Lesley Jackson speaks in depth to Martial Edge’s latest contributor Jamie Clubb. Jamie has years of experience in the world of martial arts and has cross trained in a variety of styles. He has also been raised within the colourful world of the circus. In a series of interviews, we will discover more about Jamie’s interesting background and some of the characters he has met on the way.
Interview with Jamie Clubb – the early years
Jamie Clubb, founder of martial arts school ‘Clubb Chimera’, writer and Martial Edge’s latest contributor is a true martial arts gypsy in the traditional sense. Coming from a colourful upbringing in the famous Chipperfield Circus he has been surrounded by dangerous animals and a vibrant performance community that has given him a unique outlook into the world of martial arts. The early days of training included an unsuccessful brush with Judo moving onto experimenting with Ninjutsu. After deciding on the more eclectic art of Sakiado, a mixture of Taekwondo and Kickboxing, he earned his first Dan just before his local school closed down. However, it is people rather than martial arts systems that have influenced Jamie with the various groups and characters he has encountered showing him both the dedicated and the charlatans in the huge martial world we inhabit.
After training in Taekwondo for a couple of years, he had a rude awakening in the Korean martial art’s effectiveness when he tried his luck with some street fighters from the circus. -Lesley Jackson in conversation with Jamie Clubb
During his wide experience of training, Jamie places great emphasis on the quality of teaching he has received. During his time training in Sakiado, “I trained with a great crowd and during one lengthy period I was a student of a black belt family that really invested themselves in the club’s performance. They cared about every student taking their grades and were behind you one hundred per cent when you competed. They showed the same enthusiasm with a large class as they did when only a single student turned up and that is something that has really stuck with me. I love enthusiasm above all else and a teacher who does not click with that enthusiasm shouldn’t be teaching. Later on I would meet a huge variety of personalities in the martial arts world, some are very well known and others are very obscure. All had an impact on my views of martial arts training. Individuals shape everything
Circus Time
As well as sustaining some exotic injuries from nearly having his hand ripped off by a hyena and dislocating his elbow during a spot of camel racing, Jamie has learned some valuable lessons from his circus family background from both people and animals. “The circus community is perhaps one of the most colourful and varied cultures in the world. It has no set religion, race, politics or class system. It is a truly inter-dependent community that promotes both individualism and community spirit. Coming from a traditional circus background, I was exposed to so many different types of people from as far back as I can remember. This helps you to be objective. Another thing I learned from the circus world was the tradition of hoaxing. It helped reinforce my sceptical nature and attitude towards training and researching in the martial arts.”
Jamie Clubb
From the days of Phineas T Barnum, “who is celebrated as one of the world’s greatest hustlers,” Jamie’s circus experience gave him a unique insight into some of the martial art myths that the uninitiated may take for granted. He comments, “I too was roped in by the Ninja myths and the falsehoods surrounding the Shaolin Temple. Nevertheless, as my experiences grew and I investigated more myself, I began to reconsider whether feats like ‘iron shirt’ training was any different from the acts I had witnessed in the circus. I began to get very jaded at the whole industry of martial arts demonstrations that looked little more than poor circus acts dressed up with a combination of religious imagery and mysticism.”
Brushes with Danger
As with hoaxers and hustlers of all kinds, Jamie has had some dangerous brushes with the exotic animals his family rear for use in the film industry. He describes growing up as, “like Mowgli from the Jungle Book. I had no brothers and sisters and from as early as I can remember my mother was rearing lion, tiger, bear, leopard, jaguar and puma cubs. In the world of wild animal training – which my father has excelled – something you accept very early on is the physical vulnerability of the human being. It is in this environment that you appreciate that a human being’s greatest physical asset is his brain. Self-defence is all about attitude. Attitude gets you through wild animal training and attitude helps the most vulnerable in our society to overcome situations where the odds are stacked heavily against them.” Being more in tune with the natural world has put Jamie’s perspective firmly in place as, “Whenever I see the huge egos in the world of martial arts it makes me smile.”
From full contact Sakiado, Jamie moved onto the tamer style of Sakiado’s roots of Taekwondo. After training in Taekwondo for a couple of years, he had a rude awakening in the Korean martial art’s effectiveness when he tried his luck with some street fighters from the circus. “As it turned out I did pretty well on the two occasions when I sparred with them. My fitness had kept me going, but there were a few definite wake-up calls during our exchanges that I felt straight away. First of all, when I made the transition to Taekwondo I was immediately told off for excessive contact. Due to my background in Sakiado I was regularly warned off and developed a very guilty conscience about contact. By the time I sparred with the street fighters I had developed a habit of pulling all my punches and kicks. I also had little in the way of defending a barrage of wild punches. Finally my kicks, the techniques I was most proud of using, did little to impress my opponents. They just simply grabbed hold of them and threw me repeatedly on the ground. In the end the only tactics that worked for me were storming in and meeting the assault head on, and the time-honoured method of grabbing an opponent’s shirt and upper-cutting him repeatedly in the face.”
Hoodie
Once again, the British are alarmed by a new fashion trend that is to
be launched into our mainstream and most of the rest of the world must
be just a little bemused.
This experience left Jamie to completely revaluate all that he previously thought about martial arts and led him to contact and start a long lasting friendship with one of Britain’s most well known and avant guard martial artists. “As I left these sparring bouts thoughts about the impracticality of what I was training in came flooding into my mind. I admit my ego was hurt. At school I had made a huge leap from being a kid who took physical punishment from others because he was more scared about getting into trouble to someone you ‘didn’t mess with’ and now this incident had brought back my mortality. I was frustrated. I knew I could fight. I had fought and I came from a family of fighters. Yet now I somehow taught myself things that were not only ineffective, but would probably increase the likelihood of getting my arse handed to me on a plate. Out of all the articles I had read in magazines, only one person seemed to speak to my fears: Geoff Thompson.”
Next time: Jamie’s exploration into the murky world of kickboxing and some of the martial arts friendships that have shaped his career.
Interviews 
Lesley Jackson speaks in depth to Martial Edge’s latest contributor Jamie Clubb. Jamie has years of experience in the world of martial arts and has cross trained in a variety of styles. He has also been raised within the colourful world of the circus. In a series of interviews, we will discover more about Jamie’s interesting background and some of the characters he has met on the way.
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