Growing up in the circus - a picture that says it all

Here's a picture that surely sums up how wonderful it must have been to grow up in one of the great circuses of yesteryear. Two kids taking an elephant for a walk down a suburban street... on skateboards!
That's Bobbo Roberts in the foreground (read about his new clown show here) and his sister bringing up the rear. As for the elephant... surely this picture sums up the harmony in which circus folk and their animals once lived.* The jumbo was obviously part of the family, a big pet, considered safe enough to play in the street with two young children who she clearly trusted completely, and them her.
Notice there's not a bull-hook in sight. Bobbo's father Bobby Roberts, the circus owner and elephant trainer never used nor even owned one. He thought an ankus was something you found on a boat.
What a shame we're unlikely to ever see scenes like this on a British street again - a picture from the days when human and animal relationships were considered both normal and natural, to be celebrated, not outlawed, as they are today.
*And yes, I know there are still circus trainers keeping alive the tradition, but they are becoming ever more rare and the threat of a ban on their vocation grows ever closer in Wales (see article here) and now Scotland, where a ban on wild animals in travelling circuses will be debated in the Scottish Parliament next year.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if those with the power to ban could gaze upon a photo like this, from the days before protesters, political correctness and killjoys, and realise that those simpler times were better times. Let's bring them back!

Saving Anne the Elephant by Claire Ellicott - Book Review.

Bull-hook (noun) A pointy stick used by animal rights activists to bash circuses and prod the consciences of fans.

It was largely local bans of the bull-hook, ankus or elephant goad that led Ringling to retire its iconic elephant parade. Without the guiding tool, which has been used by Indian mahouts for thousands of years, it would be impossible for the circus to safely control its elephants in the street or circus ring, thus making it untenable for the show to visit major cities such as Los Angeles.

Or would it?

I recently watched some Golden Age footage of Britain’s Bobby Roberts working his elephants at the height of his fame. It was an exciting, fast moving act. The elephants ran around the ring, sat on tubs with their forelegs in the air, laid down in perfect choreography and performed headstands... all the things circus elephants are famous for doing.

Bobby and Anne
Look ma, no bull-hook.

Yet Roberts says he has never used or even owned a bull-hook in his life. His control of his herd, which he worked from their infancy - when he himself was just a lad - was entirely with his voice.

“I always said if you couldn’t hold it (the elephant) with your tongue, you couldn’t handle them,” said Bobby. “When I shouted, that was enough.”

The only tools he used were a whip (for cracking, not hitting the elephants) and a walking stick that the lead elephant would hold in its trunk when he led his parade, marching trunk to tail, from railway station to circus ground.

That’s one of the surprising details to emerge from Claire Ellicott’s new book, Saving Anne the Elephant - The True Story of The Last British Circus Elephant.

It was, of course, undercover film of Anne being hit by Romanian groom Nicolae Nitu that led to the closure of Bobby Roberts Super Circus after a media outcry in 2011. The case led to Lord Taylor announcing a ban on wild animals in UK circuses, although the legislation has yet to be introduced.

Click here to read about my part
in the BBC documentary The Last Circus Elephant

There’s no getting away from the fact that Ellicott’s book is part of the ongoing campaign for a ban - and many fans and circus industry insiders won't like it for that reason.

It is, however, an important record of a landmark case and in attempting to untangle the complex issues involved, Ellicott includes plenty that the animal rights groups that protested Roberts' circus won't like either.

Ellicott was one of the reporters that originally broke the story of Anne in the Daily Mail. The paper campaigned and fundraised to get the elderly Anne moved from the circus to Longleat Safari Park and, on the surface, Saving Anne plays to the expectations of readers who want a clear cut story of an abused animal given a happy ending.

Ellicott takes the view “it is now almost universally agreed on that elephants shouldn’t perform in circuses.” She heavily lays on the “terrible suffering” of Anne at the hands of Nitu at a time in the twilight of her career when, as the last survivor of Bobby’s herd, the arthritis-stricken elephant was too old to perform and the ageing Roberts was himself too ill to personally care for her.

