, every time I get more comfortable, I feel more of an urge to be creative. I really didn't let myself be creative when I was trying to get better."
"I dunno. I just didn't see how the creativity would pay off. I felt it was intertwined with my problems – the bi-polar and the drug problems. I did art therapy when I was in the hospital, but not outside.
"I used to think I had to keep everything separate, like writing and comedy couldn't mix. Now I try to not dismiss thoughts. A lot of the ideas I have won't translate to stand-up comedy, but they will translate to small sketches. The stuff on my Funny Or Die pages are things which don't really fit as stand-up jokes. I used to dismiss a lot of ideas before. Now I don't stop the idea coming through.
Kevin's Funny Or Die page
"I guess to be creative you have to have some edge to you whereas, when I was getting better, I was really focussed on being polite and patient and positive and I think that doesn't translate at all to being a stand-up comic. You CAN go on stage and be positive and polite, but you also need to have that edge to say Fuck off! You have to have that little bit of darkness in you and I think I was afraid to let that back in. Now I kinda have and it feels good."
"Why did you go back to doing comedy?" I asked.
"My best friend was still in comedy and doing a lot, but she moved to L.A. Then she came back to produce a show in New York early last year and asked me to be on it. And it was like a brand new experience for me that I'd never had before on stage. It felt like I was doing it for a totally different reason.
"My first stretch of comedy – which was for about seven or eight years – was almost selfish. I was doing it for me. But this time, every time I go on stage, I perform for the audience to get laughs. It doesn't matter how many people are in the audience: I do my best instead of phoning it in."
"Do you do anything before you go on stage?" I asked.
"Yeah," laughed Kevin, "I smoke about half a pack of cigarettes."
"Nicotine?" I asked.
Kevin bought some paints last year and started with his face
"Yeah. It's about the only time I smoke any more. It's not anxiety. For some reason, whenever I've gone on stage I've always felt comfortable there, even though I was always a shy person – kinda anti-social but somehow, up there… People used to ask me: How come you can look so uncomfortable at a party with eight people, yet you can go up on stage in front of a crowd of 100 or 200 people?"
"And your answer was?"
"It's a totally different experience. At a party, you don't know what people are thinking about you. On stage, you know right away if they don't like you: they don't laugh. I think it's the honesty of being judged on stage whereas, in a social situation, people are being polite so you never know what they think.
"On stage, you can kinda change their opinion of you but, in a party, you don't know if there is a problem so, if there is, you can't correct it… I think… I dunno… I'd have to work this stuff through with a psychologist."
"You have one?"
"I have an appointment in a couple of hours with my psychiatrist."
One of Kevin James Moore's recent paintings
"A psychiatrist or a psychologist?" I asked.
"The psychiatrist gives you the medicine," said Kevin. "The psychologist just talks to you."
"Which one are you seeing?" I asked.
"The psychiatrist, to get the medicine… The worst thing about having a mental illness is you never want to admit to yourself your brain doesn't work and it's tough because there's no tangible, visible evidence of anything, so you deny it a lot."
"Well," I said, "it's not that your brain doesn't work. It just works in different way, which is not necessarily a bad thing."
"Yes," said Kevin, "but the way they diagnose it is as an illness and every time I've gone to the hospital, I'm in there for the same reason everyone else has – because they've stopped taking their medication."
Filed under Art, Books, Comedy, Mental health, Mental illness, Writing
Tagged as art, bi-polar, Blue Snow, comedy, creativity, depression, Go-Go Girl, Kevin James Moore, mental health, writing
Jan 9, 2015 · 12:12 pm
Comedian Lewis Schaffer gets serious about madness, his mother and himself
Lewis Schaffer briefly went all Jewish in a Leicester Square show last night
"Honestly!" I said to Lewis Schaffer's official stalker Blanche Cameron at the end of last night's show, "It's so frustrating! The things I can't blog about!"
Lewis Schaffer's apparently limitless ongoing weekly shows at the Leicester Square Theatre (sometimes on a Thursday, sometimes on a Sunday) are always, each in their own, unique events but – Ye Gods! – last night was quite a show. People say Lewis Schaffer lacks self-confidence but, to do what he did last night, takes extreme self-confidence.
Now you can be as frustrated as I am. I can't write about it. You won't know what happened.
Lewis Schaffer thinks I should write about it. I think it would intrude too far on at least two other people's private lives. Remember that when you read the rest of this blog.
Suffice to say, it involved a very amiably drunken member of the audience, three – count 'em – three people showing draw-dropping insights into their very, very personal lives and the line "Stop talking it's my turn to speak!" not spoken by Lewis Schaffer.
Lewis Schaffer reads his publicity last night
Before the show, I had talked to Lewis Schaffer. It was supposed to be about his upcoming tour. Then he decided NOT to talk about it because he was not sure he should publicise it. Then he wanted to. Then not. Welcome to Lewis Schaffer's world.
"The reason my shows work," Lewis Schaffer told me, "is that, in today's day and age, audiences have very little in common. They don't watch the same TV programmes; they don't work together; they don't share the same political or religious ideology. Usually, they have nothing in common.
"With me, my personality is so strong that, by the end of an hour, the audience has a shared friend. It's like being at the funeral of someone they loved. The difference is the friend is Lewis Schaffer and he's dying in front of them. People are rarely bored after my shows. They may want to commit suicide, but they're rarely bored."
"What did your father do for a living in New York?" I asked.
