I come not to bury Ken Campbell but to praise him, because even though the old bugger’s gone and died on us I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he pulled some kind of stunt. That would be the Kennish thing to do, after all. Yes, dissatisfied by audiences in the here and now, Campbell is off doing research in the afterlife, and maybe it’ll be up to me to interview him through Ann, the medium I met regarding me writing a script based on her life story. And why not? If it hadn’t been for a medium, Ken would never have bought a huge telly to watch Jackie Chan films on, a story he relates here (Part 1): Part 2 and Part 3.

Ken Campbell has cropped up in my life a few times, and continues to feature in workshops on creativity I do, most recently at DruidCamp, a spectacle that Ken would have appreciated. I was the only male over the age of ten without any facial hair, and felt somewhat out of place because of this, but with his distinctive eyebrows and amazing presence Ken would have commanded DruidCamp, and got up to who knows what antics there. Basically, I use one of Ken’s tales to encourage people to get off their arses and do something fun: if you read about it here you have to promise likewise, OK?

Ken and I met a few times over the course of the last twenty years. First time was, as recounted above, in his picnic bench office in Walthamstow Marshes, where I was happy to listen to him tell me tales of the prophet of Haverstock Hill, and the secret of invisibility (the art of hiding in front of things, it turns out). The interview featured in a comic anthology called Discordia that I published while attending the London Cartoon Centre.

Discordia is the name for the Goddess of Chaos. At least the Roman name. The Greeks called her Eris. I first heard about her in The Illuminatus Trilogy, written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Discordianism - either a joke disguised as an ancient religion, or an ancient religion disguised as a joke - predated the books, and its ‘bible’, Principia Discordia, is written in part by Kerry Wendell Thornley, a counterculture figure with connections to the assassination of John F Kennedy. All of this improbable stuff, and much more, was brought to life in a theatre production of the trilogy, directed by Ken Campbell. He talks about it here and here.

I saw a few of Ken’s extraordinary one man shows, which are alternately hilarious and moving as he recounts tales of doing productions of Macbeth in pidgin English, expounds on the occult history of ventriloquism, shares his experiences in psychiatric care, and mourns the loss of loved ones by howling along with a huge sled-pulling dog. They are - were - amazing examples of a man determined to get to the outer limits of human experience, who lived to be amazed, and came back to tell the story.

And I came across him from time to time; on a training course in London, at a forum about the state of cinema at Cannon Hill Arts Centre in Birmingham, and after performances at Nottingham Playhouse. He was always generous with his time, a warm and humane presence eager to swap tales and share laughter. More recently, I attempted to engage his services for an event I’ve been involved in. Nothing came of it, though that’s not because of Ken — sad to say, being hailed as a visionary and a genius doesn’t mean it’s easy to put food on the table. If anything, people were wary of employing him. Certainly, if you’d got any kind of preciousness or ego, Ken would be no fun to be around, and that applies to many of those who hold the purse strings in arts circles.

So, what is there to remember Ken by? Some amazing shows that anyone who’s seen will treasure. A scattering of tv and film appearances. And flotsam like the YouTube clips I’ve already linked to. And for me, I’ll keep telling Ken’s tale of the German artist that I already linked to, and hope to inspire people to discover within themselves a fragment of the madcap creativity that drove Ken to make the world a more magical place.