05/08/07
Phil Kay and the 'Law of Love' -
Categories: This morning, at 4 or 5 am, I returned to my flat as the sun began to rise having witnessed two incredible things. One was awe inspiring, the other was just plain awful.
I have a very special moment each Edinburgh which is just for me; I go and see Phil Kay. This year he has two shows, and one clashes with The Zone, it also clashes with Kitson, Craig Campbell and pretty much every show I really really want to see. So I went to see his earlier show ‘Justice’. I first saw Phil Kay at Late n Live 2005, when something happened that simply cannot be explained. It involved a verbal fight with a Northern Irish audience member and pretty much covered the meaning of comedy itself. It was a moment that blew apart the bounds of what I thought live comedy could achieve, the moment i decided this was the career for me and a moment that almost ended with a fight. During this years show he has kept his trousers on, does not have ‘Library Bar’ written across his arse, nor is he pretending to commentate on a horse race involving the candidates for the new pope in front of a mad Catholic punter. It doesn’t nearly end in a fight.
It does begin, however, with some of the most beautiful prose I’ve heard in a comedy show. So much so that I have to take out my notebook to write down the statement “the law of love says ‘you are enough’”. Unfortunately Phil sees me do this and takes me for a reviewer. “He might be a journalist” I look up “bang, you’ve missed a bit of the show” he says. I’m wearing headphones round my neck and he riffs on that for a while then moves on. But by now my face is burning and I become his point of focus after delivering set pieces. I feel terrible for the pressure he now seems to think he’s under when there is no need, “I’m not a reviewer Phil! I’m a fan! I’m a worshipper!” but I stay quiet, sit back, and enjoy his remarkable talent. I was going to give him a review, just for neatness, but I don’t think you can really review his shows, just him. He walks a line of personal confession that any self-proclaimed storyteller, myself included, is simply miles away from. Of course it’s an intensely personal thing, but for me, as nice as it is to make badges, this style of comedy is where i find hope for the new wave, or whatever you want to call it. The amazing thing is that Phil’s been doing it for nearly 20 years. He’s a true genius, a one-off, or so I thought.
After the Zone, which pretty much sold out and was really good, (a high point was Carl telling a woman with an annoying laugh ‘it’s like being heckled by the Lilt ladies’), we went to the Brooke’s Bar. It was rammed and hot. I met a person I’ve not met before, and it was he who made me realise that Phil Kay is not the only one-off up here this year. I won’t mention his name because of what transpires later, but he’s like a cross between Chris Morris and Peter Cook circa ‘Derek and Clive get the horn’, drunk, breakdown era, vitriolic Peter Cook. He’s bounding about the bar vomiting all forms of obscenity out onto an unexpecting audience, save those who know him, who reliably inform me that this is normal behaviour. It’s ‘what’s the worst thing you can say to a stranger’ stuff, captivating as much as it is abhorrent. When it crosses the line into straightforward assault I keep my distance. But he reminds me of me, in a way. Not the assault, but the tractor beam of desperation to perform that throws you round a room of strangers and leads you to ruin their evening. He will ‘figure in my plans’ I say to Carl and in a brief moment of sobriety I pitch a sitcom idea to him. He laughs for a minute after I tell him the opening scene, “then what” he says, “that’s all I’ve got” I say, “oh”.
They are now refusing to serve him, which is a good move. And we go. I apologise to the people I’ve been ignoring for an hour and explain it was for their own safety. We walk, me, Carl, this guy and his two friends. We pass a chip shop, bursting with proper Scots. Then the subject of this story does something I’ve never witnessed before. He simply strolls into the chip shop and begins berating the locals with a barrage of anti-Scottish sentiment, seemingly in order to fight THEM ALL. This doesn’t just seem to be the case, it is. He is chased out by 6 or 7 very rightly angry men, they knock him to the ground and begin to beat him. It’s the kind of thing you only imagine doing when you’re brain won’t sit still at night; “God, imagine if I shouted ‘Fuck you all’ at a funeral, or went to a Millwall game and called them all fags”. It’s not just social suicide, but increasingly physical suicide that I am watching. As the punches and kicks are thrown we wade in to stop the trouble, in the slightly awkward position of being totally sympathetic with the people who are kicking the shit out of him. One minute they were buying chips, the next being called “foreign cunts” and being told to “speak English” in their own country. He didn’t mean these things, but says them to achieve the desired effect: self destruction. As Burgess said, and never truer than now, “destruction’s our ode to joy”.
As we break it up, and shelter our colleague away from the gathering crowd, tears fall from his battered face, and now I properly see myself in his little-boy-lost eyes. I know that burning need to feel something, anything, other than what you’re feeling inside. In a former life I’d have put my fist through a door, or smashed a bottle or jumped through a shop window, something more controlled than letting half a dozen drunk Scots administer the punishment. “We need to get on top of this”, I say to him, and beating in my head is that statement, like a fucking beacon; “the law of love says ‘you are enough’” to be honest this guy is more than enough. But somehow I need to show him that like Phil suggests, he himself, is all he needs to do whatever he wants. That release, the blessed release that comes from being half-killed by an angry mob can be found inside you, the law of love says so.
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