Dialogue Festival: Shambles…. I mean Richard Herring

So, after the amazing success of the first night of the Dialogue Festival and with the prospect of seeing Richard Herring in a small church, to say I was excited is an understatement.

And you know what they say about having high expectations setting you up for a fall? Well, let’s just say they weren’t bloody wrong!

The second night, called TechnoBabble, kicked off with an off the cuff introduction from the man himself, Richard Herring. To the delight of the low capacity crowd (maybe 25 – 30 people), he ignored the script he’d been given in favour of some improvised comedy, actually ridiculing the cheesy, planned lines he had been handed. Our appetites whet, Richard then left to perform an intro at another venue, leaving us with our first act, so to speak, in the form of Perez Hilton.

When advertised, infamous blogger Perez Hilton was described as a ‘special guest’. Although he lives in America, he’s such a D-List celebrity that it was fair to assume that First Direct had flown him out to London for this very show. This was not the case…..

To be honest, I didn’t have any real desire to see him in person, so was more than happy to view his smiling bonce from 600 miles away. But it seemed a little cheeky to advertise him as a guest when really he was only appearing via Skype. Jesus, I could probably get him on Skype now! Essentially, Perez’s set formed an introduction to a story telling method known as ‘pecha kuchas’. A pecha kucha is a collection of 20 slides, each with 20 seconds of spoken word creating a narrative. What does pecha kucha even really mean though? I assume that it’s Japanese for something like ‘tedious and annoying’; almost sounds like Ashton Kutcher too, fitting. Mr Hilton was to deliver his own pecha kucha (recorded I might add), which was then to be followed by a live Q & A.

This idea was pretty pointless and uninteresting right from the outset. What would Perez Hilton even have to offer us as a story? Maybe an enlightening commentary on the socio-political atmosphere in Libya? Ah no, just a shitty explanation of how he came to fame. Just what I wanted….

God was clearly present that night in the church though. Proof for all you atheists if ever you needed it! Perez’s set was immeasurably improved by a technical failing which meant that there were no slides present as he was talking. Consequently, the audience had no idea what he was referring to whatsoever (like we cared anyway) which made every new slide more and more hilarious. It didn’t ever matter what he had to say anymore. As soon as he opened his mouth to another failed slide the audience could not help but snigger.

The Q & A wasn’t any more successful. Richard Herring had not yet returned so instead a random techy from the back grabbed the mic to converse with Perez. No-one may even have registered that this was another f*^k up if the anonymous replacement hadn’t opened his conversation with “Sorry Perez, if I knew I was doing this tonight, I would have been better dressed.” Well done that man.. that’s that illusion shattered. In all fairness, if this poor guy was a last minute stand-in then he didn’t do a horrible job. It’s just unfortunate that he had about as much charisma as some wilting spinach. He chatted away to Perez for a bit, asking particularly uninteresting questions, notably from a piece of paper that had clearly been prepped 5 minutes earlier. After 5 or 6 questions he started looking to the crowd for questions, he had run out and was desperate for some support. Sadly he was not to be rescued yet. The audience had patently lost interest in this part of the show and were no more engaged by the prospect of getting to talk to this “celebrity”. No-one wanted to ask a question, apart from one bloke who requested “Can we see your slides?” to the delight of the crowd. It got to the point that the surrogate compere actually planted some questions with a few members of the audience in the hope that it would seem a successful, even ongoing part of the show. Disastrously though, with such small numbers in the audience it became clear what he was doing, with only Perez assuming that everything was going swimmingly, not drowning like he was.

Everyone clearly wanted Richard Herring to talk to Perez, optimistic that he would vehemently rip the piss out of him. Replacing him was always going be a tough gig, made all the worse by the failings of the technical team. I ASSUME that they have one but there was no sign of it at all!

Thoroughly disheartened at the night so far and in real need of something entertaining, they then proceeeded to have 4 ”guest” bloggers come on to the stage having apparently won some sort of prize – what was it, to be eaten alive by an angry audience? Clearly no-one in the crowd was interested at this point, especially after the first blogger, physically nervous, read awkward Monkhouse-esque jokes from her phone. Chants of “Herring, Herring, Herring” echoed in the back of my mind….

Luckily 2 of the speakers were at least interesting however; one, Jon Morter, the legendary marketing machine responsible for putting Rage Against the Machine at Christmas number 1, and Trisha Champaneri, a girl whose passion for sport maintained the interest and humour of what was the definition of a ‘tough crowd’.

