GRAB AND ORI*GINAL COPY OF CHRIS’ BBC SERIES,
SIGNED BY CHRIS CRUDELLI HIMSELF.

Chris Crudelli’s self pened smash hit TV series of documentaries examining the world of martial arts. Broadcast in over 180 countries world wide it is ‘ the most widley distributed documentary in BBC TV history’.

[SIGNED]KICK ASS MOVES DVD 19.99

UK ONLY (+2.35 P&P) £22.34 EU/IRELAND (+3.20 P&P) £23.19 USA (+4.20 P&P) £24.19

AT THE PLEASANCE, LONDON

Chris Crudelli is a star – The Sun
Gifted – Sunday Time
A bit of a dude, Britain’s answer to Bruce Lee – The Evening Standard

Chris Crudelli, the cultural explorer and martial artist from BBC TV’s ‘Mind, Body & Kick Ass Moves’, is appearing at The Pleasance, Islington on Sunday 22nd February 2009. Chris’s live show incorporates probably the most dangerous mouth agog live stunts ever performed on a UK stage, some of which were seen in his smash hit BBC TV series. Others are taken from his 2 decades of martial arts training – move over Derren Brown move over David Blaine – Crudelli is the real deal, so don’t try this at home! All this is combined with outrageous clips from the TV series, humorous back story anecdotes & amazing martial stunts, tricks & audience participation, followed by a 10 minute Q&A at the end of the evening. Crudelli’s second series Kick Ass Miracles is now broadcasting on cult hit Channel Dave. The stunts you will witness will be the most dangerous from the TV series plus others that were not allowed to be broadcast on the BBC. These include:

• Stopping his heart beats for 15 seconds with a ninja drug derived from the bark of 3 trees and a distilled poisonous berry, literally killing himself on stage. St John’s ambulance staff will be on stand-by to resuscitate Chris if his heart fails to restart.

• Smashing 4 baseball bats with a shin kick.

• Making randomly selected audience members fall over like a puppet on a string without touching them – using qi projection. www.unique-pr.co.uk

• Detecting lies 100% of the time correctly, using the sound of someone’s voice alone. Chris is that confidant in his abilities that he will put a nasty fat spike straight through his own palm if he does.

• Making an egg stronger than a concrete slab by projecting qi onto it, and then use this to break solid concrete slab.

• Using concentration and qi protection, Chris will chop himself with a sharpened meat clever with no ill effect.

• Chris will have a bag or blindfold put over his face and have a baseball bat swung full pelt at his head. Through intuition alone, he will avoid its impact. • Palm strike to flaming kerb stones x 3.

• Teaching any member of the audience to become 300% stronger with a simple kung fu concentration technique,

• Getting any member of the audience too smash a brick over their hand until it breaks (brick) with no pain whatsoever.

CHRIS CRUDELLI BIOGRAPHY

Chris is an accomplished martial artist, cultural explorer and Chinese linguist. After studying the martial arts as a youth he travelled to China in his teens, traveling and studying for a further 10 years in North & South East Asia, he developed an unparalleled contact base and knowledge of the area and he is fluent in two dialects of spoken and written Chinese. Alongside martial arts, Chris loves traveling by land and sea, mountain climbing, fishing and bivouacking. His interests are cults and the occult, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, Buddhism and comparative theology, self development, metaphysics, ancients strategic texts, backpacking, teaching and film making. Chris is an active member of a number of London based theatre groups and he still participates in theatre productions under pseudonyms.

TESTIMONIALS

He has a heightened ability to use his mind to control pain – Oxford University
Really Incredible, the power issued through his hand is equal to a 1 ton car speeding into a brick wall at 40 mph – National Physical Laboratory
Regarded by Oriental Masters as an equal – Total TV Magazine
A master of his art. One of the few westerners able to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding martial arts – BBC
A genuine traditional Kung Fu Artist – Jet Li
Let’s see if you can do what Crudelli can Blaine - Zoo

Chris Crudelli’s Official Website: www.crudelli.com

KICK ASS MOVES

This 10-part BBC documentary series concentrating on the more exotic, elaborate systems of far eastern martial arts has enjoyed continued cult success on BBC television and now on a very fine double DVD. A globetrotting adventure that travels straight to the source, filming in China, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, the programme examines, through interviews and experiments, the more diverse (and unbelievable) aspects of martial enlightenment, from extreme conditioning to the just plain weird. This gives the show a strange hybrid quality of part Jackass-style stunt show (complete with preliminary disclaimer) and part Derren Brown circus show with tricks and mind games, which manages to be both incredibly interesting, and entertaining.

Review

Much of this is down to Birmingham-born Chris Crudelli, who presents the show in a mild Midlands accent, switching from English to Mandarin in many of the interview sections which portray the man as not only well informed, but also deeply skilled. Crudelli has been accused of a slight arrogance, particularly in the sections that examine his own personal skill and level of abilities. But for the uninitiated, for which the programme is made, a novice could expect no finer tutor than Crudelli and his engagingly humble persona. He absorbs himself into every situation with refreshing vigour, and a faux-naivety not too dissimilar from many modern presenter-led TV shows. When he meets people he clearly respects, we can only share in his adulation, best summarised in a later episode where he nervously fires questions at Hong Kong film legend Sammo Hung, who has clearly been an important figure in Crudelli’s life. Crudelli is both guide and expert, and one extremely tough bastard.

