CLOWN DOCTORS

Dr Fruit Loop and Dr Bubba-Louey want to infect Australian hospitals with laughter. In order to establish the first Clown Doctor Unit in Queensland, they set out to select two new Clown Doctors, who must be able to perform the very special Open Heart Surgery to sick children in the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane. It will be an inspiring journey full of comedy and tragedy.

The Humour Foundation doesn't do therapy but what we do is therapeutic. We're involved in opening the door for the child to let them be a child. The kids feel better. They've laughed and we've given them back some power. There is so much stress in hospital, especially from the child's point of view, and this is a wonderful way to help that. Humour doesn't have a high priority in medicine or hospitals. It's more important to have a whiz-bang piece of equipment. Medicine shouldn't be just about intellectual or scientific stuff. Although a child is dying, they are still a child and no-one is paying attention to that. The message these children are receiving is that there is so much grief and anxiety. We call what we do open-heart surgery. Sometimes we cry. We accept that as part of the job. We have a team of clowns for each hospital in which we work. We get funding from all over the place, but there have been times when we weren't getting paid for doing this. We use professional performers and pay them only half what they would get normally, but they accept that.

The thing that is common among all the clown doctors is that we all have white coats and stethoscopes. Underneath that costume, each person is a different character. Jean Paul [Bell] is Dr Bubba-Louey and I'm Dr Fruitloop. Jean Paul and I take our clowns through a training program at the hospital because they are performing in a different environment. You are dealing with life-threatening illnesses and children dying, so you need to have very strong sensitivity and improvisational skills - it doesn't allow you to have a set routine. Hospitals already had performers coming in and things like The Starlight Room, but they didn't do the clown stuff we do. We're different in that we have a specific program in place to address each child's needs. We parody medical procedures and ham things up using magic and storytelling. The important thing we do is leave the child with something - like our famous red nose transplant. When we finish the red nose transplant, that nose can symbolise something for the child. Say, when another doctor comes around, the child can just quietly put the nose on and see if the doctor notices anything.

As well as being fun, it's an empowering process for the child. We use the smile on the stick in the same way. On the way to theatre they can put on their smile and not feel so afraid. I meet the performers before the start of each clown round and again at the end of the day, because we really need to go through what has happened - a sort of debriefing. Each hospital team meets every three months to do healing workshops, It gives us a sense of being a family and a chance to discuss upskilling our techniques and medical issues.

The Humour Foundation came out of a long association I had with Jean Paul. At university I was involved in film and modern dance as well as my medical studies. When I graduated, Jean Paul and I decided to travel the world. We kept in contact when we came home. We used to rave about how to marry medicine and art. We decided one day to put up or shut up, so developed the Humour Foundation. The main operating arm of the foundation is the clown doctors. We started them in January 1997, at the Children's Hospital in Randwick (Sydney]. The hospital took a risk letting us work there because at that time there was nothing like the Humour Foundation or clown doctors anywhere else in Australia. Because of the kind of person I am - I'm a pilot. I have a Harley outside and I'm a world traveller - I guess I'm open too trying differe