Obituarty of comedian Gareth Ellis, who died earlier this year at 34, by his former double act partner Rich Rose
Gareth Ellis, half of the notorious double act Ells and Rose and a former deputy manager of London’s Backyard Comedy Club, died in May at the age of 34. This is the first time his passing has been reported, as a memorial event has been planned to celebrate his life next month. Here, his former double act partner Rich Rose recalls their time together.
From 2012 to 2018 I was in a double-act with Gareth Ellis. This was undoubtedly the most chaotic period of my life, characterised as it was by ludicrous pranks, award-winning violence, and ill-fitting suits. It was a delirious, hilarious, occasionally maddening time – but it was sure-as-hell never boring, and I have one person to thank for that.
I met Gareth at a house party in January 2012. We were 21 years old, fresh out of university, and insufferable show-offs. We had both previously dipped our toes into the world of stand-up and, after chatting for several hours, Gareth proposed we start a double-act. While I initially dismissed it as drunken bravado, there was something about him that drew me in. He was short (a good start I figured; at least I’d be the more fuckable one), and possessed what my Irish mother later referred to upon meeting him as ‘the cheek of the devil’.
A few days after our first encounter I went around to The Amersham Arms in New Cross, South London, which he was working in and living above. After an abysmal improv session, where we threw ideas for sketches around, only for them all to fall flat (Gollum working in a call centre, anyone?), we decided to go down the classic Laurel & Hardy/Morecambe & Wise route. We would use our own names, dress in suits, and play on the time-honoured yin/yang dynamic, with Gareth the simple-minded buffoon and me the exasperated straight man. And so Ellis & Rose was born.
We performed our first set at The Amersham’s comedy night a couple of weeks later. The five-minute routine was built around us trying to flog merchandise to the audience: copper wire we’d stripped from an abandoned building, Gareth’s old baby albums (in which he was inexplicably Black) and pillows stuffed with orphan hair (‘It’s for a good cause. Half the proceeds go to buying wigs… for orphans’).
While essentially a jumble of half-formed ideas, it went well enough for us to do two further gigs, before Gareth talked me into agreeing to a full month run at the Edinburgh Fringe that August. That 50-minute show, Ellis & Rose: Failing To Pay Off Their Student Loans, garnered a handful of very respectable reviews and we had some great audiences. It wasn’t until the year after however, that we really gained some notoriety…
In the run-up to the 2013 Fringe, a playwright reached out to us with a satirical script he’d written, Jimmy Savile: The Punch & Judy Show, wanting to know if we’d be in it. While we were deep in preparation for our own show, Ellis & Rose: Big In Denmark, Gareth felt it could be good exposure, even though it meant doing two shows every day for the entire month. After arguably not giving it enough thought, we agreed.
Maybe something got lost in translation, but we had been under the impression we would be performing in it alongside other comics. It was not until about two weeks before the festival that we actually read the script and realised we were the only two fuckers in it!
By this point, The Sun had already picked up on the story and written an article on it, which led to a slew of angry readers writing into the paper to express their disgust that anyone would dare perform a comedy show about the subject.
To make matters worse, Gareth and I never made it more than about 15 pages into the script. With respect to the writer, it was dry, talky and simply not very funny. It wasn’t us. And so, we did what any self-respecting comic would do. We ditched the script entirely and decided to simply make the show up off the top of our heads.
Every day of the festival, we performed Big In Denmark at The Hive in the afternoon, then headed over to Bob’s Bookshop in the evening to pull a ‘satirical’ show about one of history’s greatest monsters out of our arses.
Gareth played Jimmy Savile, decked out in a red onesie, plastic gold chain around his neck, papier-mâché cigar in hand, and one of his mum’s blond wigs jammed tightly over his head. I constructed some crude cardboard ‘puppets’ (Louis Theroux, The Head of the BBC, Prince Charles), which I operated from behind a wobbly table covered in a filthy sheet. We brought a six pack of beer onstage with us every evening and by the end of each show, they would all be gone.
The reviews, as you can imagine, were not kind. Here are a few personal favourites:
- ‘A steaming pile of horse shit’ – Edinburgh Is Funny
- ‘The very worst thing that has ever appeared at the Fringe’ – Exeunt Magazine
- ‘Awful, but Savile was awful too’ – Broadway Baby
It might have been the relentless drinking, lack of sleep, or poor Fringe diet, but far from being downhearted, we treated each one-star review as a little badge of honour.
