The Return of the Chocolate Ocelot’s Fringe - Monday

Notice a pile of brown paper bags in our bathroom. A message printed on one side tells me that I will use around 12,000 sanitary products in my lifetime. I find this bold assertion from a piece of lavatorial stationery that doesn’t even know me to be impertinent, not to mention physically unlikely.

Very well. As promised yesterday, I shall endeavour to keep today’s run down a little more brief.

We rise ridiculously early (I think the time starts with a seven) so we can trot over to the Captain’s Bar on South College Street. The event is The Early Word, a chance to listen to a local literary type hold forth on matters Edinburghian. When we get to the pub, it’s just us two, the landlady, and a chap called Alan Foster (or possibly Allan Foster) – author of biographies of Scottish literary figures like Conan Doyle, Burns and Scott. We are thankfully joined by one other person, a weather-beaten old person of indeterminate gender (who later turned out to be a lady) with the tan and dress of someone who has run a lion sanctuary in Africa for 30 years.

Mr Foster entertains us for well over an hour, all sat round one little tale at the back of the pub, with tales of Burns’ love affairs, Doyle pestering his mentor Joseph Bell, and Mark Twain holding Sir Walter Scott responsible for the American Civil War. He does go on quite a lot about Robert Burns, who I just don’t get. I think you have to be a scot, or more likely a rabid Scottish descendant several generations and hundreds of miles removed from Scotland, to really be into him.

http://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/event/227702-the-early-word/

Next, off to see Bagpuss, the live show! Needless to say, the audience is a little younger than most of the shows we are seeing. And about ten times louder. I’d say 50% are around five years old: noisy, and a bit loose at the seams. The rest of the audience – the parents – are in their 30s, so we two 40-yearolds - sans kiddies - out-age them all. The show is cleverly pitched at two levels to give the mums and dads something to follow in between shushing their fidgety, wailing offspring every two minutes. For the children, it’s a series of three adventures involving magical toys, moving pictures and musical interludes. For the adults – a poignant tale of the adult Emily’s descent into madness following the death of her father. Actually teared me up a bit.

By the way, I can do a better Yaffle impression and Bagpuss yawn than either of the ladies on stage though. So.

http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/childrens-shows/bagpuss

Over to the Gilded Balloon for Dr Apple’s Last Lecture. A freaky little play about a repressed psychology professor who embarks on a mind expanding trip into his subconscious, courtesy of a plateful of special cookies. The best bit for me is when he has just started to trip out, and the three female performers, dressed head to toe in day-glo lycra, crawl onto the stage behind him and begin a psychedelic dance routine worthy of The Mighty Boosh. Not sure either of us fully understand the plotline, but entertaining nonetheless.

http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/dr-apple-s-last-lecture

Queuing for Dr Apple, one usually has nothing better to do than stare at walls doors covered with flyers and posters for every conceivable Fringe show. Some of these are intriguing, some of them look funny, and some of them just make me want to punch the faces of the people depicted thereon. It’s the ones I never actually seen perform - some of them just have extraordinarily punchable faces. They either look way too smug (Andrew Bird and Patrick Monahan’s posters come to mind), or it’s their sheer ubiquity, like the bloody smiling baby from the So You Think You’re Funny posters. I swear I’ll smack that kid’s face in if ever I see him or her. Given that they’ve been using the same face for a good 10 years or so, he or she must be a teenager by now at least, so they stand an even chance of dodging my attack.

Then over to the Pleasance for the first time this year. The usual reek of sponsor Foster’s beer pervades the place, and we are posed with the usual problem of figuring out exactly which of the endless Pleasance subvenues in the complex we are supposed to be heading for. Given that we are here to see Ed Reardon: A Writer’s Burden, I should’ve just followed the stream of grey-haired heads. Reardon, the comic creation of Christopher Douglas, takes us through a précis of his life as a frustrated writer and professional grumpy old bugger. Assisted by two actors from ‘Theatre In A Basket’, he re-enacts various scenes from Reardon’s life, usually involving his ego, intolerance for poor punctuation (rah!) and the ‘perpetuation of the sickening contagion of obedience’ - a phrase he manages to incorporate into everything he writes, even the Ladybird Book of Shoes. Decent fun for grumpy old buggers like me.

http://www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh/events/ed-reardon-a-writers-burden

