Hard lessons for classroom clowns

By Dickon Hooper
BBC News Online, Somerset

It's a serious business, clowning.

Workshops on face paint or balloon bending, impromptu plate-spinning sessions - it's all in the wrist, apparently - and joke master classes are hard work.

No one escaped the organized chaos

After convening in the exotic locations of St Petersburg, Portugal and Bognor Regis, the International Clowns Festival, set up in the 1940s, has made it to Weston-super-Mare in North Somerset.

More than 130 clowns from 23 countries have rolled into the seaside town, in an assortment of costumes and cars, including two who will be attempting to smash world records.

And, complete with a red nose, I decided to take a crash course in the art of being a clown.

The first assignment is a workshop on clowns in hospital, where we practice laughing in pairs, before breaking into sobs, and back again.

Although this confirms there is only a thin line separating laughter from tears, clowns are quick to dispel the idea of the sad man behind the mask.

Clown Lorenzo tells me: "As soon as we start putting the make-up on the happiness starts. I leave the nose to last and when that is on, that's it. Happiness and joy are manifest."

It is the best job in the world. You make people happy and you make them laugh Clown Sonny Clown photo gallery

The laughter in the workshop is infectious.

One clown, with face painted but in jeans and a T-shirt, said: "If we did more of this, we wouldn't need to go to the doctors so much.

"Why don't they do this at the UN?," another half-jests.

On to the tricks room, where French clown Emile, on his first trip to a UK festival, shows me his spoon trick.

Take a tray with metal cups ranged on one side, and spoons on the other. Flip it and watch the spoons sail majestically into the cups. Try it at home - but use plastic cutlery to start with.

Emile works with his wife and son in a troupe in France. He told me: "Our life is about family and a life in the circus. We have a family act which performs an act about life in a circus.

"We are here to meet people we have met before, and to take part giving demonstrations to children and performing our spectacle on Saturday."

Clown Lorenzo dispelled the sad clowns myth

In true French style, Emile is something of a "philosophe": "There is a difference between European clowns and UK clowns, who are moving more towards the US-style. In Europe, we are moving away from costumes and make-up, towards an unmasking."

US clowns and their UK counterparts are more concerned with their looks and rely on basic tomfoolery, he said.

European clowns prefer to muse on the spectacle and art of the performance.

I asked him what the essence of clowning in Europe was. He told me: "soul".

English clowns would probably push a custard pie in your face.

Frenzy

Clowns have a licence to do what they want, to say what everyone is thinking, providing they make people laugh. And they do.

In a double act in the Weston lunchtime sun, Rainbow and Sonny work a crowd into a frenzy.

Members of the audience are dragged up to participate. Children and pensioners, even the St John's Ambulance staff, skip on a giant rope, or pass juggling clubs.

Sonny, from Watford, tells me: "It is the best job in the world. You make people happy and you make them laugh."

If you're feeling blue, my advice is, go see a clown.