Liars League, 10th February

Liars League is a storytelling night with class and one that recognizes the perhaps awkward truth that just because you can write a kick-ass story, doesn’t mean you’re any good at reading it aloud. So Liars League teams good story writers with good story tellers to create a night of tales that is top notch. Each performer is a genuine actor, turning each short piece of fiction into almost a one-person play. Accents are adopted, actions are played out, and you are completely sucked into the narrative.

Liars League is a monthly event at The Phoenix on Tuesdays (The Phoenix fast becoming a place my Meetup group goes to regularly) and each event has a theme. Writers are invited to send in their submissions and then these are vetted by the ‘Liars’ who run the league to pick the cream of the crop and the ones that will work best for the event. They have to bear in mind that someone actually has to read these stories aloud and make them believable. So, for an example of one that didn’t make the grade – someone had written a story all about a person who could do all these amazing impressions. But that would mean the actor needed to be able to do all these impressions so regardless of how good the plot was, it wouldn’t work in Liars League. Once they have the stories, they need to match them to the actors. Any accents that feature prove a strong point to consider – they had to draft someone in especially for one of the stories we saw as they realized they didn’t have anyone who could do a Scottish accent. But more than that they just seemed to match the personas of the stories to the performers incredibly well so that you couldn’t imagine any of the other performers there doing any other story.

They have six pieces per night and an interval after the first three, plus plenty of time to chat and hang around after (when I got to talking to the compere for the night, Liam, who is a writer himself. Never a storyteller apparently although he does a bang-up job of hosting in an amusingly arch manner).

For this event we had the theme The Beautiful and the Damned (it was close to Valentine’s Day) and so we had a range of love-themed stories with many a non-happy ending. First, Selkie, the eerie tale of the disappearance of a man and his entire family – had he married a silkie and they’d all been taken out to sea?

Next we had a unique and unsettling story of this poor sap who had a tendency to fall and fall hard for people who didn't return his feelings. His tendency to pour out his emotions in poetry lead to his exploitation to create renewable energy. There's nothing like the pent-up energy of unrequited love to create a source of power!

We also had the hilarious story of Ger Sheen and the Satanists involving a literal motherf*cker and a bunch of satanists terrorising a poor sheep farmer. There was the sweet love story Gerald the Absolute Swine who finally meets his match. The rather sad Lag, about a prisoner on day release to attend a uni reunion, seeing the now-married ex he still has feelings for. And even a wizard story on the origins of Guinevere's beauty. You can watch the performances of the stories, or just read them yourself here.

And just to keep it even more interesting, at the end of the break there is a short, literary quiz. With books for prizes of course! This time they were giving out tacky YA romance novels in the main although one ‘real’ book was also a prize. This was much more informal than I expected – if you knew the answer you just had to shout out as soon as you knew it, as they read out clues to the title. So even though I figured out a couple I wasn’t brazen enough to pipe up. 

Listen Softly London, 26th January

If you are a lover of words then you’re spoilt for choice in London. There is a litany of spoken word, poetry, literary and storytelling nights out there (and many of them have been blogged about by me). A fairly new arrival to the scene is Listen Softly London, run by Dominic Stevenson, in a room at the top of the Crown in Southwark. Dom works in the charity sector but still felt like he wasn’t doing enough good in the world and so decided to put on a spoken word event to raise some money for a good cause. When it was a success and someone asked him when the next one would be, it became a regular occurrence.

Dom curates four people who deal in the currency of words, as well as performing some of his own works. These are not the same people at each event and so subjective taste as well as their own objective talent will determine how much you enjoy it, but to go by the event I attended this is another gem in the literary crown of London.

First up we had Dan Carpenter reading an excerpt from a story in the collection After the Fall. I am convinced I have seen Dan read elsewhere but cannot figure out where. Anyway, this story concerned a world where technology was no more, a world where technology was viewed with suspicion and fear, by those who could even remember it. We didn’t find out why, and nor did we hear the entire story so we were left with our own unsettling imaginings as to what had gone wrong. Quite clever.

