The Argus: Interview with Dave Tusk

Dave Tusk casually reels off the list of stunts he’s been involved with in his time as a performer.

“We’ve done bed of nails, enemas with blood, live scarification, human dartboard, lots of stuff with fire. I guess one of the most extreme was in Zurich recently where I was fed five metres of ribbon by my wife (the flame-haired Lucifire) and then lay on a gurney while she took a scalpel to my abdomen and pulled the ribbon out again. We invited a few people from the audience to try to get it out with surgical gloves on but four of them passed out.”

Needless to say, Fire Tusk Pain Proof – the circus the couple launched several years ago at London’s Torture Garden fetish club – is not for kids.

The knife-wielding, sword- swallowing, fire-spitting, band of 18 describe themselves as “a very theatrical stunt show, without safety nets or wires”. Dave adds; “I think nowadays people are so used to TV fodder as entertainment, with all its CGI and smoke and mirrors, they assume everything in life is like that.

“We go to great lengths to make people realise everything they see in our show is real. We really are doing these things.”

In a show they have toured around the world and which headlined the Big Top at last year’s Glastonbury Festival, the fearless bunch present (and this is listing just a selection): straitjacket escapes, chainsaws, flaming whips, piercing weightlifting, Samurai sword chop, upside-down clowns and human blockhead.

“We have one stunt we’ve recently devised where I’m on a bed of nails and a piece of wood pivots on top of me like a human seesaw. Lucifire rides a motorbike over me. Oh yeah, and the wood’s on fire. When we thought of it, we thought we’d be able to find information about how to do it on the internet but we couldn’t, so we’ve made it up entirely. There’s another where we get Fancy Chance (aka the reigning Miss Alternative World) and swing her around by her hair. That’s quite a traditional stunt though.”

This year’s Fringe features a healthy collection of circuses, from the fairly traditional Moscow State to the more left-field No Fit State. “This is much more circus with the feel of a night-club,” Tusk says. “It’s edgy, hard-hitting, high-octane and strictly for adults.”

Fire Tusk Pain Proof Circus by Nione Meakin. Pic by Matilda Temperley.