Note
Pear Shaped is not running
at the Fitzroy
at the
moment as it is being
refurbed so
there is no
structure now
Many people look at Pear Shaped in
Fitzrovia and see just an empty room
but a whole host of people are
employed (both openly and behind the
scenes) to keep the show on the
road. Here is a look at our staff
and acts (in order of impotence):
Brian
Damage is the Proprietor &
CEO of Pear Shaped in
Fitzrovia. Owning
the club is a heavy
responsibility and a continual
burden. This means that he is
hardly ever there.
He is often at Pear Shaped in
Sydney because that is
geographically about as far away
as he can get. Sometimes
he is at his Fringe show (Pear
Shaped
in Edinburgh) rubbing
shoulders with the A-list and
marketing the gig to them as not
a complete waste of time in an
empty room. Brian is in charge
of booking acts and being
generally affable as head
compere. The absence of Brian
can lead to some awful evenings
and the deterioration of the
Pear into a very bad club when
Mr Miller is left (for want of a
better word) in
charge. As CEO Brian
has the responsibility of
sometimes talking to the
landlord of the pub " usually
about once every 9
years... It is
Brian's job to make sure there
is a handle of some description
on the inside of the
door. He enjoys
sitting at the table in the
corner by the bar where the acts
cant get at him and devolving
social interaction to other
lesser mortals.
Brian is in charge of booking
the acts. A couple
of years ago Brian decided to
branch out into Cabaret and
rediscover Music Hall with his
gig Pear
Shaped
at Turnmills.
This was a huge success with as
many as two punters coming to at
least one night and resulting in
the nightclub being rebuilt as
an office block.
Following this Mr Damage moved
the gig to Pear
Shaped at the Orwell " a
pub just outside the tube
network but not far enough away
to be an out of town
gig. Following this
experience Mr Damage has
promised that he wont be opening
any more clubs with no one at
them. One is enough!
Krysstal
forms
part of a unique male/female
double act with Brian Damage,
Comedian, Singer and All Round
Grumpy Bastard. Basically she is
his PA. Brian,
recognizing her irresistible
talents, took Krysstal on as his
Glamorous Assistant and is
teaching her all about Show
Business by not trusting her
with any Management
responsibilities and keeping her
nose pressed so permanently flat
against the glass ceiling she is
starting to look slightly
oriental. Many of you have
written in requesting patterns
for Krysstal's dresses.
As Krysstal is obviously too
busy looking after Mr Damage to
purchase her own clothes,
mention must also be made of
Vicky de Lacy who has a full
time job in selecting and
designing Krysstal's limited and
never changing
wardrobe. She has
also recently designed clothes
for Susan Boyle & Ann
Widdecombe. The
pattern for all Krysstal's
clothes is available in "Madge
and Monty's Handy Hot Hints" 1'
6d from Messer's Waterstones and
WH Smith.
Madge
& Monty are the Oliver
Postgates of Pear Shaped and the
real people behind the fantastic
fantasy comedy characters Brian
Damage and Krysstal. Madge
spends a lot of time washing,
ironing, cooking, cleaning and
in the garden too, while Monty
potters in his shed and listens
to the wireless in order to keep
up to date with any topical
events that might be important
for inclusion in Mr.Damage's
set. We wouldn't
want to miss out any reference
to topical events such as the
bad things that Colonel Nasser
is doing in Egypt and whether
Mr. Eden should go it
alone. Would you
believe that you could rebuild
the stage and the lighting of
Pear Shaped in your own home
using only double sided
sticky-tape?
At the moment Madge & Monty
are busy trying to sell the Pear
Shaped Comedy Club to the
Coalition Government as a Public
Private Partnership between
Government and the open mike
circuit. Unlike many Neds,
Madge and Monty have worked in
virtually every field: the
private sector, academia, local
government, voluntary sector and
the arts. "There was a strong
ethos in our household that you
had to put something back into
the community," says Monty. "I
have never seen a difference
between paid and unpaid
activity," says Madge.
Anthony is Managing Director of
The Pear " that is Pear Shaped
in Fitzrovia (the cash cow of
the Pear Shaped Comedy
Empire). It is his
job to manage the day to day
running of the club.
This involves turning
up. Being there when
Mr Damage is otherwise engaged
or can't be arsed (often 9
months of the year).
Pissing people off.
Calling people rude
words. Encouraging
no-hopers to turn up and fill
stage time. Trying
to keep alcoholics
sober. Booking
comperes. Filling
the holes left in the crumbling
line-ups of people pulling out
to get proper gigs and feigning
illness. Supervising
the light. Erecting
the curtain.
Diffusing potentially violent
confrontations with his
considerable personal
charm. And making
sure plebeians such as Mike
Belgrave don't set the club on
fire. His hobbies
include watching television and
vituperative public rows with
other comedy promoters and Business
Investment
Districts... and reading
transcripts of public inquiries
into wars.
He is deputy
compere. Anthony
Miller rose to the position of
Managing Director on the
resignations of Dave Dynamite
and Paul Foot (see below) having
seen a power vacuum. It is
Mr Miller's job to make the
books ballence by various
devious methods. Mr Miller
started his career on
paper but since someone
invented the internet decided
paper was silly ... almost as
silly as dealing with the whims
an caprices of editors and so
started taking nonsnse in
pubs. Did we mention you
can now buy all
his old poetry for 99p?
We recently experimented with...
Crowdfunding is where if you
cannot get anyone to watch,
finance, turn up at or enjoy
your gig, film project, play,
concept or one man show then
instead of risking your own
money or going to visit a bank
you put a ...
...button
on the internet in the hope
that those with more money
than sense will simply give
you a whole lot of their hard
earned in return for
practically nothing. You
then relentlessly plug your
page on twitter and idiots who
think they've not stupid
enough to fall for a Spansish
Prisoner scam or Ponzi scheme
just keep giving you their
savings because basically they
need someone to slap
them. Anyone clicking on
the paypal button above will
get a credit on this page in a
font size relating to the size
of their stupidity according
to the table below:
Financier:
I'm a bit thick - I
gave Pear Shaped a "5
but wouldn't watch the
show
Gold
Financier: I'm well
educated but dont know
the value of money so
gave 5000 pound
Non
Executive Director: I'm
nice but very dim and have
given a large chunk of my
cash ISA 50000 pound to
Pear Shaped although I
might draw the line at
actually buying a ticket
and watching it
Not
Executive CEO: I have
parents who sent me to
Eton but I also have
some idiotation and gave
the Pear 500,000 pound
Club
Owner: I have no sense
whatsoever and have
donated 10000000000
pund or more even
though it involved
selling my house and
club has now closed as
a result as Messers
Miller and Damage have
emigrated to warmer
climbs with my nestegg
and all my possessions
but I console myself
that while this is a
smaller font my name
is all that remains of
what was once a
reasonable semi-pro
open mike night.
My children have been
taken into care which
is for the best.
Unfortunately
although these tactics resulted
in a tiny increase in turnover
we have not been able to
translate that into anyone
actually stupid enough to sit
through the show to watch new
acts die so have now closed down
this revenue raising sideline as
it sort of wasn't the
point. If only we could
really solve the problem of
boredom by throwing money at it
... but sadly it doesn't seem to
work like that. I mean
suggest that you might want to
buy a book of Mr
Miller's poetry and
someone's probably actually
thick enough to do that but ask
people to give something for
nothing and they can't get
enough of it... because of
course it involves no thought.
The
Staff of Pear Shaped in
Fitzrovia
(In
order of burnout)
Al
Mandolino
Musical
Director
It
is Al's job to drown out the
sound of open spots bitching
about the gigs they can't get
booked for before the show and
during the
interval. His
hobbies include building
Mandolins and painting
houses. Al is the
replacement for El Nino.
Unlike El Nino for whom
everything was the Theme Tune
from Mash Al Mandolino prefers
poorly played variety to well
practiced
monotony.
Following the advice of Noel
Coward to "start off with a
medley " that way you get rid
of several tunes at once" he
plays medleys and is very good
at starting. Of course he
can't play a single tune from
beginning to end yet but he
has the ambition to and we
applaud him in this. As Josie
Long would say "Trying is
Good" and Mr Al's music has
been described by many
contemporaries as "extremely
trying". He has
been nominated for many awards
for his Banjo playing up to
and including Grade 1.
Ava
Alexis
Head Of Human Resources
Ava
Alexis was born on December 24,
1922 in Grabtown, North
Carolina. She was the youngest
of six children of Mary
Elizabeth and Jonas, an
impoverished cotton and tobacco
farmer. Ava's father lost his
farm when she was two, and the
family moved to West Norwood
where her mother worked in a
sawmill. At age 18
she went to London, where her
extraordinary beauty won her a
contract as Head of Human
Resources at Pear Shaped. It was
Ava's job to persuade the
punters (or their boyfriends) to
actually part with their money
and kick those who wont pay
their way in life
OUT! She can
be seen in three dimensions
sometimes at other comedy gigs
such as the Chuckle
Club or Downstairs
at
the Kings Head. Sometimes
Mr Miller is allowed to carry
her shopping if he has been
good. Recently the
stress of being head of seating
at the Pear has become so heavy
that Ms Alexis has taken some
time off to visit Barbados and
kill termites.
El
Nino was appointed Head of
playing the theme tune from MASH
until he decided to do some gigs
with actual punters at them
instead. Becky Munday was one of
a long line of singers who
worked for El Nino until he
murdered them and hid their
bodies under the
floorboards.
Alan
Wilde
Before
the employment of Ava Alexis,
Alan was Head Caretaker and
amusement operative.
It was his job to walk round the
corner from a key worker flat in
Bonham-Carter House and turn up
whenever a funny comedian has
let us down - this is more or
less every
Wednesday. Many of
you may remember Alan from his
walk on cameo as a shit comedian
in episode 5 of Phoenix
Nights. Sometimes he
was allowed to talk at the end
of the show as the club was
being
dismantled.
His expertise in X-ray
photography was so widely
recognised he was almost made
redundant and has now been
redeployed in another area of
the hospital. He was
not allowed to compere as this
would result in too much
hilarity. After Mr
Miller's tour of New York he
came back to find that Mr Wilde
had disowned not only the Pear
but the whole of comedy
society. He can
still be found propping up the
Spanish Bar in Hanway
Street. And can
sometimes be seen upstairs in
Fitzroy tavern if he's sure Pear
Shaped is not on that night...
or if he has forgotten that it
is a Wednesday today.
John
Sharp
is head of props and puns.
Thanks to www.thegagfactory.co.uk
for this photo of him in full
mime. He has now risen to
the level of amusement operative
previously occupied by Mr
Wilde. And does much
logistical work flyering and
encouraging punters to come back
after the interval.
The
Deputy Deputy Comperes of Pear
Shaped in Fitzrovia
You
wait for ages for one Jimbo and
then another one comes
along. The second
Jimbo is from Australia and is
so famous there that people from
Australia have come to see him
at Pear Shaped.
Unfortunately they had confused
the second Jimbo with the first
and sat through the whole
evening until 11pm when one of
them sheepishly asked, "Where's
Jimbo?". After it
was explained to them that Jimbo
was the name of the middle aged
man they had been watching shout
and cough his way through the
acts they gave us a look so much
as to say that some kind of
deception had been
performed. The
Second Jimbo's hobbies include
sleeping in doorways and
"freaking other comedians out by
telling them I'm
homeless". He has
now returned to Austalia for a
spell... but
may well return.
Ray
Presto
Young
Mr Presto rose rapidly from
deputy deputy time filler to
deputy deputy
compere. A retired
magician with a vast array of
material ranging from Christmas
Cracker gags to astute one
liners he had even been known to
give the audience five pounds of
his own money. Ray
was a regular at the Comedy
Store where he used to open the
second half of the King
Gong Show. As
well as doing the Comedy Store
Gong Ray had also done a number
of 10-minute spots
there. He once
showed us a comedy store
program, which billed him as "an
open spot". He often
went to Thailand for the
culture. His
hobbies included pestering Mr
Damage for stage time even
though we only have one club and
he was already in the diary to
compere, headline, open and
close the first half and there
were no spots he hadn't done
here. Ray Presto's career
has gone into a bit of a decline
since his death although it was
a sufficently important cultural
event to be covered by the Guardian,
Chorlte,
John Fleming... and Harry
Deansway of the Fix
Empire. His death has had
a large impact on our otherwise
successful policy of cutting
financial corners by booking the
acts that agents are reluctant
to invest in because they may
fall off their perch any moment.
Danny
Hurst describes himself as
probably the only orthodox
Jewish, bisexual, left-handed,
vegetarian Manchester City fan
on the circuit. A peculiar
combination of camp butchness,
Danny has worked in just about
every field of performance art,
including theatre, circus and
telesales.
Once a professional
stilt-walker and fire eater, he
toured with top ten band Dodgy
in 1996 and has performed all
over the UK, as well as recent
tours of Japan and the South of
France, Amsterdam and Barcelona.
