Yesterday, someone sent me a Facebook message telling me he had posted on Flickr ninety-five... count 'em that's ninety-five... photographs he took in the years 1985-1987 at the late Malcolm Hardee's legendary - nay, notorious - seminal alternative comedy club The Tunnel Palladium.
In among the early photos of Keith Allen, Clive Anderson, Phil Cool, Jenny Eclair, Harry Enfield, Jeremy Hardy, Ainsley Harriott, Jools Holland, Eddie Izzard, Phill Jupitus, Josie Lawrence, Neil Morrissey, Mike Myers (yes, thatMike Myers), Vic Reeves, Jerry Sadowitz, Screaming Lord Sutch, Squeeze and many others at Malcolm's Tunnel Palladium, there is a photo of a trendy-looking gent captioned Johnny Edge.
All ninety-five... count 'em that's ninety-five... of Bill Alford's photos are interesting - a nostalgic flashlight on an earlier comedy era - but the photo of Johnny Edge was the one which interested me most because I never met Johnny Edge.
I only knew of him by reputation.
He died almost exactly a year ago, on 26th September 2010.
He was just an ordinary bloke living in south east London, whom most people had never heard of yet, when he died, he merited very lengthy obituaries in the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and theIndependent.
In that sense, he was a bit like Malcolm Hardee.
Most people in Britain had never heard of Malcolm Hardee but, when he drowned in January 2005, such was his importance to the development of British comedy, that he merited near full-page obituaries in the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, theIndependent and The Times - indeed, he managed to get two obituaries in the Evening Standard and two in the Guardian.
Malcolm had told me tales of Johnny Edge coming to his comedy clubs and, when I showed the Flickr photo to a friend who worked at Malcolm's later comedy club Up The Creek, she immediately recognised him:
"Oh yes. I recognise him. He was a regular. He always seemed to me to be on his own. I didn't know who he was, but other people seemed to know him and treat him with respect, like he had been in known bands or something, He looked 'reggae' and he held himself well, maybe just because he was older and quiet. He seemed nice. I think if he had been in a rock band I would have heard which one, which is why I wondered how people were familiar with him... Now I come to think about it, maybe Malcolm always put his name 'on the door' so he got in for free. Logically, I think that is highly likely."
When Malcolm had told me about Johnny Edge being a regular at his clubs, I could feel the slight thrill he had in being able to say he had met and, to an extent, known him.
Johnny 'Edge' was a nickname. He was actually Johnny Edgcombe. What he did in 1962 was the catalyst that triggered the Profumo Scandal in 1963 which played no minor part in bringing down the Conservative government in 1964.
Edgecombe had fired six shots at osteopath Stephen Ward's mews flat, where Edgecombe's ex-girlfriend Christine Keeler was hiding.
Malcolm's barely-contained thrill at having a link with Johnny 'Edge' was the same thrill I could sense in him when famed 1960s South London gangster Charlie Richardson came to a party on Malcolm's floating pub the Wibbley Wibbley. It is the same thrill some people feel if they have an even tenuous link with the Kray Twins. I have heard more than one stand-up comic joke about the TARDIS-like capacity of the Blind Beggar, seeing as how most of the population of East London appears to have been in the pub the night Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell.
It is the thrill of one or two degrees of separation from important historic or society-changing events.
Malcolm had three degrees of separation from the Krays, which I think he always cherished and which is mentioned towards the start of his autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake.
When Mad Frank Fraser, the Richardson's 'enforcer' was shot in the thigh during a fight at Mr Smith's Club in Catford, he was eventually left lying in the front garden of Malcolm's aunt Rosemary and uncle Doug. The shooting was part of the bad blood and linked events which led to the shooting in the Blind Beggar which brought the Kray Twins and, to an extent, the Richardsons down.
Links within links within links.
To an extent, I share Malcolm's thrill with one or two degrees of linked separation from national, international or parochial history. Everything and everyone is inter-linked.
Malcolm never met Mad Frank Fraser. I have and I am glad to have met and chatted to him a couple of times: the man who once lay bleeding in Malcolm's aunt and uncle's front garden.
Links within links within links.
Once, Mad Frank told me he worried "a bit" what people would say about him after he was dead, because what people are seen as being is ultimately not what they are but what people write about them in retrospect.
A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazonian jungle really can change the world. Ordinary unsung individuals can be part of the chain that creates historic events. Or, to quote anti-hero Mick's line in Lindsay Anderson's trendy 1968 film If....
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place..."
Or six bullets.