After a short break, we return to the Pleasance for Colin Hoult’s Inferno, taking the title of his show once again from an old Dr Who story. I still hope to bump into him on the street and ask him if many people get the running joke. As ever, Colin Hoult plays a variety of bizarre characters, from a dog who’d rather you fetch his banana, to a Thor wannabe from Leeds, to the lonely author of a truly crap poem about a bear. As before, he slips his supporting performers into the audience, to catch us out at the start. Herself identifies Colin’s female colleague (Zoe Gardner) as the woman from Lights, Camera, Walkies! yesterday. I suppose there must be a fair bit of that at the Fringe – people doubling up on shows. If you’re a comic actor stuck there for a month, you wouldn’t want to just do one hour’s worth of show a day I suppose, and it’s not like they can busk around the cabaret / chatshow / bestofthefest gigs like the stand-ups and the musicians.

http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/comedy/colin-hoult-s-inferno

And then our last show of the night – Arthur Smith’s Pissed Up Chat Show at the Pleasance Dome – that weird cavernous student union building off Potterow with the cool caricatured wall hangings. The gig does not get off to a good start, when the queue moves forward to go into the venue and we find ourselves outside the toilets – the daft bint in front of us had taken a wrong turning in the heaving mass of people. Once properly inside, we just manage to find a space to sit that isn’t already occupied or behind a pillar. This is where we saw the late night BBC comedy showcase last year, and is a room composed mainly of stage-obscuring pillars as far as I can tell.

Anyway, Arthur comes on and introduces a couple of acts, some of which have something to do with drinking. It turns out that he himself hasn’t drunk since 2001 and is now diabetic, so he speaks from an interesting position. First guest is the excellent Ed Byrne, who I have just about forgiven for being the annoying voice of a certain mobile phone vendor’s adverts for many a year, followed by an old American hoofer and soul singer call Movin’ Melvin Brown, and then by a couple of gentlemen who have a show devoted to the art of drinking.

More importantly though, we the audience have all filled in little forms beforehand, stating our worst and best experiences whilst drunk. Having only been drunk once, I feel a bit of a fraud, but it’s just for a laugh. Arthur and guests read through the pile of submissions throughout the show, and lo and behold, mine is acclaimed the winner, though that may simply be because it is the last piece of paper in his hand when the show ends. We shall never know. Nevertheless, I come forward to claim my prize, a choice of a pickled egg or a signed copy of his autobiography (slightly soiled by a spilled cocktail). Hurrah for me, though Herself would’ve preferred the egg.

My winning submission? Thing I have most enjoyed doing while drunk: Having a good wee.

http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/comedy/arthur-smith-s-pissed-up-chat-show?day=12-08-2011&performance=33%3A8478

We return to our pad. Although our timetable dictates that tonight is ‘watch DVDs’ night, we instead stay up into the wee hours watching BBC news footage of Croydon burning.

Today’s SlebWatch: Russell Kane, with funny sticky up hair. Possibly. And Shappi Khorsandi getting a chocolate cake in the Gilded Balloon café. Though it may have been Shazia Mirza. This uncertainty makes me feel racist. My suggestion for the next Shappi Khorsandi show: Not Shazia Mirza, The Other One.

Black-Eared Bolt

Preface: Should you not have grown up worshipping at the altar of American comic books, you may find the following material easier to follow if I can trouble you to do a little preliminary viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17eeZPl_Pgo&feature=fvw

At the very least, knowing the name of Thor's first foes may come in handy at some future quiz night. No? Oh suit yourself.


Now, a lot of comic heads will cite legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as true fonts of imagination. Men of raw originality who created some of the most iconic characters in comic books from nothing but their own dreamstuff and mindgasm. Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men... Lee and Kirby crafted a 20th century pantheon of costumed demi-gods such as the world had never seen before.

Or had they?

Recently evidence has come to light which casts the reputation of these trailblazing imagineers into doubt. Evidence which is as compelling as it is indisputable. Prepare to have your preconceptions flicked sharply with a wet towel...

Let's start with this case study. In 1965, Lee and Kirby wrote and drew Fantastic Four issue #45, in which we met a strange race of beings who lived hidden from mankind in their incredible city of Attilan, high in the Himalayas. Each member of that secretive society had their own unique super-power, some of them barely human in appearance. They were... The Inhumans:

The Inhumans were led by the regal Black Bolt, whose powerful voice could lay waste to skyscrapers with but a single syllable. Thus he remained ever-silent, preferring to communicate indirectly, through the members of his royal family, Medusa of the living tresses, Karnak the shatterer, Gorgon of the thunderous tread, Triton the amphibian and Lockjaw the uh... giant teleporting bulldog. Yeah.

