How to Juggle!

Five lessons, each one just a couple of minutes long, which - if you follow them and practice - will turn you into a juggler!

But why, I hear you ask, would I want to be a juggler? OK, well ignoring your rudeness for a second, there are actual reasons!

Juggling is a brilliant way of teaching the power of failure - the act of dropping a ball, picking it up and trying again is a lesson that, if learned early, can be applied throughout ones life. And the power in being able to teach yourself something that a couple of days ago, you couldn’t do? That’s a great way of instilling a feeling of agency and potential - a way of actually proving the old adage of being able to do whatever you put your mind to.

Additionally, it’s something that all ages can learn at pretty much the same speed, together. It’s a physical activity that can be done safely indoors, which is where we all are for the foreseeable, at the time of writing. Also, it’s cheap - you can learn with any balls you might have around the house, or rolled up socks with something inside for weight, or potatoes, or y’know, literally anything ball-shaped. It’s endless - once you learn to juggle, then you can progress to tricks! Mastered three? Try four!

Mostly, though, it’s fun. There will be giggling, and perhaps some light cursing too, but if you stick with it and practice, then you’ll be able to learn the skill that changed my life.

Before we get going - if you’re unfamiliar with me, I’m a professional juggler, and have made my living for the last three decades and change by touring the world performing on stage, in clubs, at festivals and wherever else I might be able to get a gasp from strangers. Feel free to poke around this website to check out what I do - there’s plenty of fun videos to watch. Sadly though, as a live performer, due to the pandemic, all of my shows for the rest of the year have been cancelled or postponed, which is a bit scary. So if you enjoy the videos below, and want to say thanks (and if you can easily afford to) then please do consider clicking here to donate me the price of a cup of coffee. Thanks!

OK, now lets learn to juggle…

So now you have all you need - go get something you can juggle, and practice!

Find me on facebook, twitter and instagram and show me how you’re getting on - and if you need any hints or tips, just ask!

And, if you’ll pardon me for repeating myself, if you enjoyed this, then buy a boy a coffee!

Good luck! Love you, bye.

LOCKDOWN TV: WEEK 5

Hope you’re all doing ok. It’s ok if you’re not. These are atypical times. Treat yourself and everyone else as kindly as you can, and we’ll get through the crazyness.

Here’s another midweek selection of nice things to watch, personally chosen by yours truly.

Before we start - a quick reminder than over on my youtube channel, I’m posting a series of short videos in which I will, if you so desire, teach you how to juggle. You can watch them right here.

If you’re enjoying the things I’m making, curating and posting during this period of isolation, and if your income hasn’t been adversely affected by the pandemic, I’d ask you to consider donating me the price of a cup of coffee by clicking here. For the last 33 years, I’ve made my living as a live performer, and I’m looking at my entire year of international shows, tours and festivals being completely cancelled, which is scary, both emotionally and, to be frank, financially. So I’m approaching this in the same way I used to approach being a street performer - if you’ve enjoyed what I put in front of you, and can afford to, then pay what you can, but if you can’t afford to, or are a member of the wonderful front line services, then it’s free - my gift to you.

before we start with the silly stuff, something a little more serious, and hopefully helpful. I like John Green very much, he seems like a decent human, and makes thoughtful work. He’s also, like me, a sufferer of OCD and anxiety disorder, and in this video, offers some good tips - for everyone - on how to take care of yourself during the odd situation we’re all in.

Let’s begin properly now, with a study in the foolishness of messing with Michelle Yeoh’s tofu

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update has become increasingly toothless in recent years, but whenever Cecily Strong makes an appearance, things get fun.

If the words “Kristen Schaal is a horse” mean nothing to you, then buckle up.

Here’s this weeks obligatory tap dance clip. Gregory Hines, and some bona-fide legends.

I still miss Stella Street. In our house, there’s still the semi regular nasal yelling of “ERE KEITH”. (Warning on this one - there’s some swears)

Learn to count with Bruce Springsteen. Obviously.

A more perfect paring, would be hard to fathom.

A few years ago I interviewed Al Murray live on stage, and cajoled him into doing some bits from his old speciality act. What a damn delight.

OK, now turn your speakers up and dance like Louise, Tina and Gene.

We’re ending on an interesting one this week. Jesse Thorn is a friend, and a bit of a hero. Whenever I sink into a funk and find myself believing the lie that success means you have to be a dull, crass person who sells out their values, I say to myself “Ahh. No. But Jesse”. Here, he talks for half an hour about how to be an entrepreneurial maker, stay true to yourself, and be a good, moral person. I watch it, sometimes, when I need to hear it. maybe it’ll inspire you, too.

Oh wait - I lied! BONUS CLIP! Here’s The Muppets doing a tiny desk concert! Enjoy the happy crying!

Hope my picks entertained and distracted you. If this is your first time here, then scroll down and you’ll find another four and a half hours worth of content to enjoy.

One final time - and please forgive me for this - but if you enjoyed this stuff, please do consider donating me the price of a cup of coffee here, to help me keep the lights on, while all of my live work gets cancelled.

Thanks, love you.

LOCKDOWN TV: WEEK 4

Hello again, everyone.

So here we are with the fourth week of LOCKDOWN TV - my attempt to distract and entertain you with a personally and carefully curated playlist of some of my favourite comedy, circus, variety, TV, film and all sorts of other fun amusements.

This week we have a particularly bumper selection - about 1 hour 20 mins of stuff. Some if it you may have seen before, some of it you probably won’t have, but I hope that it all goes a little way to helping make the unsettling and difficult situation we all find ourselves in just a little less scary.

Couple of things before we get going - earlier this week, over on my youtube channel, I started a series of short videos in which I will, if you so desire, teach you how to juggle. You can watch them right here.

If you’re enjoying the things I’m making, curating and posting during this period of isolation, and if your income hasn’t been adversely affected by the pandemic, I’d ask you to consider donating me the price of a cup of coffee by clicking here. For the last 33 years, I’ve made my living as a live performer, and I’m looking at my entire year of international shows, tours and festivals being completely cancelled, which is scary, both emotionally and, to be frank, financially. So I’m approaching this in the same way I used to approach being a street performer - if you’ve enjoyed what I put in front of you, and can afford to, then pay what you can, but if you can’t afford to, or are a member of the wonderful front line services, then it’s free - my gift to you.

Alright, enough words, on with the funnies.

Now, I don’t know what you’ve been doing since the last show, but over at the Blue Moon Detective Agency, Maddie Hayes and David Addison have been learning how to be funky. This one’s for Carla.

The Kates - Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan - are my favourite comedy thing of the last couple of years (And yes I know I’m late to the party). “Get Krackin” is savage genius, but here’s an episode of their cooking series that preceded that, “The Katering Show”.

Here’s a very famous short, unplanned, and completely perfect TV moment from the Johnny Carson show in 1965.

We’re all picky eaters sometimes. And if you haven’t seen John Mulaney’s Sack Lunch Bunch, then do yourself a kindness, and fire up Netflix.

An Oscar nominated short film from 1977 made by Steve Martin? Oh yes.

I’m re-reading Simon Lovell’s great “How To Cheat At Everything” at the moment, and if a book with that title interests you, then this might also be up your street..

I’ve been lucky enough to have performed on a few of the same stages as the great Bob Bramson over the years, although thankfully not in the same show, because his act would have blown mine to smithereens. Originality, high skill, and a dope tuxedo - you won’t be surprised to learn that he is my kind of act. After a stellar career, he retired in 1996. A reviewer of his farewell show wrote, “He didn’t steal everyone’s heart that night, because we gave them up gladly”. Not bad, not bad at all.

That Bob Bramson clip was, of course, from the Paul Daniels magic show. I was fortunate to work with Paul a few times, and here’s my favourite - interviewing him live on stage, during one of the West End runs of my “London Varieties” show.

And since we’re enjoying being in awe of people who mastered their art, here’s a fantastic short film about the techniques Buster Keaton used to craft comedy for film.

And to finish, how about this - an entire unaired 1999 pilot for an action comedy series about an astronaut who becomes a genius when exposed to sunlight and who rides a talking motorcycle. Starring jack Black, and Owen Wilson as the voice of the motorcycle? You might have come across this before, but it’s always worth rewatching Heat Vision and Jack!

As always, I hope this weeks little playlist managed to entertain you. First time here? Then scroll down - as of now there’s somewhere around four and a half hours of stuff like this for you to watch, so HAVE AT IT!

If you enjoyed this, then there’s a good chance other people might, too - so please do share this page on social media and help spread the word.

And finally, you’re probably not getting your morning cup from your local coffee shop right now, so maybe instead click here and donate the price of a coffee to me so I can keep the lights on.

Thanks for coming, see you next Wednesday. In the meantime stay safe and sane. Love you, bye.

Lockdown TV: Week 3

Hello again. How are we all doing? “Ups and downs” seems to be the standard answer to that, at the moment. As if the tides of our moods have become more frequent and the tidal pulls stronger, now that we perhaps have less structure forced onto each day. Important to make your own routines, lest your life starts to blur. I hope, then, that my weekly playlist is becoming part of yours.

Same mission statement every week - about an hour of personally chosen fun stuff from the worlds of comedy, variety, TV and various other flotsam and jetsam of culture and entertainment.