"He was a truant officer. He used to find kids who were playing hookey and bring them back to school. But he wasn't a truant officer for very long. He became a lawyer – a patent and trademark attorney."
"Lots of money it that," I suggested.
"For everybody else," Lewis Schaffer bemoaned, "but not my father. It was one of the highest-paying legal professions but my father barely scraped by. He became the patent attorney for intellectual property which came from communist Czechoslovakia and wanted to be trademarked in America. He originally worked for AMF, the people who made bowling alleys – one of the first conglomerates. I should have been a lawyer.
"I think my father wanted to be in the entertainment business and never was. I think maybe that's why he went to Law: because maybe he thought he could be some type of performer in that. But patent law is zero performance.
"He told me he had had an offer to go to California and be in the Pasadena Playhouse, which was one of these great workshops for comedians after the Second World War and he didn't go."
"I don't know. I think he was a scared man. I think I lived his dream by leaving my ex-wife. That was my father's dream: to divorce my mother."
"But he didn't?" I asked.
"Eventually he did, when he was 70 years old."
"Seems rather pointless," I observed.
"Well," explained Lewis Schaffer, "not when she's driving you crazy. She was like off-the-wall. Instead of calming down, she got crazier and crazier and I think my father lost the energy to cope with it."
"Should I mention your mother going into mental homes in my blog?" I asked. "I've always avoided it."
"She's dead," said Lewis Schaffer. "Back in the day, they institutionalised everybody and this was a very fancy place. Charles Schulz, the Peanuts guy, was there. It was an expensive place in the country: The Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. Very prestigious."
"So," I said, "it wasn't Arkham Asylum."
"Oh no," said Lewis Schaffer. "My mother had a big health insurance, because my father was working for this conglomerate as an in-house patent attorney. My mother was always under a lot of stress. She was a perfectionist. She had a mental illness. I would just call it an extreme personality. I don't believe in mental illness. I think this Stephen Fry business is just shit."
"Being bi-polar?" I asked.
"Yeah," said Lewis Schaffer. "My mother was described as bi-polar."
"What year was this?" I asked. "Bi-polar is one of those new terminologies, isn't it?"
"They called my mother manic-depressive," said Lewis Schaffer. "By calling it bi-polar, I think they're trying to make it sound more scientific."
"Has 'manic-depressive' become non-PC without me noticing?" I asked.
"Everything becomes non-PC," said Lewis Schaffer. "Manic is like wired. And depressive is depression. But they still use the word depression. They haven't called that uni-polar. Now it's considered a disease. I think by calling something a mental illness, it's trying to take away someone's responsibility for their horrible behaviour by saying it's a disease or some chemical imbalance. But the truth is, if you show me a mental person – a person who's acting it out in a bad way – I'll show you someone who's been treated really badly. Something horrible happened to my mother to make her act that way."
"Something happened," I asked, "rather than she had that personality anyway?"
"Yeah. Something happened when she was a kid."
"Surely," I said, "people are a combination of nature and nurture?"
"No," said Lewis Schaffer. "I think it's always because something horrible happened."
"You think it's all nurture not nature?" I asked.
"Yes. I don't think people are born crazy. When you see people misbehaving, I don't think that's ever, ever, ever nature. I think it's always because something bas happened to them. Or the other side is it could be macro not micro – society has declared what they are doing as unacceptable. Maybe they're acting in a normal way in an abnormal society."
"Maybe," I suggested, "if you're a totally sane person you can't be really creative, because creativity is about originality and originality is the opposite of thinking like other people do."
"The case can be made," said Lewis Schaffer, "that all excellence comes from passion and all passion comes from insanity. Last night I was thinking what my psychological problem is… I think by the time I was conscious of being a person, my parents had sort-of given up on me. My mother was mental and really wasn't paying that much attention to me and I wanted to entertain her, so I grew up through life thinking: I have to entertain my mother and get her attention."
"You were trying to entertain her when you were 14?" I asked.
"And younger," said Lewis Schaffer. "Now I feel I am responsible for making people happy. Not just entertaining them but making them happy. It's like I'm responsible for my mother's happiness. Maybe because I was blamed. When we moved from Brooklyn to Great Neck, Long Island, she went all wonky. Probably a lot had to do with moving away from her home into this very pleasant, prosperous suburban environment and she felt lonely."
"How old were you when you moved?"
"Almost three. Jerry Seinfeld is like me: a family of Brooklyn Jews who moved to the suburbs, then moved back into Manhattan to make our way. I was born in New York, moved out to a nice suburb and then moved back into Manhattan. I lived in Manhattan for 18 years.
"The reason I am the way I am is I had resentment towards my mother that I had to entertain her and give her happiness. So, with my comedy, I'm standing there trying to make other people happy but, at the same time, I'm thinking: Why the fuck do I have to make them happy? Most comedians are happy to make other people happy. I am somewhat happy but also feel bitterness and resentment that psychologically I need to be in this role. On stage, I'm thinking about the audience: Why the fuck do you deserve to be made happy? I'm thinking: Why am I sacrificing what I want? Why don't YOU make ME laugh? Why am I having a bad time doing this?
"I look at the audience when I'm performing and I think: I can't make you happy all the time. You're going to have to make yourself fucking happy."
"You should be happy," I suggested, "that you're saving lots of money by doing self-therapy."
"It's not self-therapy," said Lewis Schaffer. "It's self-analysis."
Tagged as bi-polar, comedy, Jewish, lewis schaffer, manic-depressive, mental health, new york, psychology, Stephen Fry