20 slides are each projected for 20 seconds and spoken to for the same period, no more, no less. The script for one of these precision-based presentations is found below.

Season 1: PC#2

I realised that I was suffering from a fear of bursting. Some months ago a friend had been performing a yoga posture in the quietness of his front room. Without warning his intestines rushed from his body and coiled on the floor before him. Despite the enduring serenity he claimed to have achieved thereby, I saw myself become uncharacteristically chastened and cautious.

Everything around me seemed distended. Things thought thin now oozed uneasy bloat. Mere tautness to the touch portended splishsplash. Surfaces seemed to seep, to suppurate. I flinched in parks as flamboyant gesticulators inflated then shrugged or softly smiled. Envelopes groaned, sausages mocked me.

I lived in a small house in North London. The street was secluded and little traffic passed along it. Most of us in the street read the work of Dick Francis although we did not discuss it. House hedges were high but used volumes were left on low walls for communal exchange. I had just finished the 1972 tour de force ‘Smokescreen’ and hoped to acquire 1973’s ‘Slayride’.

Preoccupied with my preoccupations I rose that day and made my way along my street. Dick’s works were laid out as usual. I had read them all. Towards the end of the street I spotted an unfamiliar jacket. At first I assumed it was a Dick because the first two letters of the surname were the same. “Dick…Freud. Who is that?” I wondered.  I picked up the volume and examined it.

I read the book from cover to cover,  initially under the impression that it was a pseudonymous racing mystery with a theme of prediction. I gradually realised that, in fact, it contained a very interesting theory. Apparently, at least in Freud’s view,  there was a vast hidden world buried deep inside every one of us. Why had no one in the street mentioned this?

The book had been translated into English in 1913. The relative obscurity of my street meant that the translation had not become available until 2007. This would explain why I was so poorly informed. I knew, however,  that I must now, without further delay, do something that would reshape my life and stop me bursting. I wanted a subconscious and nothing would stand in my way.

I left my street, taking some some fish paste sandwiches, a dictionary and a cassette player. Where would I go to get a subconscious? I passed a number of imposing towers and these somehow stiffened my resolve. I had a choice: either I could head into the dense bush in the hope of finding a mound or I could consult a passerby. 

As luck would have it I came upon a most accommodating fellow. “How might I obtain a subconscious?” I asked him. “Fuckingpigsarse! Fuckingduckshit! They’re all fucking smiling now but he’ll come down if you ask him! Come on puss, come on, you fucking belligeranti, you fucking warwound! Fuckyourmother!  Fuckyourmother!”

So I went to see the Queen. She was relaxing in her Royal Room. I bowed low and told her what the red-headed man had said. “Yeah,” she said “if you go with me it will certainly make things easier for you.” The Queen lay very still and shouted royal messages “This is my throne, this is my ermine, this is my sceptre, you are all vermin.” I went blind.

Nurse, nurse! She opened her purse and my eyes have burst. In the park in the dark. My eyes have burst. I’m cursed. I’m immersed. All taut gone slop. All night gone shite. All night now. Who seeks shall find; Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind. I miss the sweetest sight, my parents’ face.

Benny! Benny!  Benny! etc

Down the deep creeks creak sheep. Flying fences in their sleep. Stifled with a muffle. The engine rooms are just intolerable. Wrap some towel round that, would you? They were soft, like grapes – we cut them out. We heard a tapping. On a pipe. With a spoon. Or a knife.

Then I saw my parents again. Len, Joan, Joan and Len. I had to move them apart. I got between Joan and Joan for the first time ever.  I went between them and pushed and pushed. There was a crack. They kept holding on to Len and Len but I broke my mothers in two. Joan and Len then Joan and Len. The sky opened up and things came down.

Oh now! Jimmy Croc Cow! Jimmy Croc Cow and I don’t care. Dogcheese,  catalept, pigment, turvy tops and tails, in through the out door. Well, I don’t know, Margaret, I opened the curtains and people were relieving  themselves in the street! It was awash with ones and twos! The fucking stench! Men with banjos were speaking with their mouths full!

She went to the cupboard and I was bare. Then she opened it. Then she ran her hands over the shelves. Her little dog barked. I screamed out because those shelves were so sensitive – I could feel her fingertips, they were rough. Doesn’t she know those things are inside me? Doesn’t she know I’ve eaten the world and I’m a naughty boy?

