IAN Douglas has an enviable job – he spreads joy.
The Carlisle storyteller takes his craft around Cumbria, the UK and beyond – weaving magical tales, performing or just getting down and dirty with paper, paste and pencils as he jumps in to help children make their story-based crafts.
He performs at music festivals, in theatres,village halls and wherever he is wanted.
He once performed to a group of women dressed in pyjamas and drinking wine followed immediately by an event with a group of burly farmers!
Ian recently left Carlisle 'lured by a beautiful woman with magical eyes and a narrow boat'.
He is now living in said narrow boat near Stoke-on-Trent.
It was from tragedy that the storyteller emerged: “I left school at 16 not really knowing what to do so just followed my mates and ended up working in a garage.
“As one of ‘Thatcher’s children', doing a 45-hour week for £17.50, I started looking around.
“I had a good mate at the time whose mum was a college administrator and she kept saying I should go back to learning but I didn’t have a GCSE to my name so it didn’t feel like an option.
“Sadly my friend died and his mum made it her mission and got me on to a performing arts course. I had great teachers who introduced me to storytellers and performers and musicians and I was hooked.
"Eventually I got on a degree course at Northumbria University which really changed my outlook on life. During my degree I went along to a regular storytelling night and loved it eventually getting up and performing myself. But there were also some big names in the storytelling world that came along and I thought, you know I could do that and off I went.”
He possesses Peter Pan looks and attitude – he actually turns 50 this year but 27 years of professional performing has obviously kept him young.
“ I’ve been a fire breather, a stilt walker; I’ve run youth theatres, major art projects and worked for most of the major arts organisations in the North," he said. "But all the time there has been story."
“My my biggest influences in that world have been Scottish traveller Duncan Williamson and Taffy Thomas MBE to whom I was later apprenticed.
He does not always work alone. He performs with the woman with the magic eyes, wife Jo, who is a shadow puppeteer.
He and Ulverston storyteller Mark Borthwick have developed a new project The Magic Lantern, which should be on tour in the autumn.
Whoever he is with, there is one thing to know – this story has no end.
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