If my choices manage to make you forget about more distressing things for a while, then please do share this page. And bearing in mind that every possible source of income for the year is vanishing in front of my eyes at the moment, if you want to click here and donate me the price of a cup of coffee, then I’d be more than grateful.

That said, let’s go…

It’s Wrestlemania this coming weekend, and it’s going to be the oddest one ever. I’m a wrestling fan, but I’m also a aficionado of strange live TV things that only happen once. This means that I’m perversely excited about a show, split over two days, performed in empty venues, in front of no fans. When creative people are faced with having to find short term solutions to massive problems, interesting things often happen. Not always good things, but usually interesting.

So with that in mind, here’s The Rock being inappropriate.

This is one of those old school circus acts that I remember seeing on TV as a kid, and have seen various different people do, in various different ways, a lot, over the years. Not sure if Ray Dondy was the originator of the gimmick - probably not - but he does it as well as anyone, and who doesn’t like to watch slapstick that looks like it could genuinely kill you?

This is what happens when you deprive and attention-reliant variety idiot (me) of an audience for a few weeks. I apologise.

David Letterman’s comedy sensibilities - shaped and informed by the wonderful work of Merrill Markoe - are perfectly summed up in a segment like this. There’s no reason behind it, not much of a punchline, but it’s playful and stupid and goofy as hell.

Tom Waits did a dog food advert. I’m going to say that again. Tom Waits did a dog food advert.

And since we’re in the neighbourhood of strange matches of celebrity and advert subject…

I’ve been lucky enough to make a modest living out of mid-level showbusiness for all of my adult life. I have a brain full of happy memories of travels and friends and audiences and moments. But I know that this will always have a place in my top ten of “Remember when we did that?”. From the first season of Mat Ricardo’s London Varieties. We tap danced.

The glorious Animaniacs here, with their brilliant version of “Who’s On First”

Parks and Recreation is one of those shows that I go back to when I need something that I’ve seen twelvety times before, but know will bring me comfort for another dozen watches at least. Here’s Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones mucking around with a lie detector.

How have we got this far into this deliberate effort at timewasting without seeing some Jackie Chan. Let’s rectify that right now with a scene from the excellent “Miracles”. Fun fact, my wife has seen him sing live. I’m forever jealous of that.

Lena Horne. Kermit The Frog. Yes, please.

And finally, this week, lets have a spooky story, well told, by the magnificent John Hodgman. Who just this week, convinced me that a hot dog is not, in fact, a sandwich.

Hope you enjoyed this weeks little collection of stuff. Don’t forget to follow me on instagram, twitter and facebook to see all the other content I’m making and sharing while we’re all hiding out at home.

And one more time, if I wasted some of your time in a pleasant way, and if the pandemic hasn’t affected your financial situation, go over to ko-fi and buy me a coffee to say thanks.

Keep safe and sane, and come say hi. See you next week.

Lockdown TV: Week 2

Hello again - hope you’re all holding up OK. If anyone needs a chat, then feel free to reach out on twitter. Gotta be here for each other, when things go sideways, right?

Anyway - here we are with week 2 of Lockdown TV - my weekly playlist of some of my favourite comedy, variety, circus, magic, dance, music and other kinds of culture and entertainment to distract and amuse you while we’re all stuck at home. There’s about an hour of fun stuff here, suitable for the whole family - so enjoy, share the link to this page far and wide, and - bearing in mind my entire income comes from performing in live shows, and I’m sitting here watching my whole year of bookings get cancelled - if you’ve enjoyed this, or anything else I’ve ever made, and can afford to, then please do consider clicking here and donating me the price of a coffee.

And now, on with the fun..

I’m a variety performer, so lets start with a nice, safe, professional variety act and WHOAAA

We’re all on lockdown, so now’s the time to do some home improvements, and boy do I have the product for you…

Would you be interested in watching a calming video of an expert preparing a traditional Japanese meal specifically created for cats? Of course you would, you’re not a monster.

This lovely little thing is a short film by the Coen brothers. Made in 2007 as part of a collection of shorts celebrating the Cannes film festival, and film in general. For some reason when they made a DVD of all the films, this wasn’t included.

I perform a lot in Europe - particularly in Germany, where the rich history of variety and cabaret is still as strong as it ever was. People sometimes ask me if I do my act in German. Well, I do speak a little German, but since I’m the quintessential sarcastic English gentleman, it’s much more fun to play that up and spend my whole act being joyfully confrontational. Hope it’s not too long before I get to get to rile up some more beautiful European audiences.

This is the climactic duel from the 1940 movie “The Mark Of Zorro” between Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone. the thing to remember here is that Rathbone was two time British army fencing champion, and Power was doubled by legendary fight choreographer Fred Caverns, who was also pretty handy with a blade, which all meant the the swordplay is fast, technical and beautiful. The moment of silence before the final hit - come ON.

Just kids being kids, in one of my favourite movies - Jacques Tati’s “Mon Oncle”

Get Krackin is, for my money, one of the sharpest and funniest shows on TV over the last decade. Savagely smart, and goofy as hell, too. Like a modern “The Day Today”, but with a righteous agenda. Really, really, really worth seeking out. Here’s one of my favourite recurring segments, and one of the goofiest - the amazing Helen Bidou.

The Dior Dancers. One of the most spectacular variety acts to ever grace a stage. Sit back and let your jaw hang open from start to finish, and then click on the video underneath and listen to my interview with the star of the act, Merian Ganjou, conducted live on stage at one of my “London Varieties” shows. One of my most treasured moments on stage was showing my audience that clip and then springing the surprise on them, that Merian was sitting in the crowd the whole time. Sadly, Merian is no longer with us, but she left us that clip, some amazing stories she told me in the interview, and some very warm and shiny memories.

And finally, to play us out this week, if you’re a fan of Tom & Jerry (and if not, why not?), then Scott Bradley’s music sends you somewhere beautiful and mischievous. Here’s the John Wilson orchestra playing a medley of music used in those cartoons. Keep your eyes on the percussionists!

And that’s all for this week. I’ve been really enjoying putting these together, and I hope you’re enjoying watching them. I’ll be posting new stuff every week, and in the meantime you can do two things for me:

(1) Share this page with anyone you think might enjoy it

(2) If your wages are unaffected by the current situation, then consider clicking here and donating me the price of a coffee so I can offset the fact that I’ve got no income for..well.. who knows how long? (If you’re also suffering financially from this thing, then of course, it’s free and always will be)

Both are much appreciated - stay safe and healthy in both body and mind, and I’ll see you next week.

Lockdown TV!

So - everything, at the moment, is a little - as Bill & Ted once said - ATYPICAL.

All my work for the foreseeable future is being cancelled - international trips, West End show appearances, tour dates, cabaret nights - everything, all gone. I’m a freelance live performer, and without these live gigs, I don’t have any income at all. nor many feelings of usefulness. The government don’t seem to be in a hurry to help. So I’m stuck at home, and in all probability, so are you.

So I had an idea. How about, once a week-ish, I personally curate a playlist of some of my favourite comedy, variety, circus, dance, TV, and all manner of other weird and wonderful things? I spend a lot of my time on stage hosting variety shows, so why not try to the same thing online?

It’ll give you something fun to watch, give me some kind of creative outlet, perhaps help us to stay at least a little connected, and distract us from the internet news firehose of angst for a few moments.

All I ask in return is that you share this page with anyone you think might enjoy it. And if you enjoyed it, and if your income is not affected by the current situation, maybe you’ll consider clicking here and donating me the price of a cup of coffee, so I can keep the lights on, and feel that I’m still able to contribute. Thanks.

OK, Lockdown TV week one, lets go…

Let’s start with the soul-stirringly wonderful Nia Dennis showing how. things. are. done.

You’ve seen Kung-Fu Hustle, right? SEE KUNG-FU HUSTLE. Here’s Steven Chow being seven shades of awesome.

I think it’s a fair wager that there’ll be something from The Kids In The Hall in all of these playlists. So many perfect sketches. First saw this in the 90’s on the Paramount channel, in our 4th floor flat in Kings Cross, thanks to a dodgy satellite dish we bought from Brick Lane market and attached to the roof without the permission of the landlord.

OK, Palette cleanser time.

It’s a Sunday night in the 80’s and I’m being allowed to stay up late to watch Hill Street Blues. In an hour’s time the closing credits will tell me its time to go to bed and face the horror of another week of school, but for now, I revel in this drizzly, grimy world of friends and enemies and cops and robbers. Second best TV show ever made - fight me.

And to follow that, here’s the weather, with Dawn Lazarus.

Oh look, it’s me.

This is what happened, a few years ago, when I was bored on a long gig abroad, and happened to have a bunch of selfie sticks.

Men I want to be when I grow up: Hawkeye Pierce, Cary Grant, Gene Kelly.

Poets. Geniuses, truth-tellers, spokesboys for a generation.

“This is art. This means something”

Chip Kidd is way funnier, smarter, and goofier than you might expect a book cover designer to be.

It wouldn’t be recognisably me without something wrestling-related, right? Here’s Graham Chapman wrestling…Graham Chapman.

Jiminy Glick interviews Julia Louis Dreyfus.

I went to the the Prince movie “Sign O The Times” at the Dominion in London, back when it was a cinema. People danced in the aisles. British people. Think about THAT.

This is the last act on this weeks bill, so turn your speakers the hell UP, and dance around at home to what I firmly believe to be one of the finest music performances ever put on film.

