John Fleming

It was in a Huffington Post piece in October last year that I first mentioned Andy Dunlop, much-respected President of the World Egg-Throwing Federation.

Now things are coming to a boil with the 2012 World Egg Throwing Championships themselves - on Sunday 24th June at

A couple of days ago, I was chatting to comedian Jeff Stevenson who remembered the night of 15th April 1984 when comedian Tommy Cooper may have died on stage during the Live From Her Majesty's TV show - it was screened live by London Weekend Television...

Yesterday, I was rushing to a meeting at 6.30pm just off Leicester Square, in London.

At 6.18pm (that exact time is on the sound recording on my iPhone) I saw a man standing in the North East corner of Leicester Square with a placard saying:

I HAVE NO MESSAGE. AND...

For decades, Covent Garden Piazza in London has had a pitch for street performers. One of the regulars there is Paolo Ferrari who also plays comedy clubs. I had a chat with him in Covent Garden yesterday afternoon.

"It's all about guts," he told me....

I was chatting to absurdist comedian Charlie Chuck this week. Or, rather, to the real person who performs as Charlie Chuck - Dave Kear. He told me he had been researching his family tree.

"I've traced it back," he told me. "Me family tree. It went back to...

Last week, I wrote a Huffington Post article about this year's extraordinarily heavy-handed and draconian censoring of the £400 Edinburgh Fringe Programme entries. (Performers pay almost £400 to get a meagre 40 word listing in the Fringe Programme).

You might have thought, at £10 per word,...

Now, make no mistake, I love the Edinburgh Fringe. One thing I like about it is its freewheeling, hands-off nature. Anyone can perform at the Fringe; the Fringe Office itself merely acts as a central not-really-controlling-anything hub. They charge you to put your 40 word listing and perhaps...

I was in North Korea last week for the celebrations of the late Great Leader Kim Il-sung's 100th birthday.

I left my Beijing hotel early in the morning for a flight to North Korea and got caught in a traffic jam on one of the Chinese capital's ring roads.

When...

I am in Beijing but, this morning, it felt like I was home in London when a taxi driver took me on a 12-minute round trip in the opposite direction to where we were going, to increase his meter fare. It is what all cabbies must do the world over...

I was in a basement disco in Kiev a few nights ago at three o'clock in the morning.

Anyone who knows me will tell you this is not my natural habitat. I hated dancing and strobe lights in the late 1960s and early 1970s when people not only dressed in...

Two days ago, comedian Lewis Schaffer asked me to be on his weekly radio show next Monday and wrote in his blog that my own philosophy of blogging and performing was that "garbage set free is better than genius hoarded". I have never said that,...

Last night, I went to see American comedian Lewis Schaffer's ongoing 90-minute twice-weekly Free Until Famous comedy show in London's Soho. Every time a different show.

Lewis Schaffer - always call him 'Lewis Schaffer', never just plain 'Lewis' - it's more memorable in publicity terms -...

I write a daily blog. One of its joys is that people send me bizarre anecdotes.

This is certainly one, so pin back your eyes like you are Alex in A Clockwork Orange and read on.

Yesterday afternoon, I got an e-mail from a Jeff Lantern, who...

"The first time I met Ray was in 2004 at a Linda Trayers gig in Kilburn where Russell Brand headlined and only three people turned up," Paul Ricketts told me yesterday.

"The gig was pulled but, Russell Brand still demanded his money (£100), leaving Linda Trayers in tears....

In her blog yesterday, 2010 Funny Women Awards finalist Lindsay Sharman wrote:

A chap from The Green Party contacted me last week to offer me a 10 minute slot on a bill headlined by Alistair McGowan, for a Green Party fundraising...

Last week, I had a drink with Italian-born British-based comedian Giacinto Palmieri - after seeing the first try-out of his show Pagliaccio which he will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

Giacinto is one of life's natural quotables:

"It's a love story," he says, "but it's a...

I have occasionally blogged advice on the perils and pitfalls of staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. But it really requires a whole book - which is what Mark Fisher has now done with The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide - How to Make Your Show...

There are a lot of films labelled "the best worst movie ever made" - for example, Killer Bitch.

It has taken me some time to catch up with The Room, made in 2003.

British writer and social commentator Charlie Brooker said after its

British-based German comedian Paco Erhard, is taking his 5-Step Guide to Being German show to the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival after a one-off at London's Leicester Square Theatre on 13 February. This is an updated version of the show I saw at the Edinburgh...

The Edinburgh Fringe has been described as being like standing in a cold shower tearing up £20 notes. Now is the time when potential participants are asking themselves Should I really take a show up there in August? So, in a spirit of altruism and pomposity, I thought...