Clowns

Tommy Tickle is Britain's answer to Krusty the Clown. He hates his job, but does it to pay the bills. He drinks and smokes and swears, and although he tries to stay sober for parties, he often scares the children with his gravely 40 a day voice and his obtuse jokes about Robert Mugabe. Tommy thinks modern kids are spoilt and hard to please. He wears a cricket box to protect himself from five year olds who like to punch him in the balls. He has a volatile relationship with his own teenage daughter, Stephanie but one day while she is hanging out in town with a bunch of Goths, she spots him doing his act and something surprising happens. Potty the Pirate loves children. He loves their smiles and their cheers and the way their eyes light up. And he shares their love of pirates. Genuinely. Sometimes he feels the kids aren't paying proper attention to his show and he has to stop the performance to complain. In fact, Potty's friends, are concerned that he may not be able to divorce himself from the role; he's prone to making pirate noises at the most inappropriate moments. Potty agrees he is a child trapped in a man's body... will he ever grow up? And then there's Mr Pumpkin, the life and soul of the party one minute, tending to his sick mother the next always having to put his mum to the back of his mind when he puts on his happy face for the children. Daisy attempts to find out what drives these people because children are demanding these days and it's hard for a man with funny shoes to match up to Playstation 3, the latest Transformers gadget or the wonders of a Wii. This is a film about what modern children are like, and how it affects the men who aim to please them. What is the relationship between a clown and a child all about? And why does someone end up becoming a clown in the first place?