It’s Bizarre’s Super Freaks photoshoot with The Baron and Missy Macabre, and the camera crew are watching open-mouthed as the ghostly Finn in the opera hat takes an out-sized machete and, with one blow, bisects the watermelon that sits squarely on Missy’s bare stomach.

We’re witness to danger, charm, wit and performance chops in equal measure – a combination that leaves this unique burlesque couple’s competitors standing. They’re not showcasing their astonishing ‘watermelon/chainsaw’ stunt today, though. Thank goodness, frankly. It sounds like utter lunacy.

“We’ve performed it three times,” says Missy, “but I don’t like it because I don’t have any protection on my stomach and I don’t really want to be cut in half! I don’t think you can trust someone that much. With a meat cleaver, with a saw, with an axe, it’d be fine, but with a running chainsaw going across your stomach – it’s scary!” The Baron interrupts, with a wild glint in his eye. “My chainsaw is a big chainsaw! We’re going to bring it back into the show!” Yikes.

Stalk this way

This odd couple’s professional and personal story is one of a match made in freak show heaven. Knowing each other by sight via the circuit, they first met at London’s Tusk Tattoo studio and “simultaneously stalked each other for quite a while”.

Missy elaborates: “I didn’t understand a word he said because of his Finnish accent! And I was shy, too. Then one night we were in Camden, really drunk, and he said ‘Hey! Hey! Hey! I’m gonna marry you!’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, you’re going to have to take me home and make me your girlfriend first.’ The Baron agreed. That was two years ago.”

The duo made their debut as a stage act a year later. Missy had been doing edgy-but -cute comic burlesque, while The Baron was turning the crazy up to 11 with his hardcore performance outfit the Psycho Cyborgs. But it was in May 2008 that their show’s current incarnation was born.

The Baron And Missy’s Misadventures is a theatrical freak show that encompasses traditional circus, panto, comedy, drag – everything that influences and interests them. They change their set to suit their mood and let their creativity run away with them. It’s definitely more vaudeville than burlesque – there’s a clear comic seam that runs deep.

“We’re obsessed with silent movies and silent comedy,” agrees Missy, while The Baron has clowning on his CV. The duo’s first show was set at a table, where they ate fire from a bowl of soup with a spoon. “We’re putting everyday objects into a freak show setting, but eroticising it as burlesque,” says Missy.

Extreme dreams

The Baron began his extreme performance career (and we mean extreme) in the late 1990s at Helsinki’s Kinky Club, then created a local show in 2000 called Sirkus Tapaturma with some friends. “I’m going to see my mates next week!” he laughs. “They all have babies and families now. It’s all changed.”

When Sirkus Tapaturma closed in 2005, The Baron moved to London (as Baawo The Bee) and established, with Samppa von Cyborg, the Psycho Cyborgs. Two years later, he was invited to join the celebrated Fire Tusk Pain Proof Circus, but although he’s still a member – he performed at this year’s Glastonbury with them (“Performing in a circus big top was one of my biggest dreams!”) – he now spends most of his onstage time with Missy.

Not that the new partnership is a holiday from the hardcore. “She’s such an amazing performer,” gushes The Baron. “I think she’s triple-X-rated. She’s much more triple-X than me!”

Missy, 22, hails from “Southampton and Poole and Ipswich and Norwich”. She attended a bit of youth theatre and, at age 11, became obsessed with drag queens. Every day after school she’d watch The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, then The Rocky Horror Picture Show, until the age of 16.

“It’s the grotesque decadence that really appeals to me,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be a drag queen. They’re so fabulous and they don’t give a shit! I had troubled teenage years, so that was my escapism. When I started performing, my character just came out – I evolved into more of a complete version of myself.”

Missy’s burlesque debut was at a friend’s night and, after a few shows, “I realised I should do whatever the fuck I want to! I can take this wherever I want, do whatever, be whoever – no-one’s going to stop me.”

