The touring year ends where Nina Simone sang in the NIA theatre of radical arts in Hulme. I am always happy to be in Hulme.
Like so many names in Manchester, I first learned about it from Morrissey’s wordplay. His first video release of his pop promos was entitled Hulmerist. Hulme was also where I kipped when I was in Manchester playing the stand-up clubs. It was here that I first felt at home in the company of comedians.
I stayed over with my heavily tattooed and hirsute former street performer pal Martin Bigpig. Here was a man who would fire a gun using a length of rope and the power of his pierced nipples. Eventually, one of his nipples suffered repetitive strain injury and he went down to one-nipple marksmanship. He really was a bulletproof comedian, he could play rooms which the rest of us could barely survive seconds in.
With particularly rowdy hecklers at the Belfast Empire, if all verbal putdowns failed, he would resort to holding the offender over the balcony. He never doubted his grip, but the heckler did, and so, silence.
He has now retired back to his homeland of Northern Ireland where he lip-syncs to Charles Bukowski poems and tends his bonsai trees.
It was also not far from here that I first saw Johnny Vegas, a wonder from his first outing with true poetry in his soul. What a thing it was to hear him talk of those that broke his heart. “Love is a postman and you’ve got a vicious dog called pride”.
