Poster Stash Uncovered 2

Hello there

Right, here's the second part of my recent uncovering of posters during the garage tidy, which is - as I promised - tour posters (mostly).

You'll have seen a load of these before, but some of them are definitely making their first appearance on here. They're all in colour now, and printed properly. Gone are the days of photocopies that we all enjoyed so much in the last post (I've no idea if we all enjoyed them, I've just carried straight on after scheduling the last one, literally only just finished writing that one).

Shall we?  

Yes, I suppose.  Let's get it over with.

This here was my first ever proper stand up poster, and was from the Comedy Network, which was a tour of universities.  This was what you wanted to be doing, it was everyone's aim to get onto the Network gigs.  Not just ace money to be headlining (think it was £250 which, back then, was the equivalent of £3million now).  As is customary, I of course have no memory of that specific gig, but it seems to be the only copy I have of this poster.

This was the first professional stand up photo I had taken (the one on the last poster was genuinely taken in a photo booth at Euston station). I've just noticed that it says "and vicious" on that quote from the Sunday Times, and I'm absolutely certain it didn't say that in the original quote.  I've no idea who made the decision to shove that in.  This was at a time where I was being heavily marketed at these gigs as ultra-boisterous though.  I definitely had a name for myself on the Comedy Network as being an "event" comic.  Something out of the ordinary would invariably happen at them.  

Some people have careers, I had adventures.

I'd come up with the idea to put a star by my name in every poster, with something in it that implied the audience should know about me already.  It wasn't a marketing tactic, it was something that made me laugh. I really liked seventies comedy posters that would make a point of saying that the act was there in real life, like an anticipation of the excitement to be in their presence. In fact, I used "In real life" in a later poster...

Another confrontational quote, and another belter in the star.  That is making me laugh even as I'm typing this.  That's really funny to me.

That was my last Network poster when I was doing the character, and that Daily Mail quote was from a bad review I believe. I obviously couldn't think of anything particularly brilliant for the star in this one, so the commitment to the character was clearly waning.  

Let's pop over to an Edinburgh poster now.

There we go, "In Real Life". Told you.  I could write a book about the making of this show.  A book that loads of people would take legal action to stop.  It was an abject nightmare, in so many ways, and I think I was in a real free-fall personally.  I couldn't work out what I wanted the show to actually be, it was more of a play to be honest.  It was hugely inappropriate, really quite offensive, and had no caution anywhere near it.  Which also meant it had no subtlety either.  Honestly...the story of this show... the entire experience. I'll maybe write it secretly and instruct somebody to release it after I die.  Nobody involved comes out of it well. Sheer degradation all round.

This was the following years poster, and apologies if you are having your dinner.  I've told the story before, but once more for old time's sake.  I was at a photo shoot and the girl in the picture, Claire... erm... Claire Someone (sorry), was overrunning in her shoot.  It wasn't an actual problem but I was mouthing off about how it was ridiculous (in a joking way) and eventually walked into the shoot, took off my shirt and said "I AM READY".  Claire wrapped her arms around me, Pete Dadds (the photographer) took one shot.  That ended up being my poster.  I could genuinely have saved £500.  My subsequent shoot didn't get used, it was the one picture of me taken on her dollar.  They airbrushed out my jeans, I wasn't actually naked, and photoshopped weird hips.  That's not what I look like (I mean, none of it is what I look like now), but it's much better than the first attempt at photoshopping it where they made me look like I had the body of Cleo Roccos.  OH, Jon, we should talk about Cleo on Reboot at some point.  Pop that in your list of things to remind me about.

And yes, I was genuinely sponsored by Playstation Portable.  I got one thousand pounds (that just went straight into the Edinburgh budget) and a free limited edition white PSP which I sold on eBay because I already had a PSP. I still got the better deal.  You're not telling me they shifted a solitary unit from being on my poster.

Showbiz.

Oh - Claire Ward.  I think it was Ward.

Ooops, missed that one.  Nowt to say about it really.  We all got along really well and it was fine. 

Oh I've really messed up the chronology again here.  That was the first Big And Daft show in Edinburgh.  Look at the desperately cobbled together quotes.  SouthNews was the newspaper company I worked for when I was a sales exec, and I'm 99% certain I wrote that quote.  It was printed in the paper, but it's still a cheat.

That's the infamous Big And Daft final tour. I split up Big And Daft in the interval on the second date.  Which is really quite embarrassing for me now, but that's how difficult it was for us at that point. I do however remember every single one of the dates on that tour though, which is very unusual.  Admittedly there weren't that many.

Everybody has done well.  We have all had great careers.

  
This poster actually still really annoys me.  Originally the sub-headings beneath the names were all things like "winner of whatever" or "Star of something" and when they asked me what I wanted I said it would be funny if it just said "From Leeds". Like the character had misunderstood, and just didn't have any credible credit to put on it so just said where he was from.  It looked really funny on the original design.  Some comedians don't like other people being funny (that's not meant to sound as bitchy as it does), so they all insisted that they write quirky things too.  Which kind of ruined my joke.  But most importantly, everyone has done well.

(I so wish I could tell you a story about Reg that happened on this tour...it's a belter and involves a hotel ringing the tour manager after we'd left...if you and I ever meet in person I'll tell you off the record about it)

Finally, here's the middle P&G tour.  I was genuinely shocked when I found this poster and saw those dates.  That's a huge tour.  By anyone's standards that is genuinely impressive. And I can't remember hardly any of them.  If you'd have asked me yesterday if we ever did a P&G tour show at the Edinburgh Stand I'd have said definitely not.  If you'd insisted we had, I would have put money on it that we didn't. Appears we did though. I remember the Salford Lowry because Ben Elton came to it, but beyond that it's really lost to time in my memory.

Sort of weird seeing it and not remembering.

Still, I don't have to worry about it now because we have reached the end of my Poster Stash Uncovered posts. 

I've done a lot really eh?  Now let's never speak of it again.

Hope your week is off to a smashing start.

Much love from here

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