talkmagic.co.uk

Right, this might be my first and last post here but here goes.

I was in the audience with my son who is 23 and he thought George King was totally off on another planet!
George seem to have an audience on cruise ships that adore him, but magic is moving on. George unfortunately got himself caught between the "old school" at Blackpool and the new kids on the block in the audience who want to see magic move into the 21st century.

I am a working professional, for about 10 years. When the clapping started I clapped along, for about 2 seconds. I found it the right thing to do. The old man next to me (70-80 years old?), put his hands on mine, to make me stop, explaining me that they were insulting him, that I did not have to clap. I did not care, I just wanted George to stop. As his preparation, his act and behaviour were so shameful, I really found it correct, and if I had the power to make it stop, I should use it so I found. I just wanted to watch the magic show.

However out of respect for the older magician next to me, I stopped, otherwise I would have insulted hìm, and did not want that.
I am used to work with children, all the time they give signals about the show. If you so something wrong, they will teach you. It is their duty as an audience. Exactly like this the public tried to teach George King. The clapping did not just start like that, a lot of signals were given before, unfortunately our stand up comedian was blind to them. He tried to keep up with the people who were politely listening to him, explaining how good he was, instead of trying to get the others along. Wrong choice!
But most sad thing of all, I think is that he did not learn anything about it at all, and will just believe he had a bad day, with a difficult audience.

Dumpster wrote:Im genuinley undecided about this.

On the one hand, his act was terrible, dated, racist comedy told to an international audience. He told us how he was friends with more succesful comedians, his lovely villa in Tenerife, his 36 years of experience on the Queen Mary 2, and then repeated this information many times, without acutal jokes to go with it.

He made jokes equating sex with gardening, making innuendo about "flavoured gardening gloves" which, if they existed would have been a fun euphamism - but they don't so the act made no sense. I was surrounded by people from other countries in the crowd, and they were shocked by some of the anti-french jokes. When he asked a 75 year old woman how often she "trimmed her lawn", the audience started to slow hand clap, eventually causing the compere to announce he would not be doing any more jokes, telling us "I am a very good comedian", and he had 36 years experience of TV, Radio and cruise ships. He then left the stage to great cheers and applause, and (so I read) left the venue, leaving Tony Stevens to announce the acts from offstage, and the organist played music between acts.

Now, in my opinion, George was terrible. He did tired, sexist, racist material to a crowd that obviously were not interested. Then, after the interval, he did another 20 minutes or so, when he should have been filling time waiting for the next act to be ready. It was awful, awful stuff. But that's just my opinion and there were 3,499 other people in the audience, and I'm sure that there must have been some Daily Star reading, cheap cruise ship sailing people who liked what he was doing.

What sits badly with me is that the audience was supposed to be made up of magicians. These are performing people who should have an understanding of how awful George must have felt. He tried to carry on, but eventually had to give up and whilst I was personally happy to see him leave, I felt really uncomfortable in the crowd, and felt bad seeing a fellow human being put through that.

I did not join in the slow hand clap nor did I cheer when he left, even though I was happy to see him go. Afterwards, I felt uncomfortable having witnessed it, and wondered how the poor guy was doing. Remember, that this s*** comedy really does seem to go down very well with the cruise ship audience (google him, you will see people saying his gardening routine was excellent).

So what does everyone else who was there think?

I posted about this in the Blackpool subject, but I'll throw it in here too:
he deserved it, I was glad to see that the crowd did stand up and threw him off.
As it had been said so many times before, 2011 is no place for racist, homophobic, sexist humour.
I mean, what do you ask a 75 year old woman if she trims her lawn?
WTF???
I mean you say you feel bad for him, that no human being should be put through that... but do you think the lady was pleased to be in the spotlight and asked if she shaves her bits? How must she have felt?
I truly despise comedians that use their crowd for material. This is just bad comedy.
I am French, have lived in the UK for 9 years, and trust me, I can take a French joke. I make some myself.
But this guy managed to offend me.
I mean, that was so poor, so little... sorry I couldn't stand for that c*** (not the best).
I slow clapped. I cheered when he walked off.

I love British humour. but this was crass.

I despise Ken Dodd, he is old, tacky, boring, and his act at Blackpool is usually the spot where I take a nap, and recharge the batteries for the Ruskin afterwards. But you know what?
Ken Dodd has done some French jokes in the past, and even if I don't like his stuff, I respect the guy... He has some funny lines at times, but still. he is not crass. The guy has been at the Blackpool convention for years, granted, but I don't think a magician crowd is a tough one for a comedian.
For a magician, yes, but not a comedian...

I mean if you are good and funny, you are good and funny.
George King went the racist way, the sexist way and the crass way, got slow clapped off stage.

Came back, tried the poo / fart jokes route, got no reaction, then went homophobic. That was it for me. I am not homosexual, but I have some friends who are. But that's not the point.
I was slow clapping louder than the first time. Yes it was cringy, but what made me cringe was King's blindness. To him, we were the bad crowd, and he was above us, we couldn't reach him, and he walked off proudly.

Now excuse me but his handling of the situation and heklers did not show much professionalism...

