new agenda

Any description of Joey Grimaldi's varied talents always includes his unusual skill of lampooning popular figures of his day by apparently re-arranging fruit, vegetables and cooking utensils and other every day items on a barrow. It wasn't a one-off joke, he was known for it and he rang the changes. For example: upper class dandies, the Prince Regent included, had made the Hussar uniform high fashion and Grimaldi apparently arranged a coal scuttle, a muff and a full-length coat into a primitive cartoon sculpture that had a Covent Garden audience of 2,500 rolling in the isles night after night. When I read that information I just couldn't see how it might be funny. It was beyond me. I assumed that an allusion to royalty was dangerous and his comic genius must have been in the execution, leaving the joke therefore lost to us.

Then, in the early 1990's I was sat in the middle of 2000 people in a tent at the Campus festival in Devon, watching the theatrical maverick and spoken word performer Ken Campbell. He had brought a little shopping trolley on stage with him holding several books, which he referred to occasionally. He started talking about the meaning of life and took off his jacket and casually dumped it with the books, then he read out something about physics, replaced the book, took off his glasses and placed them on top of his jacket. It was a hot day and while he talked, he mopped his brow, took off his cap and put it with the rest of his stuff. He started talking about paying a visit on Prof. Stephen Hawking to discuss Grand Unified Theory. He gave the trolley a half turn and started talking to it. No one saw it coming and no one expected it. But there on stage was the unmistakable icon of Stephen Hawking - his crumpled little body with a book on his lap and his face, lost as usual behind his glasses and under the peak of his cap. Uncanny? I think so. Grimaldi was clearly a comic genius. And Ken Campbell is worth a mention too.