A truly international performer
it is Danny's job is to ring Mr
Miller at 7.30 saying "my Bike's
got a puncture", at 8.00 saying
"I've found a pub" at 8.15
saying "the pub have let me have
a bowl of water" and at 9.15
saying "I think I've found the
puncture but I'm not sure I can
fix it in time to get
there". Most of the
time, however, he does make it
and is most
entertaining. He
once rode to Edinburgh Fringe on
his bike, which is not
advisable. He
was last seen compereing at the
Chuckle Club before going to
Scotland to talk about his
previous career as a rent
boy...
Past
and Occasional Comperes of Pear
Shaped in Fitzrovia
(In order of their disappearance)
Paul
Foot
Head of Knowing Better
Paul
was the original deputy compere
of Pear Shaped but following
what is now known as "the Aaron
Barshack Hagen Daaz ice
cream incident" he resigned to
preserve his sanity. It is now
his job not to turn up any more
and to go on television instead.
He does not have a website, he
has the Guild
of Paul Foot Connoisseurs.
Norby
West
Norby
West was the original deputy
deputy compere under the
direction of Mr Paul Foot (then
deputy compere).
Norby (nee Richard Elkan)
retired six years ago because of
declining health, which was
probably a sensible move in the
long term, as he has since died.
Paul Foot said: "I would pop
round to his flat, he'd give me
a stale biscuit and we would
laugh at amusing moments from
our comedy careers.'
His obituary is here.
If you would like to book Norby
we do not have contact details
for his agent. However, for a
small charge " less than "1 a
week each" we
can
put you in touch with his
undertaker.
There are two options for payment:
"12 every quarter through Pay Pal
"48 for a year, by cheque
Following the resignation of
Mr Foot, Mr Dewsbury filled the
immediate vacuum. Wisely surmising
that the vacuum existed due to a
lack of punters he handed in his
resignation almost immediately and
can now be seen all over the
country in front of actual people.
During
Mr Damage's 9-month tour of
Australia several years ago Dave
Dynamite was Head of the
European sub-division with
Stephen Carlin as his immediate
inferior.
Stephen didn't like being
inferior and left to have a
career. As a result
Mr Miller rose to the rank of
deputy deputy-compere while it
was Mr Dynamite's job to be
driven to the edge of a nervous
breakdown by the
responsibilities of running the
Pear. Dave enjoys
driving busses but has given up
this career in public transport
to go full time into the comedy
industry. He
recently suffered a career
setback when his car was written
off by a bus. He
spends his holidays in his
bed-sit with the central heating
turned up full while trying to
save up for a new car.
He recently went on a diet
that was so successful he lost 4
jokes.
Dave is also incharge of our
1-for-1 ticket deal. By
emailing Dave you can recieve a
special code which allows you to
buy 1 ticket for the price of 1
ticket... Instead of 2
tickets for price of 2. It
is our intention one day to
allow Dave to paper the house
but we aren't very good with
remembering numbers.
Maintaining the appropriate
ticket price is vitally
important for every
promoter. For example Pear
Shaped maintains it's ticket
price at "5 and most
professional gigs between "10-18
regardless of the fact that they
then end up giving half those
tickets away in endless BOGOF
deals in return for "free"
online advertising and may as
well be selling single tickets
at "5 which is simpler, less
complicated and more
honest... Understandably
however they do not want people
to know they have difficulty
selling tickets so maintaining a
ticket price of "10 allows
everyone to maintain the
illusion that the club is on a
par with the Comedy Store
despite the fact that all the
seats are empty and actually the
club has no turnover. Just
like at the Pear. Our head
of economics Michael
Ayers ...
...spends a lot of time figuring
out these deals and how they
create increased sales and has
come to the conclusion that we
should stick to a fixed ticket
price of "5 with no concessions
rather than do 2-for-1 deals
which effectively load the
economic cost onto single people
in favour of couples.
Except for "1 off for students
and OAPs. In contrast to the
coalition
government's plans to send
those who do not have jobs to
the back of queue for council
houses we also still give "1 off
to the unemployed. Stag
parties are welcome but frankly
if you want to spend your last
night of sexual freedom with
Anthony Miller and Brian Damage
that's a bit worrying.
Stephen
Carlin
joined Pear Shaped as deputy
deputy compere under the
direction of Mr Dynamite but has
now progressed to being deputy
head of Knowing Better. It is
his job to say he's not going to
turn up... then turn up. He was
disgusted by the wiring in the
Pear " which he described as
"Dickensian" even though in the
era of Dickens there was not any
electric light. In
2007 Stephen was runner up in
the BBC's new writer competition
"Witty and Twisted". He has
subsequently written on numerous
radio programmes including "The
News Quiz"," The Now Show",
"Recorded For Training
Purposes", "Laura Solon Talking
and Not Talking", "Look Away
Now" and "Gus Murdoch's Sacred
Cows" and has also worked as
Stewart Lee's support act.
Stephen still shows up on spec
irregularly at the Pear " as
long we dont ask him to
compere... Stephen
has a blog about his tedious
life as a professional comedian
here.
After
the resignation of Mr Dynamite
there was something of a staff
shortfall so the first Jimbo was
elected head of
Publicity. It was
his job to wander around the bar
upstairs with a cardboard board
on asking people with no idea
what they are letting themselves
in for to let themselves
in. This was a
deeply degrading position and we
were callously exploiting Jimbo,
but Jimbo had had no real job in
15 years and since the social
services have told him he no
longer exists and can't claim
the dole and he hasn't paid any
tax or national insurance since
the 1970s he had no choice and
it was still show business.
Jimbo spent a considerable time
in the army and saw inactive
service during the Cold War
where he reached the rank of
Cannon Fodder.
Wisely surmising that Mikhail
Gorbachev's Glasnost policy
might make soldiers targets once
more he embarked on a new career
as a pate salesman before
marrying and becoming a
household husband.
Jimbo has had several acts over
the years... and has changed his
style from shouting, to jumping
out of the Comedy Brewhouse
window to coughing to rambling
stories to pithy
one-liners. He
is widely admired as a true
original by people reluctant to
book him.
Recently he has retired from the
Pear Shaped to concentrate on
his new comedy character Tony
Bournemouth. He was deputy
deputy-deputy-compere.
During
Mr Damage's second 6-month
tenure at Pear Shaped in
Australia Mr Miller poached Mr
Belgrave from his position of
Managing Director of the Troy
Club to be head of Ethnic
Minority
Representation.
Being half-Irish, half-black and
half-stupid it was his job to
maintain our Arts Council Grant
from the local council by
representing as many ethnic and
minority groups as
possible. His jobs
involved sitting in the corner
message texting his bits of
fluff, sleeping with the women
who are strangely attracted to
the frigid Anthony Miller and
continually slagging the gig off
in an intensely boring and
self-pitying internet
blog. So famous did
this blog become that it has
been removed from the Internet
due to the large number of
people who have threatened him
with physical violence outside
the Phoenix. As well as being
our Boswell he was deputy
deputy-compere. He
wrote of Pear Shaped in Time
Out: "I love doing
this gig and they always ask me
to perform when they've finished
scraping the arse of the septic
barrel. Anthony
Miller and my Satan worshipping
self co-MC and plough our way
through some of the most
appalling acts in the
capital." In our
defence ...erm ... Pear Shaped
used to just book people in the
order in which they rang
up. Following Mr
Belgrave's nervous breakdown a
review of booking policy was
undertaken and we now try to
encourage people who are funny
to come back.
However, we still have a policy
of giving everyone and anyone a
gig.
"""""""""eventually.
If you have been wondering about
the booking policy of the Pear,
it is "Can you ring Brian?"
People who can't ring Brian are
never booked. All
Telexes, Telegrams, Faxes and
carrier pigeons are also
ignored. Mike
Belgrave can now be seen all
over London and the UK -
particularly at The
Big Night Out where his
"setting up the room skills"
have proved invaluable.
Mike Now blogs on on other less
controversial subjects such as Doctor
Who...
...I'm not sure what happened
to the Music Club. Don't go
because it doesn't exist
anymore. Mike's latest
project is a graphic novel he sent
me as a PDF...
...breaking
all the normal rules of
narrative stucture. The
pictures are nice but it's a
good job it's a graphic novel as
the large number of sex jokes
may upset a certain
demographic. Also while it
is customary for many first
novels to be autobiographical
the visual similarily between
the different characters and
Mike Belgrave was more than a
little unnerving especially as
one of them seemed to be a Jack
the Ripper parody. In
short this visual novella makes
Viz read like Jane Austen and my
poetry seem accessible but you
may download it from his website
if you have an hour to waste at
work...
There's also an interesting
blog on his site I found about
the mechanics of printing your
own magazines. You should
have asked Mike and I would have
told you not to - it's too much
like hard work. You can
make your initial investment
back but the real chore is
distribution. I find print
on demand works perfectly for
me. There is absolutely no
demand for my poetry and I can
now print exactly the number of
copies required to meet this
demand at no cost to myself of
anyone else.
Occasionally
and
in circumstances of dire need
the great Mr Mike Manera has
lowered himself to compere Pear
Shaped. Mr Manera has a
love/hate relationship with the
Pear (actually it's mostly
hate!). His views
differing from "You
really are a **** Miller" to
"Alright Miller.
I'll be your bitch this
once." Mr Manera
"pisses on Mr Miller from a
great height as a comedian, so
**** YOU little man" and does
not "play his little shithole of
a club anymore (apologies to
Brian & Krysstal, it's fun
when you guys are there)", and
does not book Mr Miller for his
club because "the last time I
saw him be funny was in 1973 (or
something). OK, what I am saying
is it was a long time
ago)". Mr Manera
describes his evenings compering
the Pear as an "awful
experience. I don't
know how you can put yourself
through it" which is in contrast
to the public's reaction to Mr
Manera's presence at the
gig. We can only
conclude that these conflicting
emotions are the result of a
perfectionist
spirit... However,
it should be pointed out that we
don't know Mr
Manera. We really
don't. He is, as Dickens might
put it "deep as Australia . . .
.If there was anything deeper, .
. . he'd be it".
We've met briefly at a few gigs
over the years but we definitely
do not know him socially " at
all! As you may have
surmised Mr Manera used to run a
lot of gigs but these days he
has achieved his aim of doing a
lot of gigs instead and is
consequently much more at peace
with himself.
He bequeathed his promotional
empire to Phil
Klein who handed it over
to Dizzy High who handed it over
to Mr Manera who handed it to
Alex Petty who "erm " still has
the Goats
Tavern. Mr
Manera is now a full time pro
ready to "Megabus anywhere" so
please write in if you have any
suggesting of places for Mr
Manera to go" I believe he also
still has a gig in St Albans and
for a while he also ran a music
gig with Mike Belgrave (see
above) but he was last seen at
the Comedy
Pub where I'm sure the Soho
Comedy Comedy Club used to
be before it moved to a Casino
and a complex game of musical
venues was engaged in which I
neither want to know about nor
would never mention in public.
Was
head of Youth
Representation. It
was his job to provide
ass-[sic]-kicking original
comedy. After Mr
Belgrave moved on to run the
Piccadilly Comedy Club (now a
restaurant) with Phil Klein,
self-proclaimed anarchist Andrew
inherited the Troy Club and Mr
Miller would ask him if he would
compere Pear Shaped as well some
weeks. Unfortunately we are no
longer able to afford him due to
end of our Youth Training Scheme
subsidy. However, Andrew still
pops in about once a year and
does 10 minutes for the
collection of small
change. His hobbies
include calling Winston
Churchill a rapist and making
sweeping and generalizations
about politics. He
also enjoys asking policemen for
their numbers and prostrating
himself on the floor. He can be
seen in Saxondale and at proper
comedy clubs - The
big mainstream corporate ones
where you would usually expect
to find an
anarchist. His
hobbies included not booking
Mike Belgrave for the Troy Club
because he was too mainstream.
According to Belgravia Police
station Anarchism is a political
philosophy which considers the
state undesirable, unnecessary
and harmful, and instead
promotes a stateless society, or
anarchy. Any information
relating to anarchists should be
reported to your local
police. People purporting
to be anarchists have caused
criminal damage this year to
business premises, and
government buildings in
Westminster. Andrew
O'Neill is clearly personally
responsible for all the riots between
6
and 10 August 2011 that
resulted in the Pear Shaped
Comedy Club losing a whole day's
trade. Anarchism has
nothing to do with "The Anarchy"
which was a bit shit.
Andrew has started coming down
again for some reason despite
John Sharp shouting "He's on the
Radio! He's on the
Radio! He's on the Radio!"
Following
on from Mr Belgrave's
resignation Mr Miller asked him
to recommend a replacement and
John became head of
philosophy. It was
his job to keep spirits up with
his endless tales of his years
in the comedic wilderness and
prepare the open spots mentally
for the inevitable failure that
the gig (and often their
careers) would be.
Mr Mawer is an exemplary example
of how far you can get in this
game if you keep giving up and
having career breaks because
you're a bit cheesed
off. He is famous
for his work with Britain's best
Improvisation outfits and is so
good at improv that he has never
been in The Laughing Cavaliers.
