Congratulations to Laci Endresz - Mooky the Clown - who has received a British Empire Medal (BEM) for circus entertainment in the King's Birthday Honours.
Mooky has headlined the Blackpool Tower Circus since 1999, and in 27 years of performing 350 shows a year he has never missed a performance!
Having appeared in the spotlight since he was four, he described his profession as his "calling in life" and "better than any job in the world".
Mooky's medal, however, is also a reminder of how rarely circus features in the honours list.
Tweedy the Clown (Alan Digweed) got the British Empire Medal (BEM) in 2023.
Before that, we have to go back to veteran ringmaster Norman Barrett who received the MBE in 2010, acrobat Johnny Hutch who got the same in 1994, and Coco the Clown (Nicolai Poliakoff) who was given an OBE way back in 1963 – and that's about it.
There were no gongs for such household names as Bertram Mills, whose eponymous circus was famous for its televised shows from Olympia in the 1930s and 40s; Billy Smart, who presided over the postwar circus boom with a tent that seated 5000; or Jimmy Chipperfield who outside of his family’s circus pioneered the drive-through safari park.
It’s scandalous that Gerry Cottle, the most famous circus operator of the past 40 years, died in 2021 without any letters after his name. The same is true of the late Nell Gifford, who created one of Britain’s most loved and traditional circuses, and Phillip Gandey who became Britain’s youngest circus director at the age of 17 and went on to establish Gandey World Class Productions – the country’s biggest exporter of big top shows. Since honours are often given for charitable work, he deserved a knighthood for starting the non-profit Circus Starr, which has been providing free entertainment for ill and underprivileged children for more than 35 years.
Looking back to the Victorian era, the self-styled ‘Sir’ Robert Fossett and ‘Lord’ George Sanger had to bestow those titles on themselves because no one else did!
Even Philip Astley, the inventor of the modern circus, remained a plain mister.
So if there’s a circus star you feel worthy of a knighthood, please let the Honours and Appointments Secretariat know. You can do so here: https://www.gov.uk/honours/nominate-someone-in-the-uk
Perhaps one day we will hear the words, "Arise, Sir Zippo!"
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