Day: 13 February 2015

Are you a fan of popular culture? How about comedy? Do you know that one of this country’s best comedians performed a sell out two shows at Hackney Empire this weekend just gone, and has been working the comedy scene for twenty years, but you’ve likely never heard of him? (ACTUALLY AS YOU’RE READING THIS COLUMN ON MY WEBSITE, YOU LIKELY HAVE AS MY AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC ”KNOWS”)

American comic Kevin Hart named him as his favourite UK comedian and he took his show Slim In Wonderland to Edinburgh in 2011 and The Scotsman gave him rave reviews ‘Slim is hilarious’. Still bet you’ve never heard of Slim though have you?

His name is Danny Gray otherwise known by his stage moniker as ‘’Slim’’. He performs comedy that anyone from any age, class or background would understand and find funny. Unlike many other black comedians, his set isn’t funny only if you ‘’get’’ urban culture. Slims jokes are all-inclusive and not solely about his black experience.

A lot of black comics on the London scene do, I admit, focus their sets around black cultural jokes that you have to know to understand. Slim isn’t one of them. His set is totally diverse with jokes based around his family, airlines, sex, being a bus driver in his past, topical news issues and so on.

There are hundreds of urban and black comedy nights taking place right under your nose all over the UK. They are making loads of money. As mentioned above, Slim celebrated his twenty years in the industry at Hackney Empire, which was packed for two shows. It seats 1275 people at £25 per ticket. That’s around thirty grand a show and sixty grand for the run in less than 24 hours!

SLIM AT HACKNEY EMPIRE – FEB 2015.

I imagine that mostly Londoners attended this. What about the fans all across the UKs urban cities that would make an appointment on TV to see this guy in action? How do they get to experience pop culture that they love and have paid their licence fee to see? The licence fee should mean that all communities and styles are represented. And Slim is bloody hilarious!

Lets put this in perspective. Radio 1- the national radio station plays what is considered pop culture music. In 2015 this is a healthy mix of hip-hop, R&B, grime and EDM. Even the Daily Mail runs numerous stories about young urban names like Kanye, Beyonce, Jay Z, Lewis Hamilton, Serena Williams and more. TV News shows across all broadcasters now have a very healthy mix of BAME presenters and talking heads. But put on any national TV comedy experience and its always nearly totally white male?
Look at the list below of top comedy earners in 2013. We thought the music and media industry’s diversity record was bad but comedy is shocking!

1 Peter Kay £32.8m
2 Michael McIntyre £21m
3 John Bishop £6.3m
4 Jack Dee £5.2m
5 Russell Howard £4m
6 Frankie Boyle £3.3m
7 Harry Hill £3.3m
8 Rhod Gilbert £3m
9 Sarah Millican £2m
10 Sean Lock £1.7m
11 Jason Manford £1.5m
12 Lee Mack £1.5m
13 David Mitchell £1m
14 Al Murray £1m
15 Ross Noble £0.78m
16 Jack Whitehall £0.5m
17 Hugh Dennis £0.5m
18 Chris Addison £0.4m
19 Marcus Brigstocke £0.35m
20 Simon Brodkin £0.26m

One single woman in a sea of white males. Not one ethnically diverse name amongst them?

What does Slim need to do to get a real main slot break? This week he received this e-mail from a very well known TV company that attended his show.
‘’…very much enjoyed the gig. He thought Slim was good, but perhaps not right for us on this series at this time. We always have other projects bubbling along and should anything come up that we think is a better fit, then we will get in touch’’. LMFAO. Really?

He’s performed in Jamaica, all over Europe including on USA airbases, United Arab Emirates and visited Los Angeles on 3 occasions. He was the 1st black British performer to appear at Hollywood’s Comedy Store on the invitation of John Witherspoon after he supported him on his UK tour. He has also supported Eddie Griffin, Bill Bellamy, Mark Curry and more. His TV and film credits include BBC2’s sketch comedy show The A Force (1997 & 2000), Channel 4’s Nights Out at the Empire (1999), BBC2’s drama ‘Attachments’ (2002), ITV’s Comedy Factory (2006), Voice of the LILT Parrot for ITV3 (2009) which he also scripted, The Most Annoying People of 2010 BBC3, feature film It’s A Lot (2013), All About The McKenzies (on line comedy series 2013) and OnesNtwos (on line comedy series 2013). Also Kojo’s Comedy Funhouse, Comedy Central Live At the Comedy Store, Jongleurs Live.

So, he’s okay for cameo slots all over the place but still he’s ‘’perhaps not right for us, not the right fit, blah blah’’. Just say it, he is black. Can the colour of a person’s skin make them un-inclusive? IN THE UK? YES!

