Last week, I blogged about the death of multi-talented British eccentric Bob Flag.

In the summer of 1981, he was performing on stage off-West End in London as part of The Mad Show. 

Another of the Mad Show performers was Anthony Irvine, who later developed an ice-block-melting performance art routine as The Iceman and who, more recently, became a painty-painty real artist as AIM.

Anthony has just shared some memories of Bob Flag with me. He writes:

I loved Bob’s helter-skelter act in The Mad Show. I used to admire his manic energy, both on stage and off.

In The Mad Show, his act included drums, music and a chaos that I related to. He had a sort of milkman sidekick on keyboards. I watched him every night of the run. Something about his fast-talking, almost serious, delivery got me – and the disintegrating drums, like The Iceman’s music stand.

I can’t remember if he participated much in the other antics in the show, like the immersion in the aquarium or the Japanese singing fruit group or the open bus trip round the Mall where Dave Brooks (of the Greatest Show on Legs) joined the soldiers at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard. He wore his kilt and played his bagpipes.

I didn’t really stay in touch with Bob after The Mad Show finished – my loss. But I do remember two particular meetings.

The first was a completely random meeting of 40 seconds when I got out of a northbound train at somewhere like Newark and there was Bob on the platform. 

We both behaved as if this was completely normal. 

Before I could say much beyond the pleasure of seeing him again years after The Mad Show, I had to get back on the train which was only doing a brief stop.

The second and last time I saw Bob was when I sold him a brand new baritone saxophone I had bought in East Germany before the Berlin Wall’s de-construction. The saxophone was very big in relation to him. He paid cash. It was in Leyton. 

He came in like a man in a hurry to get elsewhere. It was a very good sax. He paid me in wads of cash. I was surprised how much money he had on him.

I had bought the saxophone in East Germany – possibly in Leipzig –  with lots of East German Deutsche Marks that I had received. And, yes, I was big in the East before the Wall came down.

I blogged about Anthony a couple of times in July (HERE and HERE) when he was about to start an exhibition/clearance sale of more than 1,000 of his (AIM’s) artworks at a gallery on a farm in Dorset.

That exhibition/sale has now finished. The exhibition/sale was titled PEG IT! because a lot of the exhibits were pegged up in mid air.

He (Anthony/The Iceman/AIM) tells me:

De-pegging and dismantling the show was a huge physical effort because I had spent four weeks adding to/pegging up the show. Fortunately I had a team of customers – Jonathan, Liz, Dale – who broke the back of it. 

While we were un-pegging, a local lady – Alison – appeared and chose eight pictures she wanted to buy. She kept going home to get more cash. She repeatedly kept having a new painting wish and going home to get more cash to the extent that I showed my concern about whether she could afford to buy them. This inadvertently became an unintentional sales technique. 

I sold over 20 paintings on the very last day. As the gallery is a bit out-of-the-way, this was remarkable indeed.

My latest project is to sell my AIM paintings at the Waste Recycling Centre in Bournemouth.

This is very logical because people at Bournemouth’s waste recycling centre have just dis-burdened themselves and so have empty cars. 

I can get in with an opportunistic sale. 

The idea started when I was talking to Stuart Semple at the GIANT gallery in Bournemouth.

Stuart liked my idea of ‘recycling’ sales and latched onto the “performative element”. This gave me confidence.

The very next day I tested the idea on site at the waste recycling centre. 

It did feel a strikingly original idea and the public intercourse that resulted was very funny. 

There was some interest, some amusement plus some indifference.

Overall it was a success, though I can’t give any sales figures at this junction. I found the ‘performative element’ to my satisfaction: interacting with the dis-burdening public 

Two recycling workers at the waste recycling centre had diametrically opposed reactions which, I think, encapsulated the experience. 

One was very sympathetic and we talked about Egyptian art.

The other warned me that I was breaking regulations and I must be off.

I have also now got into film shorts mapping my artistic achievements. You can see them on YouTube HERE.