Her quest is to avoid, at all costs, swimming in the mainstream: “I’m not going to be like everyone else. I’ve always been the one to say, ‘You’re not going to stop me! Fuck you!’ And now, I can do it without being rude or dysfunctional – I can do it on stage.”

Wrestling with relaxation

Missy doesn’t drink or do drugs, but she collects weird stuff. “I’m liking porcelain dentistry equipment and medical diagrams at the moment,” she explains. “Anything that’s interesting, old, unloved, slightly dirty-looking... Not in a sexual but in a grubby way.” She also puts together her costumes (“The lounge is always covered in sewing machines and fabric and diamonds”) and occasionally styles bands.

And what does The Baron do to relax? “I drink!” laughs the 28-year-old. Plus there’s the metalwork – he builds lowriders from scratch – and he’s an artist. “I haven’t painted for a few years, but I still draw a lot,” he says. “I’m drawing a zombie clown for my wrestling costume, for when I begin training to be a Lucha Libre wrestler.”

He also pulls pints in a Soho pub – “It’s good to have a day job” – and he’s a body piercer of 10 years’ standing, working two days a week at Diamond Jacks in Soho. “I like to give people what they want,” he says. “I have my own technique. It’s not at all painful.”

We’re guessing The Baron’s idea of pain is different from most people’s. His act over the years has consisted of complex suspensions, dazzling fire displays and extreme weightlifts with his piercings.

He won’t touch electricity any more, though. Not since a major accident onstage with a Tesla prop. “It’s really scary,” he says. “Not so much at the moment it happens, but it takes a long time to recover, mentally and physically. It was four years ago and I’ve had a heart monitor implanted in my chest, ever since. I can’t work with electricity again.”

The king of extreme body performance has also hung up his suspension gear. “I got bored of the idea of doing hardcore stuff, and also my body’s tired. I did my first performance in 1998 and I really can’t do it any more. My mind doesn’t allow it any more, either.”

A touch of glass

As The Baron takes a more comedic, gentler – some might say thoughtful – route, Missy Macabre is right by his side. Her dedication is breathtaking – literally, if you’re a member of one of her audiences.

Her latest act is to perform satirical-sexual acrobalance around the top of a Victorian roll-top bath, falling repeatedly, gracefully – and, needless to say, deliberately – into it, in various poses. The kicker? The bath is full of broken glass. “I got cut a bit, but not as much as I was expecting,” she says, exhilarated, of her first bath-show outing in July at Hackney’s Gypsy Hotel night.

“The crowd were brilliant – I could hear them going ‘Oooh!’ and ‘Ahhh!’, which made me very happy, as I wanted it to be gripping and intense. In a way, it’s me saying to the burlesque and freak show scene, ‘You’re boring! Think of other things to do.’”

“The bath show is really, really impressive,” sighs The Baron. But isn’t it terrifying to watch? “It’s just amazing. It’s beautiful,” he says, dreamily.

“As soon as I accomplish something, it’s not good enough and I have to do it better,” explains Missy. “I have to push things further, be better, and it’s all I think about all the time, and it does drive me mental. The Baron calms me down. But I’m good for him, because he’s quite relaxed – he doesn’t mind if things are just ‘OK’.”

The pair finally chat about their body work, how Missy’s going to sew up her flesh tunnels (“My new obsession is bling!”), how The Baron no longer has implants in his head (“They were starting to cause trouble. Lots of pressure.”).

Missy plans to have an anatomical heart tattoo surrounded by Victorian roses in her armpit and to have her scarification work completed. Their pain thresholds must be high!

Missy answers, “In my eyes I don’t have a high pain threshold, because I still feel pain. I certainly don’t have a threshold on a Psycho Cyborgs level! It’s funny, though, because now The Baron’s stopped doing Psycho Cyborgs, I only have to pinch him and he cries!”

 Find out more about The Baron And Missy’s Misadventures  at MySpace.com/creepshowbeyondthegraves