A lot of space is given to the views of Jan Creamer and Tim Phillips, the husband and wife founders of Animal Defenders International who spent 15 years trying to infiltrate Roberts’ circus before obtaining the undercover footage. Further anti-circus opinion is provided by Dr Ros Clubb of the RSPCA and Professor Stephen Harris, the latter a long term opponent of circuses who is currently heading a study of circus animals on behalf of the Welsh government (Read more about that here).

But Ellicott's concise, journalistic book also looks at the story from the point of view of the Roberts family, and Roberts is portrayed perhaps surprisingly sympathetically as a "victim of circumstances."

It was Ellicott who first showed ADI’s video to Bobby and his wife Moira. She saw their reaction first hand - they were as disgusted by Nitu’s actions as anyone else. She clearly warmed to the couple’s sincerity and devotes two chapters to an interview with the couple carried out especially for this book.

As the author writes, “It’s hard not to be fascinated by the Robertses lives.”

Anne at Longleat

The most compelling chapter relates the history of the circus family’s illustrious lineage and glory days; Anne’s meetings with the Queen, Princess Anne and other celebrities; and Bobby’s romance with Moira, the fairground girl who ran away with the circus. In their early days the couple had a western act and Bobby accidentally shot off the finger on which she wore her wedding ring. Moira hid the injury from both Bobby and the audience and finished the act.

Back in the present, Ellicott airs the Robertses' belief that they were set up: that Nitu was paid to attack Anne; that it was suspicious that he never normally wore a hat, only in the video to hide his face, as if he knew he was being filmed. That he conveniently disappeared the morning the news broke, despite speaking no English and having no money as he hadn’t been paid.

It’s also suggested he hit Anne with a plastic pitchfork and that the thwack of a metal bar was overdubbed - a theory consistent with the observation that the noise was “almost the only sound on the video” - as well as with Anne’s minimal reaction to the blows and subsequent lack of marks on her body.

The truth about Nitu may never be known as animal cruelty is deemed too minor an offence to extradite him from Romania, where he fled to.

Bobby took the fall for employing a keeper who betrayed his trust and Ellicott stresses that there's no evidence he was personally cruel or knew what Nitu was doing.

The book also makes clear that Anne wasn’t seized from the Robertses; they gave her away voluntarily, and had in fact been looking into her retirement for a few years, but sanctuaries are hard to find in the UK and Anne was too frail to fly to America.

YouTube footage of Anne leaving the circus HQ.

When Anne moved to Longleat, Bobby walked her into the transporter  (This can be viewed on YouTube. With not a bull-hook in sight he leads her by the trunk with his hands). He was perplexed when her new owners wouldn’t walk her out without chaining her legs together. He was also apprehensive of her new keepers’ bull-hooks - it was the first time Anne had seen such an instrument.

Anne looks in much better condition in the video than she is described by the animal rights lobby. One of the new keepers in fact angered the animal rights groups by saying on TV “Hats off to Bobby” for getting Europe’s oldest elephant to such an advanced aged (around 60-years-old) in such good shape. The safari park depended on Roberts showing them how to look after Anne in her first few days there.

The move to Longleat was, in fact, a “slap in the face” to the circus-hating ADI, as it had been founded by the Chipperfield circus family.

It’s a shame Ellicott ultimately supports a ban on the grounds of changing times, and that she didn’t speak to more supporters of animals in the circus. After pages of anti-circus rhetoric by Ros Clubb and Stephen Harris, a couple of short quotes from Martin Lacey Sr and Chris Barltrop are taken from old Daily Mail articles.

My Daily Telegraph interview
with Thomas Chipperfield.

Thomas Chipperfield is however described as “the most interesting defender of circus animals” and some of his “fascinating insights” into training are quoted from the interview I did with him in the Daily Telegraph.

Elephant osteopath Tony Nevin, meanwhile, treated Anne while she was travelling with the circus in 2007 and comments that she was mentally more content than most zoo elephants, which he attributes to her varied life: “She got to swim in the sea, go on beaches, go across moorland. All sorts of stuff she’s done over the years. Then you look at most zoo elephants and they’re plodding around the same paddock.”

