Nina Conti Clowning Around

Nina Conti: Clowning Around (BBC Four) started out as a standard Minor Celebrity Sets Arbitrary Goal film (Conti wanted to learn to be a clown to help kids in hospital) but ended up descending into the depths of her own self-doubt. Her clown persona made children cry, not laugh, and as she struggled to find the "inner clown" that her many teachers insisted all of us possess, the charity for whom she was working decided that clowning itself should be banned (the donors found clowns off-putting). Conti was left questioning everything - "Nina's gone mental," said monkey, on Conti's behalf.

It was an unusual, awkward film, if only because so few things on TV are prepared to admit that the much-hallowed "journey" we're all supposed to be on often leads to failure. Conti's attempts to become a clown petered out and she gave up - it ended with her wearing a wetsuit, flippers and a clown nose, haranguing passers-by on London Bridge in a mildly alarming way. Maybe that's what she'd concluded clowning meant.

One of her fellow clowns had another definition: "A clown is who we'd all want to be if we stopped worrying about looking like idiots."

The ventriloquist's 2012 film Her Master's Voice - about going to a convention in America with her monkey and another puppet of her recently dead mentor and lover Ken Campbell - was one of the most imaginative and hilarious things that's been on TV recently, and you should see it if you haven't already.

This time she is learning to entertain children in hospital. Without her monkey, for reasons of health and safety. So she'll be a clown. But clowns have their issues as well; everyone hates them - children, parents, charity donors - clowns even hate themselves, that's part of their innate tragedy.

So Nina's up against a lot - not just acquiring new talents, but overcoming clown-prejudice, and - most of all - learning to find the strength to be with very sick kids. It's still mostly about Nina of course (mostly via Monkey, who is reprieved, via a hot wash) but it's also about the kids, which is why it can't be as funny as HMV. There's not much laughter around where it's most needed, in the wards of seriously and terminally ill children. It's almost unbearably sad then. But touchingly human too, brave and important.

Nina Conti Clowning Around, BBC Four, review

Ventriloquist fails to 'find' her clown, reduced to 'tears of...'

Radio Times review

The brilliant Nina Conti puts herself through the mill here - and produces a funny, sharp documentary about clowning and the way a phobia of clowns has spread to the point where it threatens a whole comic tradition.

Conti is a successful ventriloquist, but decides she should put her skills to use entertaining sick children in hospitals, via a charity that provides "clown doctors". So begins a surprisingly tough process of training, discovering her inner clown and spiralling into an artistic crisis about the wellsprings of comedy.

"How can I go on stage in front of hundreds of people and be fine, but faced with a single child I feel a total fraud?" she asks. As so often, it's her straight-talking Monkey puppet (slash alter ego) that provides the answer: "Because that's all smoke and mirrors, Nina. This is real."

Nina Conti: Clowning Around, TV review

We know laughter is the best medicine, but who knew that comedy's medical ethics could be so tricky?

Preview: Nina Conti: Clowning Around, BBC Four

While Clowning Around isn't quite as personal as Her Master's Voice, it does give an insight into a side of clowning that we rarely see.