Tribute to a friend

Below is the full article I wrote for the Observer's New Review on Mackenzie Taylor, whom many comedians knew and loved. I'm proud that he was my friend too. He died on 18th November after taking an overdose.

I had no idea how to start writing this piece: this thing that I hope will be a proper tribute, a eulogy, something that gets at the true essence of what Mackenzie Taylor was and is. When I think of the cheerful and extraordinary person face he presented to the comedy world in spite of his illness, the incredible number of people that he helped, made laugh, and helped to understand their own human condition, I am horrified that he is no longer with us. But more than that, I want to talk about him, and the wonderful performer, friend, brother and son that he was. To know Mackenzie was to know that he was an empathiser; insightful; wise beyond his years and much loved by many, many people.

Mackenzie suffered from bipolar schizoaffective disorder, a condition which leads to periods of psychosis, depression, mania, paranoia and a whole host of symptoms which make doing comedy both almost impossible and practically essential. However I had no idea of this when I first met him, which was in 2005 at the Wayward Council comedy gig that he ran and hosted at the Redhill Theatre, Surrey. You don’t remember every gig that you do as a stand-up, but I remember this one because I was so intrigued by Mackenzie’s material. It was just simply really good: interesting, original, thoughtful and funny. I told him so afterwards, and we had an illuminating, lovely conversation. His enthusiasm and intelligence were so clear, and I remember thinking that I’d be seeing more of him on the comedy circuit.

That turned out to be the case when in 2007, at Mackenzie’s invitation, I performed an Edinburgh show with him and the brilliant actor Alex Dee. ‘Open Mic At The Globe’ was based on the idea of Shakespeare characters doing stand-up, and I have to thank Mackenzie for asking me to do it because that was my first foray into comic acting, something I hadn’t previously considered. Indeed I’m laughing as I write this, given Mackenzie’s comments about the brilliance of being in a manic phase, where you feel you can ‘do anything’ – I don’t know if he was then, but there was something so persuasive about him, and the idea was so intriguing, that I’d instantly wanted to meet up and get going.

Mackenzie hosted that show as a sternly entertaining, rollicking Bill Shakespeare, introducing his creations and letting us fly. For my part it was one of the most fun and liberating things I’ve done in comedy, but also watching him work and deal with the pressures of the Edinburgh festival, I learned a lot about him that summer. His creative instincts, his indomitable spirit of ‘no surrender’, his ability to analyse and lucidly explain himself and his condition so that others might not feel alienated, were astonishing.

Those qualities were never more in evidence than in his 2009 Edinburgh show, No Straitjacket Required, a show which dealt with his suicide attempt of the previous year. It was a brilliant hour: illuminating, funny, humane and wise: like the man himself, really. I remember the metaphors he used to convey what his illness felt like, especially the one about it being like having a terrible modern jazz band playing in your head all the time, which he would then play insistently and gleefully. I laughed at the show so much, as did everyone, especially if they related to the darkness behind the merriment. It struck me as an extreme version of something that all great comedians do: making sense and fun of your own problems, to entertain other people. And yourself, obviously (inflicting his ‘brain soundscape’ on the audience! He loved that).

Humour’s a tool to improve the world; Mackenzie knew this better than anyone. When I think of how funny that show was, I’m reminded of the quote that Mackenzie would use night after night in Edinburgh during the Shakespeare show, about tragedy plus time equals comedy “so 400 years ought to make this hilarious”. Well, No Straitjacket Required was only a year afterwards, and he’d already transformed the bleakness of the previous year, where he’d told me that his brain felt like a computer that needed to be shut down. It didn’t matter whether you remained alive afterwards; the main point was, you couldn’t carry on with your brain continuing to, for want of a better description, betray you.

The last gig I did with Mackenzie was less than a year ago, and he was rocking the joint – MCing an unruly and slightly difficult crowd, and coming up with a beautiful, thoughtful and courageous rebuttal of a racist comment from an audience member. His philosophising on the ‘point’ they had made stopped the show for a while, but he brought it back with aplomb and a great joke. Both sides of his response were necessary and superbly done.

