BBC Radio 4’s daily arts news show Front Row sliced a terrific bonus performance-art story out of the Rupert Murdoch testimonial pie-throwing fiasco. (See previous post.) The show contacted the fabric artist whose large linen piece “Debate” hangs in the hall where Murdoch was being grilled about his part in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. When the pie-tossing incident occurred, the hearing was stopped and the TV camera was turned to the wall, on which Kate Blee‘s artwork appeared.
You can hear the BBC’s interview with Blee here; it’s not indexed on the BBC website as part of the program, since it was probably a very late add-on. It starts at six minutes and 17 seconds into the show and lasts just over three minutes. The Art Newspaper did its own piece on Blee’s Debate, here.
Besides analyzing the scenic design for this impromptu performance, the Front Row bit is also notable for host John Wilson’s referring to the assailant, Jonnie Marbles, as a “so-called comedian.” A lot of commenters on the various YouTube videos available of Marbles monologues don’t seem to appreciate his humor. But whether or not you like his politics, he’s doing lengthy, scripted humorous monologues, and I’d say that defines him as a comedian.
Huffington Post profiles Marbles, and embeds, some of his routines, here.