“It was getting silly.” I either had to swallow or puke. If I swallowed then I would shit – I’d shit the world out. If I puked then the world would not be so harmed. It would come out more or less in decent condition, none the worse for its days in my stomach. The only problem was not knowing what order it would come out in.

I moved my legs apart slightly to give myself a stable footing and stood between two parallel bars that I had noticed nearby. I grasped the bars and, thus braced, took a deep breath. The world felt heavy but I knew I could do it. I opened my mouth wide and contracted my diaphragm forcefully. Suddenly the world was in space again. I jumped down onto it.

The very first thing I did was to go and see Celine Dion. We had met in Morrisons and become friendly. I found her down to earth and easy to be with. Celine quoted from Guy Debord, the Situationist writer,  of whom she was very fond. They had been neighbours when she was a little girl.

“You see, David, “ Celine said, “The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather,  it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.” “But, Celine,” I confessed, “I fear the sheer, engulfing volume of it all. It floods into me until I can hardly bear it.” Celine grew serious “David, listen to me. Your fear of bursting is over now.  Once you’ve puked the world you can do what you fucking want.”

I didn’t go back home. I felt light. I felt effective. I discovered that you don’t have to have a subconscious – it’s just an idea. I met some people who were cognitive behavioural therapists – they confirmed this. They said it was all to do with changing mental images. If you have  an image inside you you don’t like, you can change it. It’s all to do with images.

20 slides are each projected for 20 seconds and spoken to for the same period, no more, no less. The script for one of these precision-based presentations is found below.

Season 1: PC#7

In the course of the First Season of Peachy Coochy I delivered a linked series of presentations that were ostensibly concerned with the attempts of an empty, collapsible plastic packing case to find and consolidate an identity for itself. I realise now that these whimsical digressions were simply tissues obscuring a set of nakedly autobiographical concerns.

When I was sixteen I had a girlfriend called Anne Silberstein. Here we are in a punt in Cambridge, our home town. Anne and I walked out for three years. She liked modern jazz and introduced me to the Modern Jazz Quartet. Her father was Dr Kurt Silberstein, the City of Cambridge Police Surgeon. Anne was self-conscious about her nose, which she thought was too big.

One day in Anne’s house I found a leaf that had fallen off a potted cactus. I put it in my mouth so that it looked like a protruding tongue and showed it to Anne. She laughed a lot then put a leaf in her mouth. We pretended to kiss. Then we took the leaves out and found that our tongues and lips were covered in tiny spines.

They just wouldn’t come out. In fact, they seemed to be digging deeper and deeper in. We told Kurt and he shouted at us then fetched an anglepoise lamp, a magnifying glass and some tweezers. For the next hour he pulled out spines first from my tongue then Anne’s. A few just wouldn’t come out no matter what. Kurt said they would eventually be absorbed into the body.

But I wasn’t convinced. I once broke a plate by accident and a small piece of china lodged in the side of my thumb. Over the years it has moved slowly under the surface of my skin towards my wrist. If anyone would like to see it I can show them after the presentation in which I am presently absorbed. Sometimes at night I can feel the china fragment inching towards my heart.

The spines were quite different, however. They impinged directly upon my moods. At first I did not understand what was happening to me. Within a few days of the incident with Anne I succumbed to inexplicable and novel changes in my general feelings. Not only did I experience intensities of familiar emotions but also improbable and unwieldy combinations thereof.

I endured simultaneous fits of obsequiousness and superciliousness, storms of schadenfreude and ignominy, electric bouts of quizzicality and certainty, monsoons of gloom and jubilation, collisions of constancy, zest, pep, vim, black dog, pepperiness, turpitude, languor and general shit.

In his book ‘Teenage – the Creation of Youth Culture’ Jon Savage describes the Wandervogel – ‘wandering birds’ -groups of disaffected German youth who ran wild on the outskirts of Berlin in the 1930s. They wore old women’s hats with ostrich plumes, brightly coloured scarves, ears pierced with enormous rings, wide belts daubed with esoteric numbers and diagrams.