In the local segments of the show, he gets dockworkers and Welsh auctioneers to try and push him over, which not even a team of eight manage to do. He then breaks collections of enflamed tiles with his hands, and acts as miracle worker to air traffic controllers and Glaswegian hairdressers offering snippets of crucial self-defence and techniques on how to harness ‘chi’ energy (he often starts his brief defence lessons with, “you must get loads of trouble in here?” looking into the eyes of a petite blond market seller). Crudelli comes from aChinese kung fu background, and steers the show to his principal lines of teaching. Clearly a master himself, it’s great to see Crudelli go from superhuman man of the people, teaching skater punks how to punch properly, to then being thrown mercilessly around by an old aged pensioner in a silk suit moving very, very slowly. It’s endearing, but enough to make you slightly sceptical.

Yet Crudelli realises this. He’s as sceptical as we are when he tackles Japanese theories on telekinetic combat, and on Kiaiscreaming tactics that can disable opponents with just one incredible yelp. His best reaction comes when he meets an ancient dim mak master who has spent his life developing a ‘death touch’, locating pressure points and hitting people really hard. Crudelli is poked in the stomach, quite harmlessly at first, before reacting painfully to the blast in a separate area of his torso. In three swift slaps on his back, Crudelli announces that his pain has suddenly disappeared. Crudelli looks just as shocked as the rest of us. Spooky stuff.

Other sections are just plain weird. Like the techniques of Iron Penis Chi Gong, which is perhaps the best stunt ever captured on any TV show. After lifting a 150kg weight with his testicles, a master of Chinese conditioning manages to shift a four-wheel truck carrying a cargo of ten people all with the aid of a piece of rope attached to his penis. Mouth agog, you suddenly realise why you spend money on a TV license.

But aside from some pretty savage visual stunts, often involving sharp things being put in places where sharp things really shouldn’t go, there’s nothing particularly revealing about the show, particularly one which promises to ‘uncover’ the ‘secrets’ of the masters. What saves the show from being just a slice of expensive exploitation is the filmmaker’s emphasis on the more spiritual aspects of far eastern culture, which goes hand in hand with any study of the martial arts. In the Philippines, we meet particularly Herculean masters who strongly claim that the use of sacred amulets is the source of all their extraordinary power. So its useless, really, in revealing ‘secrets’ when these guys are clearly guided by a much stronger force. Using Crudelli’s explanation, these ‘deadly masters’ are just as concerned about sharing their secrets for fear of exposing themselves to hidden enemies, who may copy their techniques and defeat them. Logical, to an extent, but what happens when the generation’s pass, and there is no one left to maintain these incredible techniques?

Thankfully, Crudelli appears to have taken it upon himself to not only be the face of the BBC’s martial arts output, but also Britain’s best tour guide to the more mysterious aspects of far eastern culture and philosophy. There is a second series of the show, titled Kick Ass Miracles, which focuses more on the freak show elements, rather than solely martial artistry and its deadly practitioners. This first-series is a great DVD, particularly for novices who got into kung fu through Kill Bill and want to see the real deal in action. Well, this is about as close as you’re going to find.

Can you explain about the sort of training courses you offer people?

We run a number of courses. The most popular courses I do are the seminars. We look at the psychology of fear, what motivates an attacker, how you can improve your chances of avoiding an assault, everything from the techniques of disarming a gunman or knifeman to the point when you’ve overcome fear and how that can help you to do other things in life that may be holding you back. They’re not for profit, so the costs have been kept to a minimum. Have a chat with one of our bookers if you think that it is something that you would like to have at your school. Chat to your instructor to see if he thinks the course is something relevant and if you would like to book us and get us round there we would be very happy to do that. I also do weekend courses and day courses, and we do a number of different things. I love getting out there and teaching people the tips of the masters, I love passing my knowledge on. That’s what the course is all about.

How do you screen your instructors?

We’re very small, we don’t have hundreds of instructors all around the world. Quite simply, they are people who have trained with me for a number of years. They understand me and what I do and I am confident that they are competent.

What are the most common mistakes people make in a self defense situation, and how can you avoid these sorts of situations in the first place?

There is one major mistake. People tend to have the wrong view that self defense is about winning the fight. That’s wrong. Winning the fight is about winning the fight. That is different to self defense. Self defense is about escaping with your life, however you do it. Winning the fight means that your ego is involved. Situations like someone spilling a pint on your girlfriend and thinking that you’re going to look stupid if you don’t have a go at him. Or if someone calls you a rude word and then you say something back to him. Well, that’s not right, is it? What if he’s got a knife, he’s going to stab me and I need to disarm him? That’s also not about self defense.

