Preview: Jerry Sadowitz in London

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Thursday 22nd June 2017

Here's a bit of behind-the-scenes-at-BCG gossip for you. During the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, when every second window in the Scottish capital seemed to have a big blue 'Yes!' poster in it (and, no, the other windows didn't often have a big black 'No' in response) we at British Comedy Guide had a few informal chats about how exactly a 'Yes' vote in the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum might affect the website, given the whole 'British' thing.

Would we need to change the name? Add a little asterisk? Or just stop covering some of the greatest comedians this land has ever produced; a list that should always, always include Jerry Sadowitz.

As it happened, a lot of those other windows clearly voted 'No' after all, so we can still celebrate this brilliantly uncompromising conjurer/comedian, without getting a new logo made up. Although, in truth, Sadowitz - who starts a run at the Soho Theatre on June 26th - hasn't always been enormously keen on being interviewed by BCG anyway.

Back in 2013, for example, we made the mistake of sending a few questions via email, some of which were not 100% to his liking, to put it mildly. Hardy souls can read the whole thing here, but selected responses included...

"What a boring question. I honestly switched off half way through."

And:

"This is a really stupid question."

And then:

"PLEASE tell me you have a better question than this. The country's falling apart."

But also:

"You're a complete and utter twat."

And then finally:

"Of all the stupid questions so far, this one is particularly annoying, and irrelevant and when I meet you, I propose to write it down on cardboard and nail it to your face."

Absolutely excruciating. But memorable: when a book of classic BCG interviews eventually emerges, that one will stand out. Sadowitz is not a man renowned for biting his tongue, but then biting your tongue is also pretty stupid, when you think about it. Indeed, while he's famed for saying the unsayable, sometimes it turns out that the supposedly unsayable should actually have been said a hell of a lot earlier (Google 'Sadowitz' and 'Savile' for that extraordinary story).

This is no loose cannon then; more an intensely powerful cannon that invariably hits the target but can cause a fair bit of collateral damage, for the unprepared. The really interesting thing about our interview, when you think about it, is that Sadowitz actually made it to the end, then mailed it back. He may "terrorise and baffle", as his current show blurb puts it, but he's also supremely dedicated to his craft.

Jerry was actually born in New Jersey, but raised in Glasgow, and he decided to become a magician at the age of eleven. Which means that he's now been inventing and honing new tricks for a pretty bloody impressive 45 years. Amid the occasional controversies, it tends to be overlooked that he's one of the most talented - and innovative - magicians in the business, whose too-candid-for-primetime material means that his tricks have often been nicked, he says, by a host of bigger names.

The title of this Soho show sums it up pretty well: Card Tricks with Inappropriate Patter. Even if his ideas do get appropriated by richer, smoother magicians, they'll never match his way with a swearword, a put-down, and a bewilderingly un-PC story about a random celebrity which may well turn out to be true. So which would you rather see? Exactly. No further questions.