As in angry, not just doing their job...

The knives are out in the street performing community – and this time they won’t be juggling with them.

Sword-swallower Tom Balmont has launched a vicious counter-attack against vaudevillian juggler Mat Ricardo, who today took issue with David Mitchell over his newspaper column about street performers.

Writing in The Observer on Sunday, the Peep Show star admitted he disliked buskers and referred to them as ‘guitar-playing hippies’.

But the article was also self-deprecatory, with Mitchell ascribing his grumpiness to being ‘instinctively very anti-fun’ and his jealousy at seeing the street acts entertaining huge, smiling crowds who gladly handed over money at the Edinburgh Fringe when he was a struggling sketch performer.

Writing on Chortle earlier today, Ricardo, pictured, suggested the column came across as ‘elitist assholery’ and accused the star of being ‘lame and mean-spirited about one of the few remaining elements of beautiful, chaotic, surprising Fringe spirit’.

However, claiming to speak for all current working Covent Garden street performers, Balmont blasted: ‘We have a sense of humour unlike Mr Ricardo. We can also appreciate how funny David Mitchell is unlike Mr Ricardo. 

‘We also understand that David Mitchell’s success is based on him being a talented funny man unlike Mr Ricardo. Mr Ricardo no more speaks for us than a dying disease ridden pigeon speaks for birds all over the world.

‘We would like to correct Mr Ricardo as well, there are a number of hippies amongst our number who would happily call them selves hippies.

‘In conclusion, we would like to issue Mr Ricardo the following advice: pull your neck in you twat.’

Published: 10 Aug 2018