Sunday, 8 June 2025
Paul Vickers and The Leg have long delighted in their uproarious array of musical phantasmagorias and fantastical delights. Over four albums of junkyard Beefheartian clatter offset by Vickers’ punk vaudeville howl, Vickers and co have proved themselves to be Edinburgh’s wildest cards.
The release of the band’s fifth album, ‘Winter at Butterfly Lake’ on the 27th of June, sees the quintet move into more grown-up symphonic territory. For Vickers and his dervish-like compatriots, this time it’s personal.
“Heartbreak is the best state to be in to write love songs. Due to incidents in my personal life, I found I had a large bundle of memories that I was pouring into a new set of songs. It didn’t take us long to work out that we appeared to be writing a heartbreak suite. This is the first time as a lyricist I have left my heart and soul so bare. With the songs co-written with Dan Mutch, and Pete Harvey flexing his muscles as an arranger, ‘Winter at Butterfly Lake is a record unlike any that Paul Vickers and the Leg has produced so far.” - Paul Vickers
With Vickers’ roots in shoulda-been 1990s alt-pop maestros Dawn of the Replicants, since hitching up to the sound and fury of fellow travellers The Leg, this unholy alliance has produced a pantheon of off kilter parallel universe mayhem. Throughout, Vickers and his musical troupe have mined a rich seam of baroque grotesquery set to the ferocious crunch of an ever-expanding musical palette.
The ten vignettes that make up ‘Winter at Butterfly Lake’ may be sired from the same fertile mind as before, but the record also lays bare a set of love songs writ large. From the opening string-led flourish that leads into the thundering cello-led gallop of ‘Slow Runs the Fox’ to the closing affirmation of ‘Contents of the Earth’, ‘Winter at Butterfly Lake’ sees Vickers purging old demons on a quest for some ever out of reach holy grail.
Along the way, Vickers and co pay homage to electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, indulge in urgent Brechtian jug band chorales and reference Charles Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield, in swirling maelstroms of yearning. There is a love song to a dog with behavioral problems so bad he has to see a psychiatrist, and an ode to an imaginary four-legged friend that helps see those who dreamt it up through the bad times.
If all this suggests the band are getting soft in their old age, think again. The music at the heart of the Paul Vickers and the Leg experience remains a mercurial powerhouse of avant-pop Sturm und Drang. Composed by Vickers with guitar auteur Dan Mutch, cellist Pete Harvey, drummer Alun Scurlock, bassist John Mackie and guitarist James Metcalfe, the record’s muted chaos explodes into life with a frantic energy that at times sounds like Babel being blown to kingdom come. A final heartfelt rally sees Vickers take stock of the debris he’s been abandoned in before offering hope for some kind of future. As a redemptive Vickers writes, “don’t underestimate your value. Ever.”
Much of the album’s musical largesse is driven by the exquisite string arrangements of Pete Harvey, who recorded the album in the magic wood of his Pumpkinfield studio before drafting in a five-piece string ensemble to take things stratospheric. This taps into the torrent of emotions at the heart of Vickers’ words, until a final purging leaves him to contemplate life’s everyday illusions. On ‘Winter at Butterfly Lake’, a broken heart has rarely sounded so magical amidst the loss.
“When I was on holiday in Tuscany some years ago we visited the square that inspired Puccini to write Nessun dorma for the final act of his opera, Turandot. It was easy to see how such a wonderful piece of music could be created in such a place. It’s an acoustically spectacular circle of houses with washing lines hung from the windows in a higgledy-piggledy manner. It was late at night when I visited the former roman amphitheatre there, and I thought I saw the ghost of Frank Sinatra lighting a cigarette by street lamp, perhaps lost in some wee small hours heartbreak. When I looked again it was just a trick of the light. It was in fact a local vagabond.” – Paul Vickers
- Neil Cooper, 2025 />
Photos Laura Meek
Winter at Butterfly Lake by Paul Vickers and the Leg is out on the 27th of June 2025 on PX4M on all platforms and picture disc vinyl.
Friday, 6 June 2025
Twonkey's Zip Wire to Zanzibar: Edinburgh Fringe 2025 Dragonfly 52 West Port (Just off of Grassmarket) The Main Room: JUL 31- AUG 24 at 20:15 apart from Mondays (60 min) Award winning Vaudevillian fringe firebrand Paul Vickers hits the town with his new Twonkey chapter house of wizardry and wonder. Performed this time out in drag as Twonketta, Twonkey’s widow, a lady who is somewhat late for church. This year it’s a thriller about rival roller coasters and fairgrounds set by a smokey lagoon in a valley once owned by ex-milkman turned singer Shakin’ Stevens.
