Wednesday 3 November 2010

Circus to counsel people scared of clowns

A CIRCUS is offering a counselling service for people who suffer from coulrophobia - the fear of clowns.

John Lawson's Circus, which tours the UK, offers workshops where people can meet two clowns and see them get into character.

The clown-fearers will be forced to watch mime and lame visual gags for four hours until they realise that clowns are not scary, just a tedious talent vacuum and general waste of everyone’s time and money.

If the coulrophobics are still quaking after the boredom therapy they will be placed into a small cage with a clown dressed as Stephen King’s It for three hours. The clown will touch them inappropriately and cut their faces with rusty blades. This therapy is known as ‘flooding’ and sees patients exposed to large amounts of the feared stimulus to shock them into mental health.

Clowns: boring and pointless.

Former coulrophobia Martin Clunes said his fear was ruining his life. “I would freeze up whenever I had to pass a circus tent or a mini because I thought clowns would start pouring out.”

Clunes said it was difficult to pinpoint the origins of his phobia but suggested it may have had something to do with a mime artist brutally murdering his parents in front of him when he was five years old.

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