Yesterday’s weekly Grouchy Club Podcast featured not just comedy critic Kate Copstick and me but London-based Italian comics Giacinto Palmieri and Luca Cupani. We recorded an audio version – available on Podomatic and iTunes – and a video version posted on YouTube – at Copstick’s Mama Biashara charity shop in London.

Below is a brief extract.

JOHN

Some performer did a love letter to you this week. who was that?

COPSTICK

Giacinto. Well, it wasn’t a love letter. It was a wonderful, wonderful piece of writing.

JOHN

She’s going coy.

GIACINTO

I just shared my ideas on why Copstick is so important – to remind us of the need to be passionate about comedy – The fact that comedy and the arts in general should be about passion. So the passion that she’s bringing to her criticism I think is very important. It is very important to remind us of that. And (speaking to Copstick) also the original way of thinking you are bringing to it and that you apply to this one as well – to the way you approach problems in Africa. I really see…

JOHN

This is the Mama Biashara charity?

GIACINTO

Yes.

COPSTICK

It was just… (a) it was absolutely glorious and (b) it was really well written.

GIACINTO

Thanks.

LUCA

Your English is so good.

GIACINTO

Somebody posted a link to that article with the comment: Who is that cunt? And I was really offended by that little, vile word.

JOHN & GIACINTO (together)

Who!

GIACINTO

After six years in comedy! Come on! Hopefully this will get me a bit more known.

COPSTICK

Yeah, absolutely.

GIACINTO

Hopefully, the next time I do something like this, they will say: Oh! I know that cunt!

COPSTICK

Exactly.

LUCA

You could put on your posters That Cunt.

COPSTICK

Giacinto has spawned, really, what is turning into an entire genre because, the author of that brilliant interrogative Who is that cunt? followed it up with – well, it wasn’t really – a satirical take on…

JOHN

Who is this?

COPSTICK

Michael Legge.

JOHN

A comedian.

COPSTICK

I would have expected something better from him. It was a kind of vicious but not particularly well-written parody of Giacinto’s…

GIACINTO

I’m a parodied author now. It’s amazing. I feel like I’ve done a Bruno Ganz.

COPSTICK

Exactly. And now, just before we went on… iPhone or…

JOHN

…or whatever we’re on…

COPSTICK

… I got an email from the inimitable, indomitable Lynn Ruth Miller and she has, in turn, written a letter parodying Michael Legge’s

GIACINTO

We don’t know if Steve Bennett has accepted it yet. I hope he will.

COPSTICK

We hope that Steve…

JOHN

Who is Steve?

COPSTICK

Steve Bennett of Chortle. You’re really just here as a footnote, aren’t you.

JOHN

I am.

COPSTICK

Any time someone mentions anything, it’s Who’s that?

This is the parody letter Lynn Ruth wrote…

A LOVE LETTER TO MICHAEL LEGGE

This is a Tinder message to Michael Legge whom I do not know and who is young enough to be my grandson but it is a Tinder message nonetheless.

I read his message to the lovely Steve Bennett and I must say I wouldn’t mind a bit of a to-do with Steve as well but for the fact that my vagina resembles the Sahara Desert during a drought and Steve still has a bit of juice left in him, or so he thinks……and I make it a policy not to disillusion the young.

As I read Michael Legge’s overwhelming desire for coitus with an innocent like Steve Bennett, I realized that what he needs is a tryst with a woman of a certain age to teach him how true sexual satisfaction is achieved.

I would like to dunk us both in a chicken soup bath and rub Michael Legge’s matzo balls in my kishke.

He would experience a kosher sensation that would set his holishkes afire because MY horseradish has such a sizzle, you wouldn’t believe. It is after all, home-made.

I do not expect to feature at his next show or anything like that but I assure you he will lust after my k’nadles and thirst for a bit of my particular, sensual brand of borscht so much he will forget his punch lines. It was my mother’s recipe and reduced my father to a pile of gribenes, every time she flaunted it. I will become an irresistible red-hot chotchke to Michael Legge and he will succumb, And who can blame him?

I will massage him with layer after layer of hot schmaltz to push his boundaries. I promise he will be overwhelmed with schpilkes that only I can ease with my adorable little latkes even as I butter his bagel.

Ah, Michael! Once you have tasted my sparkling little shalota and savored the intense pleasure of my gedempte fleisch, all those traife peccadillo’s you thought were the real thing will fade into oblivion and you will discover a passion only a kosher maidle with a luscious kugel can provide.

I must admit I have not worked in a morgue but I assure you that I will be in one far before you will and I will make sure there is a soft, velvet little babka to warm the cockles of your heart or your cock whichever you prefer. You can count on me.

I have not compared notes with Kate Copstick and of course I will move aside for her if she prefers to smother you with greibenes or give you a good bublitchke in your nether region. But always remember that it only takes one taste of the American brand of gefilte fish to make a man out of you.

I hope you will forgive the phonetic spelling in this Tinder message to you but I am so overwhelmed with the urge to schtup your brains out that I cannot be bothered to consult a dictionary.

So what do you say, Michael? Are you as temped by my offer as you are by Steve Bennett’s bum? Do you honestly think that your letter to Steve was half as creepy as that lovely idealistic young man’s accolade to Kate Copstick or my delectable offer to you?

There are still some of us who believe in hearts, flowers and a bit of charoset to give life the flavor it deserves. If you do, too, I’m your little girl.

La Chiam to you darling with a bit of a schmear.