What a song! I know little of the rest of the catalogue and really must delve deaper but what a song and what a bass line. It took me hours to learn this 5 years ago and I still struggle to nail it every time. I normally have to stop to shake my hands out every few bars. What’s your favourite bass line to play and what’s your favourite Blockheads song?
New videos every Wednesday on my YouTube channel. Ritchie Rosson (that is me that is) is an entertainer, magician, YouTuber, comedian based in London.
I was going to make a YouTube video about my magician friend and dealer of highly illegal drugs. No, not really. He’s one of the only people in Camden not selling drugs. Michael sells magic tricks!
But my video ended up being too much fun to ignore the lovely journey through gorgeous central London. I took my first trip on a London hire bike. They are ace! Hire one. If you don’t want to ride round advertising that bank; wear a big ridiclous hat and everyone will not see the name on the bike.
YES! So excited to finally get me a green screen for my YouTube videos. As a magician I have bought tons of props, gadgets and gimmicks for my shows and 90% have ended up boxed away or sold to other entertainers (they all do the same haha!)
The GS was one of these things where I thought I wanted it but had a feeling I would be selling it again soon. But NO! Loving my first attempts at having fun with this and it looks great and I have hardly opened my imagiantion on it yet.
The Elgato green screen if you can find one is so easy to set up and pack down. It’s a nice size for solo sit down or standing filming.
The part I am troubled by is how tricky to light they are. I wanted to update my video lights for a while but when I shone them on me and tried to film green screen oh boy did I need to get some new ones.
A lot of video tutorials on my dearest YouTube were frothing at the mouth over the Aputure 120D but it is rather big to set up in my shoe box sized flat. I was tempted though but when I realised that for green screening you need even lighting and not the artistic type with one key light, I looked for a set and came across the awesome and way more flat pack/plays big Aputure Amaran’s. They are iPad size and are fantastic. Battery and mains powered a variety of light types, really bright and REMOTE CONTROLLED BABY! Forget your videos, flash them at the neighbours when they put the bins out while I hide behind the curtains that what I am mostly using them for.
I am being told by lots of magician friends that the video is too long for a showreel so I am going to chop it down to a 1 minute reel later today. Enjoy! Please subscribe to my channel for more silly fun.
I spent about 30 hours editing this! OK that might in part be because I was learning to use Adobe Premiere Pro. Wow, this software is so amazing! It was such a pleasure to play around with it. If you are a performer of any kind, I recommend very much to watch videos of your shows. It is very revealing and is helping me a lot to see the good things I do and the annoying habits that need to be dropped like laughing at my own jokes.
Playing should not just be for kids and while I went down there to do some filming, I ended up having great fun playing with Juggling Jake‘s mini-bike, tightrope and walking plant pot thingies. I am doing some magic shows at Swan Shopping Centre in Leatherhead as part of their awesome Magic Mondays events every week in August. I think me and Miranda had more fun there than the kids.
Juggling Jakes does brilliant juggling shows and his workshops are so fun. He had so many fun toys which of course the kids were all over but so were the mums and dads. Really was great family fun. My favourites were the mini bikes. I used to own one and right it quite easily now I can barely get going on it without pulling 12 muscles.
Come down to Leatherhead; Swan Shopping Centre next Monday 20th August and 27th August. Bring the little ones too! Like Swan Shopping’s Facebook page here. They have great shops and cafes and lots of brill events.
I performed as a contortionist for 10 years across the UK and sometimes across the world. I worked alongside some interesting and lovely characters such as Gary Stretch in the Circus of Horrors who had a rare disorder allowing his skin to stretch like elastic and to perform tricks that you could never copy and would never see again in your life. There was the crazy but sweet Prince Albert who had an epic collection of facial piercings. And there was the brilliant Rod Laver who could play music not with a bass guitar, not with a trombone but by firing ping pong balls at gin bottles. One of the best acts I ever saw.
But the locations of my gigs as a contortionist were also pretty odd. Aside from the cabarets, and circuses, I was booked to pretend to be a normal dinner guest in a restaurant with a group of friends, and 15 minutes in, go into my contortion act at the dinner table. Just one dude, trying to impress his mates.
