Is that correct?

Yeah, so Philippe-Gollier was a very famous clown teacher who's only just recently passed away this year.

And he was one of the very earlier doctors or students of Jacques Lecoq, who also taught in Paris.

And Lecoq was the one who brought circus clowns into his theater school to teach his students.

Clowning is a way of teaching them a different skill.

He had a physical theater school, essentially, in Paris.

And so Philippe started to learn clown from Jacques Lecoq and And then he started to teach at Lecoq as well.

So it's definitely something that

Yeah.

And then after that, I say, oh, you can hang on to that leaf blower because we just use a new one every time.

And then they just sit there holding the leaf blower for the rest of the show.

But the other night, I come out and I'm delivering a monologue and I'm doing Hamlet, but I'm using the lyrics from Bohemian Rhapsody as the text.

And then I get to the point where I go, anyway, the wind blows and the person in the audience just blasted the leaf blower and it brought the house down.

Like, it was just such a beautiful moment.

This person had just been hanging onto it and thought, oh, I'm just going to use it again at one point.

You studied clowning and mime internationally like how have those experiences shaped your style over the years did it take you a bit of time to find your place in it all?

Mm-hmm.

And I think, I think one of the, the best things that could've happened to me was that we, we formed a clown troupe, this Plague of Idiots that you speak of, and I was the, the boss clown.

I was like the, the authority figure.

And so my, and I, so I, I certainly wasn't the funniest person in that troupe.

In fact, I would go as far as saying I was the least funny.

But it was my job to drive the show forward, to structure the show, to keep it moving, and to cleanse the palate, and, and, and to save the clowns as well.

So if someone came on and w- they were doing something and it wasn't working, I would come on and I would, you know, sort of save them by, usually by telling them that it was working really well.

H- H- Have you ever been on social media? And what was the point in which you realized, "I don't need to be here anymore"?

How did how did this character come about over the years? Like how in general, what was the origins of it all?

Yes, I was an actor for about 15 years before I even discovered like theater clowning because all I knew of clowns was the circus.

And then I was in Edinburgh actually in 2009 and I saw a show by a company called Spy Monkey who were just beautiful theater clowns and they were trying to do Moby Dick in an hour, you know, five, four idiots it was.

And it was just the funniest thing I'd ever seen.

So I was like, what is this? I want to do this.

I went away and retrained as a clown.

I went to Paris and trained with Philippe Goliath who was the person who trained them and sort of master clown.

So like what was if you don't mind me asking your humiliation, what did you have to get over in order to get to a comfortable place where you are now?

It's, I guess that's the, is that the clown tradition that you're sort of relying on? Is it partially technique and training that allows you to do this in front of people? With such abandon.

Yeah.

I think that's the core of clown trading is what drew me to it is that it is – it's humiliation actually to begin with.

The first kind of – it's that inkling of making yourself the object of laughter is the basis of clown.

And it's not about – it's not just about pratfalls and falling over, but really digging deeper and finding what it is about you specifically that is ridiculous.

We quite often say your clown is what someone who's not particularly nice might say about you when you left the room.

Did you notice his voice? Did you notice this about him? Did you notice the way he walked? And if you can take what is about you that people make fun of and put it in front of an audience and go, you know that thing that you notice about me? I give you permission to laugh at that.

How do you put it together? Is it somebody watching you the whole time?

LAUGHTER Have you seen a ghost? Are you aware of a presence?

I haven't.

I always say that I believe in ghosts for fun, so I believe in everything for fun because I like the feeling of scaring myself.

I like believing in aliens, but I feel like with anything like that, if you really come down to it and you find someone who really believes anything strongly and you go, but you know that like 100%, you're not 100%.

If someone goes, yeah, I'm like, oh, maybe you're a little bit crazy.

right I

was like It's fine.

It's fine.