OK, so... the thing with the hat

Like I’ve said before, sometimes I like to show the effort – to make sure the audience knows how difficult something is, so they feel more connected to me through the struggle, and root for my eventual success. Other times, though, it’s fun just to make something look effortless. And that’s so much harder. Unless you’re doing it for a camera.

Part of circus (and by extension variety, cabaret, burlesque.. and most of the shiny little worlds in which I rent a space) is to convince the outside world of our differences. Of how we’re not like you – we’re cooler, more colourful, and able to do things you cannot. We’re a different race of people, who do things differently. It is of course, as we say in London, bollocks. But it’s the kind of bollocks showbusiness has always been based around. It’s the kind of bollocks that sells tickets.

I often think that circuses are like zoos for low-level superheroes.

Anyway. The hat thing. The plan, of course, as Bill correctly surmises, was to make it look completely effortless. As if that’s just what I do whenever I take my hat off. That’s just how someone like me does something that someone like you would do in a less cool way. The truth? Well, I can land the hat on a hook pretty much every time if I’m facing the hook. But blind? While talking? When the hook has to be in a very specific place for the camera shot? Let’s just say that may or may not have been the first take.

And of course, I put it at that point in the video because otherwise it’s just a guy asking you to subscribe to his YouTube channel (and if you haven’t then stop reading this right now and rectify that, you absolute monster) and the chances are that you’ve had someone asking you to that before. But if I can throw something in (sorry) that will both be different to every other time someone asked you to subscribe to their channel, and at the same time perk you up and give you a little reason why you might want to click that button, well, then that seems like a smart thing to do.

Street performers often do a little trick up front to help convince their crowd that it’s worth sticking around for the bigger tricks later on in the show. Same deal. Trust-earning, I guess.

Two of the takes of the hat trick that I didn’t use were of me landing the trick perfectly, but being so surprised that I had, that I fluffed the next line.

I once worked with a magician who did a trick with a piece of food. It was a complicated trick, and a lovely little effect for the audience. You could tell that the crowd, every time, would be trying to work out how he did it. The only way they could figure that it would be possible was so time consuming and convoluted, and would have involved so much almost impossibly complicated preparation, that they immediately dismissed it. But I was the one sharing a dressing with him, watching him spend literally hours, painstakingly doing exactly that, for a 5 second moment on stage. A lot of what we do is patience and practice.

George Carl is a huge hero of mine. I even once got asked to go to Japan to help a TV star recreate his act. Owner of the funniest 9 minutes in the history of everything. Honed over a lifetime. I wish I’d met him, but I never did, even though I was technically in a film with him.

I have some friends who did, though. They did a season in a variety show with him. Every Friday night, he’d cook spaghetti for the whole cast and crew.

/MR