The Entertainer

How and Why I became a Street Entertainer - by Liam Collins

I remember it distinctly, I was sitting at my desk in Forest Hall in Newcastle revising for my A-levels and I remember doodling. After about 10 minutes I had drawn a picture of a stickman with an Afro and flares dancing in the street with a crowd of stick people watching. I had even drawn a sound system. The drawing came from somewhere and to this day I have no idea where but it lit a flame inside me which burns bright to this day.  I cannot even remember ever seeing a street entertainer before this point but something inside me compelled me to look into it.

I called my cousin Tina who lived in London and I asked her what the laws were regarding street theatre there. She replied with “It’s not legal but it’s not illegal. It is really a case of having a go and trying your luck.”  In between revision I kept planning what I would do. I had planned to go down to London to try it in the summer after my exams and make some cash before University at Loughborough.  I had also planned to go away on a European tour with my brother and two mates Sammy and Dave in a VW campervan so I needed some money to cover the trip.

In the end there was a too much to juggle. I won the 110m hurdles at the English Schools championships to finally end a legacy of second places. I managed to get AAA’s in my A-levels and my whole life changed at this point.  Suddenly I had choices. I had been so fearful of not getting the 3C’s I needed to do sports Science at Loughborough that I had worked so hard and surpassed my own expectations. I had never been an academic and granted, the subjects I had studied were not quantum physics! But for me it was a turning point which proved to myself that with hard work and focus I could do things I never thought were possible.

I decided it was in fact the media studies I enjoyed most and that this was in fact the course I wished to study at Loughborough. The problem was it was now full and I needed to re apply for next year and take a year out. 

3 months previous to these events my family had volunteered to look after some international decathletes who needed accommodation for a meeting in the North East. One guy in particular Enoch Borozinski struck a chord with me and we became great friends.  He asked if I ever wanted to come to Reno in Nevada he would train me.  I decided I would take him up on the offer and do something constructive in my year out and head across as soon as possible.

I was young and Naïve at 19 and did not realise I would need a visa etc in order to go so I got in touch with the American Embassy in the September of 1998 and after several letters going back and forth before the days of email, I finally decided it would be faster if I was down in London and could go straight to the American Embassy.  I also decided I would take my dancing gear down to London and do my first street shows.

Within a day of getting down there I received a letter from the American Embassy stating that I would need £5000 in my bank account if I was to go over there as I would not be permitted to work whilst training there.  My stomach sank, as there was no way of raising that kind of money in the timeframe I had. It was Late September and I needed to start my winter training in 3 weeks.  I decided that I would raise the money street dancing and that was the only way I was going to do it.  I called my mum and she was on the first coach through the night from Newcastle to London with my girlfriend at the time Emily. Most parents would probably laugh or be ashamed at the thought of their son or daughter dancing on the street to raise money but I am very lucky to have always had such support.

I had a kid’s karaoke machine and a tape with a few disco songs on.  I remember I was staying in Earlsfield with my friend Sammy and Dave. The night before we took the tube into Leicester Square with the karaoke machine to do a quick sound check. I got such an adrenaline rush thinking that the next morning I would turn from a tourist to a tourist attraction as part of the busking fraternity in the West End of London.  We instantly noticed that the sound could not be heard and that we would need a lot more volume and power.  We went back home and looked at Dave’s ghetto blaster. It was easily loud enough but required £20 in batteries! 10 years ago that was close to what I expected to make that day! We had a problem.

That morning I set off on the tube with my ghetto blaster, my karaoke machine for the microphone to help build the crowd, a roll of 6ft by 6ft cushion flooring for break dancing and balls the size of melons! This was it!  I got to the pitch early and met my mum and Emily who had been there since about 6.30am! Luckily for them London looks the same at 6.30am as it does pm it never sleeps!

I nervously set up, I was shaking and apprehensive but I was doing it.  My first show went like a blur I can’t even remember it but the reaction was good and I made a few pounds! I instantly rewound the tape and went again.  I repeated this energetic exercise about 20 times that day and at the end we all packed up and went to KFC where we counted the days takings. I was exhausted with nervous and physical exertion. I had made close to £100 minus the £20 for batteries, £80 profit.  I knew I could double that very quickly as there was loads I could improve on. I watched the other acts and impersonated the parts I liked, borrowed their lines and body gestures.  I went home in between shows for a few days to revamp the act and I borrowed my grandmas shopping trolley and made my own sound system with a motorbike battery, a car amplifier, two car speakers and a walkman. It did the job and meant I wasn’t paying £20 per day in batteries!

I came up with more jokes to use and decided if I was going to impersonate John Travolta why not have a mask. I made one and used a Speedo headband to keep it on, this later evolved to a mouth piece and one day a man was passing by very quickly and couldn’t stop to see the show but said, “You should make the mask much bigger, exaggerate it, I’m a comedian and I think it would get a better reaction.” So I blew it up larger than life and the crowd liked it. I then thought to myself if I am dancing to the Village People why not get the masks made of them and use them as the jokes as well. This was the birth of Faces of Disco.

Each day my act improved and the profits improved. However I was still not realistically going to raise the £5k I needed. It was nearly November and my dancing was now cutting into the time when I should be training.  It was starting to get cold and wet and the constant work was taking its toll on my body.  One night I was working outside Warner Bros Cinema and afterwards I decided I would just head home to Newcastle and regroup. I was ill and very run down. I lay in my bed the next day when I got a phone call from Tina my cousin. 

Little did I know that the night before when I had been dancing in London, the Director of Ladbrokes Casinos had seen my Michael Jackson impersonation and wanted to book me to perform at his opening night of the Sports Casino on Tottenham Court Road. He had gone in for a meal and when he came out I had packed up and gone.  He thought nothing else of it but that night when traveling back home on the train there was a 2 page article on how I was Britain’s number 1 junior 110m hurdler but had no sponsorship or support and that I was making my own ends meet by dancing on the streets to go and train in America. He suddenly thought it would be great PR for them and great anyway for the entertainment if I was to perform a 7 minute dance routine at the opening night in front of all the sporting celebrities he had invited and in return seeing as they were opening it in conjunction with the Sports Aid Foundation, he would present a cheque for £5000 for me to go and fulfill my dreams!  I couldn’t believe it, it was as if someone had been telling me all those months ago, I had to go to London to dance and support for me would be there.

I got the train back to London for the event and all my family came to watch. I performed the best I could in front of all of these celebrities I had watched on TV for years and here they were watching me! That night after the event Ladbrokes put me up at the Hilton at Heathrow and the next day I flew off to Reno where I would undergo some of the toughest mental and physical training of my life over the next 6 months.  I will never forget the first days on the streets in London and the feeling of being in control of your own destiny, working as hard as you like when you like. It was then I decided I would never work for anyone but myself and then that I decided that I would always trust my instincts. 

 

Click here to read more about Liam Collins the Entertainer and the history behind where he is now.