Ellis and Rose: The 'Punch' and Judy show

Edinburgh in August. The streets are awash with gaudy Oxbridge try-hards, unenthusiastic flyerers and enough bits of paper to make a tree weep. With famous faces wrapped around every lamp post, and a monumental influx of show-seekers, how are two unknown comics from London supposed to get noticed? Work tirelessly crafting a show so stunning they can’t fail? Flyer for 12 hours every day? Erm, no. Apparently, all you have to do is make some half-arsed puppets and assault your best mate.

Ellis and Rose have only been together for a year and a half; amoebic in comedy terms, yet they’re one of 2013’s most talked about acts – second only to Adrienne Truscott and her magical, talking foof. This year they hit the Fringe with not one, but two shows, and a rather unconventional plan.

“So, we’re doing Jimmy Savile: The Punch and Judy Show – basically, it’s a piece of shit.” A controversial 20-minute piece engineered to drive the public to their actual show, Big in Denmark. The Savile show is unscripted, chaotic and so undeniably crap that despite begging reviewers not to name them, Chortle’s Steve Bennett took it upon himself to out them in a merciless one-star review—which the duo maintain was rather liberal with the facts – after they engaged him in the show. Only, that sort of backfired when shortly after being named, Gareth Ellis took a fist to the face from an outraged Scot. Or so we were led to believe.

“After the review, we thought ‘let’s turn this around – how shall we do that?’” This gave the pair an idea; to prey on the media’s thirst for controversy, while teaching the omnipotent Mr. Bennett a thing or two about playing nice. What was this moment of genius? For Rich Rose to punch Ellis in the face, repeatedly, while telling the media they were attacked, thanks to the review. There was also a pretty grisly moment of ill-advised self-harm with a milk frother, but Rose had to finish the job.

“We didn’t do it solely for publicity; it was a joke – on the media furore surrounding a show that they haven’t even seen.” It worked. The story was reported on Jon Fleming’s comedy blog, before being carried by The Scotsman and several others, prompting a flurry of tweets, driving numbers to their show.

A week later they fessed up to the hoax and released the grim video of Ellis taking a beating, and won themselves a one-off Malcolm Hardee award in the process: the ‘Pound of Flesh’ award for ”relentless pursuit of the kind of publicity money cannot – and perhaps should not – buy.”  Clearly rattled by his involvement in the whole thing, a conveniently unattributed post appeared on Chortle, further piling into the duo, twisting their award win into a pity prize:

“Sadly, the duo did not even get nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt award for the biggest PR gimmick of the festival. Instead the organisers have given them a special ‘pound of flesh’ award, in lieu of the usual ‘act most likely to make a million quid’ award, for which no one was considered worthy.”

After the spiteful post, all comments in support of the duo mysteriously vanished. “Who deletes comments off a review? That’s freedom of speech. People should know that he did this. Another well-respected reviewer was absolutely horrified when she found out.”

For the most part, it’s worked out pretty well for the pair; they drove numbers up, got their name in the national press, and and award – all for the price of a shiner. The comedy world have taken it in good spirits; as a joke, as intended, and as Fringes go, that’s pretty good going. “We do feel a bit bad, for the most part we just think it was really funny.” 

Where do you go from here? Let's hope that's the end of the GBH, or we might have a solo show on our hands next year.