I cannot begin to express how much there is a void left in comedy at his passing, and how much his friends will miss him. Mackenzie is someone who, in spite or perhaps because of the problems he went through, was ever sensitive to the needs of others, and able to reach out and help so many people, including me. That he is not here is one of the saddest things imaginable. But he brought a lot of light into our lives, and in a way I know that he, too, has gone into the light.

No Anarchy in the UK

It’s a bad week for anarchy, civil liberties and just generally keeping it real. Malcolm McLaren died yesterday - now he was no Joe Strummer, but it's still part of the passing of a generation that protested and shook up the establishment. This morning, the Digital Economy Bill has passed, bar the shouting. And I think when people realise what they have given away in this bill, they’ll wish there’d been more protest against it.

In better times, decent musicians would have kicked off about this. Guilty till proven innocent, summary disconnection, government control… where are The Clash when you need them? But no, instead we’ve got Lilly Allen, who just really wants Peter Mandelson to clamp down. Artists like Allen, and the record companies, don’t seem to have realised that people who download music illegally are the people most likely to pay for music too. I actually don’t download music illegally – iTunes is just too convenient. I used to, obviously, until one part of the music industry evolved to keep up with technology and stop me doing that.

I’ve also never ‘illegally’ downloaded a TV show or film. To be honest, I feel a bit not down with the kids admitting that, but it’s true. But even supposing that downloading is losing the economy billions of pounds - rather than something which ultimately encourages people to go out and buy boxsets, music, see bands etc- I don’t see how this bill is the right answer. This bill will disconnect people’s internet if their usage is high, on the assumption that it must be illegal. The Magna Carta, anyone? You’d think this government would have learned from the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes that “guilty till proven innocent” isn’t a great basis for proceeding.

And what limit on usage is going to be set? Say it’s 30 gigabytes a month. You can get loads of illegal songs and movies for that. On the other hand, if you run a business from home, you’ll be way over your limit all the time. You actually can’t set a limit; it’s a completely unworkable law. But passing it makes the government look to the powerful lobbyists in the record and movie industries like they’re doing something. And of course it puts the onus on the people and the ISPs to prove their innocence – and makes us pay for it while we’re at it.

Basically the situation we’ve got here is that record company bosses like David Geffen are dictating government policy to fit in with their 20^th century business models, when the way the world works has moved on. And instead of creating new technology to adapt to this new way people want to own content, they’re forcing the Internet Service Providers to do the job of the police. Maybe we should give them guns and sniffer dogs too, or let them beat people up if they can’t prove what they’ve been doing online, or don’t know enough to stop their wi-fi being jacked.

Actual artists and musicians don’t benefit from the record industry’s way of doing business. They benefit from the egalitarian, information sharing way the internet works. They never got much money from record companies selling their albums. They might do if the technology were to exist for them to sell it themselves online. The record and Hollywood movie industries are not some kind of ’12 Good Men’, sticking up for what’s right and fair. The situation we’ve got now is more like some kind of French film noir, where the little guy just keeps getting twatted.

And that will include you, if your usage goes over this whatever arbitrary limit they set. The Digital Economy Bill is a very, very bad law, that has been barely discussed (by people who don’t know what they’re talking about anyway) and then rushed through. Keep lobbying your MP about it. So far, the Lib Dems are the only ones who have taken a stand against it – everyone else barely seems to understand it.

So in the spirit of punk, here's the mish-mash version wot Liam did of our protest song, against All This Sort of Thing...

A short but important rant I couldn't deliver to the Labour canvasser

Someone from the Labour party has just rung the bell to our flat. I went to the door and saw his big red rosette through the spy-hole. I wanted to tell him how Labour have destroyed our civil liberties, introduced tuition fees for uni making it harder for working class kids to get there, started an illegal war, lied and lied, killed David Kelly, given us the millionaire war criminal Tony cunting Blair, are planning compulsory ID cards, have destabilised and ultimately destroyed the British economy by raiding pension funds and overspending, and finally, replaced the Blair cockmonster with someone who, whilst incompetent, is not actually evil, making it harder to vote against them. But I couldn't tell him all that in my pyjamas, so I just stared at him through the spyhole and he went away.