STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: We've been talking to a clown. Here's your opportunity to insert a joke about the politician of your choice, but I mean a person who chose a career as a clown. John Simpson is a former journalist in London who became a clown.
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UNIDENTIFIED PRESENTER: So let's welcome up the special guest. Woo.
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INSKEEP: Videos show John Simpson being introduced in small performance spaces. Simpson, or rather the character he plays, steps before the crowd and begins a conversation which somehow grows more and more awkward until he declares a do-over.
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JOHN SIMPSON: (As character) OK. We start again.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMPSON: (As character) We start again.
INSKEEP: He walks offstage and returns. His character's discomfort is the joke. Simpson wrote about his experience in The Observer, which is one of his former publications. And when we brought this up in an NPR story meeting, it seemed that half the staff knew somebody who had been to clown school - a cousin, a sister, even our excellent Middle East correspondent Daniel Estrin. Sacha Baron Cohen trained as a clown. We have no statistics on whether there's really a trend in clowning, but John Simpson says he feels like there is.
SIMPSON: I think people are really searching for meaning, authenticity, humanity at a time where the world is increasingly feeling like we are losing aspects of that.
INSKEEP: Simpson found his own humanity not as a circus clown but as a theater clown.
And what's the difference?
SIMPSON: Even professional clowns struggle with this. But the delineation is that I never wear a red nose on stage, personally. I have never used white face paint. It's not big trousers and squirty flowers and tiny cars.
INSKEEP: Size 55 shoes. You don't do that either?
SIMPSON: Exactly. But there are very, very similar things in the practice and the basics of what both types of clown do, which is primarily we're the willing butt of the joke. A stand-up comedian makes jokes. A clown is the joke.
INSKEEP: What's a kind of thing you would do to get a laugh?
SIMPSON: (Laughter) Currently, one of the bits that I'm working on is a kind of spiritual-guru idiot.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: OK. I'm already enjoying this, but please continue.
SIMPSON: (Laughter) I come into the space as a kind of pompous fool who is very self-important. The physicality of it is very kind of, you know, puffed-up chest. He comes into the space, and he has a series of demands that haven't been met. There's no spotlight. There's no...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
SIMPSON: ...Ceremonial gong.
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SIMPSON: (As character) Usually, it's a very big room with a big spotlight, very impressive. I stand like this.
And in order to reach the microphone, there's a long list of things that the audience then have to do, and that becomes our game. So there's no spotlight. They have to light me with their phones.
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SIMPSON: (As character) And then usually, when I get to about here, someone says something like, yes, I invested in his cryptocurrency.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMPSON: (As character) And if we all find 10 people, we can become incredibly wealthy.
If it goes wrong, suddenly this very spiritual kind of zen character flies off the handle, loses his temper, storms offstage, starts screaming positive affirmations from backstage.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
SIMPSON: I'm a very spiritual person. I meditate, and I pray, and it's really meaningful to me. But I do need to be able to laugh about it as well.
INSKEEP: Now, I'm going to ask you for one of those spiritual affirmations here at the end, I think. But first, I want to understand a little better your story. What were you doing before you became a cloud?
SIMPSON: So I have been a crime journalist - a newspaper crime journalist for 15 years. And yeah. I realized I was very disillusioned with the industry, disappointed with the product, really - like, you know, both in terms of what I see on the newsstands daily and reading the papers daily and what I see in the world.
INSKEEP: So did you just have a bad day at work, and then at the end of the day, you were looking for a pub and you stumbled into a clown performance?
SIMPSON: I mean, I - it got - basically, yes.
INSKEEP: OK.
SIMPSON: There was a year where it got so bad, you know, in the U.K. 2017, we had five terror attacks. Grenfell Tower burnt down. And to be immersed in that stress and pressure and tragedy and horror that much had a massive effect on me. And actually, you know, what you said - were you looking for a pub? - like, I was, you know, an alcoholic. So, like...
INSKEEP: Oh, my.
SIMPSON: ...In the very hackneyed kind of cliches of crime-journalist behavior. That was really my escape from it. In the end, you know, the choice was made to get sober. And through that, I met incredible creative people, one of whom is a retired stand-up comedian who spoke with such inspiration about a clown course that he'd done that I booked one.
INSKEEP: What are some essential lessons that you learn in clown school?
SIMPSON: One thing I see again and again, which is so important for people to truly understand, is that we make bad decisions when we're scared. And it can be incredibly scary stepping out onstage in front of a room full of people. Training in that space of kind of nervousness and fear and anxiety starts to open up little windows of space where you can play and have fun, and when you realize there's no threat from the group of people who are sitting there waiting for you to do something funny.
INSKEEP: So would you like to leave us with an affirmation that your character satirically gives but maybe you sort of really mean?
SIMPSON: So the last time I stormed offstage and did a positive affirmation, I used one that I write down in the morning.
INSKEEP: OK.
SIMPSON: So I sort of stormed off, and I was like, I am a kind and loving man...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
SIMPSON: ...Who wants to inspire people.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) Well, you do seem very kind, so...
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: John Simpson, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
SIMPSON: A pleasure. Thank you.
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FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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