Pinioned by the staccato of tiny pains I realised I could no longer find solace in my home town. Setting aside my despair I parted company with Anne, my school and my family and took a train to Berlin. As the spines bored relentlessly through my tongue I determined to find the Wandervogel  before the arrows centred on my heart.

The Wandervogel  hike through the countryside with musical instruments, living off the land, sleeping on ferns and drawing inspiration from the ways of the American Indians. They believe in a mystical bond between the land and the soul of the people. The Berlin group, I found, was flamboyant but highly principled, with strong beliefs in purity.

I passed many tuneful days with the Wild Youth, as they called themselves. Their rituals were fascinating and their self-discipline was exemplary. When the strange exaltations of feeling seized me, as they did so often now, my companions were grave and supportive. It was when I told them about Anne that the situation changed. They escorted me to the edge of the city.

Jim Mitchell was from Wichita and sought to seek his fortune. He was travelling with Estelle Carter from Gillette, Wyoming. They were both fifteen years old. When the big banks all collapsed their parents turned to drink and started beating them. The freight train pulled though the night across the Great Plains under a blanket of stars.

Some of the older hoboes started shouting at us. They were making threats against Estelle. Then we heard screaming and crashing sounds. Something seemed to be moving down the train towards us. The end of the boxcar suddenly exploded open. An enormous translucent worm slithered through the gap. Inside it were the writhing bodies of the tramps.

We were sucked into the cold, slimy mouth of the creature and probed by the furious tentacles lining the tunnel of its body. As they entered my mouth, ears, nostrils, penis and anus simultaneously I felt a dull electric current followed by an excruciating pain – the spines in my flesh had swarmed together around my heart and were defending it against this abomination. 

The freight train was deserted. The driver and the brakeman alike had been consumed. The train clattered on for hours and hours. New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. I was consumed by an epileptic hail of conflicting emotions. They coursed through me regardless of my thoughts or whatever it was that I found myself doing.

I settled for several years in a small farming town where I kept bees. The constant wandering of the spines was a relentless source of discomfort which I found I could alleviate by drinking honey every few hours. But small town life wasn’t really what I craved. I yearned for Anne and the crash of the city.

I was methodical: I tried to imagine what she would be like now and where she would go. I spent a few days in Notting Hill, some in Hoxton, some in Soho. I kept mostly to the main streets, reasoning that she would have to use them from time to time to get to where she lived. Several months passed. I decided to visit Camden Town.

“Anne, Anne – it’s me, David! From Cambridge!”  “Fuck off!” “Anne, you’re still beautiful but you look so tired!” “Just piss off, will you? Get out of my fucking face!”  “I’ll come back – when you’ve had a rest.” I was elated. I knew where her house was! Obviously she was shocked to see me but it was clear she’d been working hard and was a bit nervy.

I went back to the room I had rented in Acton and tidied myself up. I’d been on the streets quite a while and hadn’t been too concerned with my grooming. On my way back to Anne’s house I saw her coming towards me. “Anne! My God! I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault! The spines – they’ll never leave us!”

I had a sports drink with me, with syrup in it. Blake kicked it out of my hand and slammed me into a wall. He spat in my face over and over again. I contracted Hepatitis C and in consequence could not process the removal from my body of harmful substances. The spines gathered around my liver. The pain was overwhelming.

20 slides are each projected for 20 seconds and spoken to for the same period, no more, no less. The script for one of these precision-based presentations is found below.

Season 1: PC#6

Previously on Peachy Coochy: as a result of visiting Birmingham with the intention of shagging  power ballad singer Bonnie Tyler I had succeeded in transforming from a packing crate into the singer Barry Manilow. For a while it was good to be Barry. The Las Vegas Hilton stocked many fine wines and gourmet repasts while the ensuite facilities were beyond reproach.

I made many friends and took part in complicated sexual experiences . In the street I frequently encountered people who were anxious to talk with me and touch me. I met several people who wanted to be me and a few who said that they were me. I asked a man who said he was me if he was happy – hoping to gain some insight into my condition. He replied that he was unsure of himself.

But I had everything, how could I be so unsure? My new album ‘Beautiful Ballads and Love Songs’ had gone double platinum and I had enjoyed capacity attendances at  London’s O2 Arena last December. Yes, my nose was unusually big but this could not account for my abiding sense that I was not the same as other people. Something was missing.

