Forever Dangerous, Always Fun

My Mum has asked me for some time to write about my work as a sword swallower.  Seeing as the only autobiography of a sword swallower, Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, by Daniel Mannix is reputedly not written by a sword swallower at all, I thought I may as well...  I am a fan of D. Mannix's writing, but historically there are no references to him ever trying the art.  He does not appear over at SSAI (Sword Swallower's Association International)'s list of sword swallowers past and present, either.

I started on the road to circus arts at 14... I'd hung about the amazing French circus 'Archaos' for weeks when they visited, making friends with the performers, being wowed by Pascualito Voinet's 15ft fire-breathing skills.  I decided to start with fire.  Circus Oz put me in touch with Annie Davey, at that time the fire-effects person for Circus Oz.  She met me at the Black Cat in Brunswick and took me a few doors up to her warehouse, where she taught me the fundamentals of fire-eating and breathing (fire-spitting).  She was, and still is, a marvelously eccentric character.  By chance I ran into her sister, Maude Davey, just a fortnight ago, who had just finished a burlesque show for Moomba.  We reminisced about those days, after eventually working out who each other actually was!  Burlesque is, incidentally, a huge part of womens' circus biz nowdays.

The fire stuff served me well. I practised every day before going to school at Ardoch-Windsor in Prahran, and would pull it out onstage as part of the acts for the bands I played with.  Being underage at that time, and a barefoot drummer, I was frequently kicked out of the pubs after we'd played for being either barefoot or underage or both.  I taught a fewof the dramatically talented Ardoch kids to fire-spit during lunchbreaks from school in Alma park.  I recall Brooke nearly burning all of his long, luscious brown hair off once when the wind changed unexpectedly.

I did a fire act as a guest on Fairstar the Funship once, while traveling with my Grandmother as her companion, and spat fire in every place we docked for the 22 day trip.  My main memory of the act on the ship is that the parquetry ballroom floor was covered in a film of fuel afterwards, causing a line of tap-dancing septegenarians to fall on their arses...

To be continued...and at some point, I'll get around to talking about the sword swallowing!