Glom of Nit #31: New tour dates and the best comedian you didn't know
A lost legend, a dispatch from the road.
Hello there.
A comedian called Darren Maskell died last month. You might have heard of him or seen his act, but in all honesty you probably hadn’t. He wasn’t a household name. I don’t think he made even a secondary living out of comedy, let alone a full time one, and you won’t have seen him on TV. For most of the years I knew him he worked on the fish counter at a Waitrose in Croydon. I didn’t even know him especially well — We’d been in each other’s orbits for a decade or so, shared some close friends, been on numerous comedy line ups together and occasionally exchanged gossip on Facebook. Music tips and snide comments about people’s awful comedy posters. That sort of thing. He once posted a close up of my bum crack on social media and asked other comedians to guess whose it was. But I never called him for a deep and meaningful catch up, nor him me. We liked each other, at least I liked him and I assume he felt the same, but we weren’t close friends. We were just … around each other. Part of one another’s background hum.
But when we talk about the spirit of alternative comedy, we’re talking about Darren Maskell. He did something very few people could do. He made you laugh without you knowing why. The mechanics of his jokes were invisible and absurd, and they were incredibly effective. The first time I saw him (at least, I think it was the first time, it’s hard to be sure. There were a hell of a lot of gigs in those days) was around 2010 when he was sharing an Edinburgh Fringe two-hander with my friend Hatty Ashdown. His set involved showing the audience his favourite coat hangers, displaying a tiny carriage clock and something involving a horses head which I can’t, for the life of me, remember the context for. I do remember that I laughed, though. A lot. “I mean, he’s obviously really great and everything”, I remember Hatty telling me after the show, when I’d rhapsodised about Darren’s set, “but you don’t have to go on after him every day!”.
Comedy often has a fairly easy recipe to reverse engineer. It’s not like doing conjuring tricks, where the purpose is to confound the viewer even after the trick is complete. Even if you don’t have the sort of mind that writes comedy, you can usually see, pretty clearly, how the trick was done, and therein is often the satisfaction. Mostly it’s a pairing of juxtaposition and similarities. The “woolly jumper” method. What do you associate with a kangaroo? Australia, keeping its young in a pouch, big ears, big feet, boxing, a tale, bouncing. What do you associate with a sheep? Lamb, grass, shears, shepherds,“baaaaa”, spring, fluffy white fleeces, wool. Is there an item on each list you can link together? Aha! What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep? A woolly jumper. See? The trick isn’t difficult once you know how it’s done. Most comics, like conjurors, use misdirection and various neural linguistic tricks to stop you from seeing the punchline coming, and often the thing that makes you laugh is the pricking of that balloon, the releasing of the tension. The satisfaction of putting it together yourself. The cleverer the comic, the more unexpected the punchline, the more satisfying the reveal.
Darren, to my knowledge, never did a “woolly jumper” joke, though he did wear a lot of fleeces. If there were links between the elements of his jokes, their relationships were so tangential, and so far down a tree of associations, arrived at so instinctively, that they stopped being equations and became alchemy. There was science, yes, but there was also magic. I’ve known very few comics who can do that. Rob Auton is one. Andrew O’Neill is another (though Andrew is also a master at the Woolly Jumpers). It can so often go too far the other way. I have seen any number of surreal comics fall on their proverbials because they’ve overshot their audience. The formula was too abstract. The ideas didn’t connect. Darren’s always did. Always. His stuff was incredible. You never guessed how the trick was done, but you always understood why it worked. It’s a balance very, very few can pull off.
Due to a worsening illness that began before the pandemic, Darren hadn’t been on the circuit for a while. I hadn’t seen him onstage in a good few years, though I still appreciated his oddball asides on Twitter. Reminding me of how much I look like Paul Dano, for example.
I assumed we’d run into each other again. I was wrong. Darren died from a complication of his illness in February. I saw the news on a mutual friend’s Facebook and, as always happens on these occasions, felt briefly like the world was the wrong shape. The floor was the wrong angle. A harmonic in that background hum had stopped ringing out. It’s always odd and sad and disquieting.
Back in 2012, Darren and I appeared together in a play. A pantomime update of Stephen Spielberg’s Hook (a movie fondly remembered only by a tiny slither of cusp Gen X/Millenials and either mocked or ignored by everyone else) organised by a comedy collective known as Weirdos (of which I am nowhere near original enough to be a member, as much as I might wish I was). I had a tiny part— director Adam Larter, another brilliant comedy original I’ve known for years, let me have a small role because of how much I loved the film. Darren took Bob Hoskin’s role as Mr Smee. He was brilliant in it, and it’s probably my favourite memory of him. The whole ridiculous mess can be seen here. But here’s Darren doing Darren:
I wish he would get to do that again. I wish we could experience the sheer brilliant oddness of his mind. I wish I wish I wish … and do you know what else I wish, right now? I wish I’d replied to this tweet I just found and somehow missed back in October. If you’re reading this, Darren, I thought it was pretty disappointing, actually.
