I'm sure it's a rough life being a clown, you know... driving a clown car with 18 other passengers in the driver seat alone, walking and tripping around with those really big shoes, and hours of makeup application. But their job is about to get a lot harder, a new study in a nursing journal shows that kids are terrified of clowns.

A poll by researchers looking at what decor to put in hospital children's wards found that youngsters do not like clowns on the walls and even older ones think they are scary.

"We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable," said Penny Curtis, senior researcher at the University of Sheffield which questioned 250 children aged between four and 16.

But their findings, published in a nursing magazine on Wednesday, has put the red noses of the clowning community out of joint.

In a deluge of emails to Reuters, they say they misrepresent just how popular they really are.

I'm with the survey participants - keep those clowns away from me! Creeeepy. If you're freaked out by clowns you might want to head over to ihateclowns.com.