Suffering from a bad case of stage fright? Don’t let your nerves get the best of you. Pull yourself up and brush off any failures. Your audience will remember you not for your errors but for your pluck and determination to see this project through to the end. Just don’t get too caught up in the celebrity of it all.

Vase-smasher is also a liar

That’s just what vase-smasher Nick Flynn did. As reported in F Newsmagazine’s March issue, the 42-year-old was visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, in late January when he tripped on his shoelace and fell down a flight of stairs, smashing three late 17th-or early 18th-century Qing dynasty vases that sat on a windowsill at the museum for over 40 years.

Flynn, who maintains the incident was an accident, was arrested April 5 at his home on suspicion of criminal damage in connection with the vase-smashing. Police are also questioning the tripper about an alleged assault that occurred in February in King’s Parade, Cambridge.

In a statement released in February, Flynn remarked, “I can say with my hand on my heart that it was not deliberate. I don’t think a movie stuntman would have been able to tumble downstairs, destroy the vases and come out unscathed.”

In the week prior to his arrest, Flynn was kicked out of the Fitzwilliam by security on the day the museum unveiled restoration plans for the vases. As reported by Catherine Bruce in the Cambridge Evening News, Fitzwilliam’s director Duncan Robinson said Flynn’s attendance at the event was inappropriate but that he was not permanently barred from the museum. A specialist ceramic conservator faces months of painstaking work sifting through the shards and gluing the vases back together.

May 2006