When I spoke with my friends they were at a loss. They kept saying that I was at the pinnacle of my career and could want for nothing. I introduced them to the man who said he was me to see if he had some other perspective to offer. His name was Barry, of course, but when pressed he said it was Frank. This, in turn, he told me, was short for Francium.

It transpired that Francium is among the rarest elements listed in the periodic table. It is estimated that at any one time there are no more than twenty atoms of it present in the world. As a first name it is being taken up increasingly in the countries of the west, where, one might hypothesize, the attrition of identity has acquired such momentum that the subject does not feel unique so much as invisible.

Frank explained that Francium has a half-life of only twentytwo minutes, after which it decays into the halogen Astatine, of which, it is estimated, less than one ounce exists in the Earth’s crust. This was also the name of his sister, an ethereal creature who warned us that, in eight and a half hours, she too would be gone.

“Are you not sad, Frank and Astatine, that you share with the Mayfly the briefest of lives, in which you are constantly flying, never eating, then dying? Frank et Astatine, est-ce-que vous n’etes pas tristes?” Astatine spoke softly, stroking my sleeve with her cold, translucent hand, “Non, Barry. We are not sad.”

“It is not widely realised that the mayfly spends up to two years as a larva, during which period it eats algae and other microscopic animals. By the time the mayfly transforms into an adult, it has already lived a full life, by insect standards.” Frank interrupted Astatine. “Barry, I have only a few seconds left. Promise me that I can be you.”

“Even Astatine,” said Frank, “cannot comprehend what it is to never land, to be in constant decay,  to turn inexorably into one’s sister every few minutes. That is why I chose you, I wanted to live outside time, as you do, Barry. If I cannot be you I will be a brick. At least it has constancy.” I heard myself screaming: “No, Frank!”

“Do not choose a brick! Understand that while I am Barry Manilow now,  I was once a packing case! You may even have put things in me! No, Frank,  that is not the way to go.”

“But Barry,” Frank cried, “what can we do? What is constant? Are we doomed to endless wandering?” Suddenly I knew what I must do. All the imagery with which I had sustained myself fell away. In that same moment Frank vanished.

Johnny Depp was staying a few doors down from my suite in the Hilton. “Barry, yo! Come on in!” he said warmly.  “Johnny, I am not Barry Manilow, my real name is David Gale and I am on a quest.” “Hey, whatever,” Johnny said, “I’m not really Willy Wonka! Do you love wine?  I have some from France here. Claret. Goes well with cheese.”

The truth that Johnny then told me was shocking, as I had expected. “You know why you’re not happy? Why you feel different than everybody?” I shook my head, “No. No, I don’t.” Johnny gazed at me piercingly. I realised that his eyes were brown,  like mine. We were, in fact,  almost lookalikes. Perhaps… “Don’t go there!” Johnny said. “It’s a dead end. You know it is.”

“It’s because you have never killed anybody.” I almost dropped my glass. “What? What do you mean?” “Did you see that movie?  ‘The Truman Show’?” “Yes, I did. Why?” “The way that whole  thing was going on and he knew nothing about it?” “Yeah…” “Okay. It’s the same. Everybody has killed somebody. That’s how they do it. That’s their secret.”

I felt sick. The room swirled and melted around me. “Does it have to be someone you like?” I stuttered. “No,” said Johnny. “That’s not important. It should be a mindless act, firing into the crowd.” “Does there have to be a crowd?” I asked. “That’s just a detail – could be anywhere.”

I entered the Maghreb at Tangier and started out along the coast.  I came across two men in their pants and one in a suit. They said they were,  from left to right, Peter Orlovsky,  Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. “I’m not gay,” I said. “Relax!” Burroughs said. “This is an international zone. You’re free to do what you want or not do what you don’t want.”

“I’m looking for lonely people,” I explained. “Are there any here?” Kerouac said “You’d be better off further down in Algeria. People walk alone on the beach there. You can hitch-hike. You can kill people.” I was taken aback, “How did you know?” Jack said “It’s just something you have to do. Their death fills you up.”