Hope you enjoyed that - I’ll be back next week with even more good stuff.

In the meantime, maybe click the button below to donate the price of a cup of coffee

Take care of your body and soul, and I’ll see you next week.

Love you, bye.

Dressing rooms

I’ve talked before about how comforting I find certain places. How when I’m on stage, performing, I often feel like the optimum version of myself – a relaxed and confident version that it seems impossible to maintain for longer than however long a show needs to be. It’s nice to be able to flick through a mental rolodex of those places where I can feel contented enough to be in the moment. Across a table from my wife, ideally with a couple of cocktails between us. Breakfasts with buskers in cosy secret hideaways where the spoons are greasy. I add to the list as the years tick by, but I’m going to talk about one of the first ones.

I first experienced the heady warmth of a dressing room when my mum was part of an amateur dramatics company in the late 70’s. They used to work in a small local theatre, and there were only two dressing rooms – one for the men and one for the women. I’d be allowed to sit in the corner of the one my mum used, senses being tickled by the smell of hairspray and the sound of nervous line-recapping, all bathed in the sunshine yellow of the bulbs that edged the mirrors. Then I’d go outside, up to the circle, where I’d sit with my chin rested on the velvet covered rail, slowly gnawing my way through a little cardboard box of fruit gums as the show played out at the far end of the hall.

I have a lucky life in adulthood, and rarely do I feel luckier than when I’m in a dressing room before a cabaret show. The complicated cocktail of emotions they feed me used to, in my 20’s and 30’s, belong to busker breakfasts, but now it’s thicker and stronger, and it gets delivered by the backrooms of cabaret clubs. The tesla coil hum of catching up and nerves and gossip and excitement. Hugs, genuine affection, snacks, collaboration, sudden but casual deep conversations, genuine comradeship. I sit there, talking to friends reflected in mirrors, managing to not be obsessively worried about how I’m being perceived and overthinking every little moment. Happily lost in admiration for the people I’ll be sharing the show with. It’s a +10 stat boost. Everyone made equal by a shabby, damp, perfect sacred space. Happy cogs.

I’m not sure I know too many times in her life when my mum was demonstrably, obviously, outwardly happy, but when she was in her am-dram shows, I know she was. I know that she felt some of the things I feel. Maybe not as often as she would have liked, but occasionally, I know she felt them.

Which is why, last week, I took a trip back to the little local theatre she used to perform in. I hadn’t been there since I was a child. It’s a church hall now, all the red velvet seats have been removed, and you’re not allowed to go upstairs to the circle where I used to eat the fruit gums. The whole thing is scheduled for demolition at some point, because the church want to build a posh new hall. For now though, there’s still a stage, and if you lie to a vicar, which I did, they’ll leave you alone in there, unsupervised, which they did. So I stood on stage, staring out at what my mum saw when she was in her happy times. I hoofed out the timestep she taught me on the kitchen floor before she got hit by a truck and couldn’t tap any more. And I scattered her ashes under the stage.

A juggler with nothing to juggle

Here’s what happened last week. I had been booked to appear at a festival in central Europe. I did not have fun. The shows were outside, and most of mine were drowned out by the sound of a band comprised of European white boys with dreadlocks playing dub and doing the accent. And if you’re puzzling over how that could possibly be made worse, let me put your mind at rest by letting you know that the lead singer also played the didgeridoo. At times like this, you focus on your time spent either side of the shows, in the hotel. My hotel, while looking rather splendid in a crumbling-grandeur kind of way, did not provide the refuge I desired. Inside, it leant harder towards the crumbling than the grandeur. My room had no wifi. Or TV. Or shower. Or toilet. The furniture was covered variously in stains and/or graffiti. The mattress was made up of three square sofa cushions pushed together end to end. Oh, and the only running water that filled the cracked sink was perennially warm and yellow, from either tap. In discussions with some of the other performers, it was decided that the reason the wifi didn’t reach the rooms was that it was being blocked by the ghosts that almost certainly infested the place. I did not, as I may have mentioned, have fun.

So, I was looking forward very much to this weekends mission – Flying out to Portugal to do a couple of lovely shows in a bigass theatre, and having a little time before the shows to chill in delightful, cocktail and warm breeze accented surroundings.

Sitting at my departure gate in London’s famously beautiful Heathrow Airport, my flight gets pushed back by twenty minutes. Then another twenty. Then a couple more. Then we all get boarded – hooray! And we sit there on the tarmac for a couple of hours before getting shepherded back off the plane, the staff imploring “This flight is not cancelled”, while avoiding eye contact. This would have been slightly more convincing if several of us hadn’t witnessed a dude on the wing of the plane poking around with an electric drill and shaking his head. That kinda tipped us off that things weren’t good. A few more delays, and its past 6pm before my 12 noon flight finally gets taken out round the back of the airport and shot. I manage to get myself on the next flight out, but that means that instead of a quick connection onto a second flight to my gig, I have an overnight in Lisbon and will have to arrive at work the next morning. No biggie. Airport hotel, vending machine supper and bed it is.

The next day I complete the second half of my journey. I arrive at my final destination, but the flight case with two thirds of my show in it does not. I’m assured by the baggage staff that it’s fine. Fiiine. They know where it is – it’s still in Lisbon – but there’s a flight in a few hours. They’ll put the case on the flight, and then bring it to me at the venue. I’ll have it tonight, and my show isn’t until tomorrow, so no problem. Predictably, the flight that they plan to put the case on gets cancelled. And there are no more flights today. I go to bed with the flopsweat realisation that there’s a very real chance I’m going to have to do a full theatre show with hardly any of my props. What is a juggler with nothing to juggle? Just someone who tells you they can do tricks, but can offer no tangible proof. The showbiz equivalent of “My girlfriend goes to another school. You don’t know her, but I promise you she exists”.

It’s fine though. Fiiiine. Because we’ve been told that – without doubt – a courier will bring my case to me tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning comes and I’m woken by a phone call telling me that this hasn’t happened. I start to have odd emotions about my missing equipment. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I travel the world with this flight case and its mismatched contents. I sit on it, lean on it, throw my hat onto the end of its extended handle, and rely on its cargo to pay my mortgage. A collection of items that would make no sense and have no value to anyone but me. Sometimes, after a particularly good show, as I pack up, under my breath, I thank my props. And now they’re somewhere in Lisbon airport, lonely, confused and perhaps cold. OK, pull yourself together, Ricardo, you’ve got a job to do. At least my other case arrived, with my suit it in. I might fail dismally, I may crash and burn, but at least I’ll look good doing it.

The production team and I have a meeting. We make lists of things I need, and then spend the next few hours running around stealing or borrowing anything that might remotely be useful. They find some vases and trays, I borrow some crockery from a café. And we find a much-bigger-than-usual table backstage. But its Sunday, so any shops that might sell tablecloths or fabric are closed. So they get me a bedsheet. A fucking bedsheet.

As all of this is playing out, I’m swapping text messages with my wife. I tell her what’s going on, what cobbled together mullarkey I’m going to try to get away with on stage. She texts back the simple message “Show. Biz”. Yup. Once again, I find myself living in the middle of a bloody anecdote.

And I do the shows. And, somehow, they go pretty great. Perhaps, with the wind in the right direction, if you hadn’t ever seen me before, you wouldn’t have realised anything was amiss. One of the benefits of having done this job all of my adult life, is that I’ve got an assload of material. When push comes to shove, all it takes is a little digging around in the back of my mind to find some old schtick that fits the props available. The tricks work. I get laughs. And then, later, I have a scotch and soda and breathe out.

Sitting here in seat 29A of the flight taking me home, it feels like the breath out is continuing. Earlier today, I trudged to the -1 floor of the airport I was going home from, which was not the airport I arrived at. They’d told me they’d sent my case here. I flat-out didn’t believe them. I knocked on the grubby blue door of a little office unit, and when the lady opened it, there it was, right next to her by the door, with stickers and tags all over it. It took astronomical self-control not to give it a hug. Landing in an hour or so. Lets hope my bags made it too.

Places to sit

I have a list in my head, constantly updated, of favourite places to sit. It's completely normal, shut up. Some of them are, although truthful, blindingly obvious. Across from my wife at a nice Italian restaurant. Next to my wife outside a nice Italian bar. You might be sensing a theme here. These are places where I can live comfortably in the moment, the future's fears and the past's regrets temporarily sedated by the placid contentment of my surroundings and the company I'm in.

There are less obvious ones, too. Sitting on my suitcase on the back edge of a street pitch, waiting for the alloted time for me to stand up, straighten my tie, and flex my schtick muscles. That's always been a good one - sipping on a coffee as I let the cocktail of nerves and confidence settle into the right amounts of each, to fuel some fun. I'm sure, in fact, that after my death, when the gods tot up what I spent the majority of my life doing, it'll turn out that my life's work was basically sitting on a variety of suitcases, waiting for my show. I'm happy with that. The friendships made, the shows seen, and the memories imprinted from my vantage point at the back of a pitch, with a combination latch digging into my ass, are - to quote Professor Harold Hill - golden.

