Funnyman returns for repeat showing
For many performers, the Lan Kwai Fong Street Carnival is the ideal opportunity to showcase their acts to a wide audience. Funnyman Ben Matthews seized the opportunity to perform last year as a way of launching his career after he arrived from Singapore just before the carnival began.
'I'd been working in Singapore for 12 years and [the city] is quite a small place. I felt like everyone had seen me and I had seen everything. I thought it would be fun to try to work in another place and then my wife got offered a really good job in Hong Kong,' said Matthews.
'I arrived in September and was looking for work when I saw the poster about the carnival and called them up,' he said.
The carnival was his first job in Hong Kong and despite finding it an exhausting two days, he enjoyed it enough to get involved again this year.
'For a performer, the carnival is great because the audience is huge and there is such a big age range,' Matthews said. 'In the daytime you get families and so you can do all the children's stuff. In the evening there are more adults so you can do different, more adult material.
'I've been to Lan Kwai Fong for various events since and I always enjoy performing there. It's like getting paid for a night out.'
Matthews, an Oxford University graduate who previously juggled and rode a unicycle as a hobby, stumbled into showbiz by accident in Singapore while travelling after finishing his studies.
'I was riding a unicycle and juggling when someone asked me to do a show. From then on I just got more and more work,' he said.
'One of the more unusual things I do is a mini Elvis impersonation. I have this three-foot mini Elvis that I climb inside,' he said. 'I also climb inside a giant balloon.'
Big Ben is just one of many acts in the lineup at Lan Kwai Fong's two-day street carnival. Others include He Man, the master balloon twister, clown and stilt walkers Kenneth and Wing, Colin Anderson's Jazz Band, and a Chinese puppet and shadow puppet show.
Children's favourites The Purple Turtle Theatre Group will also perform their own quirky adaptations of The Adumbs Family and Alice in Wonderland.
For a performer,
the carnival is
great because the audience is huge
and there is such
a big age range
Ben Matthews
Funnyman
