I am a massive fan of the late and great
Ken Campbell, a mischievous theatrical genius and one of the funniest men I have ever seen live. I was once laughing so hard during one of his shows that he was forced to comment on my laugh... in fact I realise I wrote a pretty good summation of my feelings and respect for him
when he died in 2008. I still regret the fact that I didn't cast him in that Absolutely Scrabulous read. I would have loved to have got to spend that day with him. He was and is an inspiration to me, even so.
Tonight I watched an utterly remarkable, beautiful and funny documentary from someone else inspired by this bushy eye-browed guru, who knew him personally and intimately as it turns out
Nina Conti's "Her Master's Voice" which I can't recommend to you too highly. Nina was one of Ken's proteges (and I am pretty sure performed in the 24 hour play, "The Warp" which I went to review for the Sunday Times, but which defeated me by about the 3rd hour - I like sleeping too much for stuff like this) and it was he who suggested that she get into ventriloquism. She took up the challenge and then some, taking it way beyond the hand up my bum jokes that most comedians might go for and taking into a theatrical examination of self. As someone who has always been interested in exploring duality - to begin with with Stewart Lee as my vent dummy (and a vent dummy that interestingly once tried to wank me off with another vent dummy), but then on my own through conversations with myself in my act, right up to playing myself at snooker in a Methodist church - I understand where she is coming from and it's been a real pleasure to watch her act develop over the years. This remarkable film takes things to a whole new level, poignant, hilarious and playing in that dangerous hinterland between madness and sanity that I also love to inhabit. There's a slope on that no-man's land and if you stumble you roll right down into the world of madness.
It's also a eulogy to Ken and to the love he engendered and the great wisdom and knowledge he had. But shows the power that a truly great performer has, as Nina struggles to bring his old vent dummies to life, with one of them mocking her for her inability to find his voice, but succeeding magnificently with an old woman dummy that quickly seems and feels like a real person. She also does something awful to her own Monk which made me cry out in anguish, even though he is just some cloth. But she'd been very open about the psychological reasons that she had created him too.
Oh look, you'll really like it, unless your heart is dead. Give it a watch. It'll probably make you cry. It didn't make me cry. But I might cry if Me2 ever dies. Even if no one seems to care about Referee 1 being extinguished.