“You arrive at suspense by letting the audience in. By not concealing things” Alfred Hitchcock “I wasn't sure if it was a horse or a lion” Jim Henson Featuring a Steve Martin puppet made from sanitary towels and the pocket princess Tutti Cnutti back after blowing her top last year. It's time to get wild, giddy and very silly. It's Twonkey's 13th solo fringe show. He must be doing something right or maybe he's mad as a lorry. “Clowning at its very best” ★★★★★ Kate Copstick, The Scotsman “His idiotic joy is infectious: he is a masterclass in play” ★★★★★ Neurodiverse Review "He’s in a league of his own" ★★★★ North West End "Wonderfully weird, it’s very funny" ★★★★ Broadway Baby Previously a winner of the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality. "Artistry and eccentricity combine in Twonkey’s world" Steve Bennett, Chortle "It wouldn't be the Fringe without Twonkey" The Skinny
Tuesday, 12 March 2024
TWONKEY'S BASKET WEAVING IN PERU (W.I.P)
Sunday 7th April 2024, 4:00pm to 5:00pm - The Bill Murray, LONDON
I am the spirit of the mountains, elf of the sea air, a basket maker. The Award winning fringe legend returns with a mysterious melodic new adventure.
Clowning at its very best ***** Scotsman.
Kate Copstick in the Scotsman wrote last year "If you have missed the many magical years of Twonkey at the Fringe then get yourself along and experience the most creative crazy in show business."
Twonkey is starting to think a simple life in Peru might be the way forward. Follow him with his donkey, puppets and songs to spiritual enlightenment or death.
Mr Twonkey (AKA Paul Vickers) is a surreal act of twisted songs, adult fairy tales and elaborate props. His goal is to mix funny anecdotes and heartfelt moments creating an enjoyable, uniquely Twonkey vision of a better world.
Twonkey is a musical comic with an operatic imagination.
**** Beyond the Joke
Being in his presence for an hour is delightful.
**** The Times
Twonkey's Basket Weaving in Peru will also be part of the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe at Dragonfly each evening at 20:15 hours (apart from Monday's).
Twonkey's Basket Weaving in Peru is the 14th Edinburgh Fringe show from the crazy mind of Paul Vickers.
Photos:Toby Long (PHOTO EXPRESS)
Saturday, 19 August 2023
5 starsTHE SCOTSMAN Fringe 2023Kate Copstick
If you have missed the many magical years of Twonkey at the Fringe then get yourself along to the Voodoo Rooms and experience the most creative crazy in showbusiness.
For those of us who have accompanied the man on his many adventures over the years this is like a wonderful reunion of many of your past loves. Sing along with The Flying Tailor as we chant “the worst part of the orange is the rind” before the song takes a gothic dive. Tiny Al Capone makes a welcome return and, just as quickly, is tossed aside to make way for some mushroom related silliness with a Goat Girl In Trouble.
Yes, we are talking drugs. But we are fine because we have moved on to a song in the style of Kraftwerk. My notes say 'Galashiels', 'Jaffa Cakes' and 'bushy eyes'.
It is tricky to make sense of Twonkey, once he gets the bit between his teeth. But sense is overrated. This 'best of' show is like catching comedy lightning in a jar. Custard Club - his abandoned musical love letter to custard – has long haunted Twonkey and he shares some extracts with us here. Or tries to.
The entire room goes into meltdown now. This is a glorious disaster. This is clowning at its very best. I cannot remember seeing an audience so reduced to rocking back and forth as tears of laughter flowed. The stage is littered with devastated puppets and props by this point and and Twonkey is muttering something about trying to make it slicker tomorrow.
The fortune telling ship's wheel makes predictions, Chris Hutchinson gets a makeover, we play a fascinating game entitled Sniff My Cottage and all five of us in the audience leave bathed in seratonin.
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4 stars North West End Roger Jacobs
There will be few Fringe sights this year more unsettling than The Wobbly Waiter, a dismembered, dead-eyed puppet & frying pan fixture, advancing down the aisle… to you. To the strains of the Custard Club song. Except, a short while later, The Ship’s Wheel appeared. The relief in the room was palpable once a woman near the front agreed to take the expensive sausage and two fellows on the left the Huge Red Knickers. Their most intimate adventures successfully described by the mind-reading ship’s appliance (despite one denial), Twonkey returned to the stage to continue something resembling a revue of his greatest moments from the last ten or so years. Nine more than he’d ever envisaged when putting his first show on in 2010. Might’ve been 2011 but everything’s fluid in the Twonkeyverse.