But as my work takes me to places new, so the list of favourite places to sit gets added to. Uncomfortable as it often is, a seat on an airplane taking me to somewhere I've never been before, is for sure on the list. Trying to sleep, but my head buzzing with all the puzzles to be solved that a new adventure brings. Making sure to wring every last drop out of the privilege that my life has lucked me into. Likewise, a long journey to a place I've been to before, a place I love, but that I only get to see every few years, is a special kind of joy. As I write this, I'm a week away from travelling back to Toronto, one of my favourite cities on Earth, and even better, it'll be filled with people I rarely see, but adore. Is there a word for a yearning that feels good because you can count the days until it's satisfied? And you bet your ass I'm going back to the Lakeview Restaurant and having the walnut salad with a side of dark rye toast and honey. The last time I had that, I was about the get the tattoos that are on my arm and my side. The tattoos that I touch when I need to feel their words in my head to remind me of things. I need no reminding about the dark rye toast with honey, though.

This month a new favourite place to sit has presented itself. For the last couple of weeks I've been hosting a late night variety show at the Edinburgh fringe. It was all of the things that the fringe always is - stressy, complicated, harder work that you might imagine, but mostly, after all the dust has settled, it was absurd amounts of fun. I cast a team of some of my favourite performers to be in the show every night, and they all, faultlessly, aced the gig. They don't know this but my thinking when picking acts was to create a family. All different, all with their own unique spin, but all somehow, similarly eccentric. An Addams Family of variety.

Every night, between my bits, I'd go and sit in the cul-de-sac wing, stage left, and watch. And after each member of the cast had done their thing, they'd go sit in the spare seats at the far right of the audience. So, sitting on a chair stolen from the dressing room, I'd be able to look out to from the back corner of the stage, at the person performing, and in the same eyeline, I'd see other members of the cast in the crowd, laughing and heckling. It was beautiful. A view that nobody else will ever see - a little gift reserved only for the host of the show, recieved gratefully. One of my favourite places to sit.

Clowns and banana skins

So. Yes. I did. And some of you might have questions.

I have been previously unenthusiastic about the rise of talent show formats. Particularly so, about Britain’s Got Talent, which seems often to poke at people’s encouraged delusions more than it celebrates their talents (Although big love to my old friend Barbara Nice who crushed it). It makes me very sad that the only viable place on television to see variety artists do their thing, is in a competitive format. I don’t see variety shows as competitions, I see them as families of different kinds of people, with space at the table for everyone. I’ve never, though, lambasted performers who chose to appear on these things – everyone makes their own choices on what to do, and we’re all just trying to make the best living we can out of whatever that is. Like Ice-T used to say, respect the hustle. It just wasn’t my hustle.

How, then, did I find myself in Los Angeles, earlier this year, smiling into the blue steel abyss of Simon Cowells gaze? Well, there were reasons.

Lately I’ve been working on hard on my mental health and am occasionally going through the process of reassessing previously held opinions – particularly the negative ones – and investigating their validity. Stress-testing one’s moral compass, so to speak. And at the same time, exploring if some of my opinions, are, frankly, more trouble than they’re worth. I’m an evolved enough human to admit when I might have been wrong about something, but also I’m shallow enough to get a huge amount of glee on those occasions when I’m proved correct.

Then there was the artistic reason. I had a new act that I thought might work really well. An act that, I suspected, might be cool, fun and fairly bulletproof. And once you suspect something like that, well, temptation sets up camp in your soul.

Also, I wouldn’t be truthful to myself, or to you, if I didn’t say that there was an element of “fuck it” at play here. As I get older, I find myself caring less about things like this, and instead, pursuing things that might be, well, interesting. Curiosity feels like a decent enough motivator for adventures, and I was curious.

But I’m burying the lede here. These reasons, though truthful and honest, are all tertiary. There was one central motivating factor in my decision to step onto that big shiny studio floor, and it happened nearly a year ago.

As you might know, last year I premiered a new one-man show, “Mat Ricardo vs The World”. The show was created by releasing a viral video in which I bet everyone in the world that I could learn any skill or challenge that they dared me to. People tweeted me challenges by the bucketload, and I picked the best ones, spent a year of my life learning as many as possible, and from that I made the show. (Sidenote: I think it was my best work, critics agreed, and it sold out every single nights of its Edinburgh fringe run and then went on UK tour, so YAY ME!)

Every night I performed the show, there would be a moment, about 10 minutes in, where I would show on a screen a montage of some of the craziest, most un-learnable, insane, and downright suicidal challenges I received. It was a funny way of showing the audience that I really did get hundreds of challenges – that the premise of the show was genuine.

Every night, I’d stand there, watching the montage of tweets, listening to the laughs that each one would get. And every night, one would stand out to me..

And pretty soon, I would wait for it to appear, and laugh to myself, as it became clear what I had to do. I had to answer the challenge. I had to do the very thing that people knew would cause me the most existential pain. I had to walk into the belly of the beast, because someone from the internet had dared me to. I had to make a leap of faith into enemy territory, in the hope that I would return safe, uninjured, and with stories to tell. I was a clown walking toward a banana skin, knowing it might hurt, but that it would almost certainly be entertaining. The gamble, as always, is that the pain fades quicker than the laughter.

Rest assured, it all went exactly as I predicted, and at the same time, totally not. I waded chest deep into a strong cocktail of vague truths, old fashioned kayfabe, and all the crooked fun you might expect. There were bruises and smiles, but I knew there would be. I figured that this might be an experience worth documenting. That it might provide stories.  

And I did, indeed, return home with stories. And they’ll get told. But only face to face…

The Yips

The Yips mostly happen to people who do sports. Notably Golf, where perhaps the term was made, and baseball, snooker, cricket. Fantastic jerky little word, isn’t it? It refers to that phenomena where someone who is wildly good at something – like hitting a ball into a hole with a stick with world-class reliability – suddenly, just, can’t. They don’t know what causes it – theories have ranged from some kind of repetitive muscular issue, to a psychosomatic mental thing. Players have tried everything – physiotherapy, hypnotism, and, in one notable baseball players case, being hammered on insane amounts of vodka during his games. None of it worked. Sometimes it goes away, but sometimes, once you get the yips, you’re done.

To me, it feels like one of those situations where the more you think about something you can do - the more you pick it apart in your mind, the closer you examine it - the less easy it is to do. Like if you start to really think about your breathing, you sometimes get short of breath and have to distract yourself from thinking about each individual in and and out, so that you can do it right again and not keel over. It’s a bit like juggling – once you’re decently good at juggling, you’re not thinking “Ok, catch that one, now throw this one, now make sure to catch that one next, and then we throw that one…” – the constituent parts of throwing and catching have become smushed into one thing called juggling, and that’s all you think about. You just concentrate on the flow of the one big thing that is made up of lots of smaller things, and it works, because you know you can do it. Usually.

That’s kinda how I’m feeling at the moment. I have a busy Summer. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t whining. Not one bit. I’m a lucky son of a gun, and always happy to be busy. Right now I’m in Germany, the middle of a season at one of my favourite festivals in the world, doing three shows a night for three weeks. Then it’s off to lovely Ottawa to do a long weekend of shouty, sweaty, crazy shows at the buskerfest. Then I go straight from there to the Edinburgh fringe, where I’ll be hosting a very carefully curated late night variety spectacular for 16 nights straight – having the honour introducing performers I admire, enjoy and love, as well as springing a few surprises on unsuspecting audiences. It’s all ridiculous, hard, stressful, beautiful fun, and I constantly remind myself of how charmed things are that my life turned out this way.

But. What if I start to think too much about the million little details of each one of these gigs, and get bogged down in the what-ifs and why-nots, lose sight of the flow, so by the time I bound on stage, I’ve forgotten how to do it? What if the stresses I have about possible failures outweigh my glee at the fun that will be had? What if I get the yips?

The show I’m doing at the fringe is the next chapter of my "Varieties" project. Over the last few years, I've done three seasons of "Mat Ricardo's Varieties", and they've turned into something that, I think, has provided a fair number of special little moments for audiences - they certainly did for me. I got to sit and chat to Paul Daniels in one of his last on stage interviews, I watched the room go nuts as I revealed that variety legend Merian Ganjou had been sitting amongst them, I tap danced with a line of showgirls, I juggled sink plungers with Dave Gorman.. I mean, if life gives you the chance to do these ridiculous things, why would you not?

But sometimes I start to think – well, what if I get too tied up in knots about all the things that might not work, or fail, or be awful, and forget how to find the fun and beauty in those kinds of unique little shenanigans? What if people stop wanting to come and find out what I’ve got in store for them? What if amazing performers don’t want to come and do silly things? What if I lose sight of the point of the stage version of me?

Well, as a great man once said "Chance favours the prepared mind" (The great man by the way was the baddie in the frankly wonderful Steven Seagal movie Under Siege 2: Dark Territory), and if you know me, you know I always prepare. Jugglers learn pretty early on to make sure they can do what they say they're going to do. I come correct, as they say. I’ll be revealing some of the special guests over the next few weeks as we get closer to the shows, but for now, you might want to click below and get your seats, lest you miss something that only happens once.

