Hello, hello! We are Cuca and Tito. It all started one August night

You know those inspiring stories that begin with a dream? Well, mine began with a fall on stage in front of 100 people.

All right, I did not count them, but there were certainly plenty.

I was a shy kid, one of those who never put their hand up in class, not even to ask to go to the toilet.

Every summer my parents took me to the same mountain campsite, and at ten at night they switched on the lights of the bar's stage: it smelled of chlorine, sun cream and citronella burning on the tables.

I would sit there spellbound, watching the entertainers, those very odd people who were not the least bit embarrassed to be looked at.

I offered to set out the chairs just to be near them. I knew their jokes by heart and repeated them in the shower, under my breath, imagining someone laughing on the other side.

But going up there myself, never. Going up was for people born for it. I was fine where I was: from the back row you see everything and nobody sees you.

Until one August night two entertainers did not turn up and the boss looked for me over the heads of the crowd.

I still remember the heat rising in my face and how badly I wanted him to pick literally anyone else.

You, on stage.

He did not ask me whether I could do it, and today I think that was the best thing that ever happened to me: if he had asked, I would have said no.

I climbed the step on legs that were not mine, took one pace towards the microphone and fell. A long fall, a loud one, the kind where you have time to think «I am falling» while you are falling.

And then came the worst part: the silence. A hundred people holding their breath at once, waiting to see whether I had hurt myself or whether they were allowed to laugh.

I have no idea where it came from. I got up, dusted off my knees, picked up the microphone and said:

Ladies and gentlemen, that is how you make an entrance.

The laughter hit me like a wave. And they were not laughing at me: they were laughing with me. Once you feel that difference, even once, you never forget it.

The next day at the pool, a lady stopped me to say she had not laughed that hard in ages. She said nothing about the fall. Nobody ever did. People do not remember whether you did it well; they remember how it made them feel.