KING OF CLOWNS Very few members of the comedy world are worthy of the title 'genius'; Chris Lynam isn't one of them but he comes damn close. Laughing Matters meets the man with fire-proof buttocks If you have to be famous for one thing & one thing alone then Chris Lynam has probably cornered the market with the most wacko stunt anyone would dream of performing & get paid for it.................. For a long time Chris Lynam has been one of the better kept secrets on the circuit not know for its ability to keep 'schtum'. A man of outrageous natural comic talent, Lynam has had to sit back and watch his contemporaries - the comic strippers and the rest - grab all the headlines and the glory while he has plied his trade on the streets and smaller clubs. The signs are there that Chris Lynam is about to become a, er .... big noise. Lynams dangerous style of comedy was born just over 25 years ago when he was a schoolboy in Zimbabwe, a country he still visits regularly to apply the finishing touches to a five story log cabin he is building. His earliest apprenticeship began at the age of fourteen when he spent the summer working in a Luna Park picking up the rudiments of being a clown There he teamed up with a group of RAF men on their annual holiday, who guided him through the first steps of public performance. From that point on he was hooked but it wasn't until he was twenty three that he finally committed himself to a life in show business with the words, "sod it! I want to be a clown" His first gig was also his very worst, playing to three kids on the Kings road. It was so tacky and embarrassing. He smiles ruefully at the memory. Right now he's playing to rather larger audiences and his best experience came at last years Hysteria benefit at Sadlers Wells. When you get a whoosh from 2,000 people, you really feel it. Clowning Lynam style is rather different from the circus variety and he certainly sticks out from the ever-increasing ranks of conventional stand-ups who merely fling words at their audience. Lynam flings so much more at his crowd, from chocolate and ice-cubes to confetti and even his whole body when he's doing his impression of some pigeon poo landing on a victim. His style emanates from the streets where he has spent so much time touring the world on a shoestring and perfecting his art. The result is a general air of barely controlled madness that characterizes his shows. But it is only an impression, because make no mistake, everything Lynam does is carefully staged. In contrast to his manic persona on stage, when he's off duty Lynam is a quiet, not particularly talkative man who reserves his copious energy and the extrovert side of his nature for performance. Nevertheless, when you are in conversation with him there is always the feeling that a fire rages furiously just below the surface, temporarily extinguished only when given the chance to burn brightly in front of large numbers of people. Up until very recently television producers have resisted his dangerous brand of entertainment - Channel four in particular - but they have finally latched on to the Lynam phenomenon and he is now in constant demand. He has recorded his own 45 minute special for BSB and it would appear that an entire series of his own is a possibility for the New Year. Even though things are going spectacularly well for him, and not before time, Lynam still retains an air of caution. You see I'm virtually unknown outside of London. That situation is about to change. Popcorn History Multi-operatic diva Kate McKenzie and the infamous Chris Lynam have devised The Popcorn Club - an iconoclastic two-hour spectacular which unravels more loose ends than it can hope to tie up! Blurring the fine line between dream and wakefulness, the cast lay bare their hopes and fears ia a surreal revue drawing judiciously upon the vagaries of popular culture. Chris turns backstage traumas frontstage, bickering and brawling before soaring high above the crowd on gossamer wings. With an exquisite grasp of the grotesque, Chris Lynam has been feverishly subverting the traditions of the stand-up for more than fifteen years. His reputation for unpredictable comic mayhem has propelled him to the four corners of the globe, and viewers here and throughout Europe have been aghast and agog at his televised antics. Kate McKenize is an accomplished performer in her own right, with a string of stage and screen credits to her name including The Singing detective, Lennie Henry's Chef and Ken campbell's beauty And The Beast. Chris Lynam is renowned for many things, but mainly for bringing his own brand of crazed humour to bear on unsuspecting audiences. His comedy is both dangerous and exciting, stretching variety to it's limits. Any one show may include pyrotechnics, acrobats, attacks upon the audience, outlandish operatic and orchestral overtures, flying sousaphones and anything else which may spring to Mr Lynam's unnecessarily large and vivid imagination. Chris Lynam has worked as an uncategorisable solo comedian for 35 years which have earned him a reputation for unpredictable hilarity and mayhem. he has toured his solo show to New York, Milan, Genoa, Edinburgh, Germany, Canada, Australia, Indonesia Hong Kong and Zimbabwe.

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