Meet Britain's only female circus tent master, Marnie Dock

In this article, which first appeared in My Weekly, Marnie Dock tells Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson about her life putting up Britain's biggest circus tent.

Circus Extreme presents some of the biggest stunts ever staged in an indoor venue, including a breathtaking stream of leaping motorbikes turning somersaults 10 metres above the ground.

Also on the bill are highwire walkers, a woman who plunges from a great height through a ring of fire into a tank of water, and a rock band that is lowered from the ceiling on three platforms while they play.

One of the most important people in the company, however, works behind the scenes.

Marnie Dock, 54, is one of only two people who knows how to put up the tent in which the show takes place.

As the only female ‘tent master’ in the UK, and possibly the world, Marnie shares organising the ‘build-up’ and ‘pull down’ of Britain’s biggest travelling big top with her brother Ingo.

“We share the responsibilities and when one of us is away the other one takes it on. We run it quite well between the two of us,” Marnie says.

The siblings learned the ropes from their father, who looked after the tents and transport for Chipperfields Circus.

“I was a typical tomboy. I did everything with my dad and my brother, working on the tents,” Marnie says.

Growing up on Hoffman’s enormous American-style 3-ring circus, Marnie adds, “I had the best childhood in the world.”

So many of the performers had children Marnie’s age that the circus had its own travelling school. When not in class, the kids did chores such as looking after the animals that every circus had in those days.

“We had a tiger cub living in the caravan with us,” she remembers.

Marnie grew up to be a tiger trainer, a flying trapeze artist and a human cannonball.

Ironically, she claims to be scared of heights.

“As kids we would sit on top of the tent for fun. Not anymore!” she laughs. 

Away from the spotlight, Marnie always worked on the build up and pull down of the tent. Four years ago, she assumed sole tent master duty while her brother was away.

“Nothing went wrong,” she says, “because I was too scared to let anything go wrong!”

At 65m long, 40m wide, 18m tall and seating up to 2000 people, the Circus Extreme tent is the biggest travelling circus tent in the UK. 

It travels on 24 articulated lorries and takes a crew of 20 people from Monday afternoon until Friday morning to set up.

The pull down is a lot quicker, says Marnie.

“We finish a performance at 5 o’clock and the tent will be gone, wrapped up, by 10 o’clock.”

As tent master, Marnie has to decide where the tent will stand and where all the lorries and caravans will be parked.

Her duties include surveying the site for overhead cables and scanning for underground gas and water pipes before drilling holes for the tent stakes.

Considerations include positioning the tent to avoid wind ingress, knowing when to circle the lorries as a windbreak, and making sure that each lorry arrives on site in the right order for a smooth continuation of work.

“It’s not something you can learn out of a textbook,” Marnie says. “It takes a lifetime to understand instinctively what could go wrong in any moment… and keep one step ahead to prevent that from happening.”

One of the most important things Marnie’s dad taught her was to never stand under a cable when the 20m-tall king poles that support the tent are being winched upright, as that is the most dangerous part of the operation.

“The whole site goes silent when the king poles are going up or down,” says Marnie.

Her biggest enemy is high winds.

“There are times when it’s a bit gusty, and we’re due to start setting up, when we’ll say no, we won’t do it until it completely calms. Once the tent is up, it will stand up to a lot. But if you’re trying to take it up and down and there are gusts coming in, that is a nail-biting time.”

The best part of circus life for Marnie is the travelling and working outdoors in good weather. The worst is the mud when it rains.

Circus Extreme’s audiences benefit from a fully-floored big top, but the people putting the tent up in all weathers don’t have that luxury! 

Marnie and her partner Artur travel all over the UK with the circus from March to November. At Christmas, they get a break from the elements when the show moves into an indoor venue in Birmingham.

Then, in January and February, they take a well-earned break from caravan life at their house in Poland.

Their 20-year-old daughter Tya works in the box office, having previously helped her mum run the popcorn stand. 

Tya was born in Cardiff where her parents were working with the Chinese State Circus. Her name is a local word for Tuesday, the day she was born, that Marnie learned of on a visit to Cardiff Castle.

“Cardiff will always hold a very special place in our hearts,” says Marnie.

The circus industry is a small world and the tent masters on different shows will help each other out, says Marnie.

“If there’s a site one of us knows well and another doesn't, we'll phone for advice: ‘Is there anything to watch out for on this site? What’s the best way in and out?’”

There’s often a good camaraderie among a tent crew, Marnie says. But she adds that tent mastering is a physically arduous and stressful job that, like circus life generally, people have to be in for the love of it.

“When it’s a windy night, you don’t sleep,” she says. “You’re just watching the tent all night.”