Ultimately, Anne is portrayed as happy in her purpose-built £1.2 million new home where she listens to Classic FM, rolls in the sand and eats wine gums “just like any old lady.”

Bobby, meanwhile, is labelled  "a misunderstood relic of a past era who had the best intentions," - a man who loved his animals and couldn't understand why what was acceptable 30 years ago was no longer accepted today.

But was he actually ahead of his time, a genuine elephant whisperer who needed no bull-hook to command his herd, just his voice and a bond built up in a lifetime?

Perhaps there are more out there like him, or will be, who could one day take elephants back into Los Angeles regardless of a ban on the bull-hook.

Saving Anne the Elephant by Claire Ellicott is published by John Blake and available from Amazon.








Further reading: For more on the bull-hook, click here to read Ringling Elephants and the Ankus - Is it Time to Let Circuses off the Hook?

Ringling Elephants and the Ankus - Is it time to let circuses off the hook?

Me and the Elephant
Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson
meets one of the last elephants to
appear in a British circus

The news that the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus is to phase out its iconic elephant parade has been hailed as a victory for the animal rights groups that have campaigned against them for decades.

But I think the battle has been won in the hearts and minds of legislators rather than the circus-going public, who continue to fill US arenas with audiences of several thousand per show, and who are apparently happy to watch other animals perform, including a lion and tiger act presented by Britain’s Alex Lacey.

As a spokesman for Ringling owners Feld Entertainment put it, “We looked across the legislative landscape and it’s become a patchwork quilt of unnecessary restrictions and prohibitions... we’re not in the business of fighting city hall.”

In short, Los Angeles and some other US cities have either banned or are considering banning the ankus, the traditional tool for guiding elephants. The ankus, also known as an elephant goad or bull-hook is a two or three-foot-long stick with a metal point and hook on one end and is the only means of controlling an elephant in what’s known as free contact management. That is, where elephant and handler are in an unenclosed space such as a street or circus ring. Not using an ankus would be the equivalent of walking a horse through a public space without a rein.

With the ankus outlawed, Ringling has the choice of leaving its elephants out of the show or taking its show out of the city. For an entertainment company that needs to be where the crowds are, that’s a simple decision.

But is banning the ankus justified?

Opponents see the bull-hook as an instrument of pain and punishment. Sadly, there is much video evidence of hooks being used in an abusive way. Fed a diet of such images by animal rights groups, it’s no wonder many legislators and members of the public believe that is the ankus’ only purpose.

Elephant handlers, however, maintain the ankus is a simple guiding tool which, when used correctly, is no more detrimental to an elephant than a horse rider’s crop or spurs, or the bit in a horse’s mouth.

When Anne the elephant was moved from a circus to Longleat safari park, animal rights groups were perturbed to see that her new handlers continued to use the ankus. The park’s director Dr Jonathan Cracknell defended the practise, stating it was “not a tool of domination... but more akin to that of a rope on a horse, used to guide her in the right direction and communicate what we need her to do.”

Zoo elephants have always been trained to facilitate washing, veterinary procedures and movement between enclosures. Traditionally, many have been taught circus tricks or used to give rides to the public, because the physical exercise and mental engagement is good for their health.

Without the ankus, for example, it would be impossible to take an elephant for a long walk in the countryside.

The Management Guidelines for The Welfare of Zoo Animals - Elephants, published by the British & Irish Association of Zoos & Aquariums (BIAZA) sets out how an ankus can be used in conjunction with positive reinforcement and the association with verbal commands to train elephants in a humane way.

For example, to get an elephant to move forward, the handler touches its back leg with the hook. When the elephant moves away from the hook, the action is rewarded with a treat (food) and verbal praise. With repetition, the action eventually becomes associated with a verbal command and the hook is only needed as an occasional prompt to guide direction.

