“Where there’s Muck, there’s Bras” by Kate Fox, Theatre Royal Wakefield, Thursday 7 February 2019

I first met Kate Fox to speak to when she performed at Seven Arts Centre in Chapel Allerton, Leeds. That doesn’t seem long ago, but it must be at least 3 years. Kate Fox is not the most famous spoken word performer I have ever conversed with, but she is the most famous spoken word performer I have spoken to for that amount of time, and who spoke to me as if she was not trying to get away, and might even consider speaking to me again, on another occasion.

During my doomed attempt to put together an alternative literature festival in Wakefield in 2018, Kate Fox was, again, the most famous writer and performer who said she might be available during the time in question. She quoted what seemed to me to be a reasonable fee. She kept telling me that she is “not Kate Tempest”. What Kate Fox meant by that was that she did not consider herself to be a safe bet to fill a large venue. That wasn’t a problem for me: I was looking for a top quality performer that people who don’t go to live spoken word events might have heard of. If you have had your own series on BBC Radio 4, then that counts as “might have heard of”. A review of one of Kate Fox’s programmes appears on this blog. My reaction to, “I’m not Kate Tempest” was, “Good.”

The purpose of the forthcoming tour is to broadcast the history of Northern women who Kate Fox thinks have not received enough – or, in some cases, any – recognition. It is a departure from Kate Fox’s accustomed “stand-up poetry”, because it incorporates music, film, and at least one other performer. It is more complex than simply standing next to a microphone and talking, to the point that it has its own director, Annie Rigby.

The tour starts in Wakefield, at the Theatre Royal, which is less than 5 minutes walk from Wakefield Westgate station. You can buy tickets for the Wakefield performance here:

https://theatreroyalwakefield.co.uk/whats-on/where-theres-muck-theres-bras/

Kate Fox is a performer who is both capable of the unexpected, and also faultless in getting the basics of material, funny/serious balance, and delivery right. I am excited at the prospect of seeing and hearing her including other elements in her act.

Review: The Price of Happiness by Kate Fox, s2 ep1, BBC Radio 4, 11:30 19 June 2017

You can listen to the programme on BBC iPlayer Radio for the next 29 days from today, or download it, if allowed in your territory:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08twgfv

Kate Fox is just about the best and most celebrated poet with whom I have a nodding acquaintance.  I have heard her perform live at Unity Works in Wakefield, and at 7 Arts in Leeds, and I had the pleasure of having a bit of a chat with her on both occasions.  She has national coverage (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about her on the BBC) and is one of the most effective campaigners in England for the belief that contemporary poetry can be relevant – sometimes, even, vital – to everyday life, and is worth paying to hear.

Like Matt Abbott, Ian McMillan, Kate Tempest, and some others, Kate Fox mixes her spoken word career with other art forms: in her case, stand-up comedy.  Today’s programme also had some musical accompaniment.  There were elements of audience participation which, to my great relief, worked very well, and were not at all an embarrassing mess.

The subject of the programme, entitled, ‘The Perfect Body’, is the amount of money that people – mainly women, but men, as well – spend on their appearance, and whether it is worth the expense and effort.  As regards hardly caring at all about what other people think of my appearance, I enjoy some advantages that Kate Fox doesn’t.  I’m male, and, although I did spend a long time in childhood being regularly taunted about my appearance and voice (I went through an artificial puberty at the age of 7) my circumstances were such that it never got to me.  All it did was to give me a rational fear of the mob mentality.

Despite the fact that this is not my kind of subject, I found the programme engaging and well worth listening to.  The most engaging parts were when she was talking about her own, idiosyncratic experiences, rather than talking generally.  But even the statistics about how much people spend on what items and procedures I found interesting. (There aren’t many statistics that I don’t find interesting, as long as they are derived from reputable sources).  She even mentioned the subject of cosmetic surgery (which, if I ever see it mentioned in a TV programme, causes me to change channels immediately).  Kate, if you are reading this, I know someone who may be getting in touch with you about your experiences.  The parts about being <adjective meaning ‘above average size’> and having large breasts provoked the most masculine reaction in me.  I find <adjective meaning ‘above average size’> women much more attractive than thin women.  I like women with big bosoms.  I know lots of men who are the same, but I unreservedly admit that this aesthetic does not fit the mainstream in this era (though it would have done in many previous eras – probably every era at least until Elizabethan times).  Even I get it that breasts beyond a certain size can not only be a problem socially, and psychologically, but can cause other problems, not the least of which is chronic backache.

