Standing at just 4ft 8in, Jamie Legg tells SARAH JONES why he is happy to use his height to his advantage and why he earns a living getting handcuffed to grooms-to-be.

LOOKING up from studying his outstretched hand, the palm reader declared that she knew exactly where Jamie Legg’s future lay.

There was no doubt about it, one day the 18-year-old would bask in the bright lights of the entertainment industry.

Shaking his head in disbelief, the bemused teenager – who had spent his life dreaming of joining the Army – was confident that she was mistaken.

And indeed for the next 30 years his life couldn’t have been less glitzy and glamorous if he tried.

His military ambitions may have been crushed by his small stature – at 4ft 8in, Jamie has a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia – but he decided to go into farming instead.

Along with a spell working for New Forest District Council as a semiskilled mechanic, agricultural work became his world. That was, at least, until Hampshire-based Jamie got a phone call out of the blue ten years ago.

A friend rang to say his brother-in-law had asked if Jamie would work at a private party for a few hours, serving drinks and cigars dressed in costume. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“The money he suggested was more than a week’s farming money so I snapped his arm off,” he says.

Despite being 48 by then, Jamie – who has a wife, two children aged 18 and 12, parents and siblings who are all of average size – said he had never even spoken to a fellow ‘little person’ back then.

“If I saw someone like me or smaller than me walking down the street, I would blot them out. I didn’t want anything to do with them. It was almost like if I pretended that other little people didn’t exist, I didn’t have to think about the fact I was smaller myself.”

So when he turned up to do the job, Jamie was horrified when he realised he would be working with another dwarf.

“I froze and panicked but eventually I pulled myself together and we ended up getting on like a house on fire. After that I signed up with an entertainment agency and have been working with small people ever since.”

A decade later, Jamie has enjoyed working on a host of pantomimes, films including Pirates of the Caribbean and Clash of the Titans, and TV programmes like Celebrity Juice and The Friday Night Project.

But as the TV and film work can be sporadic, he supplements his income working at private parties and corporate events.

He misses life on the farm, but says he can’t justify returning to his old job when he can now make more money in one night than he used to in a fortnight.

With stag parties becoming increasingly elaborate, a recent phenomenon involves friends paying for a dwarf, usually in fancy dress, to handcuff himself to the groom-to-be.

It has been a regular part of Jamie’s work over the last four years and while it is not his favourite part of his job, it is very well-paid.

“It’s ironic because I used to be a paid a pittance to put food on people’s tables but now I’m paid more simply to make people laugh,” he says.

“Doing the stag dos is a job at the end of the day. You have people coming up to you and saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Well, why do you think? I’ve got two kids to feed.”

All groups must sign a contract prior to the stag party agreeing not to physically or verbally abuse Jamie, but he admits he does worry about his safety.

“I did a fantastic one a couple of weeks ago in Bournemouth. We had a great time and I was treated as a gimmick, as I should be, rather than something you can kick around.

“Touch wood, the latter has never happened to me but it’s always at the back of your mind.

“It all depends on the group you’re with. I always try to get as much information before I do a job.”

Asked to dress-up in a variety of costumes, he has attended stag parties as a Smurf, leprechaun and policeman, and was even once asked to dress as the groom himself in full wedding attire (the groom meanwhile was to be dressed as the bride).

While some dwarves have been known to be handcuffed for a weekend, Jamie will do a maximum of four hours.

“I make sure I only ever use my own handcuffs and I never drink alcohol because you need to have your wits about you.”

But while he is on the ball at all times, the ignorance of others around him remains.

“Sometimes it’s almost like people forget we’re human. I was dressed as an Oompa Loompa at a nightclub in Wales once and a man came up to me and asked if I was real. He actually thought I might be remote controlled.”

Like many people, Jamie can think of many jobs he’d rather do in an ideal world.

But for now he is happy to reap the benefits of working in the entertainment business.

“People sometimes forget that those with disabilities – like me – know our own minds, and can make our own decisions.

“I know exactly what I’m doing and I know that my height can help me to make a living. And for now I’m more than happy to work that to my advantage.”

For more information, visit dwarf-management.com