Its true that even without TV he has made a great living from comedy for twenty years. As a young’un, he used to drive his friends Curtis Walker and Ishmael Thomas to gigs regaling them with stories until one day Curtis said to Slim; you’ve got a 5-minute slot after the interval. Slim said he was so nervous he got very drunk, went on stage told a story and everyone laughed which threw him completely so he told them he had had a few drinks and didn’t know what to say and left the stage to rapturous applause, the rest as they say is history.

Clearly he didn’t NEED TV back then and doesn’t need it now in order to earn money. But that’s not the point. The point is when do his fans across the nation get the chance to see him on mainstream TV? When does BAME talent get an equal playing field? How does an audience that may not have access to London, or the money to visit a theatre engage with him? If he can sell out established theatres doesn’t a TV commissioner somewhere need to think ‘maybe this guy has an audience and we can give him a bigger one and get great ratings simultaneously’.

When I was at MTV BASE I knew a young comedian called Kojo had a weekly comedy event in central London that was always packed. I was determined to put it on air, as I knew audiences across the UK would tune in. My bosses trusted me and empowered my team and I to make it work. Next thing KOJO’S Comedy Funhouse is a series that rated highly for MTV for a couple of years and led to all types of well paid new career prospects for him. He just needed that break.

Similarly, we gave a young very talented comic writer Jason Lewis a break with a show titled The Jason Lewis Experience. It did brilliantly and got him a foot into the BBC COMEDY Developement department. A pilot was looking healthy , and then BBC commissioners changed and it was dropped. All we want is an equal playing field!.

Slim is known as the people’s champion and 4 times voted the UKs best comic by his fellow comics (the award has only been held 4 times), winner of multiple awards. Now 42, he performs over 200 live gigs a year up and down the UK both for ‘Urban’ and mainstream circuits, he performs in hotels, comedy clubs, nightclubs, theatres ranging in capacity from 100 – 3600. Over a year he probably performs to in excess of 40,000 people.

Top Shakespearean actress Janet Suzman angered many when she said theatre was intrinsically part of white culture and black people were not interested. Tell that to the 2000 plus black people that went to see a 20-year celebration of Slim the comedian last Saturday. In an age where advertisers are falling over themselves to woo the young urban key influencers with big money for top of the range products, TV and the UK comedy industry is still stuck in the dark ages.

At 42 Slim still has a lot to say. And better than peers half his age.

6 Myths about hair extensions put right, by a man that knows..

SHORT AND CHIC OR LONG AND LUSCIOUS- THREE V HAIR SALON GIVES US THE LOW DOWN ON ALL THINGS ”HAIR”.

I’ve worked in the entertainment industry for two decades. That’s a long time sitting in the corner awaiting interviews and snooping in on celeb skin and hair secrets, watching as glam squads pretty up their targets, and a long time as a nosy journalist to sniff out the truths and myths behind much of the BS PR and fashion peeps put out there.

Having worked with practically every female celeb in pop culture since the nineties, I can tell you that in my opinion; over 90% of them have hair extensions. When I first began in this industry, hair extensions were the reserve of only showbiz pop-sters actors and film stars like J Lo, Beyonce, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, Victoria Beckham and countless others who trot up onto a different red carpet daily, rocking yet another new and different hairstyle — changing colour, style and even the length of their hair – Rita Ora is the current queen of this, but in 2015, its not just for the ‘’slebs’’ but also de rigeur for Joe and Joanne public, and discussed as openly as your annual holiday!

Former Coronation Street Actress Helen Flanagan recently announced that she had chopped off all her hair extensions as her baby kept puking in them. Helen admitted she did have some clip in hairpieces though. ‘Just for emergencies you, and for looking ‘glam’…and remember that time in 2004 when Victoria Beckham outraged us all after boasting about wearing extensions from Russian prisoners so that she had a Russian Cell Block H on her head?

THREE V HAIR SALON.

Most hairdressers now offer a hair extension service, and Notting Hill based Celeb hairdresser Julien Guyonnet, tells me that nowadays its so common that over 85% of London’s females have hair extensions, and see them as basic grooming alongside nails, bodily hair and tanning salons. That’s so high maintenance!

Julien (who has preened the tresses of Misha B. Cheryl Fernandez-Versini when she was a Cole, Peaches Geldof. Jade goody. Danielle Lineker, Lucy Rusedski, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. The Liberty X ladies, Vanessa Feltz, Victoria Beckham called him about monofibre extensions and even Russell Brand has had Juliens magic hands tend to his mane of testosterone filled hair), is in demand at his Three V salon and always zealous about his thoughts on the art and ethics of the humble hair extension.