It's like the guy from Seinfeld who went berserk at some show and went all racist... Sorry, but if you are a pro, you should behave like one.Finally I was left disappointed that no one from the Blackpool convention apologised the next day. that worries me, as they don't seem to realise what happened there...
For an international event, and the biggest (or one of) magic convention in the world, that's poor. Very poor.
I need to write to them actually regarding this event.
I will do that tomorrow, and see if I get a reply.

As for George King, well, I wish him plenty more slow clapping and dying onstage.
I can't believe I actually paid part of that guy's fee.
That's a disgrace.

I am quite sure I would have hated this fellow's act. It sounds like the sort of entertainment I abhor. Yet somehow I couldn't bring myself to do the hand clapping and the other stuff. As a fellow entertainer there would be something dreadfully unprofessional about that kind of thing.

An amateur can really do what they like, I suppose. A professional should refrain since I don't believe there is a professional alive who hasn't died the death somewhere or other although I have heard dubious claims from certain pros that it has never happened to them.

I am sure I would have detested this act. But to go to the extreme described would go far too much against the grain for me.

Surly the people that booked him must have some responsability. They must have known what his act was like.

I am with Mark Lewis on this.
Write to the organisers. They are the ones who booked him - and book his like every year.

Hopefully this will be a wakeup call and cause the organisers to choose far more carefully in future.

Robin Duke’s report on the Convention - The Blackpool Gazette:

Unfortunately comedy compere George King failed to find the same kind of success with a terribly dated set seemingly aimed at upsetting as many people as possible. Slow hand claps and heckles saw him vanish faster than a magician’s assistant on skates.

Peter Eldin on www.magicweek.co.uk:

Towards the end of the first half the show was marred by the dissatisfaction of a section of the audience with the compere’s approach and material. I have never seen such a hostile reaction from an audience (whether justified or not) and I hope I will never witness anything similar again.

For 6 years my son and I have not been able to attend the convention, but this year we managed to do so. He was 17 the last time, and, obviously, 23 this time, so George King's style of comedy had no relevance to him whatsoever. He didn't even get the reference to "The Comedians" and thought it was an acknowledgement to "The Magicians" on BBC!
As a 20 something, he is what magic will be in the future and it was encouraging to see, after a 6 year absence, how many younger faces are attending the convention, but I am afraid that once George King started, I could see we were going straight back to the 70's, when my son and a lot of the audience weren't even born.

from what Ive read, the crowd at this gig are a hard, unforgiving lot who would happily chew you up and spit you out. All of which makes me think.
"ME ME ME, book me next year, I love the french, never joke about the folk I hate, and (if the truth be known) the best part of my act is when folk heckel me (I can take as much as they give, the question is, can they).
Besides, Ive played harder crowds in Iraq and albania

devilstick Peat wrote:from what Ive read, the crowd at this gig are a hard, unforgiving lot who would happily chew you up and spit you out. All of which makes me think.

Quite the reverse in fact! The acts went well, the general atmosphere was as good as ever until George's comments started to annoy and upset. There have been many good Comperes in the past so it's not hard to organise. However, if you want the gig, I'll happily back your application !

really!!!
You've not seen my show have you?
All joking aside, id love the gig as
A) i love entertaining entertainers, their wit and banter is always a challange.
B) as a juggler, i reveal what I do, which at a magic convention would be a plesant change.
C) i'd get free entry
D) i need the money
E) well, i cant do any worse than this years one.

I agree with Mandrake. The audience was wanting good magic introduced with some reasonable comedy That would have been ideal but I'm afraid it wasn't to be.

devilstick Peat wrote:from what Ive read, the crowd at this gig are a hard, unforgiving lot who would happily chew you up and spit you out. All of which makes me think.
"ME ME ME, book me next year, I love the french, never joke about the folk I hate, and (if the truth be known) the best part of my act is when folk heckel me (I can take as much as they give, the question is, can they).
Besides, Ive played harder crowds in Iraq and albania

I don't get the "this crowd is tough"... I mean are magicians not people able to laugh?
I am very good audience when it comes to magic or comedy... If I don't like what I see, I am not gonna complain or anything; if feedback is asked, I will give a constructive opinion, but that's it...

I don't see why the Blackpool convention is a tougher gig to compere at... I think that's a petty excuse... As Mandrake said, some of the previous comperes were good...
And some years, the comperes were bad, or not that great; I don't have a problem with that... SOme type of humour is not my cuppa, and I clap politely, and do my bit as audience... But George King was just offensive, and I don't support this type of thing...

From What I read on here I think it is disgracefull that organisors of an event like this can book an act like this. Bearing in mind the wide range of people in the audience and the different audiences that magicians perform too, magicians have got off lightly.

The quote from the newspaper seems to be quite mild. I would not like to start thinking about what would have happened if someone had secretly recordeded even a small section of this persons time on stage and it was out in the public domain. When you think that many magicians are family entertainers and or children entertainers what sort of imaged would be set, would parents want people entertaining their children when the image displayed here could have been one that tollerates or enjoys racism and sexism.

Well done to everyone who made a statement at the event and lets hope someone learns that they need to book the right person. I guess no one will stand up and take responsibility for this.

Nic