A female comedian doing a live performance about women’s relationships with their own bodies, from a point of view which is socially mainstream (or working class, if you will allow) but personally quirky and idiosyncratic, invites comparison with Victoria Wood.  The fact that Kate Fox’s accent and outlook are also unmistakably Northern makes the comparison even more irresistible.  I am delighted to say that Kate Fox’s use of self-deprecation and trying to make a virtue out of one’s own ignorance or alienation is much less than Victoria Wood’s.  Even where Kate Fox uses these devices, the way she uses them is, in my opinion, more subtle and better-crafted than Victoria Wood’s.  This may or may not have something to do with the fact that Victoria Wood was from the North West, and Kate Fox is from the North East.  She now lives in North Yorkshire, but her accent is North Eastern.

This is the first time I have listened to one of Kate Fox’s BBC Radio programmes.  I will certainly be looking up the others on iPlayer Radio, including a short extract from The Verb on BBC Radio 3 about swearing.  Based on one hearing of this one episode of The Price of Happiness, the Kate Fox persona I perceived was different from the one I have heard live.   Live Kate is freer, quicker, expects the audience to keep up with her in more of a lively fashion, expects the audience to be more imaginative and unshockable.  BBC Kate sounds very slightly inhibited (duh – almost as if she were appearing on the BBC).  One of the reasons I will be listening to more of her programmes is to try to detect moments where BBC Kate tips over into Live Kate.

On the subject of performance poets on the radio, there is a rumour that I may be re-appearing on Phoenix FM, broadcast from Halifax, in July.

 

Review: Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

Mark Gatiss gave us an episode of Sherlock in the original, Victorian setting, but only a fool would not have expected him to weave it into the end of the last episode of the modern adaptation.

After a selection of scenes from previous episodes, the story is introduced by John Watson, in his army uniform, being showered by debris from an exploding shell in the Second Afghan War. This is straight off page 1 of the original version of Conan Doyle’s ‘A Study In Scarlet’. (If you have never read this, then do so, as soon as possible.)

Everybody wants to know the resolution to the apparent suicide of Moriarty at the end of the last mini-series. The programme started by giving us a story which apparently had nothing to do with Moriarty, and then it did have something to do with Moriarty, but not in the way we were expecting, and then we did get some development of the story in the previous episode, but not a resolution, and then we got another cliff-hanger.

It is a testament to Gatiss’s skill as a story-teller and constructor of plot that he manages to dazzle the audience in this way, and maintain the tension, without ever degenerating into “one damned thing after another” (as happens in ‘24’, for example).
All the characters were rigorously played by the same actors as their modern counterpart, right down to the chap who says, “He is always like that” (Dr Stamford).

Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey), the pathologist who never appears in the Conan Doyle original, looks great in a moustache. I wish I could say the same for John Watson. It was obvious how a masculine disguise would have been necessary for a woman to be a pathologist in Victorian times, but even I did not supsect that this would turn out to be a key part of the plot. The same goes for John Watson’s petulant exchange with the housemaid over his breakfast.

When Gatiss is not inventing new characters, he is setting up relationships and axes of tension between existing ones, chiefly between Mary Morstan (spy) and Mycroft (spymaster), between Holmes & Watson (subjects) and Mary Morstan (investigator). Not only is Watson his own man (as all modern Watsons have to be), but Molly Hooper, Mary Morstan, and Mrs Hudson are their own women. The subtle and unintentional homo-eroticism of the original stories has been replaced by deliberate and blatant homo-eroticism between Sherlock and Moriarty. Under the layers of physical and psychological evidence and plot, under the raising of social and philosophical questions, against the settings and characters and the subtext-laden dialogue, we always get back to the same issue: the never-ending struggle of Sherlock and Moriarty to alleviate their own boredom. Sherlock and Mycroft are both fellow-sufferers from hyperlexia. Moriarty’s condidtion may resemble hyperlexia, but I suspect him of being merely a vulgar adrenaline-addict, rather than being addicted to the assimilation and analysis of coherent data.