JULIEN AND NACHO (THREE V SALON) WITH RUSSELL BRAND. ”IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR RUSSELL…”

The lucrative hair extension industry is full of so many stories, that even comedian Chris Rock made an ethical angled movie about it titled ‘’Good Hair’’, about his daughters fixation with ‘’good hair’’ which in her media saturated eyes was ‘’white hair’’, long, shiny and straight as opposed to African hair which is coarser and was unfortunately seen by his daughter as ‘unmanageable’.

Reasons not to have extensions are numerous. They include damage (Naomi Campbell), same look (everyone looks like they belong on TOWIE), maintenance (I once had some for a fancy dress party and suffered for two months as my head was heavy, couldn’t be tied back in the gym and forget swimming without a rubber helmet!), cost (human hair is ridiculously costly and often unethical), obvious (one day you have a short bob and the next day your hairs trailing down your ass) and they may drop out (there are loads of facebook photos of unfortunate episodes of ladies leaving clumps of hair in horrified boy friends beds).
However, if you have weighed it all up and still keen to go ahead, then these are…

THE LAW OF HAIR EXTENSIONS, ACCORDING TO CELEB HAIR DRESSER, JULIEN GUYONNET.

1-The only thing that matters is the ethical issue.
‘’DO NOT BUY HUMAN HAIR- IT’S NEVER ETHICAL, women who sell their hair do so because they are desperately poor – do you really want to benefit from their desperation?’’ (Yes, he yells this!). Using human hair may sometimes look more natural, but not always and it may have a dark side. “You don’t buy knickers in a second hand shop or dead people’s nails. It’s the same thing!” Think of the karma!’ There’s a seedy under-belly that people don’t know about. Some poor woman in India or Russia has been paid about 20 pence to have her hair chopped off! Foreign prisons and church’s are said to be the worst for taking advantage of their subjects and the human hair trade has even impacted the human slave trade. Furthermore, some questionable funeral directors have even been known to shear corpses that are about to be cremated for their hair! God bless the human hair trade.

2-Often its not human hair it’s an animal. You’re wearing Shrek’s donkey to bed.
Many real hair sales people market their hair as 100% natural hair. And this is true. It’s all real. But this does not mean human hair. Often you will also have a number of contributors from Noah’s Arc. Julien says its mostly Yak, horse and donkeys. Ee – aw!

3-Human hair is riddled with a history of chemicals.
After human hair is sheared off and washed in an abundance of chemicals, it has to be bleached and coloured to match colour charts and been processed to within an inch of its now dead life, before it gets vacuum wrapped and off to the salon. This can lead to a multitude of allergic and skin and scalp reactions. Monofibre hair is less harsh and the hair lighter.
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4-Bling isn’t always more beautiful. It doesn’t cost more to look better.
It’s a myth that you’ll also spend a lot of money to maintain your extensions if you want good quality ones that last. Many ‘’hair people’’ will repeat over again that you ‘’get what you pay for’’ suggesting it has to cost loads to look and feel real. This isn’t always true. Julien says Monofibre hair was the first hair extension invented by his former training ground salon Antenna, and comes in real and zany hair colours. A full head of monofibre hair can take as little as 2-3 hours to do and cost around £500, whilst a full hair of human hair will cost £1000 upwards and take most of a day to put in.

5-Human hair is heavier and will weigh you down…and out!
Julien insists that his main concern once his clients are sitting in his chair, his main concern is how to keep the clients hair safe and undamaged. ‘‘Monofibre hair is man-made and looks and feels exactly like real hair, and is three times lighter than human hair which is so heavy it can lead to traction hair loss. Unlike human hair, which is mostly glued in, monofibre has no glue or chemical involved. This salon is a glue-free zone! We do a single plait or braid at the root and wrap the monofibre hair into your hair and seal just the monofibre so that your natural hair is never touched or stressed, keeping it totally free from damage with no pressure on your scalp’’. After all you don’t want to be the next bald Naomi Campbell or Kate Beckingsdale!

6- Size doesn’t always matter, extensions aren’t all about length.
Extensions aren’t only for people who want long, luscious locks; you can also use them to simply add volume instead or cange your shade or colour without affecting your own hair. Many of Juliens clients aren’t just famous folk in the public eye, they also include people undergoing cancer treatment and things like alopecia that need a confidence boost temporarily. ‘‘If your existing hair is at little as three inches long, you can get extensions, you can choose between straight, wavy and curly. The goal with extensions is to have the most natural look you can achieve”.

So there you have it hair aficionados. Go forth and multiply that hair but make sure its ‘’good’’ hair in every sense of the word!

JULIEN DOES HIS HAIR THING BETTER THAN THE REST!