SO IT GOES - John Fleming’s Blog

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Behind the scenes with Sammy Davis Junior, Dean Martin and Danny Kaye

Today is Colin Copperfield’s birthday. He was born eight days before me… Just saying… He has turned up in this blog before.  We meet up maybe once every couple of months and he tells me fascinating anecdotes many of which are unrepeatable and some of which appear in his autobiography It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Zing! He has another autobiography written and ready to publish if any…

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[thejohnfleming]

Los Angeles in the 1980s…Holly, Jeff, Madonna… and Missouri in the 2020s

Yesterday’s blog was the first part of a chat with Jeff Copeland, author of two books about Andy Warhol ‘superstar’ Holly Woodlawn – A Low Life in High Heels and Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn… It concludes here… JOHN: You were in Los Angeles in the 1980s… You mentioned Wacko… JEFF: Oh my God! Back then, 1980s Melrose was so hip, so trendy. And Wacko was housed in this building that was painted…

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[thejohnfleming]

Love You Madly Holly - She "shaved her legs... and then he was a she..."

Jeff Copeland is the author of two books about Andy Warhol ‘superstar’ Holly Woodlawn. Holly Woodlawn in May 2007 The first was A Low Life in High Heels. The second is Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn. He now lives in Missouri, USA. I live in Borehamwood, UK. So we chatted on Zoom… JOHN: Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is about…? JEFF: …about a friendship. It’s about a kid who runs away from…

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[thejohnfleming]

Consignia... UK comics living in a neo-Dadaist non material world...?

(L-R, top to bottom: Andy Barr, me, Nathan Willcox, Phil Jarvis) Next Saturday, surreal comedy group Consignia are at the Museum of Comedy in London with a show: Consignia Present: Have a Good One, Yeah? A 10 Year Anniversary Special. I call them surreal… In the billing, they call themselves: “anarchic, experimental, influential comedy geniuses”. In the past, comedy website Chortle has called…

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[thejohnfleming]

The Eurovision Song Contest group which did not represent Britain...

Tonight sees the 70th Eurovision Song Contest. This afternoon, I was talking to Colin Copperfield who, for 20 years, was in the musical group Wall Street Crash… They ALMOST represented Britain in the Contest… ***** COLIN: I think it must have been 1981 or 1982.  The people from the Eurovision Song Contest said: “We’d like your group to do it, to appear for the UK.” The only problem was, by…

[thejohnfleming]

How AI brought my childhood family back to life, sort of...

At the time of posting this, Artificial Intelligence seems to be developing very, very fast… So this is partly posted to remember what things were like near the start of 2026… I have some black & white photos from my childhood. So i decided to ask Dola AI to colourise them and then animate them. I started with a photo of my father with me, a baby, outside Campbeltown, Argyll,  in Scotland, where…

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[thejohnfleming]

Traditional Roman Catholic (etc) marriage vows could be shortened...

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[thejohnfleming]

The Eastern art of egg-painting - dead?

A friend of mine whom I met in Vietnam in 1989, is going back there this year, after 37 years. We both think she may spot a few social changes. When we were in Vietnam in 1989, they were selling pictures created using broken pieces of eggshell lacquered over. When I was in China in 1985, there was a small industry based round painting glass eggs on the INside…  There was a small hole in the top…

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[thejohnfleming]

Chris Dangerfield on his unique 'missus' and his current life in Cambodia...

Chris Daangerfield and his ‘missus’ in Phnom Penh, Cambodia… The last couple of blogs have been me chatting to the admirably individualistic Chris Dangerfield, who is plugging his new semi-autobiographical novel Love in the time of Nudie Mags and who is planning to move into the jungle with his lady friend. Now read on… JOHN: So where are you living at the moment? In Phnom Penh or rural…

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[thejohnfleming]

Chris Dangerfield on the perils of vanity publishers and movie scriptwriting...

In yesterday’s blog, online from his current home in Cambodia, Chris Dangerfield was plugging his new novel Love in the time of Nudie Mags. We chatted about more than that, though… JOHN: You mentioned you wrote a novel when you were around 23 years old. CHRIS: Yes. Tired, etc. I wrote that on a quarter ounce of sulphate and chain-smoking blunts when I was at Leeds University. The internet was…

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[thejohnfleming]

Chris Dangerfield - from Cold Turkey to Love in the time of Nudie Mags...

So I got a WhatsApp call from a number starting +855. I looked up +855. It’s the code for Cambodia. So, of course, I was going to ignore it – I have had enough offers of million dollar windfalls – but the person had left a voice message and I listened to that. It was Chris Dangerfield, a stalwart of this blog a few years ago. He once told me he enjoyed reading my blogs about the chats we had but…

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[thejohnfleming]

Jason Cook proves determination CAN triumph in the film industry…

Getting movies made is neither an easy nor a fast process. I first met and blogged about the indefatigable, highly-creative, dyslexic and very determined Jason Cook back in 2010, when he moved into production offices at Elstree Studios. He was trying to raise finance for the first of a movie trilogy based on his semi-autobiographical books. Last year, his first film Cookster: The Darkest Days was…

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[thejohnfleming]

Who says I don’t write about myself?

A couple of weeks ago, I was saying to someone that I have always made very bad first impressions, particularly in my rare job interviews. I almost never got jobs through interviews. Then and now, on first impression, I think I come across as irresponsible and – this came up at my college interview – certainly not someone who would be able to concentrate or to keep deadlines. In fact, at college,…

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[thejohnfleming]

Enigmatic artist AI teases me about MELT IT! THE FILM OF THE ICEMAN

Anthony Irvine, The Iceman, in Wolverhampton (Photo by Spencer Wakeling) Anyone who read my blog of a month ago (this means you, my loyal readers in Guatemala) will know that Melt It! The Film of the Iceman – the new documentary film about British performance artist The Iceman aka fine artist AIM aka Anthony Irvine – was due to be premiered in Wolverhampton last weekend. It happened but I was…

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[thejohnfleming]

A mouth-dropping new song and video by a British author/journalist...

Forget the open-hearted autobiographical lyrics and the music (really great production)… This is a cracker of a video by British author/journalist/singer/songwriter Ariane Sherine…

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[thejohnfleming]

Burns Night, Lions, Russian bombs in Kiev and the Red Hot Chilli Pipers...

(Photograph by Geralt, via Pixabay) Tempus fugit, according to Virgil, and increasingly so. 13 and 14 years are either a short time or a long time or both. So it goes. It’s Burns Night tonight (25th January 2026) and Russia continues to bomb Ukraine every night – Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Both (or all three of) these things reminded…

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[thejohnfleming]

The Iceman (Part 2) on laughing and crying audiences and angry ice blocks…

Anthony Irvine outside the National Theatre in London… My previous blog was the first part of a chat with Anthony Irvine AKA performance artist The Iceman AKA the fine artist AIM. The Iceman’s performance art involved melting blocks of ice. AIM’s visual art tends to be about him melting blocks of ice as The Iceman. He was talking to me partly to publicise Melt It! The Film of The Iceman – an…

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