With hours having passed and disillusioned patrons leaving before the end of the nights proceedings, things were not going well. But wait, next up are Richard Herring and Josie Long! This can only get better surely?! Well yes, technically, but only because the start of the night had been complete s@#t!! What followed was a complete shambles, labelled as a ‘tweet off”. From the outset, I and seemingly everyone else (including the organisers) had very little idea about what this involved. I assumed that this was going to be some kind of mc battle, updated for the technologically minded middle classes. What we got instead was a confused combination of nervous chit chat, mixed in with a few tweets every now and again. And what a surprise, technology was to play another villainous part.

It was obvious immediately that this part of the show had not been tested beforehand. If it had been, the organisers would have soon realised that using only a quarter of the screen to display the 2 twitter pages was entirely ineffectual, making it almost impossible for the audience to see what was going on (especially myopic people in the second row :[ ). Instead it became an absolute necessity for audience members to use their mobile phones to follow what was happening on Twitter, a consequence which obviously lost some of the crowd. Moreover, both Josie and Richard seemed at a loss as to what they were supposed to be doing, tweeting each other or talking to the audience. Most people would struggle to do both effectively, nigh on impossible when you are trying to make people laugh. This resulted in a disastrous, clearly untested techno-fail, readily accepted by both of the comedians:

DialoguefestRH (Richard Herring) – “so I am aware that if we are tweeting we can’t entertain the audience here coz we can’t speak, but if we speak we can’t tweet”  and “this does not work at all”

dialoguefestj (Josie Long) – “PLEASE DON’T TELL THE REST OF THE INTERNET ABOUT THIS GUYS”,  “Why have I done with this with my life?” and “this is purgatory”

It was bitter irony that they both used their Twitter pages to criticise the night whilst they were supposed to be attacking each other. The idea was inevitably doomed from the beginning; in order for the ‘tweet off’ aspect to succeed it was vital for the comedians to direct their attention solely to their Twitter pages, thereby creating a continuous, fluid conversation with each other. However, in doing this they would ignore their audience, in this way obliterating the stand-up aspect. No disrespect to Richard or Josie, they did their very best to entertain a horrendously disheartened crowd, and for what it’s worth they managed to keep us entertained.

To close the night, Richard Herring delivered a thoroughly enjoyable stand-up set. It was a refreshing bout of success on a night where the byword was disaster. Although most of the material was recycled from previous shows (Hitler Moustache / What is Love Anyway?), it was truly delightful to hear him passionately deliver what are very well-written comedy skits. Having seen him twice before, I can easily say that I will never tire of Herring’s comedic talent. He has an obvious skill for comedy writing – he did write for Al Murray’s Pub Landlord though, ouch – and when this is combined with his fluid delivery, his impeccable timing and his natural improv skills he cannot be bettered. He is also great at attacking hecklers, as one Australian female soon found out.

It’s just a shame that he was unforgivably let down by the poor organisation of the event. They were lucky to book such a renowned comedian for such a small-scale gig; I’m sure that won’t be happening again! The biggest irony is that the night, devoted to the use of technology, especially in regards to communication, was let down irrevocably by the tech used in it.

TechnoBabble??  TechnoBollocks.

Dialogue Festival Day 1: Adam Buxton

So, merrily wandering the internet earlier this week I spotted an advert for something called the First Direct Dialogue Festival. Never heard of it? I’m not surprised as it’s a surprisingly low-key affair for an event that has so much to offer.

The festival spans four days in early November at three small venues in-and-around Notting Hill. During this time, those lucky enough to have discovered it have the opportunity of seeing comedy and debate from the likes of Adam Buxton, Richard Herring, Robin Ince and Josie Long, with Will Self and Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame, amongst others) making special appearances.

So what’s it all about? Well, in keeping with the maxim of Ronseal, it’s about dialogue. No s~@t Sherlock! In a little more depth, the festival will explore the inner workings of conversation and the spoken word, discovering why it still remains so vitally significant in a world where technology has created a somewhat faceless, artless communication network. Every night of the festival is devoted to one of five themes (Debate, Technobabble, Lyrical, Chatterbox, Banter), all with different celebrities and a varying artistic focus.

The first night, which we managed to blag for £5 a ticket on Groupon – revealing how under-promoted the festival is – was focussed on Debate. Compere Robin Ince led the evening, introducing first a set from Adam Buxton, a pop-culture fanatic and one half of the inimitable comedic duo Adam & Joe. Now you’ve all probably seen the video of Adam, Joe and an endearingly young Louis Theroux dancing around to ‘Groove is in the Heart’. If somehow you’ve managed to miss it then treat yourself here). Alternatively, you may have heard Dr Buckles on Radio Four or witnessed him hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks recently. If so, then you will have some idea of what to expect from his show.

