The human dummy

Both parents attended drama school, mother went on to become a BBC Radio 2 presenter and his father a producer for the BBC World Service. Paul Zerdin is a comedian/ventriloquist (which an act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered "dummy"). When he was 10 a family friend made him a puppet theatre which he used to put on shows, a hobby which quickly grew into an obsession. The real turning point for Paul was when he was given a book on ventriloquism written by the legendary Ray Alan and it was not long before he was spending half an hour a day in front of the mirror practicing talking without moving his lips. When Paul was 17 he got a part-time job at Davenports’ Magic and began to develop his own magic skills along the way and became a children’s entertainer as a sideline.
Now he likes to embarrass people.