WHEN I was three, I desperately wanted a clown costume for Christmas, and my mum made me one.

A really good one too – stupid shoes, big colourful trousers which she’d sewed a hoop into, so they dangled round my waist from braces just like a real clown’s, red nose and a curly red wig.

On Christmas morning, she dressed me up and put a big clown face of make-up on me: smiley mouth, red cheeks, crosses on my eyelids. Then, she gave me a certificate my brother had made saying I was now officially a clown. He’d made it using clip art on the new computer so, to a three-year-old, it looked very impressive.

Then she took me to her bedroom, where the big mirror was, so I could look at my costume properly. Grasping the paper in my little hand, I looked up into the face of my tiny clown reflection … and burst into tears. I’d made a terrible mistake, I was sure of it: I was trapped as a clown for life.

My mum comforted me and explained to me that, no, the make-up washes off, and I was still the same little boy underneath all that clown paraphernalia. I nodded, and wiped away the tears. But the thing is, the three-year-old me was right. I was doomed to be a clown.

For many years I ran from my fate. I went to school, like little boys do, not clowns. I went to university to study literature, which clowns definitely don’t do. Even when I started doing comedy I was quite a straight-down-the-line sort of comic. I’d wear a suit, and read arch one-liners aloofly at a crowd. I wanted them to know I was clever, so they’d respect me, and not heckle. It was a way of protecting myself. It didn’t work.

So, in my late 20s, I was slightly dissatisfied with my act. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. On a whim, I attended a clowning workshop. And it changed everything.

I found out that having fun, and getting an audience to join in that fun, is enough. I found out that being stupid – properly, nuts-off idiotic – makes for some of the best entertainment there is. People don’t go to a comedy show to respect the performer and to think “that performer’s very smart” – they go to laugh at them. And I found out how free I felt letting myself just be that idiot on stage.

Once I’d taken one workshop, I had to do another, and another, and another ... and a couple of years later, I found myself in France, enrolled full-time in clown school. It was scary place. The teaching method basically boiled down to an old French man with a drum, which he would hit when you were boring. But, learning to have fun in that terrifying environment set me up to have fun pretty much anywhere.

Clowning completely changed performing for me, but I’ve realised how much it helped me in my life as well.

The clown is happy to be wrong. The clown goes on stage, does something stupid and is delighted about it. Through our lives I think we’re taught that getting something wrong is a really bad thing. At school, you might be humiliated for it. At home, you might be punished. When our politicians say “oh, I was wrong about that, I’ve changed my mind” we never let them live it down. Although, surely, rationally, we want to be led by people capable of learning.

So in my life I’d get something wrong, and feel awful. I’d cringe from embarrassment, and feel it in the tension of my shoulders. As a clown I learned to take that feeling, and enjoy it. To get it wrong and laugh, and say “I’ll get it right next time”.

The clown tries to please. If the clown does something and the audience laughs, the clown does it again. And again, and again. And again. And … again, until they’re not laughing anymore. In my life, I found this was the best way to entertain my toddler nephews. Unfortunately, toddlers don’t do the “stopping laughing” bit like adults do, so it’s hard to get out.

The clown loves the audience, and listens to the audience. The clown looks the audience in the eyes, and smiles when the audience laughs. As a clown you walk out on the stage loving this room of strangers – if you don’t, the act won’t work. That seems like a pretty good lesson in approaching strangers in real life, as well.

So, I was right – I was trapped as a clown. But there was no need to cry about it.

For more details on John-Luke Robert’s show, and others, visit 
www.thestand.co.uk/glasgow