He is deputy deputy deputy
deputy sub-compere.
His hobbies are painting scenery
and doing theatrical luvvie
stuff. His bouncer
abilities are second to none.
Sabrina
George
In
an attempt to stop compere's
committing suicide Mr Miller
then invented the rotating
compere system which in the
early years of Pear Shaped
involved Sabrina being shouted
at. When neither Mr
Miller nor Mr Damage could be
bothered to turn up she was
allowed to use The Pear to
practice her hour-long shows if
she promised to fit an open spot
in now and again.
She is another victim of the
glass ceiling.
Sabrina now runs a website http://www.newcomedyradio.com
Apparently " So far, as of
Tuesday morning we have 262,000
hits from a zero on 20 August
Sabrina would like to know if
anyone would like to listen to
it on Chortle? Steve
Bennett wont put a link on it or
even mention it.
Even though he put the Ed Balls
site up with a news feature
after 26,000 hits!
Who says comedy is fair?"
Amazing, isn't it ...?
Anyone would think they were in
competition. If you like
listening to comedians talking
about themselves this is the
link for you. Perhaps
Sabrina should make a comeback
now being an angry feminist is
finally "in".
For
a short while Pam was Head of
Commuting. It was Pam's job to
come help out in dire
emergencies " even though this
required stoic commuting.
Yariv
Perelmuter
Yariv
is Head of Negotiating his Fee
I couldn't find a website but
here's a nice YouTube
Clip
In
the never ending quest to find
people desperate enough to
compere the Pear Mr Miller next
turned to Yariv Perelmuter from
Israel who "started as a comedy
writer for sketches on
television (1998) soon moved to
perform Character comedy on TV
and stage (1999-2001) did a few
shows on channel 2 in Israel
that hosts and commissions a lot
of comedy related
projects". The one
popular show he participated in
is the 'Eli Yatzpan
show" where he did a
range of characters in many
sketches. Then he
did a show called - 'The
Kamerite Five'? For
some reason he is also Dave Zonk
who used to do a character
called Grisha who has emigrated
to England and started at the
bottom again.... at the
Pear. No one knows
quite why but it is something to
do with
figs. In
a recent publicity drive he
invited the couple of Israeli
embassy cultural affairs attach"
to one of his gigs.
"Either I offended him or he
didn't like the attention
because a while later I saw that
he had walked out."
Roddy
Fraser
webpage
Although he has compered
occasionally Roddy's main
position in the hierarchy was as
chief opener. It was
Roddy's job to ring up at short
notice and ask if he can open
the show. Roddy was
famous for his role as compere
of the Bath House / Dropping the
Soap, his stacks of amazing
material, his legendary bonhomie
and his love of
merrymaking. Roddy's
ambition is to make it big in
cam cording.
Roddy's flagship comedy club the
Bath House was recently
earmarked for demolition in
order to make way for Crossrail.
Still as Karl Marx remarked to
Frederick Engles when they were
writing the communist manifesto
in the Bath House bar because
his wife had thrown him out the
house for getting his maid
pregnant and trying to pin the
blame on Engles...
Interestingly 96
Dean Street has since been
occupied by squatters who are
spending a lot of time in court
argueing that Crossrail due to
some cock up do
not own the legal freehold for
the block. Which
probably didn't work as they
seem to have been evicted...
still as the the local
Business Investment District
would say "it's all progress..."
Anyway fortunately Roddy's gig
has now been reborn much
better as the Central
London Comedy Club
This has
closed now ... and Roddy seems
to have dematerialised.
I hope he's not dead.
There's too many dead people
on this page.
Following a shortfall in
the number of people stupid
enough to compere the Pear
during August because everyone
in comedy is at the Fringe Mr
Miller hired Carrie-Anne to
compere because she asked and
had jokes. Carrie-Anne is an
ex-southern-American
Policewoman. In the
USA, unlike in the UK, being a
portly is no obstacle to police
work since all policepersons are
taught the Seth Geko method of
self-defence: namely saying to
your suspect "I've six little
friends here all of whom can all
run faster than you can".
Although not yet taught formally
at Hendon this new kind of
policing is now catching on all
over London " particularly on
the the Tube.
Carrie-Anne talks a lot about
rednecks and is a lesbian"like
in your dreams boys!
Tiernan
Douieb
Tiernan
runs a club called Fat
Tuesday where he isn't
fat (usually on a
Tuesday). He
also has a car. Tiernan
has compered the Pear Shaped
once. We have
asked him back but he's always
busy! Tiernan
is often to be found mouthing
off about Question Time on the
bullies and self publiciit's
charter that is twitter.
When
he was 13, Gareth Berliner was
diagnosed with Crohn's disease;
which meant gradually surgeons
hacked away at his intestines
until today he needs a catheter
in his chest to absorb fluids
and nutrition. Mr
Miller has booked him to compere
once or twice because he had
theorised that this might mean
he doesn't have to buy him a
pint. Unfortunately
things didn't quite work out
that way. Gareth can
be seen at lots of proper gigs.
Rick Kieswetter's a
Japanese man, bought up in the
States by a German and an
Italian, and now living in
England who helps compere now
and again as he works literally
round the corner... According to
Chortle his gags and delivery
are efficient and
effective. We agree he is
efficient at
fulfilling both his fuctions of
putting acts on and telling
jokes. 彼はここに長い時間が住んで
Richard Heap is our
Professional Editor. This
covers a broad range of topics
including the law, the public
sector and professional services
including planning, valuation,
business rates and
sustainability and, most
importantly of all,
knitware. He also puts
acts on.
Lewis started out as an
actor appearing in several
musical theatre and drama
productions, including regular
performances for New Peckham
Varieties (now Theatre Peckham)
before attending a comedy course
that we wont plug as it would
undermine our political position
that the best way to learn
stand-up is to bore the
public. Everyone who goes
into comedy was just immediately
funny and has an identical
political outlook - particularly
at the Comedy Store in
1979. None of them came
out of the Fringe theatre scene
as that would not be a saleable
romantic fiction. Until
2010, Lewis mainly concentrated
his time working on his act on
the London open mic circuit, and
is now regularly performing 20"s
all over the UK for a wider
range of promoters. He has
had residencies at Laughing
Horse Camden (2004 " 2008)
Laughing Horse Soho (2005 "
2006) as well as being a regular
Headline act for Laughing Horse
(Kingston, Richmond, Camden Soho
and Holborn). He also
seems to actually enjoy
compereing at Pear Shaped
despite the extremely pitiful
financial renumeration. He
also booked some gigs...
which
have now been absorbed into the
Laughing Horse Empire ...along
with Lewis
Nigel
Taylor
Sometimes
when Mr Damage has a proper
gig or and Mr Miller is away
snoozing on the verandas of
Barabdos
rather than giving his money
to middle men at the Fringe
Festival the gig is left
under the control of the
logistical genies that is
Nigel Taylor. Nigel
MC's a lot for the Laughing
Horse empire and does not
have a publicity photo as he
has a proper job instead but
a remarkable similarity
between Nigel and Penfold
off Dangermouse
has been observed.
Hence the selection of
picture.
Hackney
Empire neue Gesetz des Jahres
Henning ist unsere emergency
Conferencier und wurde
verwendet, um Leitlinien der
Europäischen Union, die jeder
Comedy-Club muss mindestens
eine deutsche enthalten zu
erfüllen. Allerdings gab es
ein Notfall, das bedeutete,
dass er nie wirklich lernte
Conferencier obwohl er
auftauchen und in einem leeren
Raum zu sitzen. Jetzt können
wir ihn nicht leisten und das
Stück von der Seite ist
einfach ein Klagelied über
das, was hätte sein können. Er
kann im BBC-Fernsehen erklärt,
seine
Sprache zu sehen.
Er ist ein großer
Bewunderer von A E Miller
Gedichtsammlung, die er
beschreibt als "Meisterstück",
ohne es zu lesen. Dies ist
eine Verbesserung über die
Überprüfung nicht von der
Universität Salzburg, die
nicht platformed die
Lautstärke, da es verfügbar
ist auf Amazon aufweisen.
Mowten
It is Mowten's job to MC
when he doesn't think he's Jesus
and hasn't been sectioned or
isn't needed down the 99 club
Dave Mulholland
Dave
Mulholland is sometimes left
in charge of the club when Mr
Miller wins a holiday to
Australia. He is head of
flyering
petitions. Dave's
job is two keep an eye on
Double Standards and to tell
the Palestinians that the Jews
aren't very good at being bad
to them when he's not at the
Soho Comedy Club. It is
also Dave's job to ask if he
can double up on a Thursday
because he's forgotten that
Wednesday was yesterday and to
break the glass in his office
door and be made to pay for it
even if it wasn't his
fault.
أحياناالجزيرةأطلب منه
أنيقول أشياءانه لا
يعتقدانه يريدوكان
لديهحجة كبيرةمعهم.
Rob's
job is to compere once in a
blue moon and to know about
superheroes. His job is to
complain that he has never had
a paid gig even though Mr
Miller clearly remembers
paying him a fiver at least
once.
It
is Jim's job to come up from
Eastbourne when we need
someone responsible at the
last minute who will make all
the nutters look slightly
normal in comparison. It is
also Jim's job to run gigs in
out of the way places.
Jim has a wireless show that
is is digital where he talks
about the great issues of the
day from an extreme liberatian
viewpoint which is somewhere
towards the fluffy side of
UKIP but not Tory ...probably
one of those LM Network people
trying entryism. He is
not to be confused with Jim
Grant the Labour Leader in Swindon.
Even Ed Miliband doesn't know
who he is.
Don
Biswas has also MCed on
occasion. According to
Chortle Don Biswas"s
one-liners proved very
popular with the crowd,
although they are "not at
the peak of the genre" yet.
Paul T
Eyres has also attempted
to compere the Pear with
some success and is
invariably doing bigger
and better things these
days. It is Paul's
job to show us that
Buddhism is all about the
self. As Buddha himself
once remarked "He who
loves 50 people has 50
woes; he who loves no one
has no woes." Paul
is now a full time
professional and remarked
sagely to us at a recent
gig that "while normal
work is a treadmill being
a professional comic is
another treadmill".
It is with cheery thoughts
such as these that Paul T
attempts to move the
Naraka of the open spots
at Pear Shaped from the
31st plane of existence
into the 30th ...if not
into Nirvana.
Gautama Buddha
It is
Gautama Buddha's job to
teach Jean Claude Van
Damme how to kick box
while doing the splits
and to try and cheer up
Paul T Eyres and Phil
Zimmerman
Henry Moore
Following our coverage
of the Riesco Fisaco Henry
Moore's fan club
wrote in to ask if they
could be on the
website. You can vist
them here.
Although what they
actually do I have no idea.
Memorable
acts who have appeared at Pear
Shaped in Fitzrovia
Joel
is head character
act. As a RADA
graduate it is his job to
impersonate someone who is a bit
deluded " He used to have a
regular spot at the Comedian's
Graveyard (now deceased) judging
the pick of new talent that had
bothered to phone to get a
slot. His comments
on Mr Miller are "I've seen him
many times and he tends towards
the same jokes several times
whereas I like to see a bit more
variety". Joel has
been variously described as "the
future of comedy" Anthony Miller
and "A Quality act, he'd be the
first person I'd book to close.
...a club down" Dizzy High
(retired?). He was
last seen on the televisual
talent show "X-Factor" where
Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne
and Louis Walsh were of one mind
on his potential to be the next
big thing and now has a regular
spot at theOOclub...
Persephone's current act is
a comedy striptease (suitable
for children) assisted by Pere.
the penguin, who plays a
trumpet. It is clean, character
comedy where Mme Fifi ends by
playing a hosepipe.
'Refreshingly original. I've
never seen anything like it.'
Brandi Borr, director of Comedy
Cabaret. You may
have seen her briefly on the
opening credits of the first of
the competition heats, which
went out on BBC 3, 2003 or you
may have read her articles in
Practical Boat Owner, Britain's
biggest selling yachting
magazine. Her first book is to
be published this year about her
day job, which is matching
injury marks on victims of
murder with weapons.
Persephone was contacted by
ITV1"s Britain"s Got Talent in
2010 and played at the Apollo
where she made it through to the
third round. Freddy, her
penguin, was then the star of a
2 " minute feature film on
ITV2"s Britain"s Got More Talent
in a spoof of Murder She Wrote.
So remember if we dont encourage
the nutters you wont see them on
ITV ...
Piff
the Magic Dragon &
Tennyson Hanbury
Piff the Magic Dragon &
Tennyson Hanbury represent the
many magical acts who have
played the Pear Shaped (apart
from Ray Presto who is already
represented) ...although we
haven't seen as much of Piff
lately as he seems to have
had a very good Edinburgh
Fringe and gone on telly quite
a bit.
Tennyson Hanbury has not yet
broken into Television but we
did find some footage on youtube.
