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A Potted History of Gary Le Strange

OK, I’ll come clean. Gary Le Strange isn’t a real person. He’s a comedy character created and performed by an actor/writer/comedian-type-fellow called Waen Shepherd (hello, that’s me). I started doing him in 2002 and somewhere along the line he became a full-time job.

The idea was simply to find a way of combining various pursuits at the same time, like writing, acting, making music and trying to be funny. Specifically, I wanted a way of making my strange sense of humour seem acceptable to a comedy audience, and a fake pop star seemed the way to go, complete with real proper albums to make him seem even more real and proper.

It started out as a New Romantic/New Wave pastiche, partly because of the software I was using at the time (I did it all on a Play Station) and partly because the genre allowed me to be weird, pompous, extravagantly-dressed and socially inept all at the same time. His first incarnation was a broken, drug-addled madman who lived on a golf course and threatened people with a spoon. Over time, he evolved, deliberately changing every year into a different version of himself, though this wouldn’t have been apparent to anyone except me.

So I ended up taking a show called Polaroid Suitcase to the Edinburgh fringe in 2003, which somehow won me the Perrier Best newcomer Award, and only encouraged me to do it over and over again. Various TV and radio spots followed, including a regular slot on the first two series of BBC Radio 2’s The Day the Music Died. A second album/show, Face Academy, followed in 2004, which was even better than/much worse than/completely different to/exactly the same as the first one (delete as applicable according to your subjective bias).

A third album, Glamoronica, was planned and half-finished but it somehow got buried under its own weight. By this time, I didn’t really know my own name any more, and various behind-the-scenes shenanigans led to me becoming extraordinarily disillusioned with the comedy business, resulting in a complete sense-of-humour failure on my part. I couldn’t get any more mileage out of songs about robots and fashion – the character had to either evolve or die (in the end I did both). Besides, I had much better software by now, so it seemed the logical thing was to change his image, and transmogrify him into the Ultimate Arty Pop Star he was always destined to be.

As a means of trying to recapture the original spirit of Le Strange, I decided to go all-guns-blazing, out-on-a-limb, cock-a-hoop crazy for Beef Scarecrow, bringing the character full circle by writing a show about a broken, drug-addled madman who ate cat food and lived in a park, with a bunch of songs that revelled in the ridiculousness of being serious (or vice versa). But most people didn’t really get it and it bombed. (Apart from very clever people obviously, who always seemed to like it immensely). Shame really cos it’s the best/worst/most pretentious/most honest/cleverest/stupidest/funniest/most serious thing I’ve ever done.

However much I’d like to think Le Strange is finished and his story is told (and I certainly don’t have no more albums in the pipeline), his profile is still growing, with literally TENS of fans in over TWO countries worldwide! I recently filmed a few glossy, high-budget pop videos for ITV’s Comedy Cuts, and I continue to be Le Strange for at least ten minutes a month in a cellar in a London pub. There may even be some chart action on the horizon, but if there was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you about it.

And yes, all my music is made entirely on computers.

Please give generously

Waen Shepherd, age 35¼

Polaroid Suitcase has now sold out - sorry!