After a short break, Sarah Sheldon treated us to some of her ‘comedic storytelling’. In short, she is a standup comic but she has her own very unique delivery and stage persona. I know I won’t do it justice by describing it here but she had a sort of Charlie Brown resignation about her, in relation to the struggle that is ordinary life, as she told us about her favourite childhood stories of Topsy and Tim, envying both their companionship and their lives where nothing whatsoever interesting happened. She shared with us her fear of change, and how this has lead to an almost debilitating obsession with whether or not her boss was going to leave for a new job. And finally, we were introduced to her Jewish grandmother’s fixation on chairs. It was really funny, and I was really pleased to see a female comic given some floor time.

The last two acts were your ‘typical’ spoken word complete with the pattern and cadence familiar to anyone who has seen much of this. But that doesn’t mean they were old hat. Megan was, perhaps a little predictably, quite feminist (it just abounds in these circles) and started off with a bit of a rant inspired by Jay Z’s 99 Problems (she had 99 problems and the male construct anti-women society was one etc). Not all her pieces were quite so political though – she had a good old rant about couples snogging on the tube and also covered her sincere desire to be Maria from The Sound of Music when she was a little girl, and her feelings about leaving her student life behind. Before, finally, finishing on another feminist note inspired by Mary Beard. Her work was clever and witty with vocabulary any word lover would appreciate.

And finally, we had Dean McCaffrey. I must admit, I got a little distracted by his face and tats when I was trying to listen to his words but the story he was weaving eventually grabbed my attention. He started with quite a long piece about befriending a homeless guy who turned out to be something of a muse for him when he was but a young lad, as well as providing an introduction to the realities of homelessness that we all know exist. I’ve not really heard such a long piece of spoken word before. One of my Meetup members said it was Shakespearean but it reminded me more of an epic Homerian poem. He then rather shyly performed a rap for us as he is a rapper as well, though I must say, without background music the difference between rap and spoken word is ‘subtle’.

People were encouraged to stick around afterwards and have a chat, which added to the friendly and welcoming atmosphere. These nights are monthly and if you like this sort of thing, or want to find out if you do, then you should pop along some time.  

Velvet Tongue, 2nd September

Who would have thought that underneath innocuous Bar Kick in Shoreditch you could find such a haven of sexual liberation. This, however, sounds a lot more exciting than it was. 

We apparently missed the first act of the night - a reverse striptease, or 'dresstease' where a man started off naked and gradually clothed himself until he looked like a woman. This also sounded like it was the best act of the night.

We got there for the compere, Ernesto, telling everyone about the origins of Velvet Tongue, and then introducing the first act, a gay man who read some 'erotic' literature. I put erotic in inverted comments because even though they did in fact feature sex, and sensuality we all quickly discovered that this alone does not erotic make. As one of my friends put it, it was like listening to him read his boring diary. His monotone delivery didn't help and, as an editor, I was dying to get my hands on it and spruce up his prose a bit.

I quite liked the next two acts, one being just a silly performance of a song involving whoopee cushions and the other providing probably the highlight of the night. Lazlo Pearlman, a stocky, wisecracking Jewish guy came out into the audience, Jew-seeking, in order to distribute doughnuts. He then stripped off a little and started telling us about his sexually liberated mother and upbringing and his encounters with Jews - especially some ultra-orthodox Jews who invited hiim to lay tefillin, which he had never done before. He had stage presence, and was amusing, he was entertaining to listen to. And then, the music went on and he started dancing and then he provided us with the shocker - he wasn't a he! Stripped right down, beneath his burly, hairy, rather attractive chest, he had no, as Nursey from Blackadder might say 'winky'. He then explained, as you can imagine, what a dilemma he had with these Orthodox Jews who wanted him to do rites that only a man in Judaism has any 'right' to be doing. And then, we danced! He grabbed some of the audience and made them follow him around the room. I found myself caught up in his wake, him holding one hand, me holding someone stranger's as we Jewish danced around the room. It ended the first half on a strong point.