Ivan
Steward
Ivan was the founder of the
Pear Shaped in Fitzrovia. That
is to say he found the room and
promptly decided not to perform
there much for the next 9 years
having almost immediately found
a better room just round the
corner at Wheatsheaf on a
Saturday which became the Oxford
Street Comedy Club.
Stewards career path before
stand-up encompassed working as
a fireman on the Flying
Scotsman, before British Rail
brought in diesel trains, and
studying at the Central School
of Speech and Drama where he
auditioned with a tragic
Shakespearean speech that
provoked such mirth they offered
him a place. Steward
subsequently played the part of
the prison goalkeeper in the
film of 'Porridge'.
Ivan
The Comedy Referee
For
many years he was the Comedy
Referee before restyling
himself a Comedy Traffic
Warden before restyling
himself as
himself.
After a career break Mr
Steward has recently started
turning up at the Pear Shaped
again.
Toby
Adams
Is
the current head opener.
It is Toby's job to ring up last
minute for a 5 spot because he
lives round the corner
A very
chatty act, whose conversational
style is quick to build audience
rapport, there's absolutely
nothing to dislike from such an
affable performer as Coppin
except that he seems to have
Pear Shaped confused with a
socializing space instead of
getting his arse up on
stage. Sometimes if
he refused to perform Alan Wilde
would tell his jokes for
him. Nik
is one of the few acts to have
done Pear Shaped in Fitrovia,
Sydney, the Fringe, Turnmills
and the Orwell. I
think he regards as as some kind
of stamp collection.
He recently developed a show
where comedians talk exclusively
about their
sexual proclivities
JR
Ewing
It is also Nik's job to watch
old episodes of Dallas and to be
called a racist by Australian
DJs for using the word n******
on the wireless.
Prosecutors please note the the
n word in the previous sentence
was not typed by any of the
white staff at the Pear.
Ava Alexis was drafted in
specially to complete that
particular sentence and her
typing was then typed over with
*s by a committee of white
people under the supervision of
the CEO and a delegation from
Black Police Association.
It is a known fact that the "N
word" only upsets "some white
folks" as ...
Reginald
D Hunter
...Reginald D Hunter describes
them. Amongst black people
it is an accepted term of
endearment. On returning
home from a hard day of work in
the City of London Mr Miller
often remarks to Ms Alexis who
is often smoking out the
upstairs window... "Yo my M*F*
n****** any chance of a nice cup
of tea?" and Ms Alexis swoons in
his arms touched by his
assimilation of racial epithets
and does not feel offended or
upset by being referred to with
a word loaded with hundreds of
years of racist hate. It
is well known that if you repeat
and contextualise a racial slur
you automatically nullify its
wounding properties and it
becomes a nice word like
"fluffy". Your private
life will not become like a
Quentin Tarantino film. No
one calls the PoPo,
hits anyone, stabs anyone or
causes any unpleasantness.
Racial slurs also go down well
at the Professional Football
Association. Reginald has
played the Pear at least once
(about 2002) when he spent quite
a long time moaning about how
bad reviewers were for
insinuating his act may be a tad
racist slightly in places as if
we cared. Although
Reginald uses the "n word" he
uses it sparingly and
thoughtfully. He certainly
doesn't put it on any old
poster, splash it around town
and wonder why London
Underground ban his posters and
then try to turn it into
publicty and then keep repeating
and repeating this
pattern. Reginald is from
Georgia in the Deep South and
first learnt how to sell tickets
by saying the "N word" while
studying at the Royal Accademy
of Dramatic Arts.
George
Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw has
donated all the royalties from
his play "Pygmalion and White
Folks" to enable more ethnic
acts to learn the art of getting
cheap laughs from racial slurs
on stage despite Herbert
Beerbohm Tree opining that this
is not b***** likely. I've
just realised that I've ****ed
out the word bloody but
not.... Talk about double
standards.
Fatty
Arbuckle
It is
Fatty's job to be investigated
by Operation Yewtree
Alan
from the Cabinet Office
Alan
from the Cabinet Office is
our regular punter - it is
his job to sit at the front
and not answer questions
about what he does because
it is jolly top
secret. After a hard
day of bowing to David
Cameron he likes to cheer
himself up by watching
idiots who have not been to
Eton. Alan is actually
a spook monitering the
number of references to the
Iraq War and Tony Blair on
behalf of the Chilcot
Inquiry and CCHQ and
regularly commutes between
London and other top secret
places... we guess.
Lobby
Ludd and the Luddites
Play music and also
take up a lot of physical
space.
Simon Egan
Simon Egan takes up
less space and also sings
songs - sometimes about
Chinese Food.
It's like Robert White but
without the autism
The Studhams
Mr Miller actually comes
from a very long line of
people who went nowhere
and sometimes his
cousins and distant
relatives can be seen in
the audience. This
unusual event only
happens when we are
plugged in the London
Evening Standard.
Most of the time no one
comes. Not even
people related to Mr
Miller or Mr Damage or
his glamorous
assistant. It is
rumoured that one branch
of Mr Miller's family
built Chirry Chitty Bang
Bang while another
person burnt down a
workhouse and was
transported to
Australia, another
actually ran a taxidermy
shop on Turnmill Street
(from whom Mr Miller
learnt the art of
entertaining some people
by making sure others
were stuffed) where Pear
Shaped at Turnmills was
(I
believe Turmills was
also famous for its many
shootings)
and one distant relative
is rumoured to have been
the worst Mayor of
London until Boris
Johnson.
There's even someone who
claims that Mr Miller is
descended from
Charlemagne King of the
Franks although it's
probably bollocks.
Think Blackadder with
all the interesting bits
deleted - or if you cant
imagine that watch Ben
Elton's latest
sitcom. Or watch
some old Terry
and June. I
blame ancestry.co.uk,
the internet and the
Universal Credit
blurring the line
between working and
being on the dole.
Dave is Head
of unexpected
visitations. He
doesn't materialise as much
these days as he seems to
always be compereing the Comedy
Cafe on Wednesdays.
He
is not to be confused with
the CWU deputy general
secretary.
The
owner of the Comedy Cafe Mr
Faulkner
came to Pear Shaped at Turnmills
once on the bad advice of John
Fleming
and endured what can only be
described as a truly awful
evening which probably
reminded him why he runs a
proper venue with an actual
budget.
Robert
is head of asking us not to tell
anyone he's actually funny. If
you are the kind of punter who
complains because he was listed
then found a better paid gig
that night. We are not
sure if we are important enough
to be allowed to keep his
picture on this page but here it
is anyway...
Bobby
is known for his humour.
From a rather difficult start
(some of Bobby's very early
routines were noted for ending
in far too much audience
participation) Bobby has risen
to be able to tackle some quite
dark subject matters
without being tackled by
punters. He has a blog
where he interviews other comics
and stuff
here.... it also contains
a review of McDonald's Liverpool
St Station. Mr
Carroll now has his own
promoting empire called ComedyKnights....
which are well attended by
people and if people dont come
by cats...
You
get rid of one annoyingly
honest biographer and another
one soon turns up. It
was Norman's job to record
details on his
blog of exploits which
would be better kept
silent. Norman has now
retired his blog discovering
that "people
with mental health issues
behave in a bonkers fashion.
This really did surprise me "
I have encountered more
mentally ill people in
stand-up comedy than I have in
my career in criminal law. I
was talking to another comic
about the comedy scene and she
observed that no matter how
mild mannered a comic was,
there would be someone in the
comedy circuit that would hate
his or her guts".
Jason
Simmons
Jason is yet another act
who increases our chances of
selling tickets by describing
both his lack of skill and our
lacks of an audience on
tumblr. Jason's "Road to
Stand Up" blog seems to have
come to a rather abrupt end in
January 2012 - probably about
the time he realised that
other people have previously
done the same thing better...
but according to his twitter
feed he is still gigging and
was last seen on stage as
recently as the 22nd of April
2013
Pops down occasionally to
remind us to stop running
ourselves down and gain more
self esteem.
Ivor can be seen almost every
week at the Hampstead
Comedy Club פארלייקענען אַ
פּלאַטפאָרמע צו אנדערע אידישע
קאַמידיאַנז וואס שטיצן די
אידישע לאַנדיש פאַנד: אַזאַ
ווי סאָל בערנסטין און בעננעטט
אַרראָן
Darren
recently entered a competition
to have a statue made of him but
lost.
Convieniently for local
politicians he did
not win coming 4th - the
results were
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor
218
Ronnie
Corbett
174
Peggy
Ashcroft
121
Darren
Maskell
110
Dave
Prowse
90
John
Whitgift
89
David
Lean
85
Cicely
Mary Barker
84
Captain
Sensible (Raymond
Burns)
60
Tasha
Danvers
23
Malcolm
Muggeridge
38
Bernard
Weatherill
34
Charles
Burgess Fry
33
Kirsty
MacColl
13
Jim Bush
11
One person in the top 3
requested a statue not be made
of them so
Peggy Ashcroft
was promoted - which
just goes to show that even if
you lose a theatre
you may gain a bit of steel by a
park bench
They
make frequent visits to our
shores from the US but are
currently involved in a one man
and his bear campaign toBeat
the Butch. If anyone
would like a Beat the Butch
tee-shirt or bumper sticker so
sticky it can never be removed
even with industrial solvent we
have hundreds ...just ask.
Nick is head of dropping by
the Pear whenever he's spent
several years writing for
radio and television and feels
a bit rusty. Unfortunately
he's not rusty at the moment
so we can't afford him right
now.
Brian owns a roadside caf"
down by Pyecombe. Brian has
been told by loads of his
customers that he's 'quite
funny'. So in September 2005
he decided to get onstage and
try and make people laugh. He
was head of turning up at the
Turnmills/Orwell. You can see
him supporting Ricky Gervais
and on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen
Nightmares and on Derek.
Angus trained as an actor at
The Central School of Speech
and Drama. He is quite
posh and can now be seen doing
the sort of worthy things posh
people do like working for
Amnesty International where he
does silly things like stand
infront of embassies with
placards to raise awareness
about people like Troy Davies
....
...and
other people on
"incorrectly" on death row
....or raise money for ...
Popular comedian Zarganar is
serving a 35-year prison
sentence for leading a
movement that collected money
and supplies for the survivors
of Cyclone Nargis, which hit
Burma (Myanmar) on 2-3 May
2008.
Zarganar (aged 49) was
arrested on 4 June 2008, after
he criticised the government's
handling of the cyclone relief
situation in interviews with
foreign journalists. Zarganar,
who joined the 1988 uprising
against military rule, has
been arrested before for his
pro-democracy efforts.
Actually I think he was
released recently ...sort
of.
Father
Christmas
This is
Father Christmas " not
Angus dressed up as Father
Christmas. The
earliest English examples
of the personification of
Christmas are apparently
those in carols of the
15th century. Father
Christmas is also known as
Santa Claus. During
the Great Father Christmas
schism when he became
Santa in the United States
and Father Christmas in
the UK there were for a
while two Father
Christmases at the same
time. Following the
Ecumenical Council of
Lapland held at the North
Pole it was decided to
merge Father Christmas
back with Santa Claus as
belief in them both had
been in decline.
This, the most important
council on the subject of
Santa with more Elvenfolk
than any other council
ever before, decided that
Santa needed to
significantly modernize
himself by dressing in Red
instead of Green and
decided that he is both
Saint Nicholas of Myra and
Odin and no one rolled
into one to keep everybody
happy. Father
Christmas has recently
been persecuted in parts
of Austria for not being "Christian"
enough and has also been
persecuted in Minnesota
for being too "Christian"
...but driven by a cult of
martyrdom new Elves have
been trained up in a
special seminary in Douai
and dispatched to make and
deliver toys in
secret. We do also
book people who are not
Angus such as...
Very funny ex-boxer Matt
Price is head of
storytelling and has gigged
all over the UK including Broadmoor
He's with Mirth Control so
will probably be taking over
the venue any day soon
And he has a fun BLOG
here
The
Invisible
Man started out at Pear Shaped
as an open spot. We booked
him relentlessly despite claims
that we should not because he
was not funny and not
sane. But we judged
that this statement was actually
only half true and booked him
anyway. Eventually
everyone else realised that this
statement was half true too and
the Invisible Man now gets lots
of paid work about which he
boasts shamelessly and yet still
materialises regularly at the
Pear Shaped in search of stage
time and a doorsplit.
However, he does not want to be
listed or mentioned in any
publicity as he is afraid that
if people see him at the Pear
they will think he must be
shit. Neither is he famous
enough that we can bill him as
an "ACT WHO CANNOT BE NAMED"
without dissapointing the
general public who haven't
really heard of him. So as
a compromise he said he would
gig at the Pear only after he
had drank a potion that would
make him invisible.
His limbs became glassy, the
bones and arteries faded,
vanished, and the little white
nerves went last. He gritted his
teeth. At last only the dead
tips of the fingernails
remained, pallid and white, and
the brown stain of some acid
upon his fingers. He went
and stared at nothing in my
shaving-glass, at nothing save
where an attenuated pigment
still remained behind the retina
of his eyes, fainter than mist.
