Dear Madam: Redux — An Introduction
When I was a teenager, maybe 17 or 18, I lived in a small village on the south coast of England, which is where I grew up.
Occasionally, I’d buy a copy of The Stage, a weekly newspaper covering the entertainment industry, mostly theatre.
One time, I saw an ad:
“Fill out this application, send us £20, and we’ll help you become a background extra in films & TV!”
A background extra. Wow. That’s movies and TV and stuff, I thought. This could be my big break. I started practicing my autograph. California here I come and all that.
I sent off my hard-earned money… which I borrowed from my mum.
Eventually, I got a letter back confirming my acceptance as a budding young actor. It was going to be me… and Tom Cruise. That’s how it works, right? (I said to myself at thew time).
It was very exciting. I tore open the envelope. The letter began:
“Dear Madam,”
Huh, I thought. My name is Jason. I’d even signed the application “Mr.” not “Madam.”
Spoiler alert: I never became an extra. Never got my money back either. £20 down the drain. I wonder how many other people sent off money and never heard back.
That, I realised, was the first time I got screwed over by the entertainment industry.
So, a few years later, in 1998, I compiled a little zine, I suppose you could call it that and named it Dear Madam.
Iwould include a photo of there, but it used copyrighted images for the cover. I didn’t think about that at the time, but now I doi.
I was performing stand-up in comedy clubs and doing bits of performance poetry in art/spoken word nights. So I recycled that letter’s opening salutation as the title.
But I didn’t just write poetry. So I threw in jokes, sketches, and odd ideas I was working on around that time. Some fresh, some remembered bits I’d written a few years earlier.
A lot of the performance poets I met, had printed their collections and would read from them. They just photocopied pages, stapled together with collage-style covers on coloured card. This was almost pre-Photoshop. Well, that was released in 1990, but I didn’t know anyone using it. These little tomes were cobbled together using guts and glue… and a photocopier. And a stapler. And Tipp-Ex.
So I followed suit.
I recently found my original version of Dear Madam and have decided to reboot the concept for today. This version will include some of the material from that first tome, alongside new semi-autobiographical ramblings, poetry, retired stand-up, and whatever else I feel like throwing in. But having looked at it, I realized there was material that I’d written that was left out.
And I’ve always liked when comedians published collection of essays, poems, and short stories like Steve Martin with Cruel Shoes and Pure Drivel, and Sean Hughes’ Sean’s Book and The Grey Area.
So this is:
Dear Madam: Redux
No, I don’t know what redux means. Yes, I could look it up. No, I’m not going to bother. Hey, if it worked for Francis Ford Coppola when he did Apocalypse Now: Redux, it works for me.
If you enjoy it, great. Let other people know.
If you don’t enjoy it, keep that to yourself and move along.
Here are some of the parts that make up the new and improved Dear Madam. This list will continue to grow as I add more.