For more interviews with circus folk, from clowns and sword swallowers to lion tamers and showmen, read Circus Mania, the ultimate book for anyone who ever dreamed of running away with the circus.

Is the new AI Doctor Who better than the real thing? Review of The Curse of Kilmorag by The Unmade Season

 

With the BBC having put Doctor Who out to tender in search of a new production company, it could be as late as 2029 when the world's longest-running sci-fi show returns to the small screen.

In the meantime, however, a fan and aspiring scriptwriter called The Unmade Season has dropped a full-length AI episode called The Curse of Kilmorag online... and it's hard to imagine any Who fan except the most staunch opponent of AI not finding it the perfect substitute for the real thing.

Yes, you can see it's AI. But to me, it's like watching hyper-realistic animation. You know you're not watching real actors, but you instantly get so caught up in the story that you forget about the medium.

Because the all-human-written script - and especially the story and central concept - is strong enough to fit into any past season of Doctor Who. The plotting, and in particular the way everything comes together and makes perfect sense at the end, is better than many real episodes.

The story begins with an AI version of David Tennant's 14th Doctor regenerating into a completely new Doctor. The new incarnation has wild, curly black hair, speaks with a Scottish accent, and is instantly Doctor-like as he stumbles out of his crashed Tardis, high on regeneration energy.

Before the regeneration is complete, however, he is captured by the military, gassed unconscious and taken to a secure facility on a clifftop above a remote Scottish fishing village.

The underground base turns out to be full of incarcerated aliens including a Slitheen, a Meep, and an Ood called Vark who befriends the Doctor through the wall of the next door cell.

The base also has something odd about it. Thanks to a monster living in the sea beneath the base, time within the base moves at a different speed to time in the outside world, with a year for the Doctor playing out over just a night for his captors.

The top secret base is presided over by Mr Green, a sinister scientist with a vibe very similar to Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks.

Green has the Doctor tortured in a bid to gain access to the Tardis, which he has identified as a power source that could power the UK for a century. Because the Doctor's regeneration was interrupted, however, he can't remember how to open the Tardis. He doesn't even remember who he is.

In the meantime, a young fisherman falls into the sea in a storm and drowns... just before a barnacle-encrusted monster hoves into view beneath the waves. 

It transpires that the fisherman is one of many people lost at sea near the village in the past century, none of whose bodies have ever been recovered.

An old woman believes the nearby Ministry of Defence base is somehow responsible, but it's something the villages never talk about.

Lucy, a fishmonger's daughter who lost her twin sister at sea many years before, is intrigued by the hushed gossip and local fear of the base that overlooks the village.

She decides to investigate and breaks into the base, only to be immediately captured and thrown into the cell next to the Doctor's. As she converses with the Doctor and Vark, it's immediately clear that Lucy is going to be a future companion...

The scenes in the village and fishmongers are hugely atmospheric. The bleak, chilly location is a great setting for a Doctor Who story, bringing to mind classic ominous location stories like The Daemons and The Sea Devils from the Jon Pertwee era of the 1970s.

The characters of Lucy, her mother and the local policeman are realistically well drawn and full of heart.

The conversations between them are efficiently written, with every line moving the story forward. But they are also gently paced, allowing time for the characters to breathe and for us to feel like we have got to know them.

Although the 'actors' are AI-generated, it's ironic that these characters come across as more real than many side characters in the most recent two series of real Doctor Who.

That's all down to the writing, which is as character driven as it is tightly plotted, and the sure-footed pacing, which never drags but never feels rushed, in the way that some recent Doctor Who episodes have.

The same is true of the dark, claustrophobic scenes in the underground base, where the silkily polite Mr Green makes a superbly creepy villain, and Vark is another strong supporting character. Both are given plenty of time to fully develop on screen, as is the Doctor himself; a solid original incarnation who combines a little each of Paul McGann and Peter Capaldi.

All of that character building pays off in an emotionally powerful climatic scene that truly touches the heart.

It's hard to fault any aspect of this episode, which is hugely engaging and entertaining from beginning to end.

With a full season trailered, we can only hope future episodes are as good as this introduction.

I also hope that when the BBC brings Doctor Who back to television, it includes The Unmade Season among the writers. In fact, the corporation could do a lot worse than make a straight live action remake of this AI episode.

It really is that good.

Watch The Curse of Kilmorag at www.theunmadeseason.com

World's First Tattoo Inside the Globe of Death

 

Circus Extreme just got even more extreme... with one of its performers, the fearless Skywalk Trapeze artist Marloon Ysmit becoming the first person ever to receive a tattoo inside the legendary Globe of Death.