In the footsteps of Lawrence Jamieson

Last time I was in Pisa, I was at the tail-end of teenagehood, on an impulsive little adventure. Here I was, back, a grown-ass man, and I was doing it right. Wheels down a couple of hours ago and here for just one night, so your reporter files this from an outdoor table of a bar, directly opposite Keith Haring’s last mural. A half-gone negroni sits on the little metal table to my side, and as it takes effect, I let my eyes follow around the lines and curves and shapes Mr Haring left on the wall in front of me. I’m in that pleasantly over-emotional sweet spot that a cocktail in the late afternoon can locate you at. Sometimes I fall into a particularly vicious circle at times like this. Fully in love with the moment I’m in, then I start to get maudlin, thinking only of the time when there will be no more moments. Then I beat myself up and feel dumb about ruining this one by thinking those thoughts. Stupid mental health. But this evening I manage to steer clear of that depressive waterslide, and just be in the now, completely.

Once the drink is all gone, I wander up to the obvious place. I mean, it’d be remiss of me not to, right? The snarky hipster equivalent of taking a photo of the leaning tower is smirking at all the people leaning their hands into the air as their partners take photos of them holding it up. That gag looks so much better from the wrong angle.

Couple of days later I have the first of four reasons why I’m here. I’m doing a decent length performance of a new version of old material, if you get what I’m saying. A “best of” show – all tried and tested stuff, but this’ll be the first time it’s been done it this particular configuration. I wasn’t altogether sure on my timings, so although I’m happy with how the first show went, I had one eye on the clock, so wasn’t able to fully lose myself in it. I needn’t have worried – two thirds in I realised I was running long and had to cut some stuff on the fly. Always a nice problem to have, that. By the time the second show rolled around, I’d relaxed. Got my shoulders under the water, as my mum used to say. I felt loose and in the moment, and we all had a fine old time.

A couple of days off followed, which involved sitting at various cafes and bars in the Cote D’Azur reading Adam Savage’s great new book, people watching, taking deep deliberate breaths of warm sea air and reflecting , sometimes out loud, on my dumb luck. Also there was a moment when I walked past a café, and a waitress looked at me and said, out loud to a waiter, “He’s fancy!”, which I very much enjoyed.

Then two more shows, and now my stride was hit. I felt like I’d gained confident momentum. Walking out on stage in front of 1300 people without a gram of nerves doesn’t often happen, and perhaps shouldn’t often happen, but there it was. Thirty years and change of practice and honing and failing and learning and sheer bloody-minded persistence, and it all came together rather perfectly. It doesn’t always, and I’d be a liar if I pretended it did. I’m often nervous. I’m sometimes clumsy. These things less so now, just by dint of repetition, but still, they happen. But not that night. That night, they were on board. They were up for it, and so was I, and in the first few moments of the show, we secretly agreed that we’d have a good time. The 50 minutes or so slide past, easy and smooth, my sails full and fat from their appreciation. Afterwards I have cheese fries and apple pie and feel momentarily like a capable, grown-up.

The next day, my last day before travelling home, I have nothing to do, but a beautiful French seaside town in which to do it. I walk along the seafront until the bars and shops and hotels run out, past the marina, through harbourside paths framed by purple vines hanging onto flaky stone walls. Finally I get to a chainlink fence with a sign telling me that it’s the end of my walk. Just before it, though, is a little outdoor café. Right on the waters edge, a kiosk with a few wobbly tables surrounding it, with wobbly old sailors sat at them. So of course, I find a free one (table, not sailor) and sit. I get a couple of croissants, warm not from the oven but from sitting out in the hot sun, but perfect nonetheless, and a big cup of rough, strong, thick, awful, beautiful coffee. And I sit staring at the sea with a silly contented grin on my face. When it all goes bad, you dwell, right? So here’s to dwelling when it goes good.

Oh, and while you’re here, If you’re going to the Edinburgh fringe, you might want to click on this…

Good medicine

It was one of those days where, in the middle of the afternoon, I was still in my dressing gown. Usually I get up early, go to the gym, and come back after a couple of hours of sweating and punching, feeling that, well, if I don't achieve anything else today, I did that. It's been a fairly reliable little mental health shot in the arm over the last few years. Regardless of the size of the black dog that might have arrived overnight, some exercise at an early hour of the day has a decent shot at shrinking it.

But this was one of those stuck in first gear days. Momentum eluded me, my mind only had energy for dark distractions, and I navigated my house in dull shuffles, with my handbrake on.

I've developed a close enough relationship with my mental health to be able to recognise the various triggers and whatnot, so there was no puzzle about why I was subdued, but knowing why something hurts doesn't often make it hurt much less, so here I was. I had some toast and did some grumpy, half-hearted yoga, and spent most of the rest of the day just..sitting..trying not to slide any deeper into the stupid emotional quicksand.

I knew that I'd have to get my shit together at some point though, because I was working that night. You might assume that the idea of doing a show when I'm feeling depressed would be a deeply unpleasant prospect, but the truth is that I know, deep in my heart, that as long as I can get to the gig, I'll be OK. I've never cancelled a gig because of depression, and I doubt I ever will. Shows are good medicine. I took it slowly, one thing at a time, until I was putting on my suit, that armour making my skin feel a bit thicker, as it always does. making me feel a bit more like Mat Ricardo. Headphones in, during the journey to the venue, all the better to insulate me from the jerky anxious cacophony of the outside world. Then, dragging my flight case through London as the sky darkens and the last day of the work week becomes Friday night, and a growing sense of gentle comfort. I've done this before. I can do it again. I know what I'm doing.

Image by Paul Monckton

Before long I'm in one of my favourite places on earth - a dressing room full of people I love. And there are hugs and jokes and teasing and catching-up and people who understand each other, and understand me. And I stretch and prep and get given an introduction that makes the audience think I'm a star, and makes me feel like one, and for the time that I've got that spotlight half-blinding me, the black dog is chased away. It doesn't like the sounds of laughter and applause, because, I guess, it doesn't quite understand them. But with that darkness gone, I can relax in the protective magical bubble of being on stage, where I'm the capable and witty person I wish I could always be. For that time, there's no voices in my head trying to scare me with reminders of mistakes made in the past, or threats of what awful things might happen in the future - when I'm on stage, I'm only in the moment. And what a fun, warm, shiny moment it can be. To have that privilege for a handful of minutes is more than most get, and I will never not be grateful for it.

They're a lovely audience, and later, I'm striding back to the station, suitcase bouncing down curbs behind me, the sounds of late-night revelry still ringing in my ears, heart swelled by time spent with friends and strangers, the stage sweat evaporating from under my suit in the chill of the nearly midnight air.
And the black dog isn't gone, and will be back, but momentarily, he got taught a lesson, so maybe he'll be a bit more skittish next time.

(Oh, and if you think that looks like a cool show, you’d be right…

click here for info about the Gin House Burlesque)

On living forever

Recently I’ve been occasionally talking to my therapist about how healthy it might or might not be to reconnect as an adult with stuff you loved as a child. I'm talking here, as someone who has a couple of Battlestar Galactica ships sitting on his desk, and a modest but thoughtful collection of 80's pocket electronic games on his office mantlepiece. I sometimes wonder if, even though I still genuinely love these things, there might be something a little dysfunctional about that. Turns out, it's a good thing. A way to show your childhood self that you haven't forgotten them in adult life, and that however much you might have changed as a grown-up, you still genuinely love the things you used to love. I like that. So let's talk about last week, and the Kids From Fame.

Back when I was a young teenager, this show was important. Apart from having singing and dancing and funnies and drama and cool 80's New York-ness, it also had Bruno and Doris. Bruno and Doris were my favourites. Smart, sometimes shy, nerdy characters who struggled with themselves and what they were, and with what they wanted to be. I wanted to be Bruno, and I wanted to be friends with Doris. I wanted to have a basement like he had, with synthesizers and pizza and - and this is key - friends.

It was this show, and these characters specifically, that gave me permission to fantasize about being some kind of performer. I didn't know what kind - this was years before I learned any of the skills that I pay my mortgage with these days - but I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to be part of a gang of differently talented people, who were there for each other, and hung out, and did cool performery stuff. Fame nudged the direction of my life just enough, that as the years rolled by, the path became more and more divergent from what it would have been, until, well, here we are. Fantasy realised.

And not just in terms of my work. Somehow, down to a combination of luck, caution-throwing, and a rather splendid policewoman called Sue, something ridiculous happened. I became friends with Doris. Well, with Valerie Landsburg, who played her on the show. And over the years we've been occasionally hanging out, I've finally managed to calm down and be able to have normal conversations with her, so yay me.

Which leads me to last week. The splendid policewoman called Sue had organised a charity concert, in Liverpool, in which cast of the show would be reuniting and singing a bunch of old songs. The songs that I used to sing along to alone in my bedroom as a kid, sung by the people who were on the poster on my bedroom wall. You bet your ass I was headed to Liverpool. The show was big fun. There also may or may not have been a moment when Val, the girl from the show who I dreamt of being friends with, dedicated my favourite song to me, and just, basically, broke me. I sunk down in my seat, emitted a kind of "NNNHHHUUHH" sound, and proceeded to risk serious dehydration through happy tears.

The next day we got invited to the legendary Cavern Club for the cast party. I walked around gawping at beautiful old posters with the names of legends in gorgeous splashy fonts like the tourist I was. The Beatles are great, obviously, but I’d be a liar if I said they’re super meaningful to me. But once I got myself in front of an old black and white of Cilla Black.. Well, I was on three series of a tv show with Cilla in the 90’s, and I liked her very much. That was something. Another pin in your life with string stretching back to a memory.