Anyway, I was struck by the similarity between Black Bolt and another popular fictional character, seemingly mute, possessed of uncanny magical powers and attended by a weird extended family of inhuman creatures. Here he is, with some of his friends:

Yes, the similarities are incredible aren't they? Too close perhaps for mere coincidence. Now let's look at the rest of the cast of The Sooty Show:

Sooty's simpering panda girlfriend Soo is an obvious match for Medusa, the excitable Sweep is a dead ringer for Karnak with his funny dome-shaped head, gruff Butch is a perfect Gorgon, Kipper is the other girl so she must be Crystal, and the sinister snake Ramsbottom must be Triton as he's the only one left. Unless you count that little kiddie version of Sooty in the school uniform, who's probably called Spanky or Zipper or something. Maybe he's Lockjaw. No, Butch would have to be Lockjaw coz they're both dogs, so Spanky would have to be Gorgon. Or something like that. Oh, I don't know. But you get the idea.

Anyway, it's compelling darn evidence and no mistake. And here's the shocking twist - Sooty predates The Inhumans by some 17 years! Which would make Lee and Kirby dirty plagiarists who ripped off Harry Corbett's lovable glove puppets and thought they'd get away with it by sticking them in skintight ziggy-zaggy costumes and sticking an inexplicable tuning fork on their main character's forehead. Look at this damning early draft of Jack Kirby's artwork, before Marvel comics' lawyers insisted he redraw 'Black-Eared Bolt':

Well I'm here to tell you that the revelation may be coming some 45 years late, and 50% of the suspects may have sadly passed beyond the veil, but Sootygate is but the tip of the iceberg at the House of Ideas. Which would make it a very big house, I suppose. Maybe the iceberg is sort of underneath the house. I dunno.

Let's look briefly at some other test cases and see if you agree with me. In each instance, I propose to demonstrate incontrovertibly that iconic characters from Marvel comics, and in some cases their competitors at DC, are actually thinly disguised ripoffs of much-loved British childrens' television shows.

Right, so Rainbow is the obvious inspiration for the mythical rainbow bridge linking the world of men to Asgard, the home of the Norse gods, which makes Bungle and his friends all prototypical Asgardians from The Mighty Thor. Bungle is obviously the noble thunder god himself, his dull mate Geoffrey would be Balder the brave, the sneering Zippy just has to be wily Loki the lord of mischief, leaving girly mega-lashed George in the role of the goddess Sif.

And Rod, Jane and Freddy are the Warriors Three. Simple.

Moving over to DC, we note that the super-escape artist Mister Miracle, with his brightly coloured clothing and irrepressible spirit, is nothing but Basil Brush in human form. And his sidekick Oberon is just Mr Rodney/Derek/Roy/Billy/whatever with mutton chops. We also see in Basil's deerstalker and manic laughter the gestating forms of both Detective Chimp and The Creeper.

That of course takes us neatly onto Basil's dark counterpart Emu, who must surely be the ur-form of the New God Orion - ever struggling with his savage nature. Hull is clearly Highfather whose steady hand stays Emu's bestial fury.

And if that isn't enough to convince you that some of the greatest creations in comicdom are nothing but pale mockeries of older myths, just examine this beloved tale of a saggy old Lord of Dreams:

It hardly needs spelling out does it? Neil Gaiman's cast of the Sandman, those archetypes of the human experience known as The Endless, are nothing but the cast of Bagpuss dressed up for the artsy 'comics are for adults' crowd.

Consider: the sandman Morpheus, whose realm is that of dreams, is so clearly Bagpuss that it's not even funny. The dour Despair is none other than Professor Yaffle, that carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker. Seductive, androgynous Desire is none other than the collective form of those tricksome mice on the mouse organ  pandering to the unwary's deepest needs, even going so far as to perpetrate the infamous Chocolate Biscuit Scam. Smiling pale-faced Death is a ringer for Madeleine the doll, and Destiny with his chained books of secrets is actually Gabriel the toad and his banjo of visions. That just leaves insane Delirium as the clearly disturbed Emily. Destruction is of course not present, though I strongly suspect he is the Hamish:

http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/bagpuss/stories.htm#Hamish

Why yes, I do have a lot of free time on my hands. Why do you ask?