After 3,500 performances court jester still enjoys playing the fool

THE Millennium year sees St Albans man, Tony Barratt, celebrating playing the fool for 25 years.

Tony, of Fishpool Street, has just clocked up 3,500 performances in the part of the the Fool, Will Somers, during the Medieval Banqueting shows at The Old Palace, at Hatfield House.

Will was Henry VIII's jester and one of the only men he could bear to have near during his blackest moments as monarch of England.

But the life of a jester and fool is just one of a number of the fascinating jobs Tony has had. While second careers and redundancy are all part of today's work pattern, not many people are fortunate enough to have had such amazingly different careers and to have also achieved such a degree of job satisfaction.

Tony, 63, is currently working as a freelance musician, specialising in medieval and Tudor music, a far cry from his first job, based in the City, working in the insurance world for Lloyds. After just a few years there Tony decided to make a dramatic life change.

Aged 29, he wanted to do something more meaningful with his life, so, on the advice of a doctor friend, he took a job as a lab technician, at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

That gave him the opportunity to study and earn a living. Drawn to medical research, he had to requalify, while still working in the labs. That meant gaining further O-levels, BTEC qualifications in clinical chemistry and finally a degree in biology from the former Hatfield Technical College, now The University of Hertfordshire.

During university he spent his industrial year in the clinical chemistry department at St Albans City Hospital. Then he took a research post at Kings College in the bio-physics unit where he did four years of cancer research in tissue culture. During that time, as the grant money dwindled he looked for other ways to make ends meet and through a friend, found work at Hatfield Old Palace playing the lute.

Before long it was discovered his real talent was in making people laugh and he was invited to play the Fool. 'There were two types of fool in medieval times,' says Tony 'the artificial fool, who was very astute and politically aware, and the simple fool, who was usually cared for by the house or palace.'

Tony's musical talent comes from a lifetime's interest in old musical instruments. He learned the pipe and tabor, a one-handed pipe and drum played at the same time, the original of a one-man-band, and a very popular medieval and Tudor folk instrument.

He then added the guitar and lute to his repertoire. The other instrument that features in his role as the Fool is the hurdy-gurdy, again popular in medieval and Tudor times and not the Victorian barrel organ which sometimes wrongly, is given the name.

As grants in research dropped still further and finally stopped altogether, Tony made yet another career change. He had to turn to his music professionally. He had a wife, three children and a mortgage to support so he became a freelance musician.

Specialising in medieval and Tudor instruments, which are authentic from the period, it was natural to extend his work with the troupe of professionals, who perform in the Medieval Banqueting show at Hatfield Old Palace. It is now 3,500 performances since then and besides Hatfield, he is in great demand at other venues.

His music has taken him to some interesting locations such as Great Fosters at Windsor, various castles like Leeds and Highclere as well as Hampton Court Palace.

That brings his total appearances up five thousand performances and he is still playing the fool.