A nose for trouble as act with spoon comes unstuck

A MAN who hammers nails into his head for a living was yesterday recovering in his bed from an injury caused by a tea-spoon. Jim Rose, whose controversial Circus Sideshow opened last night in Edinburgh, was appearing on Festival FM Radio as the guest of comedian Graham Norton, writes Tom Morris.

Asked to demonstrate his act, Mr Rose pounded a teaspoon into his nose at an angle of 90 degrees to the face. 'There's a hole in the middle of your head that serves no purpose at all,' explained Mr Rose, who bangs nails up his nostrils as part of his act.

'If you remove some membrane, rather than sticking objects up your nose you can stick objects straight into your face. Mine is widened to the point after all these years that I can get a spoon in there.'

Problems began for Mr Rose when the spoon was in place. 'It was in his head right up to the bowl of the spoon,' Graham Norton said. Then Mr Rose sneezed and fainted in a pool of blood.

'I felt something like a powerful electric shock. I pulled out the spoon and then blacked out,' said Mr Rose, who refused hospital treatment. 'I ate too many glass lightbulbs a few years ago and they wanted to operate on me. But I knew that if I ate 20 bananas a day and did yogi stomach exercises I could shit a chandelier.'

Mr Rose was adamant he would perform in his Circus's opening, alongside the man who balances a flymo on his chin, a team of American footballers who use a chainsaw instead of a ball, and a six-foot Armenian who slithers through the head of a tennis racket. He will not, however, attempt the spoon trick again. 'I am not stupid,' he said.

(Photograph omitted)