I walked to Tetouan,  crossed the border at Bab el Assa to Ghazaouet and approached Oran. My gun was hot in my pocket. I wondered if the man I would shoot had shot a man. I supposed he had because everyone knew – I was the only one who didn’t. I hadn’t realised. Now I understood. You  are born empty. You must fill yourself with life. Life is trapped in the other person’s body.

I took his credit cards and his passport. He was just some guy. Connolly. Not anybody I knew.  I left him there. It didn’t happen immediately, the feeling. I met a beautiful woman.  I saw a chocolate cake. I found a lot of money on the ground by a bush. I was awarded an international prize. My passport photo was sharper and clearer.

I was asked advice. A car was outside my house. The car was red. I had a suit. I was groomed. I spoke calmly. I went through the gears. Warmth came to me from people. I went to the meadows and the commons and walked about. Children. Animals and birds. The sky.

Now the river. Now the pond. On the other side of the water I saw Celine Dion, Jennifer Rush and Bonnie Tyler. They were wearing white singing dresses. They were waving.  I no longer wanted to shag them. They were my friends. I valued them. I went over to them. Astatine held my hand.

20 slides are each projected for 20 seconds and spoken to for the same period, no more, no less. The script for one of these precision-based presentations is found below.

Season 1: PC#5

Previously on Peachy Coochy: I had been born as a block of wood and had developed into a packing crate thanks to some magical  beings and some clowns. I was full of glass animals and had been placed on a table where anyone could see me. I knew, however, that there was still much to do. There were things I needed. I was still not as others, despite the animals inside me.

“Strictly speaking, I’m off duty,” said Santa. “And the trouble is,” he said, “You look like a present.” “Give me a person, then,” I responded. “We don’t normally give people,” said Santa. “Our speciality is gifts for people – we have a massive warehousing operation maintained by state of the art inventory management systems. Tell you what – you can poke about in the skips if you want.”

“No way,” I said to the doll. “Been there. Done it.” “I’ve had a lot of women in my time,” it croaked.   “In your dreams, faggot!” I shouted. Then I apologised. “I’m sorry, I meant that strictly in the sense of ‘a bundle of sticks’ not…you know…” “That’s bad enough!” said the doll. “That’s the same as calling a human a ‘spaz’ or something.”

I started to shiver and was seized with wave after wave of memories that I scarcely recognised. I found myself in the air above an impossible swirl of roads, gazing down on a scene of ceaseless movement. How could all of these carriageways lead to places? From what place were they streaming? I stretched out my arms and swooped down.

It was Birmingham. I hadn’t been there for decades. I remembered being there in the 70s. I was putting on shows there, with a group of people. I couldn’t believe what a shithole the city was. I had seen shitholes in my time but this was the clear winner. Ugly wherever you looked. Not a single vista that could even be described as tolerable.

Everywhere was blue light. It was the light of clubs and night. The light of mournful excitement and dark orange foods. There are travellers in the bar with notebooks. A woman glances. There’s a dog there. You wouldn’t expect a dog. Is it a Black Lab? Under the light?

I was up in Birmingham again for some reason. I had to stay the night in a cheap hotel. Instead of rooms they had walls which stopped short of the floor and ceiling. Partitions. I stood on my bed at night and looked across the tops of the partitions. Under a blue light men and women were sleeping; sighing and shifting. I don’t know why I was there. I had no reason to be.

“I shagged her,” said the doll. “I fucking gave her one.”  I said “I don’t believe you. Bonnie Tyler has her pick of men in jackets. She would not go with something that was recently a tree.” The doll said “You know so little. The thing about Bonnie is the balance in her between male and female elements. That’s her appeal.”

I wondered if Bonnie was still in Birmingham. I wanted to find her and give her one. But would she shag a crate? I liked the firmness in her, perhaps she, in turn, would see that, in my own way, I had both rigidity and capacity. I began to think about the actual mechanics of our congress. How would I caress Bonnie? How would I remove her various outfits?

How would she negotiate my unusual proportions? Perhaps she could get inside me. I thought of her pressing upon my firm ribs with her buttocks, gripping my upper perimeter with her manicured hands, her mauve nails drumming on my rectangular rim. She would feel safe within me. At night-time she would whisper “Every woman needs a crate.”

