When you sign up for a Fed Square Safari, you’re committing yourself to 45 minutes with the kooky Richard Richards, expert tour guide (in training). Richards is actually Richard Higgins, also appearing in the List Operators, and he does a brilliant job of making a potentially dull tour into a very entertaining experience.
Richard Richards tours are not new – he also appeared in last year’s comedy festival and has worked at the Falls Festival but this year his tours are pitched at a new age group. The target market for the tour is kids aged 7 and over (parents can come along for free) but on our tour there were parents with kids as young as four and others with teenagers. And those teenagers sure are a tough crowd – when they wouldn’t play along with Richards’ rules he didn’t let it show and had them on side within ten minutes.
You don’t have to be nuts to lead folks on a tour of Fed Square but it certainly helps (thank you, I’m here all week, tell your friends). This tour is unique in that not only is Richards a character but that character also dons some costumes and morphs into four other characters throughout the tour. The special guests included: John Batman (strangely his costume included some repulsive oversized underpants), Henry Parkes (who raps his story), Dame Nellie Melba (man in girl clothes – always funny) and my favourite Mr Gray (the architect of Fed Square and a supposed brainiac).
Richard Higgins really is a natural. Participating in one of his tours is a little like watching live television – anything can happen. As an entertainer he’s brilliant but as a tour guide he’s actually very knowledgeable. Higgins dishes up the historical information when he’s in the Mr Gray character, punctuating each statement with “Boring Fact #42”. He flies by the seat of his pants, drawing in the passers-by and using Fed Square buildings for punch lines.
This is a great way to experience Fed Square, whether you’re a visitor or a local, a kid or an adult. My road test team enjoyed it too:
Scarlett (8): It was so funny when he dressed up and did all his stuff.
Violet (8): He called me Grandma the whole time. I told him I was eight and he kept saying I was 88 and that I was a good walker.
Indigo (11): He had good jokes. I liked it when he called the kids in the trees monkeys and when he was doing a boring walk and telling us boring facts – they weren’t boring.
For more details go to Fed Square Safari