OK I'll be brave and open up.

My name is martin ewen and professionally I am an unhappy stilt pantomime.

I was born in 63, I was a child prodigy,

By the time I had left the post natal clinic I had graduated as a doctor and was already specializing in bone marrow disorders.

My childhood was spectacularly uneventful, I mostly wrote books.

My parents were both hardworking professionals. My father (before his accident) was a human cannonball and my mother was an adhesive chemist.

They met by chance when a spiteful clown changed my fathers trajectory before a matinee and he flew askew and landed on my mothers date, killing him.

In the trauma counseling and legal wrangling that followed they grew close and fell in love.

I am the oldest of 4 and a half children, my youngest brother Paul has a seintinent lump on his neck with lips that we suspect is an unborn twin, occasionally it sings.

My probation officer gave me permission to attend clown school in 1983. I was then 20.

The clown school was run by Alan Clay who uses the Socretian method.

The first time I had to wear red-nose in Public I chain-whipped a pram.The baby laughed, the mother thought I was charming.

Later I found a way to shoot dead squid over buildings.

I was always a clowns clown. This was difficult in that there were very few clowns and if you didn't have one or two in your audience, no-one laughed.

I gave up laughing professionally ten years ago and I've never been happier.

I spend my days sneering at a public who find me amusing I think because I try so superficially to be happy. I sneer at myself sometimes just for the practice. I have worked 18 years over more than 20 Countries in nearly 100 citys and towns. I'll spare you the anecdotal Olympics and the flaying with cliches as I will also the name-dropping suffice to add that while I do know a large number of this community, I am open minded and still of the opinion that strangers are just people who haven't let you down yet.

I am 37 and considering retirement.