He had to hang on to the table
and press his forehead against
the glass. It was only by
a frantic effort of will that he
dragged himself back to the
apparatus and completed the
process. Now no one can
see him and think of him as a
rubbish ever again. So ends the
story of the strange experiments
of the Invisible Man. And if you
would learn more of him you must
go to a little inn called the
Fitzroy Tavern and talk to the
landlord.
To be fair when acts are on but
not billed at a club it is
generally to avoid a huge rush
of ticket sales and nothing to
do with said acts having such
huge egos that they cannot bear
to share the stage with open
spots or devious agents trying
the kind of market manipulation
that if you did it with shares
would get you banged up for
painting the tape.
Carolyn is head of painting this
website. You know you have
a successful website and brand
when it is copied on canvas and
exhibited in the USA's premier
art galleries and sold to stupid
rich people for disproportionate
sums of money. She
tries to make her paintings look
effortless by copying the
subject matter from our website
and working the painting over
and over"sometimes as many as 20
times and by copying our
logos. Something we would
take her to court for if only we
could bothered, had ever
trademarked anything and if
Brian Damage's trademarks
weren't anyway an intentitional
homage/rip off/satire of Ren"
Fran"ois Ghislain Magritte's "The
Son
of Man"... which kind of
automatically deletes all our
moral authority in this sphere.
Deputy Heads of
Turning up at the
Orwell/Turnmills included
Other
Memorable Character Acts about
the London Circuit
(in other words
other promoters we would like a
gig off and/or to pass the large
number of gig requests from new
acts on to or to shamelessly
suck up to)
Peter
Buckley-Hill
is head of creating interesting
political dilemmas from
otherwise innocuous social
situations. He is a man who
stands up for himself and cannot
be sat on who co-created the
"PBH/Laughing Horse Free Fringe"
which was triumphant in a
slightly acrimonious way a bit
like the "SDP/Liberal
Alliance". He was
their David Owen. He
now runs the "Free Fringe"
alone. His hobbies
include sitting in the front row
at the front of poorly attended
open mike nights and being
insulted beyond belief when any
compere or act deigns to break
the 4th wall and communicate
with him from the stage.
Peter does not book any normal
clubs in London but please dont
let that stop you sending him an
email.
Is one of the few other
London promoters other than
ourselves is who isn't ashamed
to admit they still book open
spots unseen and runs the
Laughing Horse Empire and the
Free Festival. He also runs a
very successful new act
competition with a "1000 prize.
We have thought of doing this
but been put off by the fact we
have a prize fund of some small
change in Barbados Dollars and a
1,000 lira note.
Phil
Klein
Was for many years our
Chief Competitor
However
he has now retired to spend more
time with his personality
James
D'Chapeau as Jim Woroniecki
James
D'Chapeau
first played the Pear Shaped as
himself. However,
after many years of having moved
on from Pear Shaped he turned up
one week in character as "comedy
promoter Mr Woroniecki"
professing to have forgotten gig
existed and to be looking for
rooms to put a "poetry gig" on
in. When Mr Miller pointed out
that he wasn't that keen on the
idea because of the fact that he
was a full time professional
comedy promoter and he feared
waking up to find himself
without a club, Mr Woroniecki
confessed some sadness that Mr
Miller had such a bleak view of
human nature which amused us all
intensely. Sadly
there is as yet still no poetry
evening at the Fitzroy Tavern
but we will keep you posted. Mr
Woroniecki currently runs a few
small 99
CLUB nights at slightly
larger rooms like "Storm".
Martin
Besserman
It is Martin's Job to
listen to reasoned arguement ...
... in the words of Socrates:
His awareness of his ignorance
made him wiser than those who,
though ignorant, still claimed
knowledge. He is also brave enough
to put on new acts unseen so
bother him for a gig and reduce
the backlog at the Pear.
With
the increasing
professionalisation of the
comedy circuit there's an
endless number of people
offering comedy courses - no one
does anything as stupid any more
as just starting their own club
for no good reason or making an
arse of themselves and learning
on the job ...or lying to
promoters. Harry Denford
runs quite a reputable one at Up
the Creek. When you have
completed this you can then go
and gig at Gordon Ramsay's financially
stable
pub chain if you bring two
punters with you for the chance
to win a paid spot at a showcase
night. According to the
catechism of the CRAPP
this is a move towards
exploitation rather than the
simply financial genius of
getting the
public to pay to see comedy
course graduates in order to
offset this revenue against the
cost of training them in order
to lower the course price but we
seemed unable to convince Harry
of this. Of
course you could just start your
own club or blag yourself an
open spot at one of about 40
open mike nights in central
London that dont expect job
interviewees to pay upfront in
the form of manual promoting
labour but one only has to look
at the Pear Shaped comedy club
to see the paucity of an
experience that might result and
also there would be no important
industry people there - progress
on the comedy circuit is
entirely down to mixing with the
right kind of people and no one
ever got anywhre who wasn't
prepared to do otherwise.
Anyway, in comparison to the sure
financial
model that is
UTC,... Pear Shaped is
obviously just a joke so dont
listen to anything we say.
We are after all both serious
commercial competitors and NOT serious
commercial
competitors.
Harry is very worried about our
lack of Employers Liability
Insurance even though it is the
opinion of the CAB that open
mike gigs, doorsplit gigs and
even Pear Shaped dont actually
need any. On the plus side
we think Harry is actually quite
a funny act so if anyone can
teach you to be funny ...erm ...
maybe it's him.
The
late Malcolm Hardee was the
founder of Up
the Creek. He can
still be seen in a variety of
bit parts in the Comic Strip
Presents ... and is also to be
seen in the first series
of Blackadder. His hobbies
included boats, taking all his
clothes off, urinating on
sleeping punters, drinking,
stealing and starting comedy
clubs becasue he got drunk and
talked a landlord into it.
A book could be written about
Malcolm Hardee's life ... and
indeed has been by John
Flemming. Instead of
treating open spots with
contempt by forcing them to
bring mates to bringer shows,
Malcolm opted for the much more
humane and emotionally honest
strategy of encouraging his
audiences to heckle the "shit
ones" off stage. Despite
or perhaps because of this
Malcolm is fondly remembered by
many people who would like to
have behaved as badly as him
...if it didn't unfortunately
entail dying so young. For
some time the Pear Shaped comedy
empire booked the Wibbly Wobbly
boat for Mr Hardee. When
Mr Damage gave up and passed the
bookings back to Mr Hardee
...erm .......... Mr Miller
would ring him up and ask to do
a spot to test some stuff out
and Malcolm would say "Erm ...
well, I'm quite booked up.
Hold on I'll get the
book". Five minutes would
pass. "Ah, yes," would
come the eventual reply, "I may
have a spot this week." Mr
Miler would say "I'm sorry,
Malcolm I've got a gig this
monday - I could do next week?"
and Mr Hardee would say "Oh
dear, well, I'll have to consult
the diary again and see when the
next available open spot is
available. It may not be
for some time." Five
minutes would pass. Then
Malcolm would say "Oh ...I
thought it might be next month
but I have just noticed that
there is an open spot available
next week after all". The
moral of Malcolm's life is lean
to swim.
An
even older fossil on the
Comedy Circuit but undead
promoter is South London's
Robin Banks who also MCs all
his own gigs, actually still
does the odd gig and
respresents the odd act.
Sometimes he picks a really
excellent act to represent
like Russell
Kane who is then
immediately taken up by Avalon
meaning Robin Banks has to
find yet another act to
respresent. In the old
days Robin Banks (nee PJ) was
regarded as something of a
disreputable charecter until
all the pay to play and
bringer promoters were born to
make us realise that actually
in comparison he is the soul
of honesty. He is
actually quite a nice
person... really. He's
the one on the right ... at
his own 60th birthday party
... I think Tomi
Walamies is also in the
photo somewhere ...
Jay
Rechsteiner
Jay
Rechsteiner
is promoter of the Comedy
Bin
Empire in Camden.
He is also some kind of artist.
All his gigs (or almost all)
are free entry open
mikes. At the last count
he had 7 of them. At
this point he decided he
needed to totally revise his
booking policy. Acts
playing three out of the six
venues now have to bring
between one and two people
along, as well as invite 10
Facebook friends. Although
when I pointed out to Mr
Rechsteiner that the although
he insisted the email he sent
me only related to one venue
when the rules were clearly
applied to three he suggested
that this was his mistake and
actually it was just one
despite the fact that he had
published his policy for all
to read on another
website. Apparently he
just wrote down this rule and
then "a few days later I
changed it to "are strongly
requested"".
This
is slightly strange since he
also insists that at least two
of his MCs and himself are
"strongly opposed" to this
rule but presumably it is the
sort of political accomodation
of the kind whereby Liberal
Democrats are allowed to
believe in the abolition of
Tuition Fees while being part
of a government that votes for
an increase in them. We
are still waiting for ballot
papers to be democratically
distributed to the Comedy Bin
workforce. Acts are also
expected to stay to the end
unless they live outside
London and are encouraged to
flyer for free (this is not
essential). According to
Jay the Comedy Bin is a
collaborative and democratic
project which is as strong (or
weak) as the people who are
involved in it.
Apparently Mr Rechsteiner does
not like his conversations
with Mr Miller as they "rob me
of my energy. They are so
negative and full of
resentment and hatred and...
Ah, what can I say?" So
we have stopped talking to Jay
as we would not wish to tire
him out. Mr R now
invites us to exhibitions of
guns and asks us to sign
petitions against the
persecution of homosexuals.
Geoff
Whiting & Strange
Arrangement
Mr
Whiting is booker of the Mirth
Control Empire who's
"diary room" is an excellent
resource Mr Miller uses almost
every time a headliner and/or
ten open spots cancel at 4.30 on
a Tuesday leaving him with 2
sold tickets and no acts (this
happens about 52 wednesdays a
year). Mr Whiting is at
the moment on a quest to rescue
his music career. In the
1980s he was lead singer,
songwriter and bass player of
80's New Romantic band...
Strange Arrangement...who
peaked with a track on a hit
compilation album that reached
number 7 in the charts in 1982
(alongside Duran Duran, Simple
Minds and Billy Idol), and a
track on another one that
reached top 20 in the same
year. They also enjoyed
being photographed not looking
directly into the lense before
dispanding to stare into space
separately but have now reformed
to stare away from the lense
together again and you can
support them by becoming their Facebook
friends
here ... In
the back and white photograph Mr
Whiting is the one not looking
at the camera.
Yianni
Agisilaou, Taylor Glenn and Liam
Mullone
Yianni
Agisilaou, Taylor Glenn and Liam
Mullone and the mysterious Holly
Dillon are heads of approaching
the venue behind our backs two
years in a row to run "secret"
previews until such a point as
the secret could not be
concealed because they'd managed
to put on more nights a week
than we were........
After it had reached the point
of no concealment they then
expected us to buy that they
didn't know the club was here
and so cannot be held
responsible. I'm still not
sure myself despite having sent
for Poirot. If you too
would like to cash in on the
Pear in order to put on a
preview in our venue thereby
seriously damaging the turnover
from which the other acts are
paid then it may help if you
dont also happen to have an
agent who also books over 150
other live venues as this can
result in many hilarious
"misunderstandings". After
a 13 way discussion with Mr
Whiting and his acts (Yianni
Agisilaou and Taylor Glenn)
... we have been assured
that this will not be happening
again as it was too hideously
embarrassing for everyone
involved ...after
all if you're trying to build an
international reputation it will
probably not be enhanced by
association with London's 2nd
Worst Comedy Club.
I'm not sure how Liam
Mullone got involved in this
mess as he was too shy to
explain but then he is a Tory
boy (sorry, I mean
"libertarian") so what do you
expect. Seriously
please can you all sod
off. Seriously seriously
it has all been settled amicably
now and we can all laugh about
it. Still fair play to
Geoff and Mirth Control they
still book us despite this
paragraph being rude about
them. Probably they're too
busy running real clubs to read
it. Then again maybe
they've got bigger
problems... if you ask me
the mistake they made in the
first place was filtering the
acts on whether or not they were
funny. As we don't do this
at the Pear the issue of are
women funnier than men never
arises because no one at Pear
Shaped is funny.
This
lady has never played Pear
Shaped
but is dead so probably wont
sue
and there are no personality
rights
in the UK anyway
Ladies
Still it's not a problem
unique to MC.
Perhaps being bumped off the
Acccording to some bird
called Helen Keeler "Another
promoter said he wouldn't book
two female acts on a bill,
justifying this by saying he
also wouldn't book two black
acts, two gay acts or two
musical acts on the same bill,
clearly believing gender, skin
colour, sexuality and funny
songs to all be styles of
comedy." Unfortunately she
only got 40 retweets because a
woman being bumped off a bill
isn't news if it happens
twice. Again I reiterate
the problem is these promoters
are risking money. And
then deciding that that's too
risky. What they should do
is what we do and start from a
position of risking no money at
all. Or better still book
the acts, offer to pay them
large sums then email them the
night before saying they're very
very sorry but there have been
no advanced online ticket sales
so the gig is pulled.