One of my favourite ever Fringe memories is watching from behind my table, as Gareth (as Jimmy) read out the most recent awful write-up we’d received to that day’s audience, tears of laughter streaming down his face, plastic jewellery jangling against his chest.
Perhaps naively, we felt protected from the bad publicity as our names were not attached to the Jimmy Savile show in any way, and as far as we were concerned no one could link it back to the show we had put real work into and were performing at The Hive each day. Unfortunately for us, that all came crumbling down when Chortle gave the Savile show a one-star review (opening line: ‘It’s an insult to every comic who’s poured their heart and soul into their Edinburgh show that this atrocity shares space in the same programme’), in which we were named and shamed as Ellis & Rose.
Gareth was determined to turn it around. He reasoned that if we somehow built on it, we could find a way to transform this crappy publicity into great promo for our act. He had his sights set firmly on winning the Cunning Stunt Award at the Malcolm Hardee Awards.
And so, a couple of days after that review came out, Gareth was walking around town with a fresh and horribly swollen black eye. We alerted whatever press we could, telling them that someone had waited for us outside our show at The Hive, having found out who we were from the Chortle review, before deliberately attacking him for his involvement in the Savile show.
A few websites and blogs ran the story, although almost all of them expressed some level of incredulity, seemingly not quite convinced about the course of events.
It was not until the week before the Malcolm Hardee Awards that we met with the judges and revealed the truth: that the whole thing had been staged and I had punched Gareth in the face.
I’d like to say it was a tough call to decide who got punched, but the truth is he owed me £30, which I said I’d write-off if I could be the punchee as opposed to the punched. Yup, we had got paralytically drunk one night and I had walloped him several times in the eye. Of course, to prove this was the case, we had to film it to show the judges. Unfortunately I was so pissed I had failed to turn the camera on for the first three punches, which meant when the camera was finally rolling I had to deliver a further five thwacks.
The judges were not so much impressed as horrified by our ingenuity, which meant we did not end up winning the Cunning Stunt Award. Instead, for the first and only time in the history of the awards, a new award was created: The Pound of Flesh Award: For Publicity That Money Cannot (and Possibly Should Not) Buy.
Far from launching us into the comedy stratosphere, I think this stunt led to us being seen as attention-seeking liabilities, if not full-blown psychopaths. Undeterred, we leaned into this, and idiotic pranks became a staple of what we did.
The following year we performed a show for one night only at the Fringe. This was the year that Jim Davidson took his first show to the festival. He was none too impressed when he got wind of our one-off show, Jim Davidson’s Funeral, prompting him to tweet that we were ‘just some intellectual twats trying to be funny’. If he’d seen the show, he probably would have dropped the ‘intellectual’. Nonetheless, that quote was displayed proudly on the poster.
That same year we got barred from The Hive for packing out the room by spreading the word that Russell Brand was performing a secret show there, only for us to perform the Jimmy Savile show again (I like to think those who didn’t immediately walk out enjoyed it).
The next year we ran into Steve Marmion, artistic director of Soho Theatre, at a party. While aware of us, he told us he didn’t think we were ready to appear at the Soho Theatre. We felt otherwise.
To prove our point, we had a professional looking photograph taken of us, seemingly performing in a black box space that could’ve been the Soho Theatre, with Gareth holding a balloon on which he’d drawn Steve Marmion’s face. One day, when it was relatively empty, we took a seat at a booth in the theatre and secured our photo, now in a fancy wooden frame, onto their Wall of Fame.
The picture remained there for about six months, before the theatre cottoned on and removed it — though not after tweeting a picture of it with the caption ‘Ha! This lot have skipped the Soho show & put themselves ont’ photo wall regardless. 5* for Effort’.
This giddy brand of mischief was Gareth’s forte. He would go to any effort to elicit a reaction: preferably laughter, sometimes annoyance; it didn’t really matter. These lunatic schemes made him an exciting, unpredictable force – being around him, I never quite knew what would happen next. And while my natural inclination is to fly a bit more under the radar, I found myself getting swept up in his shenanigans time and time again. It was a joy.
Bolstered by our newfound infamy and going against all good sense, we even did a mini tour of the Jimmy Saville show (inexplicably, people showed up to watch it). We ditched the cardboard puppets and I built a cast of supporting characters out of foam and felt, which somehow looked even worse than their cardboard counterparts.
