The silver wizard won’t talk to me

It might seem a doddle being a living statue, but it’s not as easy as it looks The Silver Wizard won’t talk to me. Nor, for that matter, will the Golden Tin Man. This is, in part, because neither speak more than a smattering of English, and in part because both make a living as human statues, a profession in which not talking to strangers is, alongside standing still, more or less the whole point of the job. To the outside observer, imitating a statue must look like the easiest and least competitive career imaginable. Turn up, get dressed, stand still, get given money by passing members of the public. But the Silver Wizard, if he spoke, would tell you otherwise. Competition is fierce, and he has got a 14in scar to prove it. The wizard, real name Rumen Nedelchev, a 45-year-old former mechanic from Brest in Belarus, plies his trade on the southern bank of the Thames in central London, under the shadow of the London Eye. It was here that, one morning last year, his bronze rival The Invisible King clubbed the wizard to the ground with a concrete block for the simple crime of setting up his plinth in a prime location. After surgery, Nedelchev spent more than three months in hospital. Earlier this week, the king – 37-year-old Dechko Ivanov – was sentenced to a minimum of four and a half years in prison. It is, undeniably, a crowded market. Yesterday, on the South Bank, the wizard and the tin man jostled motionlessly for attention with a Roman centurion, the Queen, a not-very-convinving Scream and a very sweaty Spiderman. Some of these buskers appear to be taking considerably less than the minimum wage. Though professionals earn upwards of £200 a day, making a living as a living statue is much harder than it looks. David Ferguson, 42, of Statueman Living Statues, has been standing still professionally for 18 years. “To actually do it full time is quite strenuous. You have to be in control of every muscle in your body.” He and his wife Pamela have never busked, but perform exclusively for corporate events and parties, coated head to toe in gold, silver or bronze body paint. “We do up to an hour and a half per set. That’s the maximum you could do.” “There’s a difference between buskers and professionals,” he explains, when I tell him the Silver Wizard’s story. “It’s extremely hard. There’s a lot of people that do it but there’s very few that do it professionally.” Street art Art Tom Meltzer guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 10, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.