Dubai: He has been called the King of Pickpocketers, reason enough to convince anyone to be anywhere but near him. But the good thing is, this gentleman stands on the right side of the law.
He uses his legendary skills and lightning hand speed to entertain audiences all over the world. More important, he has been sharing his knowledge with authorities in the fight against crime.
Video: Pickpocketer bamboozles shoppers
Bob Arno's brand of entertainment is certainly unique and his advocacy, truly inspiring. It was certainly a treat when the self-styled magician from Las Vegas finally made his debut performance in Dubai this month.
Bob Arno spoke to the Gulf News website and shared his thoughts about performing in Dubai:
Briefly, can you tell us about your distinct style, or brand of entertainment?
It is with fun, with comedy and humour and bringing in sneaky reality scary reality. I don't think I have any competitor in this type of entertainment anywhere in the world. Maybe on the street, but not on stage.
How did all this start? Any inspiration?
My inspiration comes from the street. I started out in my career only doing pickpocketing for fun in a comedy way by taking people up on stage. Some years later, I noticed that I could detect a pickpocket out in the street.
I could walk in Paris, I could walk in New York and I could see who is a thief or not, and once I realised that, I started to follow them, I tracked them, I looked how they operated and I used the same technique on stage and suddenly I realised I stumbled on something quiet unique.
How long have you been doing this and how longer do you intend to keep on doing this? What's your motivation to keep on performing?
I had done actually this type of shall we say style, this type of mixture and marriage of reality, of real crime and fun and comedy. I've done that for about 20 years.
Of course I become better and better, not necessarily in the technique but in the psychology by observing what is going on in the real world.
And this is something that is still ongoing; I have not reached the top of my career yet. I think that every day in a new city I learn a little more and in the meantime I'm having fun with it.
And I realised that my audience appreciates this rather strange mix of entertainment.
Aside from being an entertainer, you have also become a popular speaker and anti-street crime crusader. How did it come to this?
The peculiar challenge that I have in my world is that entertainment is certainly a side wherein I bring in my inside sense of humuor, but more challenging to me is how to bring the reality of crime in the world, which is ever evolving.
Today such crimes come in electronic form, like identity theft. What I do today is that I try and learn more about the new technology that criminals are using.
Because of that, I get as many bookings, as many enquiries around the world, whether it's from Johannesburg or from China where they simply want me to talk.
There is not so much interest in the fluff of having fun, but for a large corporation or maybe a security company or a travel organisation, they want to know all about the new trends and so my speaking career to some extent is as important. But here in Dubai, we're gonna try and concentrate on comedy.
Have you yourself been actually victimised by any kind of street crime, particularly pickpocketing?
Well I'm doing the show, of course I bring people up on stage and I do all of my little stealing stunts with them, the gimmicks and the psychology to divert their attention.
In order to get a grip on this, in order to learn all of the techniques, it isn't just that I have to be out in the street and observing, but I also let them steal from me.
Now that sounds of course strange, how could I let someone steal from me. You have to find them first, I bait them. I may be in the train station, I may be in an airport or in a hotel lobby, I observe, I look, and if I see that I suspect that there is a team of professional organise criminals, I will put myself in the line of fire so to say.
So I have a couple of wallets that I put in a strategic position and I walk around and I try to have the same body language, not as security expert but as a tourist that means I'm lose with my shoulders, I'm easy, I'm smiling and I left them steal the wallet.
And that has happened hundreds and hundreds of times. Once they have the wallet, now it's up to me to try and approach them, to get close to them and start a dialogue, which is how I get close and kind of get to their thinking process.
What are your thoughts about performing in Dubai? What are your expectations? Do you plan to do anything different or unique for your Dubai fans?
In Dubai, the challenge is to entertain the many social groups that I'm gonna encounter.
I assume that I will have locals, that there will be expatriates and there will be people from all over the world at the show. Now that certainly creates a challenge for me.
I wouldn't call it a problem, but it means that I have to attack the way I pace, the way I get their attention, the way I structure the humour.
Because some of these people maybe from India, Australia, United Kingdom, United States and everyone brings with them their own culture, their own idea of what sets up the comedy line.
For that reason, this is not an easy challenge; it's one where you have to understand how different nationalities and how different cultures think. I look forward to that of course.
What can you say to those who idolise you and perhaps want to be like you?
When my performance shows up on YouTube, it gets a viral life, it grows and it multiplies and before I know it, I have a million hits on some of my different television shows.
Because it is so popular among the young people on YouTube, I get an average of two enquiries a day from young people anywhere in the world: United States, China, Singapore.
They are seeing a very compressed, a very short snippet of what I am doing on YouTube. If they see me being out for example in the street taking a wallet very quickly, they will misinterpret it and they will think that's very funny, while in fact, we did it to show how to protect yourself.
Young people will sometimes misunderstand what I'm doing and they will bombard me with questions on how to do this. We have of course pet answers as to how to discourage them from becoming entertainers.
And I say that because in today's world, being a juggler or a comedy magician or a pickpocket entertainer would be an extremely difficult avenue: the opportunities are fewer than they were 30 years ago. It would be extremely difficult to repeat what we have accomplished as it takes a long time to build up the skills.
So for anyone who is young and finds this amusing, if they are very determined to following this path, they might as well use that challenge to be a marketing guy, a video editor or something else that is creative. My advice is, don't stand on the stage because 90 per cent of entertainers live in squalor.