I realised I was deluding myself. I needed to talk to someone who could remember what having a proper body was like. The man was insubstantial in many ways. I was afraid that he was dead. He assured me otherwise. He explained that he had been killed by lethal injection but that at the point of termination he had jumped out of his skin. He frequented warehouses, giving counsel to distressed packaging.

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell…

…and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast

“You’re lucky,” said the psychiatrist. “Thanks to modern mind science I can help you change in 60 seconds starting now. First you must realise that the reason for your sadness is related to negative images and thought patterns that have become stuck in your head. We can replace these images with positive ones that will lead you to embrace life to its deep hilt and suck upon its rich teat.”

I took the train from Birmingham New Street. As we passed through Granton Road I saw Bonnie. She looked so tired. A tired little girl. I wound the window down and started to sing. She looked across the track at me. I felt that although she could hear my singing I was moving further and further away from her. I wondered why she didn’t wave.

As Bonnie became a dot I started to point at her. It was both a goodbye and a hello. I had joined her but I had left her. I was a singer now. I could move others like she had moved me in Birmingham, a blonde in the blue lights, singing for the people sighing, the people wandering through the dead, drab streets. I had changed my ideas. I was a new person.

I read about pecha kucha somewhere and felt that it could be fruitfully appropriated. It had been conceived in 2003 by two architects working in Tokyo, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, who had been trying to find ways to curtail a tendency in young architects to speak for an intolerably long time when pitching a scheme for the new library or whatever.

Klein-Dytham decided to restrict all candidates to a slide show comprising 20 slides, each of which would be projected for 20 seconds whilst being explained or described by the presenter. In the course of this 6 minutes and 40 seconds long presentation the presenter should aim for utter precision – if, for example, you consistently spoke for 19 seconds per slide then one of two things would happen. You’d stand, albeit briefly but in this context unattractively, in silence until the slide transitioned or, if you moved on to the next speech without a break, you’d start to go into overdraft i.e. the next time round you’d finish a little earlier, eventually leading, in theory, to the catastrophe that is Talking-Mostly-About-Slide 17-While-Slide 16-Still-Occupies-the-Screen. Or, of course, you could stand speechless at regular intervals. This takes nerve but in those silences resides the possibility, if you remain calm, of recovering the synchronisation.

Conversely, if you spoke too slowly or had consistently underestimated the length of a speech then you would find yourself describing the past while the present awaited your attention, its duration being steadily reduced but separated from its carefully crafted commentary. It’s only natural at this point to speed up but this inevitably involves an unseemly gabbling.

Surely, one might imagine, the slide operator could accommodate such all too human wavering with a succession of benign adjustments. But where’s the fun in that? A counter-empathetic dimension was added to the setup, ensuring that a cold, dispassionate, machinically fixed set of timings would proceed at the click of the mouse that launched the PowerPoint display. From Tokyo to London, pecha kucha presenters whose puppy had died earlier that day would not be favoured in the least. The playing field was now, like a billiard table, level. PowerPoint is not indifferent to puppies – it doesn’t know what they are.

Audiences sense these presentational challenges, especially when they are alerted to them by the compère, who happens to be me. Such disclosures endear the compère to the audience and introduce the latter to an athletic dimension not generally found in your average lecture.

I learned that ‘pecha kucha’, as used and pronounced by the Japanese, has an onomatopeic quality that resembles ‘the sound of chatter’. I also learned, having determined to use the format as the basis for a series of live public shows, that if I called these occasions ‘Pecha Kucha Nights’ I might be sued for breach of copyright. Thus it was, on January 31st 2008, that ‘David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites’ opened in the bar at ArtsAdmin in London. Months later, when the Nites were well under way, a lawyer told me that the copyright threat was nonsense – it had no legal basis at all. Anyway ‘Peachy Coochy’ was much better.

Thanks to the welcoming enthusiasm of Judy Knight and Gill Lloyd, the directors of ArtsAdmin; Chief Dawethi, the head technician and Toby Saunders, the free-lance projection tech, the bar, set with tables and chairs, proved to be an ideal location for the show. It was one of those venues that look gratifyingly full when they are not at capacity and pleasingly packed when rammed.