Adam’s set, essentially a ‘best of’ compilation from his popular show BUG, explores the greatest media sharing site of our modern culture, Youtube.  With hours spent trawling the site, he has compiled a collection of what he considers to be the best music videos and the most amazing user responses to them. Now although this is not particularly new territory, for example the Channel 4 show RudeTube also seeks outs popular videos from the site, it is Buxton’s charm and impeccable delivery that make the show his own. As he described himself, the show feels like he has invited us “round to his house for dinner”, but leaving us undernourished he soon digresses, instead showing us videos he likes. The great thing about this feel, especially in the tiny church we were in, is that it creates such a refreshingly informal atmosphere. He shows us a few videos and we have a laugh together. After particular selections he then also proceeds to unveil some hilarious comments left by Youtubers on them. He extracts the very best comments, having clearly committed himself to hours of slogging through undoubtedly inane or abusive chatter. The actual comments he selects are incredibly funny, but it’s his comedic delivery, complete with a range of hilariously indistinguishable accents, that have the audience belly-laughing throughout his set. This is interspersed with Adam’s own music videos, one involving some talking poo – not like South Park, I’ll leave that to your imagination. I’ve always enjoyed his quirky, energetic humour right back from the original Adam & Joe series and it’s great to see that he hasn’t lost any of it; despite sporting a lumberjack beard and having kids he’s still able to prance around the stage rewriting the lyrics to Grace Jones’ ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’. It was one of the finest comedy sets that I have seen in a long time, my continually watering eyes were a testament to that.

Here are some of the best videos he had to offer, each one amazingly different:

Iz Tropical, The Greeks. Video produced by Megaforce.

I absolutely loved this video and had to share it. The combination of naive children playing innocently with nerf guns and the destructive adult animation is wonderful. It made me want to be 12 again, or at very least just shoot some kids with some foam projectiles. The Play Doh C4 was a lovely touch too.

It also got the biggest laughs of the night from its Youtube commenting continuity afficionados:

As a self-professed literalist, Mr Buxton repeated this last comment with hilarious accuracy.

Manchester Orchestra, ‘Simple Math’. Video produced by Daniels.

This video was so engaging and totally mirrored the emotional feel of the song. I admit, I’m not entirely sure what it was supposed to mean but nevertheless, the fluid cuts between the past and present, the juxtaposition of a car crash with childhood relationships, left an undeniable impression on me.

Pigwiththefaceofaboy, ‘A Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris’. Video produced by Chris Lince.

There is nothing that I really need to say about this video. I adore games and have always held a special place in my heart for remixes of gaming theme tunes, so just the Russian-style adaptation on accordion is enough to earn my love, especially as it speeds up as the video progresses. Yet, there is so much more to love about it. The choice of the Tetris theme goes so far beyond simply providing a suitable backing tune and interesting visual prospect. Instead, it is used as a rather inventive metaphor for the Russian working classes, toiling away daily in manual labour yet ultimately seeing nothing for the fruits of their work (in Tetris, your ultimate goal is to make the very thing you have worked at for hours disappear).

Following Adam’s set was an unfortunately uninspiring debate about the Art of conversation and whether the rise of technology had killed it. Robin Ince mediated the debate between experimental comedian Simon Munnery and globally celebrated comic writer Alan Moore. Disappointingly, what could have been a very interesting debate ended up as an unbalanced critique of modern technology, without ever really discussing how conversation had been affected, let alone the prospect of it being a damaged ‘art’. The rise of the internet and social networking were never never mentioned, unbelievable when you consider that they have probably had the biggest impact on conversation. I fully expected the debate to be centred around these communicative tools and how they have streamlined our conversations into small sound bites, whilst allowing them to be shared globally at the touch of a button. Undoubtedly, the debate needed a commentator from a modern perspective to balance out the somewhat outdated opinions of Simon and Alan. Adam Buxton, whose set was devoted to modern technology and innovation, was the obvious choice for this. He certainly would have livened up what was a lifeless debate, especially after his own high-energy performance. Perhaps if they also opened up questions to the audience during the actual debate, rather than asking for them to be written down beforehand, it could have been directed in the way that people expected whilst keeping it relevant and fresh.

Robin Ince’s final set at least seemed to open up the debate slightly. It soon became clear that he had an awareness of social media and how it has affected modern conversation, so it was odd that he didn’t choose to use this point of reference to mediate the debate. Nevertheless, his set was an engaging and thought-provoking way to close the proceedings.

As a reward those that stuck it out until the end, Alan Moore once again approached the stage to pitch a new idea for a children’s cartoon. The captive audience chuckled away as he began to divulge his plans for a Scooby Doo-style crime solving caper starring himself, God and Hitler. There was an explanation for why this unlikely trio had united as a “dream team” (Moore’s own words) but I think it’s more fun to leave you without it… Suggestions on a post card please. The possibilities seem both endless and non-existent.

Roll on Thursday, with Richard Herring and a live tweet off!