While riders Charles Torres and Ruan Brandao thundered around him at speeds of up to 65mph, the historic tattoo was created by Craig Fisher, professionally known as Plague Fisher, from Utopia Body Arts in Aberdeen.

Circus Extreme, which travels in Britain's biggest circus big top, will be at Silverburn Shopping Centre, Glasgow from 7 - 23 August.

Click here to read my review of Circus Extreme's 2026 'Rock It Out' tour.

Circus Kids - Born to Perform!

 

Circus folk often begin their careers as children, like Carol and Grace Macmanus, seen here with their dad Carlos in a performance at Manchester's Belle Vue Circus in 1969.

Carol and Grace grew up to found Circus Mondao, which is one of the last truly traditional big top shows still touring the UK with horses (presented by Carol) and doves (presented by Gracie).

They come from a family with circus roots stretching back around 200 years.

Read their story, and many others, in Circus Mania.

The book charts my backstage journey through the world of sawdust and spangles, talking to acrobats, lion tamers, sword-swallowers, illusionists and circus proprietors about their unique history, traditions, superstitions and ongoing lifestyle.

Colourful poster for Skegness Summer Circus

 

Mooky the Clown gets British Empire Medal, but where are the honours for other circus folk?

 

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!"

TV Review: Tip Toe

 

In an eventful month, Russell T Davies has stepped down as Doctor Who showrunner... and delivered potentially his finest-ever work in the form of Channel 4 miniseries Tip Toe.

By turns funny, gripping and horrific, Tip Toe is a rollercoaster of a television event. It is so acute as a slice of social commentary on how issues such as online hate, social media and transphobia affect us all in 2026 that it deserves this blog's step away from the circus scene into the realm of small screen drama.

Tip Toe stars Alan Cumming (above, right) as Leo, the waspish owner of a bar on Canal Street in the heart of Manchester's gay village, and David Morrissey (above, left) as his homophobic next-door neighbour Clive.

Clive, an electrician, is brimming with barely contained anger. He's out of work, short of money, and his marriage is on the rocks. Unbeknown to Clive (or perhaps he's in denial about it) his 16-year-old son George (Jackson Connor) is gay.

When George reaches out to Leo for help, because he can't turn to his dad, it's only a matter of time before the pressure cooker of anger in Clive's head overflows. And overflow it does.

There are no spoilers in saying the series ends in tragedy. The show begins at the end, with Leo hanging from his neck from a lamppost. We then turn back the clock ten days to see how we got to that point from the seemingly innocuous act of Leo knocking on Clive's door in his pants because he's locked himself out.

Cumming and Morrissey are superb and completely believable in challenging roles, but so is every one of a large supporting cast headed by Iz Hesketh as a transwoman bar staff member Zee and Paul Rhys as morose drag queen barfly Melba, about whom more later.

Davies wrote my favourite book on the craft of writing, The Writer's Tale, in which he discusses the page-by-page writing of his Doctor Who scripts. He is at pains in the book to say it's not meant as a 'how to' guide for new writers, but simply as a look at how he personally writes.

It's amusing, however, to see how Davies breaks many of his own rules in Tip Toe, and does so to glorious effect.

In The Writer's Tale, for example, he mentions that it tends to be new writers that try out all the flashy stylistic tricks, such as telling stories out of order, while mature scribes tend to trust the story enough to tell it in the most straightforward way. 

In Tip Toe, Davies repeatedly and deftly jumps around in time in order to show events from different perspectives, and cleverly reveal that things happened in a different way to what we supposed.

In one example, we're led to believe that Clive has been using his spare key to mess around in Leo's house, moving small objects around and so on. We later find out that it is George who has been letting himself in and treating the place as his own while Leo is out.

This leads to a dramatic scene in which Leo and Clive enter the house and find a trouserless George masturbating in front of Leo's TV.

Another of Davies' opinions in The Writer's Tale is that people in real life seldom make long speeches, so they should be avoided in realistic dialogue.

Tip Toe is full of characters making long speeches... and they are so well written and delivered that they crackle with intensity.

Melba

The most powerful is Melba's sermon on the return of an openly displayed homophobia that the complacent Leo feels had died out 15 years ago.

It's something we've all seen in online comments where bigots are using language they wouldn't have dared to a few years ago. Not just about gay and trans people, but women and immigrants. Emboldened by the rhetoric of right wing politicians, they no longer hide their hate.

"The president of the United States has given them permission to attack us," says Melba.

The show's title comes from Melba's fear of online hostility spilling over into real life assault: "I used to walk into a room and go ta-da! Now I tip toe, just in case."