I was always small as a boy. I was the smallest boy in my year until the top year of high school. I’m probably about average now as a man but the day of one of my contortionist gigs, I felt like a very small man; when I was booked to do a show at a bodybuilding competition. Everyone in the building was bulging with muscles especially the women. I had an idea for two big fellas at the end of my act to carry me off stage with my legs behind my head. They did it but seemed rather uncomfortable and unhappy about it for some reason. I cannot imagine why.
As a children’s entertainer/magician, I thought the gigs would get less weird, but last year, I was booked to do a show at a doctors surgery. I assumed it would be closed for people’s appointments. I got there, they had a face painter and had done a bit of advertising. 3 children turned up and so did people for their doctor’s appointments. Suddenly I found myself entertaining (?) a half-full room of people needing medical assistance. Those who were delighted by me, were the doctors as they would pop out to call their next patient into their rooms. The doctors did enjoy my stool sample joke.
Speaking of which; I registered at a new doctors a few years ago. I went to a check-up session with a nurse. She typed into the computer some details and took a urine sample from me that I had been asked to bring. I then said to her “I have brought my stool sample, look!” She continued to look at her computer as I repeated: “look, look, my stool sample!” As she fixed her gaze to her computer she sternly repeated “I do not need to see that!”
As I have lowered the tone already, I had a fun few days shooting a TV advert for Easyjet where I had to get in and out of a suitcase in central London. See the video here
At the time, I was a vegan and trying to build muscle in the gym so I was eating a lot of chickpeas and lentils. Yes, you guessed right. I farted while zipped in the suitcase, twice!
Woah! I did my first stand up comedy gig last night at the awesome Comedy Virgins at the Cavendish Arms in Stockwell. I had been secretly studying and writing stand-up comedy the last few months to work towards my first 5 minutes on a stage without any balloons, magic tricks or a giggle-ready bunch of 5-year-olds in front of me.
I didn’t quite have the whole room barking with laughter but then I did get some laughs. So I think it was a success. It surprised me that the whole room cheered at the mention of “stationary” but that a stoic silence was met with my talk of “a rubber fist”.
They have a random order of comics on the night meaning everytime the compere calls for “a big to cheer to welcome to the stage…..” every act of the night puts down their drink ready to march to the stage. This was nice for me as I was the 43rd act of 45 on the night.
The very funny and lovely man Adrian Tauss was compereing. We briefly danced as I went on stage I seem to remember and as my five minutes ended I tightly hugged Adrian like a fireman who had dug me out of an earthquake rubble. My plan for next time is to extend the dance section to 4 minutes and drop some of the material I wrote for this set, maybe 38 of the 40 jokes.
I think this is a good rule for any service, but going for the cheapest children’s entertainer especially is not the best idea when a 4th/5th birthday party is such a special day. Whoever you book, read their online reviews and look at their website and videos. Are they professional? Do they entertain full time? Do they have a high-quality sound system that won’t be driving everyone mad with feedback noises? Will the children have a great time? Will they laugh and be comfortable in the company of this person? Are they experienced in the range of children’s parties that take place? I did one show last Saturday for 6 children of 4 and 5-year-olds and 40 adults but on Sunday, I did a party for 15 x 5-year-olds and 10 x 8-year-olds. It took a lot of experience to gauge the magic routines, jokes and the rhythm of the show for those different groups. This is something that only comes from performing at hundreds of shows.
The worst thing of all about cheap entertainers is that they might call and cancel a few days before because a carnival offered them twice the money to do 5 hours there or worst of all, the nightmare scenario of the entertainer not turning up at all! Suddenly you have a very disappointed birthday child and 30 little ones running around screaming and driving the parents to despair.
Book a brilliant children’s entertainer, not a cheap one. If budget is a worry, cut corners on having simple (or no) party bags, finding a cheap village hall, have the party at home (if it’s up to 15 children) or have a joint birthday party with another family to split the cost.
Avoid entertainers from cheap party companies as you usually won’t know who the entertainer is that you are booking and a lot of their entertainers are very inexperienced and trained within a few hours.
You will probably only have such a party once or twice. With a brilliant entertainer and fantastic magic show, they will have an unforgettable day, you will get great photos and all the other parents will be wondering how you organised such a brilliant party.
Children’s Magician & Party Entertainer – Ritchie Rosson | Surrey, Kent & London 