The wait for this was too long. “So that Martin Freeman could portray Bilbo Baggins” is, in my opinion, one of the worst imaginable reasons for the delay, but it can’t be helped. I cannot wait for the next one. In ‘The Abominable Bride’, Mark Gatiss has succeeded in writing an ultra-promiscuous adaptation of a set of Victorian stories, and producing something which is better-thought-out, more plausible, and more gripping than the original. He has even managed to create a story which ends with “and then it was all a dream” without it seeming to be a cliche. Good writers avoid cliches. Great writers use cliches in new ways.

Finally, I come to the awards section.

Coolest Man On The Planet: Benedict Cumberbatch, for the way he delivers the line, ‘The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B, Baker Street.’
Most Unlikely Person: Jane (Stephanie Hyam – ?) the housemaid, who just wins it ahead of Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey) in men’s clothes.
Best Editorial Decision: making Mycroft fat again, but making him the subject of a tontine with Sherlock, and addicted to plum pudding.
Best Line Other Than Sherlock’s: ‘He didn’t want a drink: he needed one’, or ‘You’re Sherlock Holmes – wear the damned hat.’ (both John Watson). The latter is narrowly the winner.
Best sideburns: Lestrade (Rupert Graves).

Escape Kit

http://www.stairwellbooks.co.uk/html/collections.html#ThrowingMotherintheSkip

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (content warning: rude words)

Stewart Lee reached new heights in the last episode of ‘Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle’ on Saturday 8 March 2014 on BBC 2.  However, he missed at least one trick.

And what about the Battle of Britain eh?  Those bloody Poles, and bloody Czechs, and bloody French pilots COMIN’ OVER ‘ ERE and taking jobs from our fighter pilots, those that hadn’t been killed.  COMIN’ OVER ‘ ERE and talking Polish, and Czech, and French all the time, and being told off by Air Marshal Dowding for not speaking the fucking language.  And then, when the struggle was at its most bitter and intense, those bloody Poles, shooting down more enemy planes per capita than any other Allied nation in the conflict, and taking more casualties.  They bloody CAME OVER ‘ ERE and took jobs from our pilots that we didn’t have in sufficient numbers but that’s not the point and they didn’t speak the fucking language and then, while they were being all Polish, and all foreign, they CAME OVER ‘ ERE and they  LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES FOR OUR CAUSE WITHOUT QUESTION OR HESITATION.  Bloody Poles, and bloody Czechs, and bloody French, COMIN’ OVER ‘ ERE, pitting everything they had to try to save Western civilisation from the otherwise inevitable downfall of humanity that was Adolf Hitler’s ultimate goal.  COMIN’ OVER ‘ ERE and, bloody succeeding.   And for what, eh?  For what?  They CAME  OVER ‘ ERE just so that we could have this bloody conversation, against a background of civil government which, no matter what its specific shortcomings with regard, for example, to recent events surrounding the Stephen Lawrence investigation and creeping privatisation of the NHS, still preserves independent institutions which hold the potential for a rejuvenated, modern democracy if only members of the public, empowered as they are by new and widely-available forms of mass communication,  could be encouraged to ask more questions, put those institutions to work, and engage with them.   Bloody foreigners.  COMIN’ OVER ‘ERE.  We’ll fight our own battles in future, and instead of filling vital shortages of personnel, skill, and morale with fanatically-motivated people who regard themselves as our natural allies, we’ll fall back on a sclerotic class hierarchy, xenophobia, and a mythologised and grotesquely-misplaced belief in our own self-sufficiency.