» Mad Matt
Matt Whistler lays down the gauntlet
Like many Brightonians Matt Whistler lives life a bit differently to the rest of us. According to Matt: “If you don’t look round the corner, you just go round the bend!”
So far Matt has travelled from Lands End to John O’Groats on a self-propelled push scooter; smashed Evel Knieval’s record for jumping over trucks on his scooter; set up the world’s first naked speed-dating event; ridden a tea tray naked in the snow and toured Brighton in a skimpy mankini to propel ‘Surfin Bird’ to number three in the charts!
However, Matt’s favourite stunt dates back to secondary school: “Mr Pilchard was teaching pythagorous and my friend Andrew dared me to hit a screw head next to the chalkboard with a small piece of Blu-tack from the back of the room. I hit it and we laughed our socks off – then I got detention!”
But Matt’s just getting started on his previously untrodden path to fame. At the moment he’s spending a month living in an 8 x 8ft ‘Super Sonic Shed’ with no other humans or even plants living inside. While there, Matt’s been entertaining himself “fighting with a cursed, suspended bird cage and meeting people in a way they have never been met before.”
Those people have included TV magician Paul Zenon, Monty Python’s Carol Cleveland and some “hardcore criminals and bailiffs.” It’s this meeting of minds that differentiates Matt from comparisons with David Blaine: “This adventure of the mind could not be further away from what Blaine did. I eat and chat – the public love a gabber – and I’m using these experiences to write the Greatest Comedy Show on Earth.”
Now, in order to reach that goal, Matt has decided to “put his tartan slippers on, sit down to Mozart and relax in zen state” as, for the first time ever, you decide Matt’s challenge of the week!
Latest 7 readers can write in to set Matt challenges, and then read about how he did them in this very column.
But these can be no simple challenges. “I want you to make me sweat so that my eyebrow perspiration will make a bowl of soup! Test my mind, to save a few quid on Sudoku! And push new boundaries so in a year they’ll call it Brighton and Hove and Portslade Council!”
So if you’re like Matt and can view life “sillyphosically” then get your thinking lamps on and write to Challenge Matt at editorial@thelatest.co.uk
Follow Matt’s blog at www.mattwhistler.com
Additional Reporting:Richard Hook
March 8th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Count the pebbles on Brighton beach!
March 29th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
498598559303030300333333.000000 minus 1323242 which were thrown into the sea over the weekend!