Mind Body Group™

Has working in TV always been your ambition, or do you see it as an extension of your role in furthering the name of Kung Fu in the west?

TV hasn’t always been my ambition. Early on I just wanted to be a kung fu teacher and that’s how I started out. I viewed myself as somebody who could introduce the benefits of martial arts to people. I saw a lot of people’s lives changing, as mine had, through my teaching. I’ve taught drug addicts, I’ve helped them reform, I’ve taught criminals, and people who have just had a shitty time, and I’ve seen it make a difference in a lot of people’s lives. I’ve always been very proud of being able to help people, really, and see their lives improve. That was why I decided to get in to TV.

I had been to drama school, and I love acting and I love the craft of acting. I’ve worked in theatre for a number of years as well, but TV was not a natural move. In fact, when I was doing my acting I never did anything to do with martial arts at all. I very strongly avoided doing anything martial arts because generally it’s just done so bloody badly! I have seen a couple of very goodKorean martial arts movies, but apart from that martial arts and acting just generally don’t go hand in hand.

I think the programmes have furthered the name of kung fu in the west. The show went out to about 120 countries which is absolutely huge in TV terms. It’s rare if they can get it out of England, or if they do they might make it to five or six countries. I get a lot of emails from people around the world saying that I’ve seen your show and I’ve been inspired to get fit and I’ve been inspired to learn a bit about spirituality, or chi-gong, or taichi, or whatever. We get thousands of comments from people all over the world saying how much this program has inspired them. So I’m really happy about that, it’s great. It’s worth every drop of sweat, tear and broken bone that I suffered making those programmes

How did your first TV series come about, and did you ever think the show would take off the way it has?

I hope this doesn’t sound too arrogant, but I had absolutely 100 percent belief in the programme. I had a very strong feeling that this has never been done before, and that it’s a really interesting subject matter and it’s going to do well because people are going to be interested in it. It also helps if you’re not too up your own arse about how you present and if you’re down to earth and you’re realistic and you’re tongue in cheek and you entertain as well as put across the facts. Then you’re not just preaching to the converted, you’re taking the message to the sort of people who have maybe never considered exercising in the martial arts before. I knew that the way I approached the material was fresh, original and entertaining, and I thought, ‘yes, that’s going to fly. That’s got legs.’

I spent ten years traveling around Asia being obsessed with martial arts, studying and training with whoever and wherever I can. When I came back to UK, I was working in theatre and I thought that there was something there [for a TV show] with that journey lifestyle aspect in mind. So I wrote a number of TV formats based around the idea of me traveling around the world and training with the masters and revealing their secrets. I pitched that to so many channels and at first they all said, ‘That’s rubbish mate. Martial arts and TV? Forget it. That hasn’t worked for thirty years…’ and blah blah blah. But I just kept on. I was convinced that there was something really good about the idea and that we could get it out into the marketplace. And eventually, I did it. It goes to show that if you don’t give in and you just carry on, sooner or later you’ll get to where you want to go.

Would you describe yourself as a ‘natural’ in front of the camera, or is presenting a skill that you have had to work hard at perfecting?

I don’t think I’m a natural in front of the camera but everybody tells me that I am. To be fair, I think they’re just being nice. I’m sure they say that to everybody. I’m not phased by the camera, that’s for sure, and my theatre and drama training has really helped me to not be phased about that sort of stuff. Also, I think if you know the subject matter then you feel more confident, that really helps. It is hard work, and I’m a long way from perfecting it but certainly it does take practice. I know that when I’m in some far flung place and all the rest of the crew are out getting pissed, I’m generally stuck in a hotel room somewhere or in a tent reading through the material and thinking about what the story is for the next person that I’m going to meet. I think that if I don’t do that then I’ll be misrepresenting that person and their art. I have a responsibility to be the best that I can be so that they get the opportunity to get their art out to a much wider audience.

I usually take an ashtray wherever I go, because as ash tray looks like a camera lens. So I put the ashtray on the wall and I’ll pretend that it’s talking to me and I’m talking back. It does look a bit odd when you go out abroad with me filming and I’ve got this ashtray with me everywhere I go!

You have met some of the greatest living martial artists currently alive in the world today. Who stands out above the others, and what have you learnt from them that has furthered your own perspectives on the martial arts?

I’ve learnt a huge amount. I’ve had a wonderful experience making these TV shows, particularly the first one I made on the martial arts where after twenty years of training I spent a whole year going round the world and spending between three to five days with every master that you see on the show. Of course, you only get to see a two minute clip with them on the show, but that means that I probably spent about three to four days with them, training with them and them teaching me different stuff, their secrets. The icing on the cake has been the opportunity to study with pretty much all of the greatest martial artists currently alive today.

So many of them stand out. There’s one man who has got the hardest fists, there’s one man who can throw chopsticks through metal, one man who can lift cars with his bollocks, one man who can knock down twenty men blindfolded, there’s one man who can dodge out the way of bullets. But one man who stands out, in my view, is an old fellow that we met, who was approaching 88 at the time. He had been teaching martial arts for about 75 years, and he said that he’s still keen on teaching people but he never lets them come to his space. He always gets on the bus and goes to them and teaches them. And he does that not because he’s ashamed of having anyone round his house, but because he says that the art is so important that it’s important that I go there, I can help them change their life by teaching them this art. So, at 90 years old, he gets up, goes on the bus, goes to wherever, teaches them and then goes home because he doesn’t want them wasting their time traveling around. If that’s not a life in service then I don’t know what is. To me, at that age and to still be doing that, and to have such a high level of martial arts skill, and to still have that love in his heart for his art and for humanity and for how the art can help change people’s lives, then for me he stands out of the crowd.

How do you handle being TV star, and do you see a TV career as a stepping stone into something else – films, perhaps?

‘Star’ is such an odd word, it’s so unnatural. I’m really quite uncomfortable with that to be honest. I went on the Paul O’Grady show last year and they showed me to this changing room and there was this huge golden star on the front of the door and in big letter it said ‘Chris Crudelli.’ I walked in and there were bunches of flowers everywhere and all these gifts and all this great stuff, and I was waiting there before I went on and I just thought, ‘how odd is this?!’ I remember being backstage before I went on, and because it’s recorded live in front of an audience, Paul gave me a really nice introduction and I came out and there was a huge audience there and they just went wild, screaming and clapping their hands. I just thought, ‘this is so bizarre! What are all these people doing clapping for me? Man, it’s a TV show, you’ve just basically filmed a year in my life doing what I do anyway, this is so normal to me, and you’ve got a thousand people there cheering and roaring?’ It’s just really odd, it doesn’t seem right.

Doing TV is just a job. It would be much more appropriate if a surgeon came on the show, which had spent his/her life studying medicine and saving people’s lives everyday, for a crowd to start clapping. Or a dustbin man, a bloke who clears away your rubbish and keeps the rats from your door. It is much more appropriate to clap for someone like that, I think. It’s funny how we put value on things. We put value on people who work in TV and film. We put value on really bizarre things. We assign different values to different things, not generally out of importance, but on how rare and difficult we feel that that is. It’s an odd world. It’s slightly skewed in the wrong way I feel.

I have had a couple of film offers and it is something that I would like to do. I love the craft of acting, and I would like to go back to my acting roots. But I don’t want to do anything crap, it’s got to be really decent. Something that really motivates and moves me. Otherwise, I’m not interested.