In Fame, the TV show, every so often (OK, every week, regular as clockwork), there would be a moment where some of the kids would suddenly all come together, pick up instruments, and sing a song. “How unlikely”, the cynic in your head would say, before relaxing, safe in the knowledge that that’s just how things work in musicals. So, there we were, sitting around chatting in the Cavern Club, when the actual Kids From Fame drift up to the stage, pick up instruments and spend the rest of the night jamming, singing songs, swapping instruments and taking requests JUST LIKE THEY USED TO IN THE SHOW.

I even managed to, through a medicinal haze of scotch and soda, thank Lee Curreri, who played Bruno, for, well, basically completely changing the course of my life and giving me artistic purpose. A confession that he seemed to take fairly well. Better than I did, perhaps, since it was only on the train home the following day that I remembered that conversation and had a little cry.

I write this not to brag about my 1980’s TV friends. Well, ok, slightly that, but mostly not. Mostly this is a letter to my teenage self. He wasn’t very confident, stuttered badly, spent a long time in his own company, and was, often, scared of too many things. The creative life that Fame encouraged me to pursue was instrumental in helping me grow away from some of those things, while keeping hold of the stuff that the young me loved. The life I get to live, while still a continual struggle, was an actual, literal, bona-fide fantasy to the me that watched Fame every week. So, one more time, thanks to them.

I still love the show, and still have a bunch of songs from it sitting on my phone, and some of them still make me cry. Life is too short for shame about stuff that makes you happy and harms nobody else, so fuck fashion and the judgemental awfulness of “Guilty pleasures”. To quote the great John Hodgman – “People love what they love”. I love Fame, and I owe it, because it helped make me the dude who is currently sitting in an airport coffee shop, about to get on a plane to Switzerland, where I will do my show, and hang out with a bunch of other, differently talented people, who I love.

you know, for kids...

I’m a comedian, a writer, a host, I make a pretty serviceable cacio e pepe, and I’ll take anyone on at Galaga – I am multitudes, is my point – but mostly I’m a variety performer. I’ve written in the past about my disappointment that my artform, the genre that is the most tailor-made to be able to work for audiences of all types, has often, lately, been for adults only. My training as a street entertainer taught me how to appeal to people of all ages, because without that skill, you’ll be hard-pressed to succeed. Entertain the kids but bore the parents and you’re turning off those with the money, do the opposite and there’s only so long an adult will endure a kid tugging on their sleeve to go somewhere else. But the recent revival in variety came from the upswing in cabaret and burlesque, so it mostly got saddled with the same “illicit late night thrills” aesthetic. That’s all well and good, but, wait, no it isn’t.

Variety is for everyone – that’s the whole point. A mixed bill where every member of the family can leave the venue with a different favourite act. It’s also a smart business plan, which makes it all the more surprising that good quality family-centric variety and cabaret shows are very rarely a thing. So I made them a thing again.

Last year, in association with the lovely people at Comedy Club 4 Kids, I curated and hosted a couple of test shows of this very idea. I also did a few similar shows in various other venues around the country. The shows were great, I mean, really great. So this year we’re doing more.

And here’s the point – despite the name, these aren’t kids shows. None of the acts I’ve booked would call themselves children’s performers. Instead, they’re simply some of the best circus and variety acts in the world – because if you’re really good, you can play to anyone. That’s where this artform can truly succeed – sometimes a comedian doing a kids show will shoot some gags at the kids and the occasional one just for the parents – but that’s not necessary with circus, every part of every act is for everyone. Adults and kids all sharing the same moments at the same time. That’s what we’re here for.

I’ve worked hard to make sure that, across the season of three shows we’re doing at London’s Underbelly Festival speigeltent there’s a total gender balance in the acts on the shows. As many women as men. I remember clearly being a tiny child in a park in North London and seeing the magician Peter Pinner do a show there. Funded by the local council, on a little stage on the grass, on a hot 1970’s Summers day. The tiny me giggled as his magic wand melted when he gave it to a volunteer. I can see it in my mind right now. I must have been, maybe 7? I’ve never forgotten it. I want the kids in my audiences to have those same moments, and that’s easier to do if the people on stage look similar to the people in the audience. It’s far from perfect – I’m still struggling to find people of colour to fit into these shows (and if that’s you, go to the contact page of this website and get in touch!) – but it’s one of those things I always try to keep in mind.

I think there’s something special about this kind of show. I think it slyly teaches kids some lessons. If you’ve just seen someone on stage pull a live dove out of a volunteers pocket, you can’t help but think that things, in life, might not always be as they seem. If you’ve just seen a woman lift up two of the biggest men she could find in the audience and spin them around, well, maybe it might teach you that seemingly superhuman things are achievable if you put your mind to it. That’s what my artform teaches me, still.

We just did the first show of our 2019 season last week. I was nervous about ticket sales. We did ok last year, but this year would be the test. Would we start to build an audience? Can this idea develop a following and work? Well, turns out we were pretty much full.

So, there I was, pacing around the back edge of the audience in the minutes before the show was going to start. Smiling to myself in the way you would, if you were about to host a show full of your friends to a packed house, in a beautiful speigeltent just a few feet away from where you used to do street shows 15 years ago. Just by chance I spotted that I was being gawped at by a tiny little girl in the audience. I knew the quizzical expression she was wearing. She thought she might have spotted someone who’s in the show, but she wasn’t sure. I grinned at her and did a little conspiratorial wink. Immediately she jumped into the air on the spot, her mouth wide open and her face popping with excitement. And I remembered what it was like to be where she was, and thought about all the things she was about to see, and I couldn’t have had a bad show if I’d tried.

If you’re in London, we have two more shows, with a different line-up each time, on Sat 18th of May, and on Sun 8th June, both at 1.15pm. Click here for more info and to book your tickets.

I’m also doing a family variety show at the Chester Storyhouse theatre on Sat 29th June at 4pm, click here to get tickets to that one. And if you’d rather have a little late night grown-up cabaret, later that same night, at the same venue, I’m hosting an amazing cabaret show for adults only - click here for info and booking for that.

And scroll down for a little taster of what you missed at the last variety Club 4 Kids show!

Vincent

This past weekend we went to the Van Gogh gallery. It's always something special to be able to stand right in front of images that have been part of the universal visual environment for all of your life. You know these pictures, but you've only ever seen representations of them, and here you are, inches away from the actual paint on the actual canvases.

I didn't expect to be so deeply affected by it. It was the self portraits that started it for me - one in particular, where the subject seemed to be staring at the artist with an expression that said “What do you want from me”. There were some words on a wall about Vincent's mental illness. They still don't really know what was wrong with him, they said. Seems pretty clear to me. Periods of suicidal depression and feelings of complete worthlessness, and then spells of intense activity, creation and mania. Van Gogh was bipolar, surely. He struggled to keep relationships with the other artists he knew, often ruining friendships with his indiscriminate attacks of desperate anger. His brother believed in him, at least as a human, and seemingly also as an artist. But often he was the only one, and to Vincent, I wonder how much it felt like an act of fraternal charity rather than genuine encouragement.

In the last ten weeks of his life, in a final whirlwind of mania, he painted more canvases than he had days left. I found myself wondering what fuelled his creation in that period. Was it belief that he was good, and must therefore make as much work as possible, or could it have been a frenzied attempt to keep painting until he produced something that he thought might be good? Perhaps it was as simple as being the only thing he knew how to do. Either way, he left a lot of beautiful paintings, before he left himself.

The work hanging there moved me, of course, but it wasn't a painting that caused me to unravel. In a glass case we saw his palette and some tubes of his oils. One of them was half used, folded over. You could see where his thumb had pushed against the little metal tube to squeeze out some paint. I couldn't stop looking at it. An everyday object, but precious. He'd never consider in his wildest dreams that people would be gawping at it in a gallery 130 years later. But here we were, staring at the tools that created all those beautiful things.

The gift shop, as art gallery gift shops can often be, had its depressing bits. To see his work slapped on every conceivable piece of merchandising - Vincent Miffy dolls, Sunflower iPhone cases, Starry Starry Night oven gloves - threatened to leave a sour taste in the mouth. But then I picked up notebook next to a rack of pens. People had been using the display notebook to test out the pens. The thing was full of visitors versions of sunflowers, almond blossoms, bedrooms, and portraits of Vincent himself. And that sour taste was sweetened.

A tour date in a chapel, usually used for metal bands, above a brewery, in Nottingham.

Photo by Jodi Whittle

I’ve talked quite openly about my mental health issues in print, online and on stage, on many occasions, but still if this isn’t something you’re comfortable reading about, or interested in, that’s cool, you can skip this one.

The 48 hours prior to last Friday nights tour date in Nottingham wasn’t fun. For those couple of days, my brain chemistry was making me feel empty and desperate. Everything I saw and felt was colourless. Flat. Meaningless. I was working hard not to be unpleasant to those around me, and myself, and I was sometimes failing. All the usual things I do to trick, distract or subdue it didn’t work – it came strong this week.

I had a show to do, but I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do anything. The prospect of getting dressed, packing and prepping my show gear, travelling on a series of trains all the way to Nottingham to do an hour and a half in a venue where – honestly – I had not sold a huge amount of tickets, was all deeply unattractive. But I have never, ever, let my mental health get in the way of my work, so I got myself there. One thing at a time, making sure to leave early, so I wouldn’t have to rush and get stressed. Slow and careful. Moving in the right direction, figuratively and literally.