People after all never turn up
on spec without having purchased
a ticket well in advance.
There will be more on the female
sex later on the page... but
obviously we have to spread them
about a bit ... we can't have
them all in the top half of the
page.
Huntingdon
and Hutt
Represent other male
female double acts and sketch
groups.
David
Jesudason
Is head of asking us for preview
slots even though he has his own
venue which he claims is defunct
even though it has its own
twitter feed and website and
already knows the answer (It's
no, in case you are also
asking). Mr Jesudason
claims the club is "defunct" and
he has simply forgotten the
login he needs in order to
delete his site - so dont go
there? Still at least he
asked.
It
is Lynn's job to charge women
"15 for an open spot in the her
Funny Monied Women award.
If you are wondering why there
aren't more women on this site
it is probably because they
are bitchy and irrational
and only interested in talking
about periods and gossip and it
is the fact that we are not
charging them "15 a spot that
has lead us to this
conclusion. With her
background in marketing Lynn is
always able to find celebrities
and potentates to hang out with
her who still haven't twigged
that she's turned what used to
be a well respected brand into a
seedy pay to play scheme.
So
You Think You"re Funny, the
BBC New Comedy Awards, the
Chortle Student Comedy Award,
nor any major awards run by
clubs, charge entrants to take
part. and
neither does
Some
women who have recently played
(and in some cases even been
paid) at the Pear include (picked randomly from
the listings) Saskia
Preston, Katie Field, Natalie
Proudlock, Miranda Kane, Sahar
Mirhadi, Sajeela Kershi,
Jennifer Carnovale, Annabel
Heaney, Sheila M, Claire Temple,
Katie Bridget O'Brien, Sonia
Aste, Karina Brisby, Margaret
Wudward, Becky Fury, Dr
Josephine Ettrick Hogg and many
others....
... however
very few women are pictorially
represented on this page as
women (though keen to play
the Pear) are seldom idiotic
enough to want to MC it
... prefering instead to
headline or something ...
Pope Gelasius in
his ninth letter (chap. 26) to
the bishops of Lucania condemned
the evil practice of letting
women MC at Pear Shaped - a
practice which had been spread
by Sabrina George, Pam Ford,
Carrie-Anee Guthrie and Vicky de
Lacy. We refer women also
to Etsi
Pastoralis,
Liturgicae instaurationes and
Inaestimabile donum and
Funny Women. Also please
bear in mind that this page has
been here so long that when we
say the word "recently" we may
be using it in the Inkey Jones
sense of the word.
Sunna
Jarman
I
forgot Sunna Jarman also turns
up all the time... well, a lot
of the time - I dont know why
we haven't invited her.
Becky Fury turns up univited a
lot of the time too.... but if
I dont let them turn up
sometimes they attempt to mug
me at Victoria station or
other gigs. This is
really why we have two senior
managers as telling everyone
to **** off all the time is a
bit waring for one
person. Maybe some of
these people should get a life
- or a better
agent. We would
tell more of them to get lost
but the sexist jokes dont work
unless you have a few women in
to aim them at and when Brian
stops overbooking then we'll
have a week no one turns up at
all. Probably you're
supposed to do things like
confirm the headliners but
that's a bit anal and anyway
we're all too busy discussing
football and talking about our
sports cars ...okay we're not
but neither are we ... Sunna
stopped bothering us for stage
time recently and an inquiry
was launched to discover
whether Pear Shaped had become
a victim of lad culture.
It turns out now however she
has actually just
died in real life.
That's the problem with
promoting if you book enough
people statistically a small
proportion of them die.
One advantage of being a woman
is that in
the UK there are 58
deaths per 1,000 among women
were before the age of 60,
while for men the figure stood
at 93. Although to be fair it
hasn't worked out for
Sunna. I believe Steve
Anderson also died a
while back. And Brandi
Borr. Still if we
keep writing this page forever
eventually everybody on it
will be dead including
me. In fact by the time
the club closes we're aiming
to have stolen the market from
find
a grave.
Fortunately the service
provider will probably reclaim
their domain at that
point. If you're also
depressed by everybody round
you falling off their perch
too early you can cheer
yourself up by watching this
video... or giving some
money
to charity. One of
the advantages of Just Giving
is that acts who when they
were alive kept protesting
they didn't want the money now
don't have any choice in the
matter anymore. Anyway,
I thought this page was laking
token women so here is
another...
Harriet
Bowden
Harriet is head of turning up
when John
Gordillo wants to plug
one of his comedy courses and
distributing flyers that look
much better than ours.
We're not sure that this
entirely fits with our
corporate image as a couple of
pub bores who were thrown out
of school at 16 but we cant be
bothered to make an issue of
it. Everyone else just
does the club so they can
stuff the mantlepiece with a
whole load of pum and
propaganda anyway. At
least they didn't impersonally
post me 1000 flyers like the
BBC. Unfortunately the
BBC have forgotten how close
their letterbox is so I was
able to post the other 950
back individually without a
stamp. No doubt Ivor
Dembina and Kate Smuthwaite
and Becky Fury and Dangerous T
and Inkey Jones and Joel
Elnuagh and every other mid
range act will also now be
plugging their comedy course
at the Pear as the market for
teaching comedy is now almost
as crowded as for not
performing it. Still,
they could do something really
stupid like run a club that
actually creates stage time
for new acts or
something. That's
unrewarding. Not that
I'm bitter. John
Gordillo did the club once but
I'm not going to put his
picture here incase the ASA
sue me for misleading you like
they did to
Inkey
Jones
Inkey Jones is head of
veracity
Inkey once ran a club called
C***s on a Monday
It was on a Tuesday
Pete
Jonas
Pete hasn't done the
club in a while but he is
head of lifesize vaginas and
trading standards
We
don't see much of Robin any more
but for a while in the mid '00s
when he didn't have an agent and
kept bumping into Mr Miller at
the Chuckle Club and being
talked into something he knew he
really didn't want to be doing.
Robin was head of quadrupling up
until Mr Miller sent him an
email suggesting that although
technically it was possible for
both us and him to fit us in
between a Fringe preview show
and a BBC recording it might be
better for his own career to
perhaps put Pear Shaped on the
back burner for a while and
concentrate on keeping the BBC
happy. Fortunately he now has an
agent to protect him from
himself. We're not entirely sure
why an atheist should want a
publicity shot that makes them
look like Saint
Sebastian but it's quite
kinky I suppose. Robin now
runs gigs to celebrate the
birthdays of prominant
scientists. Mr Miller is
still waiting for his tribute
gig.
Mr
Ince like many modern
alternative comedians does not
like the Pope Benedict XVI and
was so angry about his visit to
the UK as a Head of State that
he actually wrote a letter
to
the Guardian. This
alone caused Pope Benedict to
resign - to be replaced by Pope
Francis. Pope
Francis I's election by exhaustive
ballot created a great
strain on many of our new acts
who immediately lost a whole
load of materail about Benedict
XVI. But fear not an
effort is being made to replace
these racist Hitler youth jokes
with stuff about the Argies
and/or the Belgrano. Pope
Francis is much better at comedy
and we are hoping to book him
some time in the future.
Unfortunately Pope Benedict
could not fit Pear Shaped in
Fitzrovia into his very busy
gigging schedule when he visited
the UK (even by doubling up) but
Mr Miller did once have an
unintended private audience with
the late Pope John Paul II when
he was wandering round the wrong
part of the Vatican at the wrong
time and the plain clothes
branch of the Swiss Guard locked
the doors behind him preventing
any escape. If you are
wondering how it is John Paul II
met more people than anyone else
on the planet the answer is
simple - kidnap. Kidnap is
a good way to get an audience
and is now offical Pear Shaped
policy. We would also like to
encorage people to book tickets
online so if they walk out we
can follow them home and
continue the gig at their house
now we have the address. In
the spirit of John Paul II's
apology for 2000 years of
years of violence, persecution
and blunders and Pope Benedict
XVI's appology for the child
abuse scandal, Pear Shaped would
like to applogise for booking
some really awful acts over the
years particularly in the early
days of our now abandoned policy
of booking every single open
spot unseen in the order they
rang up. Yes, we
acknowledge the shame and
humiliation which may acts have
suffered because of these very
bad past booking policies but we
would point out that in the era
before email booking acts was
very time consuming.
Peppa
Pig
Peppa
Pig is head of strong
political convictions.
Labour's Patrick Hall
MP met with the popular
children"s TV character
Peppa Pig and TV presenter
Melinda Messenger on 12
February 2010 to
celebrate the launch of a
new campaign in support of
Sure Start Children"s
Centres. Peppa then
suddely refused to be
photographed with Yvette
Cooper, Peter Mandelson
or Tessa Jowell during
the 2010 election campaign -
pulling her gig at short
notice. Peppa
represents the political
centre of Pear Shaped
and is here to remind us
to follow Al Murray's advice
not to have opinions
completely literally. Peppa
was most recently
photographed next to
Gavin Barwell MP at
the New
Addington Street
party having
seemingly gone over
to the
Conservatives.
Comedy's role
is to lampoon politics
not to champion
it. We certainly
wouldn't ever be seen
gigging for Stand
Up For Labour -
even if they asked us
really nicely and it
meant we could get a
paid gig and
photographed with ...
Ken
Livingstone
We
just wouldn't sell our
souls that cheap
- instead we'd
keep the cash ISA full
with the proceeds of
our various corporate
endeavours. We
are very popular down
ICI, Barclays and the
CBI and wouldn't want
to put these vital
potential revenue
streams at risk by
whoring ourselves out
to political parties.
Andrew
Pelling's job is to
schism the Conservative
Party with hilarious
consequences... and to
be photographed at the
Labour Party Conference or
even with Communists.
Andrew has now joined the
Labour Party and blogs
regularly for Inside
Croydon.
He is now standing as a
council candidate for the
Croydon seat of Waddon...
See above the political
evolution of Andrew Pelling:
Conservative, Independent,
Labour (sorry we couldn't
get a Communist
still). It is Andrew's
job to keep us in mind of Libel and Slander.
Abi
Wilkinson, Nathaniel
Tapley, Chris Coltrane, Daniel O'Reilly,
Brendan O'Neill and Lee
Kern
It is the job of these
people to give a shit about
freedom of speech and
feminism. It is Daniel
O'Reilly's job to have a
rather unpleasant act that
starts a moral panic the
centre of which is a taboo
issue (rape/lads) and to be
the most
likely target for a moral
panic being someone deemed
socially inferior,
culturally different and
personally unknown who is a
challenge to
the normal social
order. It is Lee
Kern's job to be a moral
entrepreneur trying to hold
society to better
standards. It is the
NUS's job to be a rule
creator. It is
UsVsTh3m 's job to be a rule
enforcer and have a name
that sounds like a grass
roots organisation but is
actually an offshoot of
Mirror newspapers who have
decided they need to do more
on the internet rather than
make everyone redundant
meaning they are now trying
to share the same platform
as Daniel
O'Reilly and Katie Hopkins
which is awkward as there is
a slight conflict between
their styles of
comedy. It is Abi
Wilikinson's job to go
muckracking ...going over
Daniel's past with a fine
tooth comb to find any
evidence that support's Mr
Kern's hypothesis that there
is no difference between
Daniel and his comedy
persona Dapper Laughs -
using age old journalistic
techniques such as character
assisnation and hunting
witches. The fact that
the witches happen to be
witches is neither here nor
there. It is Brendan
O'Neill's job to point out
that this may conflict with
Enlightenment values about
free expression and to
suggest that perhaps no
platform is actually a form
of soft censorship.
While it is Lee Kern's job
to protest in the teeth of
all the evidence that there
are absolutely no even
slight freedom of speech
issues at all and that
anyone who says so is a
simpleton using this as a
mask for their misogyny -
which is completely unfair
becuase there may be some
truth in it somewhere.
It is Daniel's fans' job is
to protect him from
criticism by threatening to
rape Abi Wilikison just for
running a hate campaign
based on character
assasination. While it
is Mr Miller's job to smoke
large cigars and say sagely
that he condemns all of this
behaviour.
Unequivocally. We
believe that as Abi says no
matter how many awful things
a person has done or said:
it doesn’t make them a
legitimate target of hate
speech. Hate speech is
of course defined entirely
as using nasty words and
making direct threats.
These tactics we would never
use because Brian and I are
middle class - not working
class like that Lee Kern oik
who thinks it's funny to
make people believe they've
been cloned just because
they are mid-range
celebrities.
Katie Hopkins
It is not okay to use
gender based insults to
attack that person Katie
Hopkins. Katie Hopkins
is not a horrible fat sl**
an ugly f***** sl** a dumb
sl** and we do not hope hope
that she gets r*** with a
strap on. Saying these
these things is wrong and
just to show how wrong they
are I will say them again in
case anyone thinks I
actually mean the reverse
which I do not. I am
very serious - so serious
that I have starred out
anything offensive while
making it perfectly clear
what it said. Katie
Hopkins is not a horrible
fat sl** an ugly f***** sl**
a dumb sl** and we do not
hope hope that she gets r***
with a strap on. I
shall now confess my sins to
Father Michael Legge.