We also constructed a ‘Satire-O-Meter’, a movable dial with a picture of Chris Morris on one side and Dapper Laughs on the other, which we gave out to a random audience member at each show so they could let us know in real-time how successful our satire was (hint: not very).
When we performed the show in Norwich, the venue had a large window next to the stage, facing onto the street. About halfway through the show, a walking ghost tour passed by. The tour guide balked upon spotting Gareth and stopped the tour. A devilish glint flashed across Gareth’s eyes. He leapt over to the window and waved his cigar menacingly at the astonished onlookers, shouting “Yes, it’s me! ‘Tis the ghost of Jimmy, back from the dead!”
The sight of several confused Japanese tourists taking pictures of this strange little man, as he danced and writhed against the glass, is something I’ll never forget. I can only assume they’d never heard of Jimmy Savile and must’ve thought themselves lucky to catch some quality British comedy.
In 2014, we were nominated for best alternative act at the London Cabaret Awards. The ceremony took place at Café de Paris in Leicester Square. Deciding we needed to look the part, we ditched the shabby Waiting for Godot suits that had been our mainstay since the formation of the act, and bought a pair of snazzy matching blue-and-red tartan numbers, which became a fixture from thereon in.
The Rubberbandits were also up for an award that night, but were not attending. We contacted the organisers of the event, using a fake email address, and pretended to be the Rubberbandits’ agent, with the intention of performing as them at the ceremony (taking advantage of the fact that they wear plastic bags over their heads).
The plan was to perform one of their songs, while giving a shout-out to our new favourite act, Ellis & Rose. Perhaps sensing something was amiss, the organisers emailed back saying all the acts had been booked and there was no room to accommodate the Rubberbandits on the bill. Reading this back now, I think that was probably for the best, as I’m fairly sure what we were planning constituted some form of fraud.
Around this time, we set up our own monthly night at Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green: Ellis & Rose’s Brainwash Club. We hosted every month, trying out new bits in between acts, and secured such names as Harry Hill, Omid Djalili, Reginald D Hunter and Nina Conti. Harry Hill ended up doing it three times and took a real shine to Gareth (I won’t lie, I was jealous, which delighted Gareth no end).
Harry invited Gareth to be a part of his Soho Theatre show in 2016, in which Gareth played Hitler entirely in his underpants. I went to see it and Gareth was truly fantastic. His Adolf elicited a barnstorming reaction from the audience and he almost stole the show from underneath Harry’s feet. If a photo exists from this, I think it deserves to go on the Soho Theatre’s Wall of Fame…
He later filmed a cameo for Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule, in which Harry smashed a wooden chair over him. I went to the live recording and despite being the funniest part of the episode, it was ultimately edited out of the final broadcast, much to Gareth’s chagrin and my barely concealed glee.
If this sounds cruel, I suppose it gives some insight into what it’s like being in a double-act. It is like a romantic relationship, complete with all the feuds, jealousies and insecurities that can entail. For all the fun and camaraderie, I’m not sure it can ever be a truly healthy dynamic.
In 2018 we made it to the finals of the Naty New Act of the Year Awards. I felt it would be a smart move to do tried-and-tested material that we knew worked. By this point however, Gareth was so addicted to chaos and unpredictability that he felt we should create a purpose-built set largely from scratch. His natural charisma and gift-of-the-gab always made him incredibly persuasive, so I pushed my misgivings aside, and that’s exactly what we did.
The routine involved us presenting the audience with a cake shaped like a handbag, for reasons that I can no longer remember. We had a cake custom-made, with ‘Love Ellis & Rose’ written in a delicate icing swirl across the base. The punchline involved Gareth dropping the cake at a pivotal moment, ‘inadvertently’ smashing it all over the stage. The problem, it turns out, with this kind of curated chaos, is that it can often go wrong.
Our set on the night was already marred by a faulty lapel mic attached to yours truly, which crackled and hissed throughout. When the moment came for the cake to be smooshed, Gareth dropped it like a pro. It pirouetted, doing several balletic flips in mid air. The crowd held their breath. I held my breath. And then the cake landed… perfectly.
The fucking pastry bastard landed on its base in the middle of the stage without so much as a blemish. Gareth and I stared at it in disbelief. The room was silent. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.
Without the cake being smashed there was no ending to our set. So Gareth, ever the quick thinker, kicked the bloody thing to pieces. It made a lot of mess, but made no sense in the context of the gag. We did not win the New Act of the Year Award.
