Little is just an ordinary Joe . . . Neighbour Mangel's back with cavemen

gary flockhart

FAIR dinkum. As blokes go, Mark Little is a thoroughly good one.

As the hapless and hopeless Joe Mangel in Neighbours he was famous for being the stereotypical Aussie male, fond of a few tinnies around the barbie and a bet on the horses, but much loved by all.

Happily, the Brisbane-born entertainer has a similarly sunny disposition to the now legendary Ramsay Street character with which he made his name all those years ago.

"Just thawing out, bit of sunshine, ripper mate," he says chatting ahead of his return to the Capital in award-winning one-man show Defending The Caveman, at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on Monday and Tuesday.

"It's quite a piece of work," he says, describing the hit 90-minute show, which won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment, and is the longest running solo play in Broadway history.

"Really it's about why men seem to annoy women so much, that's where a lot of its humour comes from. It's trying to explain men to women, and uses this idea... this theory... this fact even... that we came from the caveman... Neolithic man... cavewoman.

"It's the things we used to do once upon a time - that we might be doing now - that makes men and women different. That's really important, the differences between men and women, and how we can work together is to understand how different we are. Therein lies a lot of laughs, and I get to do a whole piece giving all these examples," he adds.

Little says the show is aimed at everyone, but specifically anyone who's been in a relationship for more than five minutes. "The longer you've been in a relationship, the funnier it gets," he smiles. "So I get a great age divide coming along - the twenty-somethings, the sixty/seventy-somethings - and everyone's having a good night as it's a universal theme.

"It's a bit of a revelation to some people this caveman-cavewoman concept," he continues, "but what the play's saying is that the caveman has a bit of bad reputation for being stupid and oafish, and that's not necessarily fair.

"There's the common image of the caveman striking the woman on the head and dragging her to his cave, when really that didn't happen. Truth is mate, the caveman was a protector and a provider who worshiped his cavewoman. It was totally different to what we've been led to believe."

Defending The Caveman opens with the line 'all men are a***holes', and Little says that gets the opposite sex on side right away. "The women are thinking, 'Oh brilliant, this is gonna be a good show'," laughs the 50-year-old. "And all the blokes are sitting there thinking, 'Yeah, I know, I know'. None of the blokes even boo or hiss - they just go, 'Yeah, I know, I've heard that before'.

"What it's saying really is, well, we can't all be a***holes really; maybe we're different and maybe it's the fact that we're not like women, that's what p****s women off so much, that we're not like them."

Written by Rob Becker and directed by Little's wife Cathy Farr, the show's star says Defending The Caveman is "a very, very clever piece of writing".

"I've been with this play for ten years and it seems more relevant to British society now than it did back then," he says.

"Now, with gender issues and what with metrosexuality and a bit of a male crisis and a lot of ASBO young men running around, a lot of 40 year-old boys running around who haven't made that step up from boy to man, whatever that means. So the play's very clever like that.

"There's a lot of love in it, it's got half a brain and it's really, really funny. It's a great recession piece of entertainment. People burst with laughter," he adds. We've heard that the caveman has a bit of a bad reputation, but then again, so does the Aussie male, who is seen as a misogynistic lager-swiller. "Who Australians? Macho?" he says with mock annoyance. "Nah, that's why I was trying to get away with doing this show in Britain. A lot of people think that Aussies are just cavemen anyway, so I was just defending that.

"It's about normal blokes, and how hard it is to be a normal bloke and not be ashamed of being a bloke. It's all right to be a bloke, it doesn't mean you have to be stupid or an idiot. You know, not all blokes are. Some are good men, trying to do the right thing." Laughing like a drain, he adds, "It hasn't really taken off in Oz, but maybe that's like you say, because they can't understand it."

After quitting Neighbours in 1991, Little established himself here as presenter of The Big Breakfast, and has now lived in Britain for 19 years.

The way he remembers it, he first came over here to get away from Neighbours – only to find it was much bigger here than over there.

"Yeah, I had no idea!" he laughs. "I'd finished the show and Britain was two and a half years behind, so when I came over here there was still two and a half years of me on the television. I didn't realise how huge it was going to be when I moved here; I didn't think anyone in Britain would even watch it."

Little had lots of fun playing the Joe Mangel character, but apart from briefly reprising his Neighbours role in 2005, he insists that he has no plans to do so again.

