Monday, January 28, 2008

Audio interview: Dallas’ Tharpo the Clown (aka Jeff Tharp)

By Jimmie R. Markham of If Dallas Were A Podcast

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Comments (2)

Here’s new word for you: coulrophobia. Coulrophobia is an unusual fear of clowns. A recent study commissioned by a British hospital concluded that, out of 250 children ages 4 to 16, 100% of them were afraid of clowns. That struck me as a bit odd and, perhaps, a bit inaccurate, so I thought I would go straight to the source.

I googled “Dallas clown” and Google was quite kind to me with some 440,000 hits. I clicked on the first one and ended up at alloccasionperformers.com, the home of Tharpo the Clown, a.k.a. Jeff Tharp.

I had a chance to visit with Jeff and gave me his opinion about this study. He also shared with me his wealth of knowledge about clowns, a wealth of knowledge he has accumulated in over 20 years of literally clowning around. Let’s listen to the quite amusing interview…

Listen to the podcast here.

Host: Jimmie R. Markham

Guests: Jeff Tharp (Tharpo the Clown)

Music: Razorheat by DSN

File Size: 39.04 MB

Length: 42:38

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Comments

viva_la_malcriada Anonymous

Wow, judging by the number of adults I know with coulrophobic tendencies (including myself), I'd venture to guess that the numbers cited in the children's study mentioned above might be more accurate than we care to think.

Tharpo sounds like a diamond dude, however - and kudos to him for taking the time to sit down and talk about his misunderstood and often maligned profession. And I'll bet he'd totally kick Mr. Giggles' ass for this poor woman, too:

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Chad Jones Verified

My research indicates clowns like to dance http://pennywiseclown.ytmnd.com/

and their only known enemy are Predators http://clownvspredator.ytmnd.com/

A less popular phenomenon:

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

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