www.thejohnfleming.com

This page was last updated on 12 November, 2008

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I am creative advisor and production manager for Gangster Videos. Their latest DVDs are Jimmy White - The One and Only and Jimmy White & Alan McManus' Absolute Snooker with new title Carlton Leach due out in a few weeks. New 2008/2009 projects feature Hurricane Higgins, Jake La Motta and Mike Tyson. Since Gangster Videos began in 2002, I have advised on and production managed 46 UK titles and 8 US titles for them.

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I am currently advising Dutch comedic musician Christiaan Oranje on his move to the UK. For the next ten years, until 2017, I am sponsoring an annual Malcolm Hardee Award for comic originality at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; the first was awarded this August at the Fringe. At last year's Edinburgh Fringe, I staged Janey Godley's Chat Show for 25 days with 67 guests. Also in 2007, I staged the four-hour Malcolm Hardee Charity Cabaret Show at the Hackney Empire, London. This year, I have been London-based UK consultant for the Bleecker Street Theater and Green Room venues in New York and for The Green Room Presents in Edinburgh and New York.

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Last year, I production managed a series of Underground Boxing events filmed by Gangster Videos and transmitted on the TWC Fight channel; Gangster Videos' footage was also extensively used in the Lawless Britain series on Bravo and has been sold to BBC TV, Channel Five and Sky News. In the last few years, I've also researched a TCM documentary The A-Z of Crime Movies, was script consultant on a TCM documentary The First 100 Years of The Western, a consultant on promo/script/style elements within the Granada/ITV series This Morning and gave an alleged 'script masterclass' to the production team of Trisha. My credits in various production capacities include Tiswas, Game For a Laugh, Surprise Surprise, The Last Resort With Jonathan Ross as well as Jools Holland's The Happening, The Last Laugh with Jerry Sadowitz, Prove It (with Chris Tarrant), Jack Dee's Saturday Night and, well, you get the general idea......comedy, punters & jollity. I've also produced a couple of Gong Show style pilots.

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I've written, produced and directed promo trailers for all the major ITV companies and many others in places as diverse as Amsterdam, Dublin and Prague as well as in languages I didn't understand (Czech, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish). Oh and I've also produced-directed multi-language corporates in England, Wales and the Czech Republic. And managed promotion departments at Anglia TV & Granada TV in the UK. Oh! And I worked in the News Depts at Anglia TV, BBC TV, Granada TV and ITN.

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I edited and advised on Handstands in the Dark, the non-humorous, pre-showbiz autobiography of comic Janey Godley, a No 3 hardback bestseller in 2005 and a UK Top Ten paperback bestseller in 2006. Previous books include Sit-Down Comedy, an anthology of specially-commissioned writing by 19 British and Irish stand-ups; I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake, the autobiography of 'godfather of alternative comedy' Malcolm Hardee; and I contributed three chapters to Anatomy of The Movies (other chapter contributors included Martin Scorsese and Donald Sutherland). I have also written for various magazines, newspapers and partworks including Halls of Horror, House of Hammer, The Independent newspaper, The International Times, Mensa Magazine, The Movie, Screen International and Starburst.

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I built and webmaster sites for, among others, London-based comedians Ricky Grover and Helen Keen, Cardiff-based comedy scriptwriter Nigel Crowle, Scots-based comedians Janey Godley & Ian Watt, eccentric inventor John Ward and a tribute site for the late comedian Malcolm Hardee. I also built and webmaster sales websites for Gangster Videos, the soft-core DVD company Laid Bare, the wedding site I'm Getting Married and Milan-based VW dealer Elettrofficina s.n.c.. I designed & webmastered the original Cass Pennant website and a now defunct website for imprisoned artists called ConArtists. I wrote comedy reviews from the Edinburgh Fringe for the chortle.co.uk website, 2004-2006 plus a 2005 Fringe blog and a Fringe feature for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.


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I've holidayed in Albania, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Kosovo, Laos, Lebanon, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Serbia, Siberia, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. I have eclectic interests....In music, I like Bach, Just Jack, Randy Newman, Stereophonics and Kurt Weill. In writing, George Eliot, James Joyce, Richard Matheson, George Orwell and Terry Southern. My favourite films include Fight Club, It's a Wonderful Life, Malice, Once Upon a Time in The West, Slaughterhouse Five and The Wild Bunch. Television: Quatermass and The Pit (1958-1959), Talking to a Stranger (1966), The Cops (1998-2000) and Doctor Who (2005-2007).

In its early days, I worked as a features researcher and news sub-editor on the BBC's CEEFAX teletext service. I have done a little bit of radio (promos and programme) and written questions for a Basque-language children's TV gameshow. I like new projects and the unexpected. The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" has always seemed a rather attractive option to me.