Ecstatic Gaucho

I’d never heard of the Cathars before, or the buggers, as Ken called them. This was when Holy Blood, Holy Grail was still a cult book and way before its offspring, the Da Vinci Code, took all things Knight’s Templar into the mainstream. It turned out the Cathars were a medieval movement based on the Gnostic heresy, who lived in large castles in the Languedoc region of South Western France before they were violently suppressed by the Roman Catholic church.

Ken Campbell’s hilarious, rambling ‘Violin Time’ introduced me to this fascinating area of European history, as well crazy stories of life in Essex and the Hackney Downs and more. This was in 1997, when I was still living in Putney. London was meant to be swinging again, but it sure wasn’t happening down there. But Ken showed that there was something ‘going on’, although it might not be reported in Vanity Fair, even if I couldn’t quite see it at that point.

I was so impressed by the show that I took Tamara, an ex-university friend, to see it the next week. She didn’t quite get it, and it just confirmed to her that I was irrevocably strange. It can’t have been long after that that we lost touch.

Languedoc interested me as my dad had retired there and Ken’s explanation of their heretical belief system was intriguing. He covered a lot of ground in that performance – his trips to Newfoundland and drinking screech with the loopy locals, a visit to Damanhur, a New Age sect who live in caves in the Alps. He also got on to the girl he picked up who tried to trepan herself in his house, and came downstairs with a bloody drill sticking out of her head. Not to mention Macbeth in New Hebridean Pidgin English.

Ken’s flaming eyebrows, bulging eyes and expressions of pure mischief were unique. He was a psychedelic prankster, but stoned on the possibilities of life. I looked out for performances afterwards and went to BAC for one and back to the Cottesloe for his History of Comedy – Part I (Ventriloquism). Here’s some clips of his inimitable story telling style - a and b. I wish I’d seen more of his shows before he dissapeared back into the big magician’s hat in the sky. I wonder what his history of comedy part II would involve? It could have be anything.

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