"He was a massive character, and people still have enormous affection for him after all this time, but Joe's had his time. Besides, I've never done any television or film acting since, and that's because people seem to think I'm actually this gardener bloke in real life – it's insane."

Defending The Caveman, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, Monday and Tuesday, 7.30pm, 15.50-19.50, 0131-529 6000

MANGEL HIS WORDS: Mark Little in Broawdway hit Defending The Caveman

Pappy's got a brand new gag

HOT tickets. If you believe the hype come August in the Capital, there are few shows that are not 'hot tickets' – especially when it comes to comedy.

However, Pappy's (formerly Pappy's Fun Club) have the reviews to support their claim: 'Sheer joy,' 'blissfully funny comedy' and 'best in their genre,' are just three of the compliments thrust in their direction after their 2009 show on the Edinburgh Fringe.

Next week, at The Stand, Pappy's return to the city with a world record attempt: 200 sketches in just one hour – plus bonus sketches and an interval.

Will their quick fire gags, recurring characters and snappy songs be enough for them to achieve the impossible or is their historic attempt just spectacular folly? With the clock ticking away and the odds stacked against them, a place in the record books is far from guaranteed but what they can promise at the York Place comedy club next Wednesday is a host of outrageous characters, ridiculous sing-songs and more high-energy, uplifting post-sketch comedy than you can shake a jester's stick at.

LIAM RUDDEN

Pappy's, The Stand, York Place, Wednesday, 8.30pm, 10, 0131-558 7272

WORLD RECORD bid: Pappy's chase comedy sketch record

Linkous' sparkling talent sadly dies

Gary Flockhart

Music matters

MARK LINKOUS, who released his music under the Sparklehorse moniker, told me before his 2006 Liquid Room gig that he'd been to hell and back in the five years since his band's last album, 2001's It's A Wonderful Life.

"I got really wrapped up in my own head and couldn't work for probably three years, just from being secluded and letting things go in my mind," said the Virginia-born musician.

"I always thought it was the end of the world and I was the only person that realised it."

The singer, who I'd greatly admired since Sparklehorse's 1995 debut, Vivadixiesubmarine-transmissionplot, said that a chemical imbalance in his brain resulted in the frequently introspective and downbeat nature of his music and lyrics.

That may have been good for fans of his dark and beautiful lo-fi rock songs, but it was not so for the fragile genius behind the music, who over the years had to contend with crippling depression. This battle against his personal demons would be one he would ultimately lose.

Linkous took his own life on Saturday; the news of his death confirmed via an online statement attributed to his family.

Conversely, it's not the first time he has died. In 1996, while touring the UK with Radiohead, he suffered a drug-related catastrophe.

After mixing a cocktail of alcohol, anti-depressants, Valium and heroin he passed out in his London hotel room with his legs trapped under his body, cutting off his circulation for 14 hours until he was found unconscious.

Linkous was pronounced clinically dead, albeit for two minutes, while being treated in hospital. He came back to life but was temporarily paralysed for weeks and wheelchair-bound for six months.

Having shot himself in the heart in an alley outside a friend's home in Knoxville, Tennessee at the weekend, this time he isn't coming back.

Linkous' dark, poetic lyrics and unmistakable sound earned Sparklehorse lots of friends in the music industry.

And I wrote in a 2001 review of third album It's A Wonderful Life that it would only be a matter of time before the record-buying public clicked on.

Criminally, it never turned out that way. But although Linkous' Sparklehorse was largely a cult concern who never had wide commercial success, it found respect among critics and other musicians.

In the wake of the weekend's tragic news, Linkous' back catalogue is sure to be re-appraised, so at least more people will get to discover his special talent.

At the time of his suicide, he was working on a new Sparklehorse album, due to be released by the Anti-record label – though how much of the record was completed is anyone's guess.

What fans will be grateful for is Linkous' multimedia collaboration album with producer Danger Mouse and the director David Lynch, entitled Dark Night Of The Soul, which gets a summer release.

The sadly departed singer was hardly a prolific artist and that was mainly because of his up and downs. But when we chatted back in 2006, it seemed as if things were looking better.

"I try to look at it that way," he said, "but it's still hard to get through every day. But I'm lucky to be doing what I'm doing, and you'd think anyone would be content and satisfied with that, but it is still hard to get through every day.

"If I didn't have music I would just go crazy. But it's still a struggle."

His art was genuine but, sadly, so too were his problems.