Each Nite comprised six presentations – three either side of an interval. I aspired to bring together on each monthly occasion as diverse a selection of presenters as possible. It would, I felt, be tremendous if, on a typical bill, we could offer a policeman, a surgeon, a criminal, a taxidermist and a quantum physicist. My own background was arty – I knew lots of performers, playwrights, directors, film-makers, writers, journalists, designers, dancers etc. It came to pass that these dominated the line ups because they were rather easier to recruit than, say, members of the police force.

We did, however, succeed in presenting a quantum physicist and our arty colleagues proved, more often than not, to be daring in their bending of the stern Peachy Coochy rules and thoroughly unpredictable in terms of topics and styles.

My perk as curator of the cultish events was to install myself as master of ceremonies and to compose my own presentations, which I inserted in the first slot after the interval. Whereas the five guests were, with some exceptions (Wendy Houstoun and Ursula Martinez, for example, were audience favourites) presenting for the first and last time, I decided to link my own presentations so that they had a degree of thematic and narrative continuity. They are assembled here, in the order in which they were presented.

I should point out that I was hardly the first person to notice the potential of the Klein-Dytham pecha kucha format – it is regularly presented in over 1000 cities around the world and, I imagine, tweaked and stretched on every occasion.

Our press information pack, assembled with producer Amber Massie-Blomfield sometime in 2010 (slightly updated 2019), dramatised us as follows:

David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites is the perfectly shaped art form for the new decade: a celebration of artistic expression that is concise, precise and fleet of foot. In its brevity artists feel liberated to explore challenging subject matters and take risks with new material, whilst audiences thrill in the creative tension between the improvised compèring and the highly formalised, almost athletic presentations. The show prompts reflection in audience and artists alike on the way in which we consume media; specifically, images and words.

Past Coocheurs have included: Oreet Ashery, Mark Borkowski, Duncan Campbell, Marisa Carnesky, Robin Deacon, Richard DeDomenici, Tania El Khoury, Tim Etchells, Marcia Farquhar, Gareth Brierley, Ant Hampton, John Hegley, Wendy Houstoun, Alex Kelly, Lois Keidan, Keith Khan, Richard Layzell, Brian Lobel, Jeff McMillan, Ursula Martinez, Nic Rawling, John Smith, Julian Maynard Smith, Trevor Stewart, Gary Stevens and Hilary Westlake.

Past topics have included: My 20 Favourite Fonts; The Dangers of Health & Safety; Lustful Emails Sent Subsequent to my Nude Cabaret Act being Illegally Released on YouTube; Criminal Gangs of 50s London; My Family Photo Album used as Evidence of my Precocity as a Live Artist; An Introduction to Quantum Physics; Public Art in Poundbury, Dorset; An Enquiry into the Origins of Compressed Chewing Gum Found on Pavements; Art on Roundabouts; My Life and Art in Bombed Beirut.

David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites has run monthly at the Toynbee Studios since 2008; it has also played at the National Review of Live Art, the Riverside Studios, The Victoria & Albert Museum, Battersea Arts Centre, Cambridge The City Wakes, Poole Lighthouse, The Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The show works particularly well in a festival context, as an alternative, arty end-of-evening entertainment. It prompts dialogue between artists and audiences around their work, offers a platform for fledgling ideas and encourages audiences to experience the work of artists they may not typically take a risk on. It also goes down very well with a drink.

20 slides are each projected for 20 seconds and spoken to for the same period, no more, no less. The script for one of these precision-based presentations is found below.

Season 4: PC#21

Previously on Peachy Coochy I had gone to Tibet and learned the art of concretised visualisation in which a mental image is gradually made into a real object by intense and protracted concentration. On my return I lived with a beautiful pale woman but she faded away to the point where she was no more than an idea.

I realised I had made a fundamental error and determined to concentrate instead upon the human body as a means of pulling myself together. I’d had enough of abstraction and concepts, I decided to wholeheartedly throw myself into things. First I needed to stand out more. I needed an outfit.

I looked good and I felt good. I could really get involved now. The world was just a place and I was a person. I laughed at the idea that there were things that you couldn’t do. What could go wrong? If your body was hard there would be no harm. I decided to assess my body in terms of its suitability for my intentions.