Nikolai
Bukharin
Remember too when
trying to evaulate how moral
your act is that anything
anyone else who likes you
says or does can be held
against you as
evidence. You are not
just guilty for what you do
but for what everyone else
does in your name even if
you didn't ask, advise or
encorage them. Think
Nikolai Bukharin and the
trial of the 21.
Our New
Character
We will in future be
following Nathaniel Tapley's
advice that the reason
Daniel O'Reilly's character
"didn't work" is that he was
never seen to be a
loser. Mr Miller is
unpleasant and a loser and
this is why he is on
television and not in the
back of a pub. People
immediately warm to Mr
Miller's dark material
because it is presented in
self-depreicating
manner. They don't go
round the comedy circuit
saying "that Anthony Miller
at Pear Shaped what a right
****". After all who
gave Mr Miller or Mr Damage
the right to decide who to
and not to censor at Pear
Shaped? The answer is
Dorothy Parker. Brendan
O'Neill is not and never has
been a communist.
Chris Coltrane is 100%
behind all of this.
Charlie
Hebdo
Bien que nous tenons à
dire que nous sommes Charlie
Hebdo nous sommes clairement
pas - nous sommes en forme
de poire à Fitzrovia. Comme
les médias traditionnels (ou
MSM car je crois qu'il se
appelle maintenant) nous
sommes trop lâches pour
retweet ou réimprimer des
images du prophète Mahomet.
Ce ne est pas que nous ne
sommes pas facilement amenés
nous sommes juste pas
complètement stupide et
pensons plus que nous-mêmes.
Après tout, ce ne est pas
seulement nous, mais tous
les comédiens à en forme de
poire qui se tiennent à se
sauter. Alors que nous ne
sommes pas peur de se battre
jusqu'à la dernière goutte
de notre sang, nous sommes,
comme Kerr
Avon dirait, peur de
se battre jusqu'à la
dernière goutte du sang de
tout le monde. Si vous me
demandez, ils auraient pu
éviter énormément de peine
en ne imprimant pas leur
adresse de bureau et en
utilisant une boîte de
bureau de poste. Ce est ce
que des magazines comme
"Viz" utilisés pour faire
comme une précaution
raisonnable contre les gens
fous. Cependant, cette
précision est de blâmer la
victime alors je vais garder
le secret. En passant, si
vous pensez que ce est une
mauvaise traduction
française tout ce que je
peux dire, ce est que Mike
Sheilds mort l'année
dernière nous avons donc dû
se rabattre sur Google
Translate.
Gerry
Ryan
Gerry Ryan represents
all the politicians we
used to make fun of who
have gone to the great
satirist in the sky
sometimes meaning we have
lost as much as 60 seconds
of old material in one
go. You can donate
to his memorial fund here.
Michael
McIntyre
has
never played the Pear
Shaped but we thought we'd
insert this picture of him
anyway taken by Damien Everett
from Southampton when his agent
wasn't looking as Michael is the
most googled comedian in the UK
and we might pick up some
traffic by accident that we
completely dont deserve.
He is often compared to warm
diarrhea by people who maintain
that their stage persona and
their real life personality and
opinions are actually completely
different despite the fact that
they are political
comedians. Michael
is now
available as a Wallet,
Eye Mask, Fridge Magnet,
T-Shirt, Tour Programme,
Calendar, Beanie Hat, Mousemat
and Car Sticker and everything
that would make Bill Hicks turn
in the grave he smoked himself
into when someone suggested to
him that a comedian's function
might be to sell tickets and
make money ......with which to
buy cigarettes to smoke yourself
to death with. Michael
McIntyre does
stirling work putting new
standups on telly so it's only
fair they all slag him off as "bland"
behind his back because as most
comedians who promote anyone
else will tell you - no
good
deed goes unpunished.
After all he never does adverts
or voiceovers as far as I know
and has actually refused to gig
for debt collectors and if we
combine this is with the fact he
is funnier than absolutely
everyone at the Pear Shaped
clearly the man is a total
bastard.
Stewart
is head of keeping a low
profile. It is Stewart's job to
keep a low profile and not have
to flee the country because of
death threats. Stewart has
performed at Pear Shaped at
Midnight at Pear Shaped in
Fitzrovia because he knows that
the Management of Pear Shaped
are laid back and in no way
social climbing and he can keep
a low profile without people
continually pointing at him and
saying "There's Stewart Lee" or
people pointing digital cameras
at him or us trying to milk him
for every iota of publicity we
an eek out of him. One of the
people in this photo might be
Stewart Lee but we're not
telling you which one because
we're afraid of Christian Voice
and are big pussies.
That's why we don't book him
often. It's got nothing to do
with us just not being in his
league. No not at
all. That's a slander put about
by Stephen
Green. Stewart's
emails are notable for their
exceptional brevity as whenever
he says what he actually thinks
in an email it goes viral on the
internet and he wins an award.
Stewart
recently said in The Evening
Standard "It's
amazing that from the smallest
pub club, such as Pear Shaped
in Fitzrovia to the O2, you
are basically seeing the same
kind of show." Indeed
he is right. Both venues are
extremely similar in style and
presentation. The
again
Robin Ince and Stewart
Lee spend a lot of time trying
to get Alexei
Sayle out of retirement...
so obviously they have a great
deal of taste. Stewart
Lee
also does not think Pope
Benedict XVI should be granted a
state visit because, as ...
...would say
the Vatican does not have an
Olympic
team so cant be a real
State. It is Stephen's
job to slag off Catholicism
for strangling the
Enlightenment and make silly
comments about Poland being
responsible for things it is
not
responsible
for. Despite
Pius XI's encyclical Non
Abbiamo Bisogno in 1931, in
which he criticized the idea
of a totalitarian state and
Mussolini's treatment of the
Church, the encyclical "Mit brennender
Sorge" condemning
the Nazi ideology of racism
and totalitarianism and Nazi
violations. From 1941
to 1944, Pope Pius XII and
the Catholic Church were
responsible for saving more
Jews from Nazi persecution
than any other person or
institution or so they tell
everyone often enough that
the KGB launched a smear
campaign against Pius
XII with motto "Dead
men cannot defend
themselves". I'm not
sure who did what so I just
listen to anyone with a
dodgy political or
theological agenda.
Then again on the
other hand what
a shame about the condoms,
peados,
Ann
Widdicombe, Tony
Blair, Islamophobia
and blatant homophobia
... maybe we should give the
Pope a miss now. Like
the Catholic
Church, the British
Humanist Association
which was started in the
1930s when the Unitarian
Church found it was losing
customers and the Richard
Dawkins Foundation for
convincing other people that
many professional scientists
don't think he's a bit of a
wally ...the Pear
Shaped Comedy Club is
a business and has decided
to "do
God" because he is
good box office. The
mission of the Pear Shaped
Foundation for Open Mike
Acts is to support
unscientific
generalisations, a lack of
critical thinking and non
evidence-based understanding
of the jokes in the quest to
overcome boredom as long as
it can be kept to series of
5 minute slots that are not
needlessly racist,
homophobic, misogynist or
likely to start a
fight. While there is
a cutting edge of comedy we
are staying firmly at the
lets not get beaten up for
anyone else edge of comedy.
Stephen Hawking
( & President
Barack Obama )
It is Steven
Hawking's job to
use God as a metaphor in
order to try to explain
the concept of the Grand
Unified theory without
the use of equations
meaning his opinion on
the existence or absence
of God is constantly
sought by atheists,
religions, politicians
and the media who (even though
by definition an
unobservable deity who
exists outside of time
and space would not be
capable of being
proven not to exist) cling
to
his every word in the
hope it will give them a
reason for belief or to
dismiss belief in the
suprenatural because
their source of power
relies on it or despite
being professional
Godbotherers they're
actually lacking in the
gift of faith
themselves.
This is very trying for
Stephen and means he has
to be constantly
interviewed on
television and talked to
by powerful potentates
and be constantly
publishing new books and
presenting TV
series. He now
suggests that the search
for this particular Holy
Grail is over, now that
scientists have come up
with a type of theory,
known as M-theory, that
may
describe the behaviour
of all the fundamental
particles and force, and
even account for the
very birth of the
universe. Of
course to test these
theories may take some
time as data produced by
Large Hadron Collider as
well as LHC-related
simulation will produce
a total data output of
15 petabytes per year
...
If you
would like to help
scientists process this
data to understand the
Universe you may be
interested in joining
your home or work PC to
Volunteer
computing
is an arrangement in which
people (volunteers) provide
computing resources to
projects, which use the
resources to do distributed
computing and/or
storage. BOINC software
allows you to use the idle
time on your computer
(Windows, Mac, or Linux) to
cure diseases, study global
warming, discover pulsars, and
do many other types of
scientific research.
It's
safe, secure, and easy...
Super Large Hadron Colliders
and Very Large
Hadron Colliders are also
planned for the future too
to stop more theoretical
physicists being laid off in
the next round of public
spending
cuts.
God
God
is most often conceived of as
the supernatural creator and
overseer of the Universe.
Theologians have ascribed a
variety of attributes to the
many different conceptions of
God. The most common among these
include omniscience,
omnipotence, omnipresence,
omnibenevolence, divine
simplicity, and eternal and
necessary existence. The
single God who is also three
persons replaced polytheistic
belief systems with lots of Gods
as none of these polythestic
Gods could decided how to divide
up their indivdual
responsibilites [A
bit like "Up the Arts"]
and had conflicting goals and
argued a lot about exactly who
should be in charge of improving
the weather or starting
wars. As a result of this
inability to bond as a team they
were all fired by Constantine
and Licinius's Coalition
government after The Edict of
Milan in 313 AD...
So all pre-monotheistic Gods
have now been consigned to the
British Museum ... which
is a good thing as they argued
far too much and got nothing
done. I'm sure we all
remember the debacle when
Egyptian Gods
drawn by Jeff Dahl, Roman
Triade photgraphed by
Luiclemens
Set fooled Osiris into getting
into a box, which he then shut,
had sealed with lead, and threw
into the Nile . Osiris' wife,
Isis, searched for his remains
until she finally found him
embedded in a tree trunk, which
was holding up the roof of a
palace in Byblos on the
Phoenician coast. She managed to
remove the coffin and open it,
but Osiris was already dead. She
then used a spell she had
learned from her father and
brought him back to life so he
could impregnate her. Afterwards
he died again and she hid his
body in the desert. Months
later, she gave birth to Horus.
While she was raising him, Set
was hunting one night and came
across the body of Osiris.
Enraged, he tore the body into
fourteen pieces and scattered
them throughout the land.
Isis gathered up all the parts
of the body, less the phallus
(which was eaten by a fish) and
bandaged them together for a
proper burial. The gods were
impressed by the devotion of
Isis and resurrected Osiris as
the god of the underworld.
Only without a penis.
This section is included for the
benefit of the regular party of
Egyptologists who visit us from
the British Museum round the
corner. I say regular but
they dont come that often as
they have a habit of dying in
mysterious circumstances because
they were meddling in things
they dont understand.
Samuel
Smith
Even above
God and Brian Damage in the
Pear Shaped pantheon are the
eponymous Smith brothers -
owners of the Samuel Smith's
Old Brewery, popularly known
as Samuel Smith's or Sam
Smith's. Samuel
Smith's is an independent
brewery in Tadcaster, North
Yorkshire, England started
by the titular Sam Smith. It
is Yorkshire's oldest
brewery, founded in
1758.
The Fitzroy Tavern is a Sam
Smith's pub and the beers
are all produced by the
Tadcaster brewery.
Brewing water for ales and
stouts is still drawn from
the original 85 foot well,
sunk when the site was
established in 1758, and the
yeast used in the
fermentation process is of a
strain that has been used
continuously since
approximately 1900 - one of
the oldest unchanged strains
in the country.
Prices are kept minimal by
only increasing in line with
alcohol duty and inflation
increases. So please drink
their beer so that they
continue to let us hire
their room for free ...
It's
actually quite nice!
Like the publicity
shy Smith brothers the Pear
Shaped Comedy Club trades as an
unlimited company in order to
avoid the embarrassing social
situtation of either Mr Damage
or Mr Miller appearing by
accident in the Sunday Times
Rich List.
Mind you
we're leaving the Fitzroy for a
refurb some time this year
during which time I wouldn't go
there as it is closed but they
keep putting it back in time and
changing their minds so at the
moment we're still here.
Cookies
Like many other corporate
websites this site uses cookies
to compile data about it's users
to help enhance the experience
of other users. By
clicking on these pages you
agree to share with us your
location, country, platform,
computer type, physical
location, address, facebook,
twitter and google+ profiles,
circles of friends and
followers, wife, offspring,
siblings, cousins, employer,
job, bank details, sexual
preferences, browser history,
employment history, innermost
thoughts, religious beliefs or
atheism, financial and credit
card details and details of any
other loans and securities which
will be shared with the relevant
credit reference agencies.