The evening might have begun on a negative with a song celebrating The Flying Tailor, a parachute innovator who died jumping off the Eiffel Tower in 1912 attempting to test-fly his life-saving device, but it provided plenty of wriggle room for more cheerful stuff. Tiny Al Capone featured, Idle Goat Girl too and we were advised to try booking a ski holiday after taking an Ecstasy tab. Which led seamlessly to one of Twonkey’s catchiest laments ‘Moosk’, inspired by a tormented night in Galashiels after a pre-bed Ovaltine. A highlight was the touching duet with Chris Hutchison concerning the World War 2 incident when Twonkey’s wife ran off with Mussolini. Amidst broken and breaking props and a scratchy soundtrack Twonkey persevered, even finding time for a competition, the audience member guessing (nearly) correctly the origin of the cheese rewarded with an in-your-face performance from the revered Transylvanian Finger Fantasies.
The only twitch missing was the customary stomp-out from a baffled, frustrated audience member, livid at what their partner had dragged them to.
4 stars Entertainment Now Avantika Sood
Twonkey’s greatest twitch is not explicitly pointed out. Perhaps it’s a bit in his show, perhaps it’s the whole show, perhaps it’s not in the show at all. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take away from the fact that you can count on Twonkey to point out absolutely ridiculous, somehow-devised nuggets of whimsey and nonsense.
Armed with an army of some of the most disturbing puppet contraptions you’d probably ever have the pleasure(?) to lay your eyes on, Twonkey presents his musical show and tell. It’s an amalgamation of musical numbers that talk about a lot of nothing, and bits in between that talk about a lot of nothing too. But it’s the nothing that makes you chuckle, or laugh whole-heartedly if it’s your thing.
Unfamiliar to the Twonkey universe, I’ve seen described as weird and wonderful, the hour was a massive suspension from any reality I ever knew. The only thing that resembles familiarity are the melodic crashes of sound, making up the numbers he sings to. They share a similar DNA to the surrealist music making of the 60s and 70s. As mentioned, the lyrics are whacky and paint whacky landscapes of his imagination.
The show is most definitely out there, out there in a land so far away, semi materialised in the Twonkey imagination. There’s no formula, rhyme or reason, just a whole lot of whimsy and a self-aware scrappiness that engulfs the performer’s repertoire. The talent it takes to make utter nonsense become the content of a show is entirely impressive. Not to mention the obvious musical proficiency that is intentionally downplayed by playfulness, making it all the more wonderful to experience. If you give it a go, there’s no doubt you’ll walk away either in splits, impressed, confused, or all of the above. It’s not your typical show, it’s on the alternative side of alternative, but I reckon that’s what makes the Fringe for some of us.
Twonkey’s Greatest Twitch @Voodoo Rooms Ballroom 6:30 until the 27th of August (apart from Monday's).
Friday, 19 May 2023
Like an electrocuted Tommy Cooper in a car crash with Frank Sidebottom, 'being in his presence for an hour is delightful' **** (Times). An award-winning Fringe legend, 'he creates wonderlands of weird' **** (Scotsman). The ship's wheel will be sent into the crowd to read minds. A goat girl will be in trouble, a tiny Al Capone will be discovered, and we will be able to see inside the pub from outside the pub - wobbly fun with songs and puppets. 'We will examine the tapes closely when we return to London' (Britain's Got Talent).
Monday, 2 May 2022
Sunday, 12 September 2021
>>Twonkey’s Greatest TwitchI'm back so let's do it this time: London Soho Theatre 19th october 7.15 pm :
Paul Vickers aka Twonkey is back with a bonfire of goodies like Leonardo Da Vinci he’s ahead of his time, but behind on his rent. Its his first London show sense the incident, so to celebrate he’s putting on a show that brings together all his best bits from ten years on the Edinburgh fringe. He’s only in town for one night before trip to Margate to see his gran, so hurry hurry hurry.
"A pioneer of the indie/fringe crossover"
Guardian.
Ex- lead singer of John Peel favourites Dawn of the Replicants.
Winner of the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality 2016.
Lead singer with Paul Vickers and The Leg.
“He creates wonderlands of weird” 4 stars
The Scotsman
"Mind-boggling from start to finish" 4 stars
Broadway Baby
“Mind bending fables” 4 stars
The Times
“He’s a one-man cornucopia of the bizarre” 4 stars
Fringe Guru
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