I arrived at the venue with my power bar empty. The fantastic festival staff asked how I was, and I lied. But, gradually, as I set my props and sorted out the tech for the show, I started to feel..lighter. Sometimes that’s how it happens. I assume it’s a slight change in the delicate balance of chemicals that dictate mood, but I can equally see how a religious person might feel it as a god, gently lifting them. I’m not a religious person, but the feeling was still there, of relief. That small gaps in my soul were slowly refilling.

In the green room – as beautiful and shabby as only a room above a pub can be – I prepared myself to do my show for a small audience. I’m totally OK with that – my training as a street performer taught me early, to be able to adjust and deliver the best version of what I do to whatever version of an audience I get. As I did, I could hear a few more people outside asking if there were still tickets available. By the time I hit my music and went on, the room was full, and somehow my energy bar was full, and all my special attacks were lit up and ready (Street Fighter II references for the win!)

They were a fantastic audience. Relaxed but enthused, big on laughing and clapping and whooping. Standing up at the back to get the best view. And you know what, I was pretty great too. They energised me. I found myself pacing around, yelling punchlines, giggling, in short, having a fine old time.

Afterwards, I went back to the green room as the audience filed out, and gave me a final gift. I heard a woman, as she shuffled out, say to her friend “That. Was. Astonishing!” – and I was done, the last little bit of monochrome had been coloured in. And it won’t last forever, but it’s lasting as I write this. And maybe it’s shallow that a good show can put a shine on a previously dulled soul, or maybe I’m lucky that I have that secret weapon against it. Perhaps both, who knows?

So, if you were there, then thanks. I hope you had a great evening from wherever you were sitting, I just wanted to let you know how it felt from where I was.

Next tour date is on Saturday the 24th of November, in Chelmsford

You can get info and book tickets by clicking here.

Bye bye gabys

Forty nine years ago, as I was being born in North London, and my dad was buying a teddy bear to give me, which now sits on a shelf in my office, Gabys Deli was serving falafel and salt beef and the best latkas in the country. Twenty five years ago, I would sneak away from my street pitch round the corner at Covent Garden, with the girl who became my wife, and we’d huddle around one of the continually unbalanced tables in the back, surrounded by posters for West End shows, and share a baklava. Seven years ago, when it was under threat of closure, I, alongside much more famous customers like Vanessa Redgrave, Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes staged pop-up cabaret shows inside the restaurant to try and discourage its execution. And we did. It survived. We won.

A couple of nights ago, the girl who became my wife called me on her way home from work and said “Shall I bring home some Gabys?”, to which the answer, as it had been every other time it had been asked, was “Yes. Please”. Then she told me the bad news.

Gabys is closing at the end of this month. No fight to be had. It’s done. And I’m very sad about it.

It would be very easy to blame this on the continuing deliberate homogenisation of London. The obvious slide toward a city where the rents are so high that only global chains can afford retail space and only oligarchs, millionaires and investment groups have a chance at anything where someone could actually live. This blame would be easy because it is true.

I’m a Londoner. Never felt particularly patriotic to my country, it’s too complicated for me to love unconditionally. But London? I’m London. And so is Gabys. The perfect symbol of what a city like mine is supposed to be. An Iraqi Jew opens a café in the 60’s, serving food that, back then, would have been new and exotic. And over half a damn century it becomes somewhere that every possible kind of person gravitates to, because the food is good, and the people are nice, and the place is comfy and cheap and easy and did I mention how good the food was? Their target market? Their demographic? Bloody everyone. Go in there last week and you’d find west end stars carb-fuelling between shows, tourists getting a taste of a real London café, foodies instagramming their salads, families with kids digging into pitta breads bigger than their heads. I’ve never left that place without a smile on my face, and not just because after I did those shows to keep it open, I always got a couple of free falafel.

Last night we went for one last meal there. It was packed. By this time next week it’ll be gone. Same as Maria's café in Covent Garden, where I had twenty years of full English breakfasts. Gone. Same as the Piccadilly café, where I’d go between matinee and evening shows when I was in the West End for a year. Gone. The places where I fell in love, learnt my trade, built lifelong friendships, had ideas, wrote jokes, sobbed and giggled. Euthanised as part of the ongoing redevelopment of London from a working, beautiful, melting pot city of small businesses, movers, shakers and lifeblood grafters, into a theme park version of itself, a façade of what investment consortia think a city looks like, a boring identikit theme park sham where the only places to eat or shop are the same places as in every other city in the country.

I’m a Londoner, but I moved out recently. I live by the seaside now. Somewhere not quite lucrative enough to have had the authenticity kicked out of it. I go to greasy spoons run by Jewish families, a coffee shop run by a German humanist, and buy way too many ice creams from a local company who came from Italy 85 years ago. I’m sad about Gabys. So sad. It feels like much of what I loved in my twenties has been closed up and erased. Except the girl who became my wife, of course. She still sits across from me in cafes and coffee shops and ice cream parlours. Goodbye Gabys, sorry that yours won’t be a table I get to sit across from her at any more. I won’t spend a penny in whatever takes your place.

Just before you go.. I am currently halfway through a UK tour of my new, Edinburgh fringe sell-out, 5-star reviewed, one man show “Mat Ricardo vs The World”. I would, of course, love you to come. Remaining stops over the next few weeks are Darlington, Camberley, Nottingham, Cumbria and Chelmsford. It’s a funny show about how I spent the last year of my life learning any trick suggested to me by strangers on the internet, and why I did it. Hopefully I’ll see you there. More info can be found by going to the tour page of this website.

Complimenti

Day One

In my pocket there’s a one way ticket to a TV show in a country I adore, that pays enough for me to be here, in Gatwick airport, letting a flat white slowly persuade me that 5am is a time I should be anywhere.

At this point in a trip, especially a trip to do a foreign TV show, there are almost always many loose ends. My OCD (Oh, and professionalism) likes to know exactly what will happen and when for every moment of the gig. Ricardo likes a schedule. But sometimes that’s just not how things are going to work, and all you have is an end point – me doing some cool tricks in front of cameras – and you just have to go with the flow in terms of how we get there. This creates in me, as you might imagine, not insignificant amounts of stress and anxiety, but over the years I’ve learnt to re-frame the annoying uncertainty as adventure, and to let that redefinition remind me of what a privileged and exciting position I so often find myself in. This, again, is the kind of life the teenage me dreamt about, so lets work hard on enjoying it as its happening, and not just in a few decades time as a happy memory, shall we?

I arrive in Rome, am slid into a large, comfortable, dark car, and off we go. I still have little to no idea what I’m actually doing today, so I ask the driver if we’re going to the studio or the hotel. “Studio”, he says. Alright then. I slowly boot up the version of Mat Ricardo that the studio will need, and power down the version that is currently running, which just wants a nap.

The last time I was in Rome I was also filming something, but that was a lifetime ago. 30 years back, they brought me here to perform in a station ident for Rai-2. I remember it being a very fun shoot. They had booked another British performer to be my showgirl assistant, and I played a juggler on a beautiful theatre stage, who kept having his juggling clubs stolen, mid-juggle. I remember that the guy they’d hired to catch the clubs as I threw them, who told them he was a juggler, was in fact, not. So I had to secretly teach him how to catch what I was throwing, so the rest of the crew didn’t realise that he was a bullshitter. We filmed in at CineCitta studios, and, one lunchtime, as we sat in our dressing rooms enjoying our on-set catering (And you haven’t experienced on-set catering until you’ve had it in Italy – fresh pasta, warm bread, tiramisu, and WINE), we were startled by a series of loud bangs and cracks coming from nearby. We poked out heads out into the corridor and saw that they were coming from behind a door labelled “Godfather 3 special effects”, which explained everything.

I was still a teenager when I was in Rome last, but here I am again, as a not-teenager, sitting in a makeshift green room, signing contract after contract, mostly in Italian. Then being shown to a dressing room and told that we were doing a full camera rehearsal. And in a blur of prop-setting and tech-testing, I’m on a huge shiny stage, staring out at an empty auditorium, supervising camera positions to best show my tricks. There’s a microphone hanging off my right ear, and a live translation earpiece hanging off my left. Whenever I move, they both bang around a bit and feel like they might fall off. And then there’s the language. When I speak, my words are translated live, over the studio loudspeaker, and when one of the hosts asks me a question, someone translates it in the earpiece in my left ear. This means that in a simple question and answer, there are four voices all talking at the same time, and I have to focus on the right one to hear the question, and then block out all the others, in order to give my answer. I’m a juggler – I’m supposed to be good at doing several things at once, but this is tricky. I realise I’m going to have to work really hard if I’m going to look cool, and not like a deer caught in headlights desperately trying to make sense of the tumbling cacophony of words swirling around me. OK then, well, at least I know what I’m in for.

We run my spot, and everyone seems happy with it. The producer who booked me tells me it was perfect. Strikes me that that’s something that someone says either if (a) it’s perfect, or (b) they don’t care if it’s not and want to move on. Guess we’ll see, huh.

And then I’m signing all the contracts again because apparently I did it wrong the first time, and then I’m finally cleared for the day, and in no time am sitting in a restaurant next to the hotel, across the table from my agent, and we drink wine and have pizza, and still don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing tomorrow. But at least we have wine and pizza.

