page_title: Malcolm Hardee
section_title: Clubs
hierarchical_section_title: Malcolm Hardee / Clubs
caption_attribution_description: English: "Up The Creek" Comedy Club, 302 Creek Rd, Greenwich, London SE10.
context_page_description: Malcolm Hardee was an English comedian, author, comedy club proprietor, compère, agent, manager and "amateur sensationalist".
  His high reputation among his peers rests on his outrageous publicity stunts and on the help and advice he gave to successful British alternative comedians early in their careers, acting as "godfather to a generation of comic talent in the 1980s". Fellow comic Rob Newman called him "a hilarious, anarchic, living legend; a millennial Falstaff", while Stewart Lee wrote that "Malcolm Hardee is a natural clown who in any decent country would be a national institution" and Arthur Smith described him as "a South London Rabelais" and claimed that "everything about Malcolm, apart from his stand-up act, was original".
  Though an accomplished comic, Hardee was arguably more highly regarded as a "character", a compère and talent-spotting booker at his own clubs, particularly The Tunnel Club in Greenwich, South East London, which gave vital and early exposure to up-and-coming comedians during the early years of British alternative comedy.
context_section_description: Hardee was also renowned as a talent spotter and owner of clubs which gave vital early exposure to up-and-coming comedians including Charlie Chuck, Alan Davies, Harry Enfield, Harry Hill, Paul Merton, Vic Reeves, Frank Skinner, Johnny Vegas and Jo Brand, with whom he had a two-year affair and whom he persuaded to become a comedian. He hosted the first-ever outing of the new circus group Ra-Ra Zoo, who performed comedy mime to a, for once, silenced audience. He also worked for a time as the manager of Jerry Sadowitz and was an occasional promoter and tour manager for his friend and neighbour Jools Holland.
  His most infamous venue was The Tunnel Club, which he opened in 1984 next to the southern exit from the Blackwall Tunnel in Greenwich, South East London. He would sometimes introduce inexperienced stand-ups to audiences with the nerve-jangling line: "This next act's probably a bit shit" but, once their performance was finished, he would often comfort those he thought showed promise with backstage words of encouragement and urge them to try again. According to Stewart Lee, he would often insult you after you have finished your act while also simultaneously praising you, as a way of protecting your dignity. Lee notes, that after his first gig he did for him, Hardee said "That was Stewart Lee. Started off well, got worse, by the end he was shit". His advice to comics who were concerned that a joke might be offensive to an audience was: "If you think it’s funny, then fuck ’em."
  At his weekly Sunday Night at the Tunnel Palladium shows, sometimes even experienced and accomplished comedians failed to complete a whole set against the unforgiving crowd and razor-sharp heckling. When the club became established, it attracted groups of men apparently from the suburb of  Eltham who Hardee referred to as 'Herberts'. They  were usually drunk and attending the Tunnel club as it offered after hours drinks on a Sunday night, a rarity back then. They usually ended the evening by fighting, fortunately usually between themselves, leaving everybody else as spectators. It was at the Tunnel Club that comedian Jim Tavare once began his act with the unwise opener, "Hello, I'm a schizophrenic" – to be met with the lightning rejoinder from a heckler in that night's audience, "Well, you can both fuck off then!". Julian Clary together with Fanny the Wonder dog were surprising hits at such evenings.
  The Tunnel closed in 1988 and, in 1991, Hardee opened the Up The Creek comedy club in Creek Road, Greenwich. In an upstairs bar at the club was a mural commissioned by Hardee as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. It showed Hardee as Christ with Jo Brand, Julian Clary and other famous British comedians as the Disciples including Ben Elton as Judas Iscariot.
  In 2001, after he sold his percentage in Up The Creek, Hardee took over a floating pub, The Wibbley Wobbley, on a converted Rhine pleasure cruiser in Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, by the River Thames.
caption: Up The Creek comedy club, Greenwich, 2011
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