Sadly, it was barely worth coming back from the second half as each dire, boring, amateur graced the stage to be replaced by yet another. I derived some small enjoyment from realising I was at what could be the epitome of an 'underground' event - people were dressed (or not) however they pleased, taking advantage of a welcoming, safe place to be themselves - but sadly I might as well have been listening to some self-indulgent jazz or poetry for all the entertainment and eroticism it provided.

Of course, it wasn't all about being stimulating and there were some touching moments and some that took me out of my comfort zone, and I sort of appreciated that. For example, one guy took to the stage and proclaimed he was a sadist - he enjoyed hurting women during sex. Of course, purely consensually. He recited some poems of his that reflected his tastes in sadism - punching, knife play. As a girl whose limits are some spanking and a bit of light electric shocks (see Antichrist) it made for some difficult listening, despite his reminders that for all the violence, an orgasm was at the end for both of them. But his was probably some of the better, more well written material that night and it was compelling to listen to the brutality, and a window into a world I'm not familiar with. 

There was also the person who took to the stage as a 'fairy godmother' and recited a rhyming poem which was quite an amusing ditty in some ways, but also quite a sad tale of acceptance, culminating in her derobing and revealing her transsexuality. 

And I have to give a quick mention to the German who recited a poem on making a chocolate carrot cake - something about combating racism in cookery. I noticed he seemed to have some shrubbery coming out of his shorts. This, it turned out, was the leaves from the carrot he had stuck up his bottom, which he dramatically pulled out and used to stir his wine with. He was quite a character!

But mostly it was kind of boring, and I mainly stayed because as more and more people left, I didn't want to be impolite! We were finally (sort of) rewarded because the final act of the night was not bad, not bad at all. A girl in an open marriage told us a vignette about a recent lesbian encounter she'd had (these were not rarities for her) and did so in a funny, dry, honest way that was both amusing and quite a turn on. I don't know if it was quite worth the wait, but had the whole night been like that I would have been more than happy.

Sadly, with open mic nights you can never really guarantee quality, and I wish they had just tried to restrain the quantity as well a little, so that even if you did have to endure some bad acts, they were at least short. Some of them seemed to drag on interminably. A time limit would have been very welcome. Ernesto himself was quite funny, having more changes of costume than an Academy Awards hostess in the night, progressively getting more naked with each outfit. My favourite was when he came out in nothing but an inflatable rubber ring.  

I appreciate what they're doing in terms of welcoming anyone and everyone to explore and be open about their sexuality, but I don't think I'll be returning. 

Bang Said the Gun, 27th September

Bang Said the Gun prides itself on being the noisiest poetry night in London, even garnering complaints from the locals on occasion. To be honest, most of this volume is created by the audience who are encouraged to take up the makeshift maracas (milk bottles with rice in) and shake them at every opportunity. The poetry itself is spoken at a fairly normal decibel.

The night is held upstairs at The Roebuck pub in Borough (which is a lovely pub and serves some excellent chips. It’s also great value for money – a large wine was only £4.80!). The room is quite small and it does get busy so getting there early is advisable.

And it gets busy for a reason. There wasn’t a single bad act, though some of them stood out more than others.

After our compere for the evening had stopped skipping around the stage to the music, shaking his ‘maraca’ all the while, and occasionally banging on the bar in case rattling wasn’t loud enough, he introduced himself and the night began. It has been going for 15 years or so I believe he said, and was set up because they wanted an antidote to all the ‘beard-strokey’ serious poetry happening at the time. Instead, this is supposed to be more light-hearted . . . more raucous, and they achieve this by playing loud music and having some silly interludes, such as playing ‘keepy up’ with a balloon for a prize. The first act introduced rather emphasised how this night contrasts to others.

