Gerry Cottle with his Wookey Hole
circus school students
Five years after the untimely passing of circus giant Gerry Cottle on 13 January 2021, I thought it would be good to revisit the following tribute article that I wrote in The Stage, with contributions from some of his closest associates. Their memories seem especially poignant now that John Haze and Phillip Gandey have themselves passed away, bringing to a close a particular era in big top history.
Gerry Cottle, who died on 13 January 2021 aged 75, was “Britain’s Barnum – the greatest showman”, according to the British circus impresario’s friend and former business partner John Haze. Circus of Horrors director Haze says: “When I was a kid, Billy Smart was the name you associated with circus. Gerry took over that mantle. He had these great acts from bygone times, such as a man lifting an elephant with his teeth and Miss Atlas, the World’s Strongest Woman.”
“From the 70s onwards, you’d have to put Gerry Cottle at the top,” agrees fellow showman Phillip Gandey. “He took risks that other circuses weren’t prepared to. He had a flair for showmanship and publicity, which is the lifeblood of a circus. At a time when everyone said the circus was dying, Gerry said, ‘No we’re not, we’re here, we’re bright and vibrant.’ I think we all owe him a debt for that.”
Cottle served his apprenticeship as a juggler, stilt-walker and clown on Gandey’s Circus in the 1960s. Phillip’s father Joe Gandey gave Cottle his clown name, Scats, after being stuck behind a Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society lorry on the A303, and showed him how to run a circus.
“Gerry said in his book Confessions of a Showman that it was my father who set him on the road to being a circus owner,” says Gandey, who was a boy at the time. “Gerry shared a 10-foot caravan with my elder brother Mike. We did a gala show with James Brothers Circus and that’s where Gerry met his wife Betty (Fossett).”
In later years, Gandey and Cottle were rivals.
“We weren’t at each other’s throats exactly,” Gandey laughs. “We’d take each other’s posters down and jump into a town ahead of the other. That’s just how it was. But you could still turn up on his site and have a cup of coffee with him.
“Gerry loved circus and always tried to put on the best possible show. It was the size and success of Gerry’s shows which drove us on to become bigger and better.”
Cottle’s rise to fame was fuelled by two TV programmes. Within two months of starting Cottle & Austen’s Circus with long term associate Brian Austen in 1970, Trevor Philpott made a documentary about the five-person outfit which was billed on the cover of Radio Times as ‘the smallest greatest show on earth’.
In 1975, Cottle’s fame spread when BBC1 variety show Seaside Special was broadcast weekly from his big top.
“It had the prime time Saturday night slot that X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent has now,” says Haze. “They had massive people on it, like Abba. It raised the profile of Gerry and circus as well.”
“The TV people liked Gerry’s can-do attitude,” says Cottle’s former ringmaster and general manager, Chris Barltrop. “He was very inventive when it came to getting around problems. He was never deterred.
“Gerry was very organised,” Barltrop goes on. “He had an exercise book and each day was a new page with things that needed doing under headings like ‘transport’ or ‘costumes’, and he’d just work his way through the list.
“He was admiring of other people and curious about other ways to do things. From Circus Roncalli in Germany he got the idea of putting a dab of makeup on people’s nose or cheeks as they came in. On their way home people would ask where they got it, which got them talking about the circus.”
Not everything Cottle touched turned to gold, including an ahead of its time non-animal student show in the early 80s that was critically praised but a box office disappointment. But he always bounced back.
“Gerry was a juggler when he was a kid,” says Haze, “and when you think about it: throw enough balls in the air and you’re going to catch a few. And that’s what he did. He tried a circus on ice which didn’t last long, but a day or two later he got an offer to take a circus to Hong Kong which was really lucrative.”
Cottle’s successes in the 1990s and 2000s included the Moscow State Circus, Chinese State Circus and Circus of Horrors, now in its 26th year.
“Gerry was the only one with the balls to do it,” says Horrors founder Haze, who teamed up with Cottle to stage the show at Glastonbury in 1995. “Then off we went around the world with it.”
In 2004, Cottle sold his circuses to buy the Somerset tourist attraction Wookey Hole, an ancient cave system. He expanded the site to include a circus school and a 58 bedroom hotel.
“Wookey Hole was turning over a reasonable amount of money when he bought it and I thought he was going to go there and take it easy,” says Haze. “But Gerry couldn’t take it easy. I went back within a year and, wow, had it changed! He’d put in a theatre and a dinosaur park. I thought: plastic dinosaurs in this place of natural beauty? But it worked.”
Cottle wasn’t ready to wave goodbye to the circus, however.
“Gerry’s various addictions have been well documented in the national press,” says Gandey, “but his biggest addiction was circus. I remember sitting in his office where he had a huge collection of circus books. He said, ‘I’ve read that when successful circus directors retire, they always take this last show out which loses a fortune, and I’m not going to do that.’ But of course he did! He told me what he lost on Zambezi Express and it was getting into seven figures.”
Undaunted, Cottle continued to produce touring shows including Gerry Cottle’s 50 Years of Circus and Magic and Gerry Cottle’s Turbo Circus.
“Even last year, during a pandemic,” says Haze, “he rang me up and said ‘I fancy putting a tent up on the prom in Weston-super-Mare.’ I thought, bloody hell, Gerry, is this the right time to risk something like that? If he’d lived, I’d have put money on him doing a summer season this year.”
Olympia Posirca performed in Cottle’s Wow! Show in 2012, although her connection to him goes back much further.
“My mum and dad met and fell in love on Gerry Cottle’s Circus. Their wedding reception was at his headquarters. When I was three or four months old, Gerry’s circus was the first one I was taken to.”
Although Cottle was in his mid-60s at the time of Wow!, his enthusiasm was undimmed, Posirca says.
“I was like a schoolgirl because I learned so much from him. The one thing I’ll never forget him saying was, ‘Remember there’s an audience and remember to smile. As long as you’re smiling the audience will smile.’ Even now, as soon as that curtain opens, I’m smiling.
“He wasn’t scared to push the boundaries of circus,” Posirca adds. “In my case, I wondered if people would want to see someone singing in a circus, but he brought those things together. I’ll always owe him for that, because my current boss saw me in Wow! and now I get to do singing and ringmistressing at Big Kid Circus.”
What motivated Cottle in later life?
“His family,” says Posirca. “He said he was doing Wow! to show his grandkids that you can do everything you want to, so don’t ever stop wanting and wishing for things.”
Asked if anyone will ever fill Cottle’s shoes, Posirca answers without hesitation, “Not a chance! He was one in a million and there will never be another Gerry Cottle.”
Gerry Cottle (L), Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson
and John Haze from Circus of Horrors.
Gerry Cottle was a major help when I was writing Circus Mania. As the top man in the business, he introduced me to people who would never otherwise have talked to me, including his longterm business partner Brian Austen, who ended up telling me things Gerry himself was surprised to learn!
Gerry also travelled half way across the country from Wookey Hole to attend the Circus Mania book launch at the then Circus Space in London. There was nothing in it for him, he simply supported anything to do with circus.
For more on Gerry Cottle, read Circus Mania. His name runs through it like the letters in a stick of rock because there wasn't a corner of the British circus industry in which he didn't have an influence.