Also remember that if you buy a
ticket online and leave before
the interval you have already
given us your details and we can
follow you home and continue the
gig at your house.
Yes,
Mr Amos has also done Pear
Shaped to test material for
the Edinburgh Fringe 2010 -
unfortunately there was hardly
anyone in that night who
either spoke English or knew
who he was but as one might
expect Mr Amos was not phased
by this and proceeded to
explain to the audience that
he was/is "a star". We
could claim that a lot of
stars have done the Pear but
if we listed them here as
though they all popped by
every week we may be in danger
of being sued by Addison
Cresswell
like...
Maria Kempinska
Maria
used to own the Jongleurs
chain. Which she
sold to Regent Inns which went
into administration and renamed
its self Highlight
or something as she owned the
name which she has now
relaunched taking over Highlight
which had a shit name which was
previously a better name.
Maria has visited the Pear
Shaped Comedy Club in Fitzrovia
to marvel at our financial
acumen and ability to never go
bust. This is achieved by
lowering our operating costs to
near zero. We were hoping
she would successfully steal the
room off us all but sadly this
has
not yet come to pass.
Maria is what...
Hils
Jago
...Would
call
an Important Industry
Person. An IIP. It
is very important for a promoter
to have IIPs in his/her audience
to encourage open spots to do
all their rubbish matertial at
someone else's gig (Pear
Shaped). We have therefore
listed a selection of our IIPs
on this page to enourage open
spots to think about doing some
new stuff down the Amused
Moose. A pie chart of IIP
density per gig is available on
request and we are in the
process of creating an IIP app
for your Iphone so you can tell
if there's anyone important at a
gig before you do it and how
much rubbish material and
experimentation you can get away
with on any given night.
The Hils Jago guide to social
mixing it with IIPs is
here.Ms
Jago's
other job is to run lots of
comedy courses to manufacture
open spots on an industrial
scale for the Pear Shaped stage
which is why we've given her a
plug - but remember you dont
need to do a course to give
stand-up a try as there are a
near infinte number chances
available to be a poo comedian
and die on your bum in comedy -
particularly at the Pear.
Addison
Cresswell
Mind you no one's going to be
sued by Addison Cresswell any
more because he died a while
back. Sometimes I think I
should just go into the funeral
business and be done with it.
Colin
Barrow CBE
Cllr
Colin Barrow was leader
of the well known comedy troup
known as Westminster
City Council. He
left a succesful City career
behind in 1996 to concentrate
on public life and charitable
work, while retaining a number
of business interests. He
lives in Central London with
his wife Ana, and has two
young sons. Colin
was an active member of the
Conservative Party, both
nationally and locally.
He describes himself as a free
marketer, supporting consumer
choice and localism in the
delivery of public
services. Ironic then
that he should've been
personally responsible for the
Westminster City Council flyering
ban which has led to the
perverse situation that there
are actually more flyerers now
than a year ago, but they are
all from a single club that
operates out of the Thistle
hotel because hotels have different
licences .
Licenceing law was not
designed with the
implementation of flyering
bans in mind so it is a mark
of Cllr Barrow's genius to
extend its functioning into
this area (usually the
province of Environment Acts).
We would like to thank
Cllr Barrow for making so many
of our competitors go bust
with his flyering ban as we
are 150m outside his remit and
so he has unintentionally made
the Pear a
lot of money.
Colin recently stood down
as leader of Westminster
Council due to some problems
with his parking
spaces...
Christopher
Graham Collins
Christopher is deputy head
of keeping a low profile. It is
his job to be surrounded by glum
Channel 4 executives and not be
commented on. He has never been
on stage at Pear Shaped but he
has sat through a whole evening
without being paid and for this
he deserves commemoration.
You cannot read about the Pear
Shaped Comedy Club in his
autobiography ISBN
0099426870.
Christopher is a fan of Pope
Benedict
XVI but a bigger
fan of ....
It is Samuel Johnson's job to
keep Christopher away from
Popes. Had Dr. Johnson
written his own life, in
conformity with the opinion
which he has given, that every
man's life may be best written
by himself; had he employed in
the preservation of his own
history, that clearness of
narration and elegance of
language in which he has
embalmed so many eminent
persons, the world would
probably have had the most
perfect example of biography
that was ever exhibited. But
although he at different times,
in a desultory manner, committed
to writing many particulars of
the progress of his mind and
fortunes, he never had
persevering diligence enough to
form them into a regular
composition. Unfortunately James
Boswell was left to write the
most famous single work of
biographical art in the whole of
literature instead.
Johnson's Dictionary of the
English Language was published
in 1755; it had a far-reaching
effect on Modern English and has
been described as "one of the
greatest single achievements of
scholarship." Christopher
has now taken control of the
Lichfield Johnson Society taking
over from the Bishop of
Lichfield, the
Rt
Rev Jonathan Gledhill
Jonathan Michael Gledhill (born
14 February 1949 in Windsor,
Berkshire) is the 98th Bishop of
Lichfield. He was enthroned in
Lichfield Cathedral on 15
November 2003. But he's
never been to Pear Shaped so
we're not going to tell you
anything about him apart from
the fact he's CofE.
Pope Formosus (c. 816 "
896) is the Patron Saint
of Open spots. It is his
job to carry on even though he
has died. After being dug
up by Pope Stephen the VI, he
was put on trial and found
guilty... his body was finally
interred in a graveyard for
foreigners, only to be dug up
once again, tied to weights, and
cast into the Tiber River.
Undeterred by this hostile
audience reaction Formosus kept
gigging and rumors soon
circulated that Formosus' body,
after washing up on the banks of
the Tiber, had begun to perform
miracles. A public uprising led
to Stephen being deposed and
imprisoned. While in prison, in
July or August of 897, Stephen
was strangled. In December
897, Pope Theodore II (897)
convened a synod that annulled
the Cadaver Synod, rehabilitated
Formosus, and ordered that his
body, which had been recovered
from the Tiber, be reburied in
Saint Peter's Basilica in
pontifical vestments. In 898,
John IX (898"900) also nullified
the Cadaver Synod, convening two
synods (one in Rome, one in
Ravenna) which confirmed the
findings of Theodore II's synod,
ordered the acta of the Cadaver
Synod destroyed, and prohibited
any future trial of a dead
person. However, Pope
Sergius III (904"911), who as
bishop had taken part in the
Cadaver Synod as a co-judge,
overturned the rulings of
Theodore II and John IX,
reaffirming Formosus'
conviction, and had a laudatory
epitaph inscribed on the tomb of
Stephen (VI) VII. Sergius
III was possibly the only pope
known to have ordered the murder
of another pope and the only
pope thought to have fathered an
illegitimate son who later
became pope (John XI). He
then reportedly had the
much-abused corpse of Formosus
exhumed once more, tried, found
guilty again, and beheaded, thus
in effect conducting a second
Cadaver Synod. Which makes
Pope Benedict XVI sound in
comparison quite a rational and
thoughtful man.
Dr Ashti Hawrami was
appointed Kurdistan Regional
Government Minister for
Natural Resources in May
2006, and reappointed in the
six cabinet on 28 October
2009 following the July 2009
Kurdistan Region
parliamentary
elections. Before
joining the KRG cabinet, Dr
Hawrami held several senior
oil executive positions in
the private sector. Born in
Suleimaniah in 1948, Dr
Hawrami gained a bachelors
degree in oil engineering
from Baghdad University in
1971 and worked as an
engineer in the Iraqi
National Oil Company (INOC)
in Basra from 1971 to
1974. After moving to
the UK, Dr Hawrami worked as
an engineer on the North Sea
in Scotland for the British
National Oil Company from
1975 to 1982. In 1978 he was
awarded a PhD in Reserve Oil
Engineering in Scotland, and
from 1982 to 1985 worked as
a senior oil engineer for
the company Intera in
London. He was a senior
engineer for an exploration
consultancy from 1985 to
1988, and from 1988 to 1999
he was the proprietor and
director of DUK, a limited
liability UK engineering and
services firm. In 1999 he
became Chairman and CEO of
ECL Group Plc. After
retiring from ECL, he was
appointed Minister of
Natural Resources in
2006. Exactly what he
is doing on this page is a
mystery.
Is editor of the
Iraq
Inquiry Digest. It is
Chris's job to link to our
back of the fag packet
idiots guides to the Chilcot
enquiry. For the 3
people who are interested
the articles are... ,
Lor
Pear
Shaped
Iraq_Enquiry_Enquiry
Most of the
first 4 pages are
brief commentary
with the
transcripts
re-edited in Xtranormal
format (the videos
are also on Youtube).
For the next
article we tried a
different approach
with a mixture of
commentary,
transcripts and
Xtranormal
animation...
MI6
goes Pear Shaped
Iraq Covers
SIS private
evidence from
MI6 officers
SIS1, SIS2,
SIS3,SIS4, SIS5
and SIS6 and C
(Sir Richard
Dearlove).
Kurdistan
Goes Pear Shaped
With Emma Sky -
Emma Sky
was sent to the US
controlled region
of Kirkuk in
Kurdistan by the
USA who secured
her services from
the British
Council.
The
JIC goes Pear
Shaped in Iraq
- Sir
John Scarlett
and Julian
Miller (heads of
the JIC during
the run up to
the invasion)
and Sir William
Erhman and Tim
Dowse (heads of
of the JIC after
the invasion of
Iraq in 2003)
discuss the
actual evidence
or lack of it
for the claims
within the two
dossiers and
illuminate us as
the JIC
intelligence QC
processes in
what is widely
regarded as one
of the most
boring pages on
the internet.
Defence
Intelligence goes
Pear Shaped -
Martin
Howard the head
of the DIS is
interviewed by
the inquiry both
in public and in
private. This
page is
extremely
tedious.
GCHQ
goes Pear Shaped
- Sir David
Pepper tells us
what went on at
GCHQ after the war
and no one tells
us what went on at
GCHQ in the run-up
to the war
Major General Tim
Tyler goes Pear
Shaped - A
view of the Major
General's view as
Deputy Commander
Iraq Survey Group
and a review of
Decision Points
insofar as it
relates to the
Tony Blair/George
W relationship
Actually much to our
surprise one person did
actually read these articles
Owen D Thomas of the
University of Exeter who
with funding from the Economic
and Social Research
Council (ESRC) is
writing some kind of paper
on "acts of publicity in
global politics: exemplified
in events ranging from
quasi-judicial,
outward-looking,
state-appointed public
inquiries"?
The Bloomsbury group was a
literary group that made the
Fitzroy Tavern the centre of its
activities from 1904 to World
War II. It included Lytton
Strachey, Virginia
Woolf, Leonard
Woolf, E.
M. Forster, Vita
Sackville-West, Roger
Fry, Clive
Bell, Mike Manera
and John
Maynard Keynes. The group
began as a social clique: a few
recent Cambridge graduates and
their closest friends would
assemble on Thursday nights for
drinks and conversation. Its
members were committed to a
rejection of what they felt were
the strictures and taboos of
Victorianism on religious,
artistic, social, and sexual
matters. They remained a fairly
tight-knit group for many years;
recent biographers have detailed
their tangled personal
relations. By the 1920s
Bloomsbury's reputation as a
cultural circle was fully
established to the extent that
its mannerisms were parodied and
the Phoenix Bar
opened. Bloomsbury
became a widely used term
connoting an insular, snobbish
aestheticism. Unique in the
brilliance, variety, and output
of its members, the group has
remained the focus of widespread
scholarly and popular
interest. It was in
the very same room Pear Shaped
now inhabits that Vita
Sackville-West first suggested
gassing poor people.
Charles
Allchild
Charles Allchild was a
previous proprietor of the
Fitzroy Tavern (here
photographed showing novelist Louis
Goulding [center] round
his cellars in a an
uncopyrighted photo we nicked
from the Jewish
Museum
of London).
Charlie Allchild was married to
Annie, the daughter of Judah
Kleinfeld, a Polish Jew who took
on the management of the Fitzroy
in 1919. They eventually
sold the pub following the
aftermath of the Fitzroy
Tavern
Buggery in the toilets case.
Mr Allchild's other celebrity
punters included...
Many famous comedians
started out at the Pear
Including Charlie Chaplin who
was so impressed with what Mr
Miller could do with the spoken
word that he went on to make
himself famous in a silent
medium.
I think that's a lot of people
but I cant possibly list
EVERYONE who's made an important
contribution to the Pear.
So thank you to everyone else!
ANNOUNCEMENT
Mr Damage would like to
make it clear that he has no
knowledge whatsoever of this
page or any page like it on this
or any other website anywhere
and that all references to
people living or dead are just
references which may or may not
exist in the mind or minds of
the author himself or herself
who shall remain nameless and
shameless unless named and or
shamed by a victim or victims of
his or her razor sharp tongue.
Mr Damage is feeling extremely
affable today unlike Mr Miller.
On a lighter note Mr Damage
would like to formally apologise
to hardened Pear Shaped fans for
the lack of apostrophes and
inverted commas in this text.
They appear to have been
misappropriated by person or
persons unknown.