Fresh back from the Edinburgh festival, he was definitely one of my favourites of the night. Not strictly spoken word, but part comedy act, his ode to yellow was completely off the wall and silly and not to everyone’s taste, but right up my street. I’d urge you to seek him out and see if he appeals to you. Unfortunately I cannot remember his name. But I can remember some of his shopping mantra ("take a lemon from the shelf, take a lemon for yourself") so if anyone recognises that, please let me know who is responsible for it.

The final speaker of the first half was also excellent. A lot of spoken word artists speak about things that they strongly believe in; it is not unusual for the poems to have a political leaning (always liberal, I do wonder what would happen if a right-wing poet ever found their way to the stage). But, even though I am sure they believe what they are writing, sometimes it is hard to believe that they really know what they’re talking about. Not the case with Joelle Taylor, who works closely with young people from all walks of life via Slambassadors, using poetry as a way for them to deal with or escape from their sometimes tough situations. Her poetry was powerful and touching, clearly inspired from experience (she said as much but you could tell from the way she delivered it that this was true). In fact, she was so overcome with emotion from her words that she couldn’t finish the poem. She was completely forgiven this by the audience who were all touched by the message.

After the break, the person who won Raw Meat Stew last week took the stage. Raw Meat Stew is the open-mic part at the end of the night where you win a slot in next week’s gig. He’d only been doing spoken word for a few months and his novice status was evident, but having said that he had good stage presence and I think his poetry showed promise, there were a few clever turns of phrase, even if it was a little rough around the edges. And long.

My overall number 1 act of the night was Musa Okwonga who brought a huge amount of energy to his poems, commanding the room so much that he didn’t even need to use a microphone. His first poem on the fast pace of this world was delivered with breathless velocity, his poem on the father he never really knew was moving, and his words on the tremendous effort it takes to just do the adult thing and tidy your room (a metaphor for dealing with life as an adult in general) was spot on. I will make the effort to see what else he does. I’m already following him on twitter. Proof of my admiration.

And almost last was Raw Meat Stew. Even the people who did this were pretty good (though not as good as the ‘pros’) and had a charm to them. The guy who won was a bit of a regular at Bang apparently, often participating in the Stew. He won over Joelle, who was judging, and the rest of the audience, with his poem about Shelley Long from Cheers. Clearly we’re all suckers for a bit of audience participation – having to shout “Cheers” whenever he signalled clinched it for us despite his halting deliver (well, English wasn’t his mother tongue).

I was incredibly impressed with the standard of this night. I’ve been to a few spoken word events in my time and this was a head above the rest. Even if it didn’t have all the silly noise and jingles (yes, Raw Meat and the balloon game come with visuals and a song) this would be a night deserving of becoming a regular feature in my repertoire. Bang Said the Gun was kick-ass.

Shoreditch Literary Salon, 12th September

It has taken me longer to get into a Shoreditch Literary Salon, hosted at Shoreditch House, than it has for some people to get a table at Dabbous. The night is held only semiregularly and spaces are strictly limited, and free. Which means that you have to be quick off the mark to be one of the first 250 to RSVP to the Facebook invite if you want to be reasonably sure of a space (priority is given to Shoreditch House members). But finally the stars aligned and I got the notification that another one was being hosted while I was actually on Facebook and I RSVPd straight away.

Stephen and I arrived at 6:25 and there was already a queue. Despite all the warnings about not turning up if you hadn’t got your name down before the magic number 250, no one was checking names on the door so they couldn’t have had a clue whether or not those who were supposed to be there really were, or if there were interlopers. I had thought we were being extra cautious getting there so early because I knew numbers were limited, and I assumed (wrongly) that there would be enough seats for everyone. By the time we got in to the area, there were none left and we had to stand. And still more people streamed in!

As with other literary nights, the success of them depends quite heavily on the calibre of the guests, in terms of entertainment value. If you have a boring speaker or reader, then the night is going to be slightly marred. This night, unfortunately, did suffer from this with the second speaker Bharat Tandon. He is one of this year’s judges for the Man Booker Prize, the shortlist of which was announced Tuesday. On paper, this must have sounded like an excellent guest to have, and very topical. He’s also a lecturer on post 18th-century British literature and so would be used to speaking publicly you would think. Unfortunately he came across as quite awkward, rather pretentious, but worst of all he wasn’t able to speak off the cuff very easily. His pre-planned talk was fairly painful to stand through as it was, but when it came to the question and answer part, it was nigh-on excruciating as he stuttered, and hesitated through his answers.