Day Two

The hotel is just across the street from the studios. I say street, but lets be frank - huge motorway. Because although technically we are in Rome, we’re actually in a bit of a no-mans land mini-sprawl on a ring road on the outskirts. So when they say, as they have, that they probably won’t need me today, but they might, so stay in the hotel just in case, it’s a bit frustrating. There’s very little here. And the wifi in my room doesn’t work. So me and my agent disobey the orders and go for a wander up the road to see if there’s anything to find. There’s not much, but we do have an espresso and some cannoli in the roadside “Big Ben Bar” – because when you’re in Italy, you want to find an authentic medium-sized reproduction of the houses of parliament to hang out in. Then, a little further up, we sit in the sun outside the “Dubai Bar”, which is totally lovely, although in the back of my mind, the whole day, is a little voice saying “At any point they might call you and you’ll have to go and do a crazy-ass TV show, the details of which are stunningly unclear”, so I’d be a liar if I said I was completely relaxed at all times.

Finally we get the call that I won’t be used today, and decide that it’s a waste to be in Rome but not actually in Rome, so we jump in a taxi and get it drop us off right next to the Coliseum. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a hell of a thing. We amble around it and come across some street performers. My people. There’s an opera singer in a red ballgown singing in the twilight to a crowd of people all sitting along a low wall. She’s singing a song that used to be the backing music to a trapeze artist I did some seasons with. I get a bit emotional. I’ve written in the past about the global brother and sisterhood of street performers. The international family of people I’m so proud to be a part of, who all share such a specific and unique life. Whenever I see a busker work, especially in a foreign country, I wish there was a way I could easily communicate that I have lived their life. That I understand it. Some kind of secret handshake that would signal that we’re part of the same hidden society. I gave her some money, and she had some business cards laid out, and I took one, so maybe I’ll send her a secret handshake that way.

We went to a nice, slightly shabby, café for dinner – recommended by both websites and friends – and it didn’t disappoint. Big heavy bowls and plates full of thick, gloopy, rustic, sticky, fresh, beautiful food. And then a gelati, of course, and then back to the hotel. The only information I have about my schedule is that they will probably use me tomorrow, but they might not. Well, alright then.

Day Three

Hard boiled eggs and swiss cheese in a soft roll for breakfast. Italy, I love you. But as I eat them, I still don’t know if I’m filming today or not. And If I’m not, then I’m filming tomorrow, and I have to go back home tomorrow, because a day or so later I have a tour date. Oh hello there, stress, won’t you make yourself comfortable?

Again, we get told that I might get used today, but I might not, so I have to stay in the hotel. They seem to have found out that we disobeyed yesterday, as they say it much more forcefully this time around. “You must stay. In the hotel. IN THE HOTEL. OK?”. Ok, sure fine whatever, mum. I’m coming down with a cold anyway, so I go back to bed. And that’s my day. Coughing and sniffing and reading, in my hotel room, all day. There’s no business like showbusiness. There are two bright spots – lunchtime, when my agent brings me a pizza from the restaurant next door, and late afternoon, when I realise that if I stand in the very far corner of my bathroom, by the window, I can get wifi. No business like it.

Day Four

I’m filming today, they tell us. Be at the studio, ready to go, at 11am. So, another big breakfast, and we’re checked out of the hotel and back in the green room. And so commences a long day of things happening to other people, and little happening to me, except a few feverish checks of the timings for my flight home, and increasingly worried thoughts about how in hell I’m going to make it. And then, mid-afternoon, somebody puts a brick on the gas pedal and everything suddenly starts moving fast around me. I’m in my work suit, checking and setting props, ensuring my tie is straight and my fly is up, and I’m slapping a smirk on my face and swaggering out on to that same shiny stage as a few days ago, but this time, I’m under hot lights, and being stared down by a few Italian celebrities and a chattering full house audience. Here we go then.

I do my first couple of lines, and manage to cope with the three voices competing for attention in my earpiece. I do my first gag, and it gets a laugh. And I relax, and slide through the rest of the act. It feels easy and pleasant. The laughs come at the right places, and the tricks all hit their targets. My final bit is one of my new pieces, from “Mat Ricardo vs The World” – the routine with the knife. It goes good, and watching it back, their post-production really did it justice. Then I’m chatting to the celebs, and one of them wants to try the knife trick with her hand. The idea gets a laugh, so I gesture to the chair, as if daring her to do it. She takes the dare. Gets up and walks over to me. And my mind is racing, because I’ve thought about this being a nice extra part of that routine, but I’ve never done it. Never even tried. Not totally sure if it’s possible, bearing in mind the change in body positioning. But it’s happening, right now, on Italy’s biggest TV show, so, I think to myself, I guess its time to trust in my skills.

And she sits down, and she’s brave, and I’m good, and it works, and as I’m doing it, I’m thinking “well, this is some fun TV, right here…”

The celebs all say very nice things, unless the translator was lying to me. Many “Complimenti” and one “Terrific!”, according to an ipad that one of the hosts holds up, 92% of the audience thought I was great. I wave at them and blow them a kiss.

And then, half an hour later, I’m still sweaty from the studio, in a different suit, and in a taxi bombing to the airport. I get to my gate with just enough time to neck my last real Italian espresso for a while, grab a caprese and some fonzies, and buckle myself into my homeward journey. And breathe out.

Just before you go.. I am currently halfway through a UK tour of my new, Edinburgh fringe sell-out, 5-star reviewed, one man show “Mat Ricardo vs The World”. I would, of course, love you to come. Remaining stops over the next few weeks are Darlington, Camberley, Nottingham, Cumbria and Chelmsford. It’s a funny show about how I spent the last year of my life learning any trick suggested to me by strangers on the internet, and why I did it. Hopefully I’ll see you there. More info can be found by going to the tour page of this website.

Shoe in the fridge

I’m sitting in a green room in the basement of a theatre somewhere in England. I say “somewhere in England” partly because I know this is the kind of sexy mystery you’ve come to expect from me, but mostly because I’m not, without checking my diary, 100% totally sure where I am. In the corner of the room there is a large foam Minion outfit, a broken clothes rail, and behind me, a fridge with, I shit you not, nothing in it but a single high heeled shoe.

I am on tour.

I had a good Edinburgh fringe this year. It was only a month or so back, but seems so long ago that z-grade celebs should be doing pieces to camera about it on channel 5. I took the train up there feeling slightly scared, unsure of what I had to show, and uneasy about the competitive nature of a festival that, however much you try to avoid that side of it, bludgeons you with it from the get go. I set myself a couple of clear goals: Do work I was proud of, and don’t go too mental. I came back fairly sure I’d done some of the best work of my 30 year career (critics agreed!), with every single show selling out, and – excepting the occasional little blip here and there – I didn’t go too mental. It was exhausting but probably the most successful fringe I’ve ever done. I had a grin on my face like a boxer who’d got a black eye but won the fight. And black eyes are part of the game, anyway.

For the next couple of months, I’m bouncing around the country doing that same show in a variety of venues that range from small odd-shaped rooms in arts centres, to big-ass red velvet seat jobs. And I’m back to be being scared and exhausted again, but still mostly smiling. Because – yes, touring is hard work (I mean, it ain’t nursing, but stick with me) – I don’t drive, so the hours before you see me on stage are spent lugging flight cases full of dumbass props around the famously slick, pleasant and efficient British public transport system. I do this while worrying, as I have been for weeks before the date of each show, about how many people might come to see me. Maybe none will. I’m not famous, after all. This variety schmuck hasn’t been on any panel shows, or live at any Apollos. Any reputation I have has been earned by grinding. By leaving sweat on stages. Walking on to the polite applause of people who have no idea who you might be, and, ideally, leaving to the cheers of people who, now, damn well know who you are. That’s the job of someone like me, and that’s the challenge I relish.

And the nice part is, even though as I sit here, one hour from showtime, banging away on my laptop - achey back from the suitcases, hungry but without the time to get food, unable to find a coffee place that’s still open (BOOOOO!), and stressed about ticket sales - I’m still looking forward to what’ll happen 60 minutes from now. Because like I said, I’m not famous. Most people who spend their hard earned money on a ticket to my show have never seen me before in their lives. They’re taking a chance that I’ll entertain them. So who am I to half-ass that obligation? Times are tough. To have anyone at all spend their hard-earned on a ticket, come out, and sit in an audience to see me is a damn privilege – and the idea that anyone would do that is literally, actually, genuinely and exactly what the teenage me fantasized about. So now its real? Buckle the fuck up, because I’m motivated.

And that beautiful little magic spell of the background music fading out, the house lights dimming, and the spotlights revealing a stage full of props? That doesn’t just work on the audience. We feel it too. You know that, right? However tiring, or shitty, or anxious my day has been – at the end of it, I get to slip into into the protective bubble of a show. Where things are simple and fun and beautiful. That place I made where all that matters is to perform and be watched. The audience leave their worries in the lobby and I leave my stresses in the wings, and we spend an hour or so just..playing.

So, yes, I’d obviously love you to come and see my show. I’m doing dates over the next few weeks in London, Birmingham, Darlington, Camberley, Nottingham, Cumbria and Chelmsford. It’s a funny show about how I spent the last year of my life learning any trick suggested to me by strangers on the internet, and why I did it. Hopefully I’ll see you there.