Now, if you were backed into a corner where you couldn’t escape and you couldn’t talk him out of it, and you couldn’t deceive him and you couldn’t outrun him, then you may have to defend yourself by disarming him. The physical aspect of the martial arts is the last aspect, it’s when all else fails. If you remember this principal, you will stay on the right side of the law and increase your chances of survival ten fold. Nobody likes to be called a rude word, but if you’re getting yourself in to fights or even if you’re physically touching someone else, chances are that you’re in the wrong. It’s a last resort to knock someone’s teeth out. Teeth are expensive. They cost a lot to repair. The guy might have spilt the pint by accident. Avoid the situation.

What are your thoughts on ‘martial sport,’ and does it hold much practicality in a self-defense situation?

Martial sport is good for your health and it will help you in a self defense situation. If you are stronger, you are fitter, you are healthier. You’re going to come out better in that situation than the other fellow certainly compared to if you hadn’t trained in martial sport. Martial sport is not for me, I’m a traditionalist, that’s the background that I’ve come from and I have been indoctrinated into that world. But I would recommend to everybody to get involved in martial sport.

As a pioneer of chi energy in the west, what do you say to the skeptic who would argue more along scientific lines against the notion of chi, and how do you approach this subject in your chi gong classes?

Firstly, I don’t think that a scientific skeptic can argue against the notion of chi. I’m not entirely sure on the definition of the notion of chi. I’m not entirely happy with the Chinese definition on the notion of chi and I’m not entirely happy with theJapanese notion either. Our bodies have an electrical magnetic force, this is not science fiction, this is fact. Whether that is chi is a question that we could look into. Another thing is that your body can emit this electrical magnetic force, and it all starts with a thought. I try not to use the word ‘energy’ because I don’t like it. ‘Energy’ for me is like ‘et cetera’, it doesn’t mean anything. Anyone who tends to use the word ‘energy’ is either from LA or they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s not specific enough.

I think it’s good to be a skeptic. I pat you on the back if you are, you have to be. You don’t want to believe everything you hear. I think it is important for people to experience it [chi]. Sometimes people can experience it very quickly, sometimes it takes longer, but generally there is a 95 percent success rate. In my lessons, I don’t explain it to them. I let them form their own opinions of it. You can teach people it in very different ways – you can teach people to see it, which I don’t think is a good way. It’s a bit of a head f*ck. I think the safest and most practical way is to teach people to find it within themselves. They experience that by feeling it and that generally forms an electrical magnetic force that is emitted by their own body and then I teach people how to emit that via their thoughts onto other people.

Tai chi is great for developing chi gong. The moves are very consistent with allowing people who want to get in touch with that feeling and that sensation.

How much is development in the martial arts due to overcoming mental restrictions, rather than physical?

In terms of real genuine development, if you’ve studied for five or ten years and you’ve got your black belt for 40 quid, you get to that level when you just follow one teacher. You do what you’re told. You turn up to class on time, you develop and become proficient in that art, but if you want to take it further you need to look at your own mind and your own psychology and you need to start unraveling some of the set patterns and set formulas that you’ve been taught that get you from A to B. You need to look at your own personal indoctrination and your own views. Those views may feel personal, but they have been shaped from the group you’re within. You need to open your mind, and that is difficult, to look at other art forms and say, ‘that’s good, maybe I could learn something form that guy?’ It’s a mental game, particularly with martial arts.

Essentially, martial arts are about surviving a life or death encounter. To do that effectively you need to look at your own mind. You can’t just punch a bag for ten years and then think that you can look after yourself when someone mugs you. You might be the best person in the world at punching that bag, but you haven’t dealt with your own fear of confrontation, you haven’t dealt with your adrenalin kicking off with your mind all over the place, you might want to piss your pants. You haven’t looked at your own fear. That’s all mind games. That goes for everything. The mind is the most important factor in the martial arts. By developing your mind alongside your body you become a complete, whole martial artist. By just developing the body and the physical aspects, then I think you’re missing out on a very large and important part of the art form that you have spent your life training in.

Is there such a thing as an ‘ultimate’ martial art?

No. There is an ‘ultimate’ person, however. There is a person who has found an art that is ultimate for them, and they have trained in it to a degree where they have become very proficient. But is there an ultimate art? No, there isn’t, there is only an ultimate art for you.

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.

Bexley’s Anime (animation) and Manga (comics) Festival is a coup for youngsters that are fans of the art forms originating from Japan.

The packed line-up, that promises to bring the far-east to the south-east, will run throughout February and all events are free.

One of the key components of the festival is a range of popular anime films being shown at Cineworld, Bexleyheath, including screenings of three major new titles: Sky Crawlers, 5cm per second and K20:Legend of the Mask.

During the month Manga art workshops will provide budding artists with the chance to pick up new skills, TV’s Chris Crudelli will run Ninja skills seminars and a Cosplay workshop will give Manga fans the opportunity to make costumes and props from their favourite comics.

There will also be a Japanese cookery workshop for good measure, a Manga art competition and Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon events. Some of the workshops and events come with free gifts and the chance to win special prizes.

Cabinet member for leisure, arts and culture, Peter Catterall said: “This festival is a real coup for Bexley. The young people from the Manga network have worked extremely hard alongside the library service to secure world renowned anime and manga artists and experts.