The previous guest, Shirley Conran had been an excellent and rather raucous, steamy start to the night. Regarded as one of the pioneers of racy literature, she was clearly used to being on stage and the centre of attention. Approaching 80, she had the wit and sparkle of a much younger woman, so that hearing her say ‘thrust his cock violently into her mouth’ was not as shocking or as grotesque as it would have been if, say, your nan had mentioned it in conversation. She came across as a very interesting lady, forthright and frank. I hadn’t heard of her before the evening and was left wanting to know much more about her and her life and read her most famous book Lace, which seems to be a thinly veiled memoir (even less well cloaked now that she has included an afterword confessing who the characters were in real life).


So, we had started on a good note, but then things had stalled and people were getting restless. Luckily after Bharat it was time for an interval so people could reinvigorate themselves at the bar, or try to get a slice of the free pizza on offer. Besides being free to get in, Shoreditch Literary Salon also provides free cocktails on arrival and free pizza at the interval. But not enough. When we arrived there were still free vodka and tonics lining the bar. However, if you turned up closer to 7 than 6:30, you were out of luck. As for the pizza, there was no way near enough to afford even a slice to everyone who was there. This lead to what felt like almost a free-for-all as people were determined to get their free slice. It’s amazing how free food turns us into base animals. I happened to actually be ordering a drink at the bar when some of the pizzas were presented and managed to get myself and Stephen a slice. If you had been sitting down until the end of Bharat’s piece, you were out of luck. In fact, the pizza was brought out not quite before the Q & A with Bharat was over, and some astute people realised this and also that they wouldn’t get a look-in if they didn’t move soon, so started to shift and move toward the bar. This, I thought, was a little rude and disrupted what was happening on stage. Bharat was already a disjointed speaker, I think people getting up and moving around didn’t help his concentration.


I know people appreciate free stuff, but when there’s not enough to go around, I think sometimes it’s better not to bother offering it at all, as it just leads to crowds and unpleasantness as no one wants to miss out. Leaving the pizza at the bar also had the unfortunate consequence of people waiting for drinks being able to help themselves to as much as they wanted, or to people who had no need of a drink clogging up the bar to get to the food.



Having said that, the scarcity of it meant I was extra pleased I got some, and everyone getting up to get some presented the opportunity to move to a better position for the next half.



I must confess that I didn’t watch as much of the Olympics and Paralympics as the rest of my fellow Brits seem to have, and therefore I didn’t get swept up in the national crush on Clare Balding. Until last night that is.



Clare Balding took to the stage to read some of her forthcoming book My Animals and Other Family and she completely captivated and charmed the audience. She was warm, very spontaneously funny, open, and her chemistry with Damian was excellent. I did wonder if they had met before as they were so at ease and comfortable with each other. The chapter she read from was humorous and entertaining and learning about her background was equally interesting. I know she sounds posh on TV but I had no idea she had such close ties to aristocracy and royalty. And did you know she’s a lesbian?! (Kidding, she’s not really) (No - she is.) She was completely in her element and I could see why the nation had fallen for her over the summer.


What is different about these nights compared to other literary nights I have been to (apart from it being free) is that the guest doesn’t just read their excerpt and get out – Damian does a bit of a ‘chat show’ session with them, and then the audience can ask questions, so you get to know more about the author. Damian is an excellent host, a little bit cheeky, funny and asks questions we’d actually like to know the answers to. He very much deserves credit for making the evening so enjoyable.



Part of me hopes no one reads this as it is hard enough to get on the guestlist in the first place, but it was fun and deserves to be read about. Highly recommend.

Oh – and Jon Tickle from Big Brother was there, which is always nice.