Last night, comedian Tony Hawks gave a performance in Morley Town Hall as part of the Literature Festival. Karen has seen him once before, when he did a tour celebrating breaking his one hit wonder status (he reached 17 in the Albanian pop charts performing with Sir Norman Wisdom).
We suggested him to the festival director earlier in the year and we were delighted when she confirmed she had managed to book him. (His having a new book out was probably serendipitous as he squeezed in an appearance at Leeds Waterstones yesterday).
He mostly talked about his original tour round Ireland with a fridge which was the result of a drunken £100 bet. It turns out he spent £130 on the fridge…
Tony gave us a bit of a Powerpoint presentation with various photographs of his Irish endeavour. He also showed us a photo of the actual pledge he and his mate Kevin signed about doing the bet. By a spooky co-incidence, his phone rang during the performance and he decided to answer it and put it on handsfree because it was his mate Kevin! (It turns out he doesn’t wear a watch and uses his mobile to be able to keep track of time so it isn’t the first time his show has been interrupted).
Tony also played the piano and the guitar during the show and he is a talented musician in his own right, although he struggled with his laptop and one point when the slides lept forward to the end unexpectedly. (The technician sorted it out for him whilst he obscured the screen so as not to give away too much of the presentation).
He was treated to a rather fridgo-centric question time, with many people asking what had happened to the fridge (it is in his house on top of the real fridge), does it actually work (he has never plugged it in, but it may be in doubt as it has been surfing) and will the fridge be appearing in the forthcoming movie? (No, because it has autograohs all over it and a clean fridge would be required to recount the adventures).
His latest book ( The fridge-hiker’s guide to life: How to stay cool when you’re feeling the heat) is a sort of edited highlights of the original, a sort of match of the day of the best bits aand associated reflections. He said it was a good book to buy for someone else, then realised that description was a rather odd one as though it wasn’t worth buying for yourself. Curiously, the fly leaf categorises it as humour/self help.
It turns out that Tony Hawks gets mixed up a fair bit with Tony Hawk, a legendary skateboard person. He frequently replies to the odd emails he receives in his own whimsical way, well worth a few minutes checking some of them out.
Karen primed David to ask him about Red Dwarf- he had been the warm-up man and played numerous onscreen and offscreen roles, including my favourite, the deranged talkie toaster. Tony reacted to this by putting a special dedication in the book.
Tony had a hit in 1988 with a parody song in the style of the Beastie Boys called Stutter Rap. You can watch the original here (Tony is the one in black), or watch this unplugged version.
