Clubs
Hardee was also renowned as a talent spotter and owner of clubs which gave vital early exposure to up-and-coming comedians including Charlie Chuck, Alan Davies, Harry Enfield, Harry Hill, Paul Merton, Vic Reeves, Frank Skinner, Johnny Vegas and Jo Brand, with whom he had a two-year affair and whom he persuaded to become a comedian. He hosted the first ever outing of the new circus group Ra-Ra Zoo, who performed comedy mime to a, for once, silenced audience. He also worked for a time as the manager of Jerry Sadowitz and was an occasional promoter and tour manager for his friend and neighbour, Jools Holland.
His most infamous venue was The Tunnel Club which he opened in 1984 next to the southern exit from the Blackwall Tunnel in Greenwich, South East London. He would sometimes introduce inexperienced stand-ups to audiences with the nerve-jangling line: "This next act's probably a bit shit" but, once their performance was finished, he would often comfort those he thought showed promise with backstage words of encouragement and urge them to try again. His advice to comics who were concerned that a joke might be offensive to an audience was: “If you think it’s funny, then fuck ’em.”
At his weekly Sunday Night at the Tunnel Palladium shows, sometimes even experienced and accomplished comedians failed to complete a whole set against the unforgiving crowd and razor-sharp heckling. 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 heckler in that night's audience, "Well, you can both fuck off then!"
The Tunnel closed in 1988 and, in 1991, Hardee opened Up The Creek comedy club in Creek Road, Greenwich. In an upstairs bar at the club was a mural commissioned by Hardee as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. It showed Hardee as Christ with Jo Brand, Julian Clary and other famous British comedians as the Disciples including Ben Elton as Judas Iscariot.
In 2001, after he sold his percentage in Up The Creek, Hardee took over a floating pub The Wibbley Wobbley on a converted Rhine pleasure cruiser in Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, by the River Thames.
Read more about this topic: Malcolm Hardee
Famous quotes containing the word clubs:
“I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children’s homes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Women realize that we are living in an ungoverned world. At heart we are all pacifists. We should love to talk it over with the war-makers, but they would not understand. Words are so inadequate, and we realize that the hatred must kill itself; so we give our men gladly, unselfishly, proudly, patriotically, since the world chooses to settle its disputes in the old barbarous way.”
—General Federation Of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)
“The true reformer does not want time, nor money, nor coöperation, nor advice. What is time but the stuff delay is made of? And depend upon it, our virtue will not live on the interest of our money. He expects no income, but outgoes; so soon as we begin to count the cost, the cost begins. And as for advice, the information floating in the atmosphere of society is as evanescent and unserviceable to him as gossamer for clubs of Hercules.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)