February 20^th 2005 had seen a hastily arranged charity show to raise money for the funeral of Malcolm Hardee (see here for details).

This was followed up, on February 5^th 2006, by a benefit tribute show at the Hackney Empire that apparently lasted 4.5 hours.

By all accounts it was a rowdy night with a very “refreshed” crowd that booed and / or shouted down a number of the acts. Chortle said it was technically shambolic, the hecklers were feral and there were middle-aged men on stage in just their socks. Janey Godley said there were around 40 acts (a weird mixed bunch of a poet, musicians, comics, a conjuror and Frank Sanazi singing old lounge songs as Adolf Hitler).

Performers included:

• Arthur Smith (compere)
• Boothby Graffoe
• Charlie Chuck
• Frank Sanazi
• Hattie Hayridge
• Henning When
• Janey Godley
• Jeremy Hardy
• Jim Tavare
• Jimmy Carr
• John Hegley
• Johnny Sorrow
• Johnny Vegas
• Jools Holland and Squeeze
• Kevin Eldon
• Phil Zimmerman
• Ricky Grover
• Simon Day
• Stewart Lee

The Belfast Telegraph had a single paragraph piece that said that Jimmy had been booed off stage – which very much gives the wrong impression as it sounds like half of the acts were either booed or removed (or both).

Jimmy was his usual upbeat self and said:

It’s the first time I’ve been booed off in years and a good lesson in humility. It was very aggressive and weird but rather brilliant.

According to the write-up in Chortle he had received the “most aggressively hostile reception” but “won around the majority with a typically well-crafted joke about rape (“and that doesn’t reflect well on you”, he admonished).

That article also said he “gave as good as he got when it came to heckles – some with the devastating panache of the Tunnel Club’s mob, but rather more that were just thuggish abuse – the end result was probably a no-score-draw.”

Janey said that Jimmy was heckled all through his set and “pulled them back and made the best he could of a conflicted audience”.

Someone who definitely was removed from the stage was Johnny Sorrow who lasted just over a minute (Chortle) before the crowd demanded that he leave.

Chortle described Hattie Hayridge and Simon Day as both “struggling to connect”.

Both Chortle and Janey found the Johnny Vegas slot disturbing as he made shouty, rambling, impassioned pleas about how badly his life was going (he was very drunk) and tried to get the room to sing Jerusalem (which caused some people to leave as they thought the evening had finished).

Janey said “Johnny normally thrives on this kind of situation, but he became incoherent and the crowd went for his throat”. Staff members struggled to get him to leave the stage and Janey said that she tugged on his jacket to get him away as the crowd were getting stroppier and he was louder and drunker than ever.

Here’s me thinking it’s a bad comedy gig when someone won’t stop talking…this one sounds like it was a nightmare.

The glamourous life of a stand-up comic…