I was disappointed to see that the inside of the body could be detected from the outside. I felt alright about the mouth and eyes being, respectively, a hole and an organ that was half in and half out but there were far too many signs of the way the body worked that you could see quite clearly and that did not need to be so obvious.

If I was to throw myself thoughtlessly into things it was possible that some of these things could pierce me. What particularly unsettled me was the prospect of a situation in which purely personal matters might be revealed to those with whom I was not on intimate terms. Imagine lying on the ground while people stared into your open body!

I decided to ignore my misgivings and get stuck in. The tube carriage was extremely crowded and I realised that I actually had no idea of what all the people touching me were like. Right in front of me was a woman wearing a rucksack that jutted straight into my chest, making me lean backwards.

As I fell I grabbed randomly at a suitcase held by another traveller. I found myself tumbling to the floor, effectively using someone else’s luggage as a battering ram. There was a number of bags piled by the carriage door and I brought them all down around me. The noise was considerable.

It was good to be back in Hampshire. Nothing much had changed. There were odd pieces of clothing strewn along the side of the road and some of the bushes had male and female toiletries jumbled up in them. I found some Jo Malone fragrance – suitable for both men and women.

When I looked up I thought at first that she was looking down on me. Certainly her movements were very deft and skilful. It became apparent that she was, in fact, staring at the ground beyond me. I could not tell whether she was emptying me out or filling me up. I hoped that my fragrance would make her wish to fill me.

If I found that she was emptying me I could run away and find my own straw. I would carry my bale with me and whenever I faltered I would stuff myself. In that way I could cross and recross the border between life and death. Such a journey would not only strengthen me but invigorate the community.

It was difficult to discern whether my visits to the shadowlands were states of mind or experiences. Sometimes I went down and down and other times up and up. Wherever I ended up, I was always aware of objects. Most of these tended to float but some were tethered. I even came across books but it was usually too dark to read.

With a great effort of concentration I was able to remember  that despite my disorientation I was still in Hampshire. I was shocked to realise that I had, once again , confused an everyday activity, such as the stuffing of a child’s toy, with an invitation to the transcendent. I shook my head briskly and was in Petersfield.

The town was clean but almost entirely depressing. There was, however, little that threatened to be confusing. The few citizens that I saw seemed purposeful. The streets were largely empty but the shops had assistants in them and my search for a café and restaurant was fruitful. I ordered a flat white.

To my great surprise I found myself sitting opposite the actor Christian Bale. He told me that he had a small flat in the town. I said to him “But Christian, this place is amazingly fucking boring!”  He explained that as much of his professional life was spent playing deranged  individuals, small town life was the perfect antidote.

“With respect, Christian,” I said, “Is it not the case that in the protracted absence of meaning sociopathic tendencies will incubate, giving rise to random and explosive acts of destruction much like popcorn in an uncovered pan?” He did not answer me directly but seemed instead to be studying the package I was carrying.

“What do you call that?” he asked. “It’s my straw,” I said, “It’s in a bundle.” His face darkened. “Do you believe in the Christ, David?” “I have no faith, Christian,” I replied. “Did you see my movie ‘American Psycho’, David?” “I loved it,” I said. “There are things in that movie you don’t want in your mind,” he said.

In the dark there were the usual children but Christian was keen to keep moving. “There’s someone who can help us,” he kept saying. The girl said “Take me with you, Mister Christian.” Christian said “Nothing must leave this place.” The girl said “I’m somebody’s daughter.” But he was resolute. He would not deviate.

Then I realised who it was. Christian hugged Heath and started crying. “I love you, man,” he sobbed. Heath seemed very pure. “Heath, why are you so pure?” I asked. “Whatever you were when you took off, that’s what you take with you,” he explained. “You had nothing, you had no skin,” I stuttered.

“I went through my skin. I stepped outside. Thousands supported me. Thousands stood aside as I swept past,” Heath said. “I was one of them, man,” Christian sobbed. “But I couldn’t make the final journey.” Heath gripped Christian by the shoulders. “It’s not a journey. You don’t start. You finish.”

The two film stars turned to me. “There’s more to life than Hampshire, David,” they said. “And there’s more to life than life. Be like a dog now. What can you smell?” I lifted my head. I started to run. I got to the edge. It was no longer dark. It was pure. I could see a boat.

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