Malcolm Hardee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Malcolm Hardee (born Lewisham, London, January 5, 1950 – died London, January 31, 2005) was an anarchic English comedian, author, club proprietor and compere.

1 Early life
2 The Greatest Show on Legs
3 The Clubs
4 "He has no shame"
5 Freddie Mercury's birthday cake
6 Performances
7 Settling down - and finding his trousers
8 His death
9 After his death
10 Others' comments
11 Books
12 References
13 External links
- 13.1 Obituaries and reports of his death

[edit] Early life

Hardee came from a long line of River Thames lightermen - who earned their living on tugs pulling barges. The eldest son of Frank and Joan Hardee, he spent his first two years in an orphanage while his mother was in hospital with tuberculosis. He was educated at three south-east London schools - St Stephen's Church of England primary, Colfe's School, and Sedgehill comprehensive.

Expelled from all three, he drifted into petty crime - stealing Coke from a local bottling plant, burgling a pawnbrokers and setting fire to a Sunday school piano because he wanted to see 'holy smoke' - eventually serving prison sentences for fraud and burglary. He also had convictions for arson and once infamously stole a Rolls Royce which he believed belonged to British Cabinet Minister Peter Walker. (Walker later wrote to Hardee after reading about this widely-reported story and denied it had been his car.)

During the late 1960s, he worked as a mobile DJ - "Wolf G Hardee" - in between stints at various detention centres. After coming out of prison in 1977, he decided to turn to showbusiness as a way of staying out of trouble, saying: "Prison is like mime or juggling - a tragic waste of time".

[edit] The Greatest Show on Legs

Hardee regularly performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and, with Martin Soan, he formed the Greatest Show On Legs - at the time, an adult Punch and Judy act. It became a regular at the Tramshed in Woolwich, alongside the likes of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. Soon afterwards, The Comedy Store opened in Soho, and they became regulars there, too. Their breakthrough came in 1981, when they did the balloon dance on Chris Tarrant's OTT. Hardee claimed he was the first to attempt the 'banger-up-the-bum' routine, later performed by Legs co-star Chris Lynam, in which a firework (occasionally a three-stage Roman Candle) was clenched between the buttocks and lit to a recording of Ethel Merman singing "There's No Business Like Show Business". Hardee also became known for a rarely performed but unforgettable act in which he would use his own genitals to create a unique impression of French President Charles de Gaulle; this act pre-dated the Australian show Puppetry of The Penis by several years.

[edit] The Clubs

Though an accomplished comic, Hardee is best known for being a compere and owner of clubs which gave vital and early exposure to up and coming comedians such as Alan Davies, Harry Hill and Jo Brand, with whom he was once romantically involved. He also worked for a time as the manager of Jerry Sadowitz, and was tour manager for his friend and neighbour, Jools Holland.

His most infamous venue was The Tunnel Club (situated next to the southern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel in Greenwich, south-east London) where even accomplished comedians rarely managed to complete a whole set against its unforgiving crowd. He also helped start the careers of Vic Reeves and Paul Merton. Hardee didn't help the new acts with his stage introductions and often introduced them, with a nerve-unsettling, "This next act's probably a bit shit" - and if the audience didn't heckle the hapless act - he did; however once the act was off stage, he would often comfort them backstage with words of encouragement and urge them to try again.

It was at the Tunnel Club that comedian Jim Tavare once began his act with the unwise opener, "Hello, I'm a schizophrenic" - to be met with the lightning rejoinder from a wag in that night's audience, "Well, you can both fuck off then!".

[edit] "He has no shame"

One journalist said of Hardee: "To say that he has no shame, is to drastically exaggerate the amount of shame that he has". This neatly summed the man up; whenever or whatever Hardee did, either as a comedian or as an interruption to other comedians, he preferred to do it naked, although the story, printed in newspapers on his death, that he once appeared naked on stage with his mother Joan is untrue.

[edit] Freddie Mercury's birthday cake

On September 5, 1986 Hardee's house was searched by the police - who were looking for crumbs, after he and others stole Freddie Mercury's 40th birthday cake; no crumbs were found at the house as he had already by then donated the cake to a local nursing home. No charges were pressed.

[edit] Performances

Hardee rarely appeared on television, though did play minor roles in six Comic Strip film projects and one episode in the first series of Blackadder.

He told the story of a blind punter coming to one performance and unfortunately arrived in time for the mime act and sat there for 10 minutes, hearing only the occasional burst of laughter; eventually he got up and shouted, "Tell us a joke for God's sake"!

[edit] Settling down - and finding his trousers

He wrote his autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake with John Fleming in 1996 and in 2003, also with Fleming, co-edited an anthology of mostly non-comic writing by 19 stand-up comedians, called Sit-Down Comedy. He also wrote columns in comedy magazines in which he gave tips and told anecdotes about life as a comic. He was fond of collecting put-downs used by comedians as a way of curtailing hecklers.

In later years, Hardee ran the Up The Creek comedy club in Creek Road, Greenwich, then his own pub The Wibbley Wobbley on a converted barge in Rotherhithe. In later years he had calmed down somewhat and in his 1995 autobiography said, "I am happy where I am in South East London. I am respectable now. I have trousers, a house and a wife." ^[1]

[edit] His death

On 2 February 2005, Hardee's body was recovered from Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe, by the River Thames after he was reported missing from his barge on January 31. A post-mortem soon confirmed he had drowned. It seems likely that he fell drunk, into the water on the way back to his houseboat "The Sea Sovereign" (20 feet) from The Wibbley Wobbley, which was moored nearby. About 700 people attended his funeral at St Alfege's Church in Greenwich - and perhaps fittingly, was one of the few funerals ever to get rave reviews the following day in both the Daily Telegraph and Sun newspapers. He was cremated at Hither Green in south-east London.

[edit] After his death

In 2005, there were two tribute shows at the Glastonbury Festival in June, a BBC Radio 4 documentary tribute in July and two tribute shows at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. There were five-hour tribute shows at the Hackney Empire theatre in London on 5th February 2006 and 28th January 2007 to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

[edit] Others' comments

“	Throughout his life he maintained a fearlessness and an indifference to consequences	”
*—The Times: obituary - 7th February 2005*

Miles Kington, writing in The Oldie said "I saw Malcolm perform several times and when he was good he was very good and when he was drunk he was not so good, and sometimes naked, which didn't always make it funnier, but even when it didn't quite work I envied the danger he brought to the act. I could never do anything like that. I could never, as he is reputed to have done, get a tractor and drive it (also naked) into the tent of a rival comedian who was making too much noise."^[2]

[edit] Books

I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake (autobiography) Fourth Estate, 1996. ISBN 1-85702-385-4.
Sit-Down Comedy (anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming) Ebury Press/Random House, 2003. ISBN 0-09-188924-3.