Under the make-up, the red nose and the rainbow dress, Dottie the Clown has a secret — she’s really rather shy. That’s why her nose is bright red in the first place (blush). She overcomes her shyness by doing what she does best, making kids giggle.

The Royal Gazette recently met with Dottie to discuss her clowning career after she won a Clown Idol award at the Clown Fun Convention in Calgary, Canada earlier in the spring.

“I got my start at the Methodist church in St. George’s,” said Dottie. “We were having a Christmas pageant. The minister needed someone to do clowning, and I said I would do it, as long as I didn’t have to talk.”

Unfortunately, Dottie hadn’t been expecting the large Christmas crowd that greeted her when she clomped into the church in all her clown finery.

“I just froze and I did whatever the lady told me to do,” she said. “About a week later I got a call from a group to come down into the square and hand out candy. I thought, ‘I can do that’.”

For her second clown appearance, Dottie put on her best polka dot dress and went down to the Square in St. George’s.

“A Policeman down there asked me what my name was. I said, ‘My name? I don’t know.’ The Policeman said, ‘well, I have to introduce you to the kids as someone’. So I looked down saw the polka dots and said, ‘Dottie’.”

Her appearance in St. George’s went so well that she was asked to do her first birthday party a short time later. That was 16 years ago. Since then she has been appearing at birthday parties and charitable functions all over the Island, spreading her own special brand of magic. She doesn’t work alone. She has several co-performers including a puppet named ‘Freddie the Duck’ and a live bunny rabbit, named ‘Pichu’.

“Freddie is my main man,” said Dottie. “He is a duck. He is rude and he is very silly, which the kids love. They try to correct him, because he messes me right up. It is so much fun watching the kids. My rabbit, ‘Pichu’, is a Netherland Blue Eyed Dwarf. He is awesome. He has been in the business with me for eight years now. The lady who had him before had him in the house with five cats, and this rabbit thinks he is a cat. He is very good and he has never bitten any of the children. I don’t know what I would do without him.”

She said puppets can sometimes reach children in a way that humans often can not.

“Over the years I have come across maybe eight children who were terrified of clowns,” she said. “As soon as I bring out that bird, they are not crying anymore. I end up face painting them later. There are so many things you can teach with a puppet. I have about eight puppets in total, but only about four perform with me.”

She said puppets have to be trained and worked the same as any other type of pet. “You have to find a voice and a character that you believe in,” she said. “You have to work with that puppet as a human being. Keep going back and forth, talking to your puppet just as you go about your daily routine, or while you’re watching television. Then suddenly the stuff they come up with is scary.”

Of course, clowns need an education just like ordinary mortals. Dottie has attended many clown conventions in the United States and England and also received training at Clown Camp at the University of Wisconsin.

“I went there for about four years,” she said. “It was fun. “Once I got to know what my character was, and what the children were looking for, what I had to look like and what my make-up should be like I didn’t need that anymore. I had my start. From there I started going to conventions that were geared to what I was looking for, face painting, ventriloquism, characters and magic for children — all kinds of stuff like that.”

Dottie said the secret to maintaining her girlish clown complexion, has been ‘Oil of Olay’ (of course).

“In terms of my clothes, I have to make all my own because in Bermuda there is no place to buy this stuff,” she said. “My shoes come from a place in Texas and my socks come from England.

“The outfits fade every six months. So every time I change the outfit, I change the style a bit, but I have kept the Mary Jane look. I wear a rainbow coloured dress because I am originally from Rainbow Land. I try to keep the same soft and gentle look so I am not scary.”

If you were wondering what clown painted your neighbour’s roof, it could have been Dottie. When she isn’t performing at birthday parties, she is often helping her husband (Mr. Bozo) with his roof painting business. In the past, she has also worked in hospitals in Montreal, Canada with diabetic patients. Dottie’s first love, though, is working with children.

“I love doing the clowning,” she said. “I always say, if I got tired and looked at it as a job I would stop doing it. I use to do six to eight parties a week. But as the years pass, the clown is slowing down a little bit. Now I do up to about four parties a week, because most of my parties are on the weekend, and I still work with my husband during the week. Also, even clowns need a life.”

Dottie has performed at a number of different venues around the island including the Police Club, The Bermuda Regiment, the Hamilton Princes, Elbow Beach and more. She also works with five special charities.

“I am at their beck and call,” she said. “Right now, I am working with PALS, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Windreach Recreational Village, among others. If charities don’t use me within a couple of years I will change the charity. I don’t have transportation, so I have to wait for Mr. Bozo to drive me.”

Dottie’s love of clowning around has proven to be infectious. Four years ago, she convinced her sister in Edmonton, Alberta to don the red nose. Her sister teaches children with physical handicaps.

“She loves clowning to death,” said Dottie. “It is a pretty cool job to make children laugh and you get paid for it. I never thought I would be doing something like this. It is not something I planned on doing.”

However, she said clowning around can be quite tiring.

“It takes a lot of energy,” she said. “It is lot of energy from the brain. I get brain tired when I finish. I get back in the van and I just die. But the greatest thing about being a clown is making them laugh, and being that silly. It is a lot of fun.”

But she said being a clown involved more than putting on a costume, and declaring yourself a clown. “There are a lot of psychological things that go on,” she said. “If a child has that look on their face as you are approaching, then you don’t approach. You back off and you say goodbye and just wave. If a child is a little nervous you get down on your knees and talk one on one with the child. It works.

“In my early days of clowning I asked another clown ‘how can you be funny all the time?’. He said, ‘sweetheart, you don’t have to be funny, get down on your knees and be loving’. That’s what I try to do.”

For more information about Dottie and her birthday party rates, go to her website at http://dottietheclown0.tripod.com/.