CRACKMASK
A Memoir by Eddie Haworth
Updated 05/06/2026
Welcome to the home of Crackmask, a memoir built from lived experience, early fractures, hard‑won resilience, and the long, uneven work of rebuilding a life from the inside out. This space follows the journey behind the book: the memories that shaped it, the places that forged it, and the clarity that finally allowed it to be written. Here you’ll find updates as the publication date approaches, reflections on survival and purpose, and glimpses into a life scattered across continents yet held together by truth. If you’ve ever rebuilt yourself piece by piece or wondered how someone does, you’re in the right place. The mask cracked a long time ago. This is what came through.
A true story
of the cracks that shaped me, and the light that shone through
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Crackmask grew out of a lifetime spent navigating the edges of survival, identity, and purpose. It follows Eddie Haworth through the landscapes that shaped him, from childhood upheaval to years of physical work, creative graft, and frontline safeguarding across cultures and continents. The memoir explores how a life marked by disruption can evolve into one defined by clarity, compassion, and a refusal to look away from the truth. This website charts the unfolding journey toward publication: the thoughts that didn’t make it into the book, the memories that continue to surface, and the reflections that come with finally giving shape to a life lived at full tilt. Readers will find new writing, behind‑the‑scenes insights, and ongoing updates as Crackmask approaches its June release. For anyone drawn to memoirs of resilience, lived experience, trauma recovery, or the strange alchemy of turning pain into purpose, this space offers a deeper look into the world behind the book and the man who lived it. |
Crackmask Book Cover by Eddie Haworth
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Crossing the Wild Water
Age gets a bad name generally, but I’ve found it’s only with seventy years behind me that life finally starts making sense.
The fog lifts, the patterns settle, and I can look back without flinching or guessing. I’ve crossed enough rivers now, the calm ones, the furious ones, the ones with cracked bridges hanging over white water and hard rocks waiting beneath. Now I begin to understand their currents, and I realise those rivers weren’t there to stop me. They were there to teach me how to keep going. |
Eddie Haworth - Performance Artist - Author - Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts
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"I’m grateful to have survived the torrents that once tried to pull me under. If Crackmask can offer a handhold, a breath, or a moment of steadiness to someone in their own wild water, then every rapid meant something."
Princess Margaret Opened the Octagon. My Career Quietly Began -- Back to Where the Lights First Came On
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26/5/2026
A return to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. Some places stay stitched into you long after you’ve walked away from them. Today, standing beside a plaque in the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, I found myself face to face with one of those places, and with the boy I used to be. READ MORE |
Pointing back to the spot where I first learned how to make magic happen on stage, long before I knew I’d spend decades doing it around the world.
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The Quiet Air I Choose to Breathe -- The Gift of Being "Stupid"
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A short Essay by Eddie Haworth.
24/05/2026 Intro: Some labels cling to us long after the people who gave them have disappeared. I’ve carried one of those labels since childhood, and over the years, I’ve learned to turn it into something strangely powerful. This is a small reflection on that journey. The Essay Because I was born Dyslexic, I was labelled as stupid by teachers, family, and other children. But I always knew something that those clever people couldn’t see while their unprincipled intelligence festered and grew inside their heads. READ MORE |
My Dyslexic Life as a Clown
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The Quiet Air I Choose to Breathe -- A personal reflection on silence, survival, and the unmasked life behind my memoir, Crackmask.
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An essay by Eddie Haworth
22/05/2026 There are moments in life when the world feels too loud to bear, when the noise presses in from every direction, demanding my attention, my outrage, or my allegiance. I’ve lived through enough chaos to recognise that feeling instantly. It’s the same pressure I felt as a boy in the places where my life first cracked, the same suffocating noise that followed me through derelict ships, circus tents, psychiatric wards, and refugee camps. Noise has a way of trying to claim you. READ MORE |
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People often ask, “Why do I call myself Dr Percey Veer?”
Eddie Haworth - Wannabe Part-Time Philosopher
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Well, because that’s the name I registered with Equity, the British Actors' Union. It’s one of the names I used, that followed me across continents, street corners, back rooms, circus tents, city slums, refugee camps and theatres where I did my best to make people laugh. Not in any grand way, just in the simple, human way that sometimes matters more than we realise.
I’ve been lucky enough to bring a bit of joy to people who didn’t always have much reason to laugh. That’s something I hold quietly, not proudly, more a privilege than an achievement. Being dyslexic, I never wrote scripts for the slapstick shows. I just trusted instinct, timing, and the willingness to look ridiculous for the sake of someone else’s smile. Writing a memoir, though… that’s a different kind of tightrope. Spell‑check helps, but the words come from a deeper place than the pratfalls ever did. The words I’ve written are a quiet archive of a life that cracked early and had to be stitched back together, one stubborn step at a time. A look behind the greasepaint at the shadows, the deep scars, and the strange persistence that kept me moving when logic said I shouldn’t. |
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The Skill I Never Knew I Had... Over the years, I’ve realised something no therapist ever had to tell me: survivors often develop a kind of awareness most people spend a lifetime trying to learn. READ MORE |
India -- A Romantic Place for Crackmask Creator
I’ve just rediscovered a rare photo of myself taken in India. I’ve no idea who pressed the shutter, or how the picture managed to survive in a bag of old memories, but I’m glad it did... Read More |
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A playful image, but it hides a deeper history.
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Just Sayin’... It’s Probably Not What You Think?
Riding high on a unicycle and squeezing out a tune on national telly, not bad for someone who’d barely crawled out of the nightmare that almost finished me off in the mid‑90s. You’ll get the full story when you’ve survived the chapters that begin in 1952… just sayin’. READ MORE |
The Red Balloon - A feature in Crackmask
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The Red Balloon - A feature in Eddie's Life
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These two photographs are small windows into a much larger story, a story that began for me with a single red balloon drifting through the grey streets of Paris in Le Ballon Rouge, my favourite film of all time. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a look: Le Ballon Rouge ... Something in that little film settled into me when I was young, and it never really let go.
Years later, in Venice, I stumbled into an extraordinary true tale about the boy in the film, his father, and his grandmother who produced it, a story threaded with coincidence, loss, and a quiet kind of magic. I’ll share that in full another day.
What I can say now is this: the red balloon has followed me across continents and decades. It has floated through almost every performance I’ve given, not as a prop but as a companion, a bright, stubborn reminder of wonder, resilience, and the possibility of rising above whatever tries to hold you down.
These images are simply moments where that thread shows itself again, woven through the long roads and the strange, tender business of being a lost, then found child.
Years later, in Venice, I stumbled into an extraordinary true tale about the boy in the film, his father, and his grandmother who produced it, a story threaded with coincidence, loss, and a quiet kind of magic. I’ll share that in full another day.
What I can say now is this: the red balloon has followed me across continents and decades. It has floated through almost every performance I’ve given, not as a prop but as a companion, a bright, stubborn reminder of wonder, resilience, and the possibility of rising above whatever tries to hold you down.
These images are simply moments where that thread shows itself again, woven through the long roads and the strange, tender business of being a lost, then found child.