One of Davies' opinions in The Writer's Tale is that you create fully rounded characters by continually "turning" them to show different sides of their nature.

He does that to great effect with the complex characters of Leo and Clive.

Leo is the good guy, but a realistically flawed one. He's vain, lecherous and full of himself. He's also kind to George (if incautiously so) and generous enough to give his unlikable neighbour some work at the bar.

Although Clive is the villain, he sometimes behaves well, albeit with a gritted teeth expression that suggests he is continually conflicted inside.

He installs a key safe for Leo. He does a good job on the wiring at Leo's bar and returns to complete the work even after a violent row with Leo the night before.

That evening, Clive turns up to drink in the bar, but not to cause trouble as Leo suspects.

"If this is my son's world, I want to see it," Clive says. "You told me to learn, so I'm here to learn."

When a student assaults a drag queen in the bar, Clive steps in and lays the troublemaker out. He tenderly cradles the drag queen as she lays trembling on the floor.

It is one of several moments when Clive and Leo come within an inch of becoming friends.

There are electrifying scenes between them when they go from blazing anger to sitting and talking, and a shadow of understanding passes between them.

"In a strange way, we get along well," Leo says at one point.

But just when they seem on the verge of reconciliation, Clive pulls back, unable to let go of his bigotry and anger.

That's how Davies breaks our hearts. He taunts us with the possibility of a happy ending when we already know what the ending will be.

Rightly, Davies makes no excuses for Clive's hostility. The problems that cause his frustration are all shown to be of his own making.

"Why aren't you rich?" Leo asks him at one point. Because Clive has the skill to make good money and live a comfortable life. 

Instead, he has rendered himself unemployable through his attitude and bullying behaviour. As a building site boss tells him, nobody wants to work with him.

His marriage problems, meanwhile, were caused by him telling his wife that he slept with another woman.

Instead of seeing himself as the architect of his own problems, however, he blames everyone else, from immigrant electricians to the gay man next door.

The irony is that Leo could have been the one man to help him turn his life around. Instead, Clive kills the man who gave him a helping hand.

If I have one criticism it is that the story lost its footing a bit in the final episode, in the scene immediately before the lynching, when an unruly group of football fans gather in Clive's house to watch a match on TV.

It's a very long scene with a lot of clunky tone shifts, not least because we haven't met most of these characters before. It also seems odd that they are all much younger than Clive. They look more like the friends of his eldest son Saul (Joseph Evans), who is the only one who tries to stop the killing.

I therefore found it hard to believe that they would all so quickly follow Clive's lead into a murderous act.

In my view, it would have been more convincing if Clive's football mates had been aggrieved men his own age and there had been a scene of them talking in a previous episode to show how close they already were to committing such an act of violence.

But that is a small criticism.

Ultimately, the fact that I watched the series on the same night that rioters were setting fire to immigrants' houses in Belfast proved how easily the events in Tip Toe could happen.

Davies has compared Tip Toe to Cathy Come Home, an era-defining drama about homelessness that aired exactly 60 years ago in 1966 and led to a major national conversation, and action, on the subject. Davies, bless his middle T, has never been shy of bigging up his own work.

In this instance, however, he is on the money. Tip Toe is in the Cathy Come Home league.

The one caveat is that Cathy was shown in the prime time Wednesday Play slot. It was watched by a quarter of the population.

Tip Toe is tucked away on Channel 4. A headline in The Independent called it 'A landmark queer drama'. Which it is. But will the tag 'queer drama' be taken as the show being only for a queer audience - and therefore a small audience?

I hope not, because Tip Toe is simply a fantastic drama that deserves to be seen by everybody.

Just as it begins with a flash forward, Tip Toe ends with a flashback.

In the final scene, Leo is talking to his friend Stephanie about a disturbing lurch in the national mood that that I'm sure we've all felt. A lurch from tolerance and progress to intolerance and regression.

In an ominous tone, his final words sum up the show's warning: "I think something big is going to happen."

The Sloan Family, out stretching their legs in 1932

 

Another marvellous poster. Jay Miller's Circus in Seaford

 

RIP Emilien Bouglione, France’s Prince of the Circus

 

We bid a big top farewell to Emilien Bouglione, horseman and showman, who died on 14 March 2026 at the age of 92.

He and his family ran France's most celebrated circus building, the Cirque d’Hiver-Bouglione, where Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida shot the 1957 film Trapeze. The young Bouglione had a part in the film.

In 1974 Bouglione played a major part in helping Prince Rainier launch the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo. At the same event, he won a Silver Clown.

Click here to read my behind-the-scenes account of the filming of Trapeze.