Marc
Tour update
The Magic of Terry Pratchett 2024 Tour (WITH NEW DATES)
I’m writing this from the bar of Motel One in Newcastle, just a few doors down from The Stand, where I just finished the tenth date of the the Magic of Terry Pratchett tour. Possibly, arguably, it was the best show so far — though I said that after Leicester. And Northampton. And Birmingham. The shows have been gorgeous, the audiences astonishing. We’ve, somehow, sold out seven of the ten shows, and those we didn’t were pretty damn big rooms. I can live with being 40 tickets away from a sell out in the 400-capacity, triple-tiered Royal Theatre Northampton, or 30 away from a late-in-the-day addition at the beautiful 300-cap Y Theatre in Leicester.
I think the show is getting better. I think I’m getting better at delivering it. I think I’m getting better at honing and sharing my message about Terry’s work. And as a result … it’s not ending any time soon. Once the current tranche of dates is over we’ll be heading back to the Edinburgh Fringe for a two-week run (dates tba) in a bigger room than last year, before heading out to more theatres in the Autumn. The dates are still rolling in (please hold complains until they’ve all been announced!) Below is what we have so far. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
TICKETS ONSALE HERE.
14 MARCH The Theatre CHIPPING NORTON TICKETS
15 MARCH ANDOVER The Lights TICKETS
22 MARCH Trinity Theatre TUNBRIDGE WELLS TICKETS
23 MARCH Churchill Theatre BROMLEY TICKETS
24 MARCH Public Hall BECCLES TICKETS
28 MARCH Nordern Farm MAIDENHEAD TICKETS
10 APRIL Bellerby Studio GUILDFORD TICKETS
12 APRIL Dixon Studio SOUTHEND TICKETS
18 APRIL Foxlowe Arts Centre LEEK TICKETS
19 APRIL Queens Hall HEXHAM TICKETS
20 APRIL The Stand EDINBURGH TICKETS
21 APRIL The Stand GLASGOW TICKETS
25 APRIL Town Hall MIDDLESBOROUGH TICKETS
03 MAY The Atkinson SOUTHPORT (onsale 16/02)
15 MAY Mill Arts Centre BANBURY TICKETS (RESCHEDULED FROM FEB 8)
18 MAY Theatre Severn SHREWSBURY TICKETS
31 MAY UK Games Expo BIRMINGHAM INFO
1 JUNE UK Games Expo BIRMINGHAM INFO
15 JUNE Theatre Royal WINCHESTER (ticket link tba)
2-5 AUG International Discworld Convention BIRMINGHAM INFO
NEW DATES
6-18 AUG EDINBURGH FRINGE – LIMITED RUN (details tba)
23-25 AUG Asylum Steampunk Weekend LINCOLN (details tba)
5 SEPT Brewery Arts KENDALL TICKETS
6 SEPT The Chapel ORMSKIRK (details tba)
7 SEPT City Varieties LEEDS (details tba)
13 SEPT The Grand SWANSEA (details tba)
18 SEPT The Savoy MONMOUTH TICKETS
20 SEPT The Maltings FARNHAM (details tba)
22 SEPT Chequermead Theatre EAST GRINSTEAD TICKETS
25 SEPT Town Hall CHELTENHAM TICKETS
28 SEPT Arts Centre WARWICK (details tba)
3 OCT The Witham BARNARD CASTLE (details tba)
4 OCT Waterside Arts SALE TICKETS
20 OCT Chelmsford Theatre CHELMSFORD (details tba)
1 DEC Arts Centre SALISBURY (details tba)
Other gigs
My band BEFORE VICTORIA is returning to action this summer. More gigs to be announced soon, but firstly there this beauty, playing with my The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing colleagues Jez Miller, with his band The Head Hunters, and Andy Heintz, with his band Flesh Tetris. Joining us will be Frenchy & The Punk, two of our favourite people, with whom we have crisscrossed the United States. They’re always amazing. Tickets available now!
I’ll also be doing a new material standup gig with the luminous Juliette Burton in London on April 4th - details tba.
Recommendations
New music:
No link to this yet, as it’s not out for a few days, but Rebecca “Self Esteem” Taylor and Jake Shears have announced a release of the Cabaret tracks they recorded before Christmas for Radio 2. They were BELTING.
Andy and Eva and Duke are back with the irritable slice of spiteful wonkopop. You won’t get it out of your head.
TV Shows:
I know this is only of interest to me and some 8 year old boys, but I freaking LOVE Star Wars: The Bad Batch. It’s honestly the most beautiful looking and sounding thing on television.
It’s on Disney+ now.
Right, that’s all I have in me as I REALLY need some sleep. More writing excerpts next month, I promise!
Marc x