At this point, Gareth and I were living together in a flat in Newham. I remember waking up the morning after the Natys, with a thudding hangover, and going for a walk.
This isn’t working anymore, I realised.
The chaos had taken over and we had lost sight of what made our act fun in the first place. A relentless pursuit of unpredictability had taken over and in this instance it had hurt us.
Shaking with nerves, I told Gareth how I felt. To my surprise, he agreed.
We decided we would do two more Brainwash Clubs, then put the act on indefinite hiatus.
‘It’ll be a lot funnier if we come back to it in middle-age,’ I told him. ‘You’ll have hopefully lost a leg to diabetes and I’ll be a bitter divorcee whose children don’t speak to him. Then we’ll be hilarious!’
It breaks my heart that we’ll never get that opportunity (divorced dad part notwithstanding).
We performed our final Brainwash Club around summer 2018. I believe the Euros were happening at the same time, so the audience was small but appreciative. I don’t mind admitting that I felt a lump in my throat as we walked off that stage for the final time.
It still makes me sad that such a demented act, that was such a large part of my life, ended not with a bang but with a sputter.
Post-Ellis & Rose, we continued to live with each other up until 2021. During this time, Gareth won a prestigious 30 Under 30 Award for his work in events management when he worked at Royal Museum Greenwich. He later went into advertising, winning three coveted D&AD Pencils for his formidable and imaginative work in that field. It seems his knack for publicising Ellis & Rose in the most bonkers and eye-catching ways possible was just a precursor for bigger and more lucrative things.
Even though Ellis & Rose was no more, he still gained a great deal of attention performing. At the start of Covid, he and I went into Central London one day, with him dressed as a medieval plague doctor. We spotted a BBC news crew about to shoot a live segment, outlining the start of lockdown restrictions.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Gareth wandered into shot directly behind the newsreader. Afterwards, we walked away, cackling like a pair of schoolchildren and went straight onto Twitter, where his cameo was already trending. On YouTube, the video has over a million views (and I would just like to point out that the prick who runs into shot at the end and gives a thumbs-up, thus slightly killing the moment, despite looking a lot like me, is definitely not me).
Most recently, Gareth could be seen last year at several festivals, including Glastonbury and Boomtown, as Chicken Man. This basically involved him dressed in a sparkly dinner jacket, with a rubber chicken mask, clucking along to the hits of Frank Sinatra, while throwing eggs at the audience. People loved it.
***
Gareth passed away in May of this year, at the age of 34.
I realise this has been a long obituary, but frankly it doesn’t even scratch the surface of one of the most original, hilarious, and ‘not give-a-fuck’ people it has ever been my privilege to not only meet, but work with,
After we put Ellis & Rose to bed, I felt lost for the best part of a year. So much of my identity was tied up in that act and when it was no longer part of my life, I felt adrift and confused. I think that’s what being in a double-act does to a person. The obvious comparison is that it’s like a marriage, but I don’t think that’s quite right. It’s more like you’re two separated parents, trying to deal with a pair of unruly children who want to climb on the furniture and chuck paint at the walls. The children are the alter-egos you form for the act: a part of you, for better or for worse.
I miss those little bastards.
It has been a few months, but it is still hard to comprehend how someone that gregarious, that full of life, that BIG is no longer around. Several people have reached out to me on hearing the news, asking if it’s some elaborate Ellis & Rose prank. I wish I could say that was true.
I keep expecting footage to emerge of him in North Korea, walking around eating an ice cream, exposing his death to be some kind of mad Andy Kaufman-level stunt. But I know that is not the case.
While critics may not have always agreed, Gareth truly was touched by genius. He may not have always been the easiest person to work with; in fact at times he was nothing short of exasperating, but being around him was never less than electrifying. And my god he was FUNNY. I think that is ultimately how he would most like to be remembered. He was a one-of-a-kind on the comedy scene: someone who marched to the beat of his own drum and could mine humour from any avenue.
It has been deeply moving to receive messages from people, including many comedians, who have reached out to share memories and anecdotes following his passing. He was loved by many, but no one adored him more than his wonderful partner, Michelle. Our double-act paled in comparison to theirs.
Goodbye lad, you will be greatly missed.
The world has lost a true original.
• A memorial will be held for Gareth at Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, East London on October 9, from 6.30pm to 9pm. Anyone who knew him and would like to pay their respects is welcome to join, just come along.
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Published: 16 Sep 2024
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