The Spirit of the Stairwell

An article I wrote for Ctrl.Alt.Shift.

The town seems unnaturally clean, the streets are straight and uniform, stretching out at right angles in all directions. Large friendly signs hang above each road clearly stating what you can find along them ‘schools & library’ or ‘park & duck pond’. Everything in neat little rows – from the terraced Value Estates to the mansions and castles in *Finest Heights. The citizens move slowly down these pathways as if sleep walking, wearing their identical blue and white-striped blazers and name badges. The cars are activated by putting in a pound coin but tend to swerve all over the road. Suddenly a deafening public address system crackles to life: Bing-bong. Citizens should note that there is a 2-for-1 offer on school entry at the Value Comprehensive. Thank you. Bing-bong.

Welcome to Tesco Town.

It may seem like the kind of satirical dystopian future that would spring from the fevered imaginings of Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci but worryingly Tesco Town is a very real possibility. Reports came in yesterday of Tesco’s intention to build a ‘supermarket suburb’ next to the Olympic site in Tower Hamlets. The area is already groaning under the weight of 10 new Tesco stores built in the last two years but it seems the supermarket giant wants to go for a total scorched earth policy, an 11-acre site with a 24-hour Tesco Extra hypermarket at its centre. Tesco are also planning housing, hotels, parks, schools and a library called, in true Orwellian fashion, the Idea Store. Creepy.

Most of us have come to terms with the fact that we now live in a world where 6% of the population own 59% of the wealth. We know large multinationals are richer than most emerging economies but it does seem to be taking the piss a bit for them to actually start building capital cities. How long will it be until we get Tesco Cathedrals with ‘Every Little Helps …’ carved over the vaulted entrance in Latin? Or the Tesco Political Party promising to save the economy with the same ruthless single-mindedness it uses to crush local stores and family businesses?

Tesco’s chief executive Terry Leahy has already thrown his hat into the political arena, describing Britain’s school system as “woeful”. Thanks for that Terry but I’m not quite sure how a career peddling low-quality foodstuff to the hungry masses gives you a mandate to comment on education reform. It’s probably best you go back to putting Whoops! stickers on the chicken that smells a bit dodgy. You’re good at that.

The Tesco Occupied Territories of east London. We’re through the looking glass here, people, the war of attrition with major corporations is just beginning. And to the future residents of Tesco Town let me just say this – squeeze the produce before you buy. It might be rotten and leave a bad taste in your mouth.

The last time I did a sponsored event I was still at school and it was a sponsored silence.

That was a long time ago. We didn’t even have the internet then. We had to go around with a clipboard and collect sponsorship manually. That’s really hard when you can’t speak. I guess I should have planned in advance.

Anyway, I’m now going to cycle to Copengahen for the December climate change talks. Talks that could very well impact on the continued existence of humanity so, you know, I thought I’d check them out. We’re cycling 140 miles in three days in weather conditions that could charitably be described as ‘unpleasant’. Quite a challenge when, to quote Friends, you have a body shape ‘like a potato with arm and legs … and a head’.

My target is to raise £2000 for Christian Aid. Quite a large sum of money, especially in these lean times, but believe me when I say that anything you could spare would be a great help, particularly if you GiftAid it.

Why Christian Aid? Easy, it’s the best development agency out there, fighting poverty in partnership with local agencies in 50 countries worldwide. Christian Aid works with people of all faiths and none, its mission is nothing less than the total eradication of extreme poverty from the face of the Earth by identifying and dismantling the mechanisms that keep people poor. I believe its work is invaluable.

I also work for them.

Which is nice.

Anyway, I hope some of my readers will choose to sponsor me. For my part, I’ll attempt to be witty and entertaining as I recount the two month training period and the ride itself on this blog. If that doesn’t do it for you, I’ll post pictures of me looking red faced and sweaty like a lumpy radish in lycra.

My sponsorship page is at www.justgiving.com/spiritofthestairwell.

I was meant to go to an Arthur Russell retrospective at the ICA this evening but dropped everything and bought a ticket to the Olivier when I found out the National Theatre was hosting a celebration of the life of Ken Campbell as part of its Platforms series.

Now I didn’t know Ken personally nor had I ever seen any of his prodigious body of work (before tonight at any rate). I am, however, a member of the London impro community and you can’t hang around with that crowd for very long without realising how important Mr Campbell is. In fact, he seems to be stamped indelibly onto the lives and careers of some of the greatest improvisors I know.

You see I came to impro just a few months after Campbell’s death and it seems to me that his absence still defines a part of the London scene. People talk about his theories and opinions all the time, it’s very much ingrained into the fabric of the community. I feel very sad that I came so close to meeting such a great man and in many ways the fact that I didn’t puts me in a different comedy generation to my contemporaries. I’m PC – a Post Campbell improvisor.

Of course, he was much more than just an improvisor. By all accounts he was a genius, a superb writer and performer; a brilliant, erratic, eccentric curmudgeon with a real gift for supporting others. The evening I just spent at the theatre was a bit like him – just off-the-wall, balls out crazy.

For a start it was meant to be just over two hours long and ended up closer to three and a half, the cast a glittering ensemble of powerhouse comic talent from John Sessions to Toby Jones by way of Nina Conti and the guy who played Alf Garnett. Everyone spent the whole evening talking with Campbell’s voice – a kind of a cross between an Essex wide boy and a goblin.

The acts themselves were amazing – monologues and extracts from Campbell’s plays (one of which The Warp is over 22 hours long if performed in its entireity). Someone mimed being bacon frying (ask me to demonstrate), another stripped naked to his socks and copulated with a giant golden apple. There was an inspired sketch revolving around a 20ft long piece of black knicker elastic and an extract from Macbeth translated into Pidgin English.

My favourite moment came from Nina Conti, who was bequeathed all Ken’s ventriloquist puppets in his will. She told us how she had spent the best part of this year “trying to find new voices” for them all. Conti has always been a master of making puppets live and breathe, a strange alchemy where she is almost able to split her soul in two and this was a bravura performance. The last puppet she hauled out of her trunk was a mini version of the man himself. At the very end of her act she begun to pack him away only for mini-Campbell to exclaim loudly “Don’t put me back into another box”.

It was a brilliant moment, both hilarious and heart breaking. Everyone on stage obviously had so much love and respect for the guy but that didn’t stop them scoring a cheap laugh out of his death. You got the feeling that he would have approved entirely. Even after she shut the trunk, he kept protesting in a muffled voice. I still can’t shake the notion that there were two people on stage during that scene.

The evening culminated with the entire cast engaged in an improvised haka, the finest proponent of which (chosen by audience reaction) recieved Campbell’s entire DVD collection of Jackie Chan films*. It was just that sort of an evening.

Certainly not your average night at the theatre.

But then it wasn’t your average life either.

* Ken had been told by the spirit of Laurence Olivier, via a seance, that Jackie Chan was the world’s greatest living actor. His collection of Chan DVDs was so large, it had to be wheeled on stage on a trolley.