To see the ankus used correctly, watch this video of Willie Thieson, the elephant manager of a zoo in Pittsburgh, showing TV news presenter Sally Wiggin how to use a hook to make an elephant lie down for a veterinary procedure. “The hook is not as sharp as it looks,” Wiggins observes, “and I barely had to touch her to get a response.”

Having interviewed several circus trainers for my book Circus Mania, I tend to believe that most treat their animals well. It’s also probably the case that most innovations in animal training grew from the uncommonly close relationship between circus trainers and their animals. The inventor of the modern circus, horseman Phillip Astley, for example, is said to have used clicker conditioning more than 200 years before it became the current buzzword for training pets.

That little is known about circus training is unsurprising - a magician doesn’t spoil his illusions with a banal explanation. But the secrecy of the circus community has fuelled the suspicion of cruelty. It’s human nature to distrust those who live differently from us and to apply sinister connotations to things we don’t understand.  

With anti-circus campaigners often seeming to have the only voice in the media, perhaps it’s time for circuses to swap mystique for openness, put more emphasis on education and show us how they work with their animals. In turn, perhaps legislators can focus on regulation, the raising of standards and the rooting out of bad apples, rather than taking the simplest option of a ban.

There’s no doubt a large part of the public still wants to see animals up close in a circus ring. Zippos operated an all-human show for ten years before introducing horses and dogs due to public demand. Giffords, the most gentrified circus in Britain, is built around the horse.

Some opponents of circuses with animals draw a distinction between domesticated and wild, forgetting that elephants and camels have been domesticated in their native regions for thousands of years. Besides, is there any difference between training a horse, an elephant or a lion, except in the sense that the circus’ biggest selling point has always been taking things to the extreme and showing us things we would not believe possible.

For more on the always thorny subject of animals in the circus read Circus Mania by Douglas McPherson - The Ultimate Book for Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With the Circus.

Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson TV debut in The Last Circus Elephant

Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson
making his TV debut in BBC 1's
The Last Circus Elephant

The 2012 circus season ended with Bobby Roberts convicted of keeping Britain's last circus elephant chained to the ground and allowing a groom to beat her while unsupervised at winter quarters. But was it grounds that a ban on all circus animals is necessary?

Interestingly, the sentence was a conditional discharge - Roberts was given no fine or custody and not ordered to pay court costs. The judge said the circus owner had suffered enough from the adverse press publicity and praised his previous "exemplary" record of looking after animals for most of his 70 years. The judge also criticised Animal Defenders International for their delay in releasing secretly filmed footage of the groom - a delay which allowed the groom, the actual perpetrator of the violence, to escape justice and return to his native Romania before the story hit the headlines last year. No one has seen him since.

BALANCED VIEW

Bobby Roberts (far right) with
Anne the Elephant

The BBC Look East documentary - 'The Last Circus Elephant' - which aired at prime time in the east of England on the Monday after the trial took a very balanced view of the case. There was some entertaining archive footage of the elephant, in her younger days, driving a car around the village where the circus is based. Yes, this elephant can not only drive, she had her own car, a bit like a golf cart, which she could apparently steer with her trunk without help on public roads - hardly suggestive of a deprived life. There was also an interview with the chief vet of the safari park to which Roberts was forced to give the elephant after a vicious front page press campaign. Far from confirming the protestors' claims that the animal had been badly cared for, the vet said "Hats off to Bobby - to get an elephant to that age (58) in such good condition, he had to be doing something right."

EXPERT OPINION

As the author of Circus Mania, my part in the programme was relating the history of animals in the circus since Philip Astley, a trick horse rider, built the first circus ring, in London, in 1768. Again, my segment of the programme included some excellent archive footage from the glory days of the British big top in the 1950s and 60s - vast tents packed to the rafters and rings heaving with polar bears, elephants, lions and chimps. There was some nice contemporary footage, too, of the all-human Russells International Circus, but also of Britain's last tiger trainer, Martin Lacey, kissing up to his big cats, and Bobby Roberts training horses that were evidently in superb condition.

All in all, for a programme about an abuse trial, I'd say the circus came off pretty well.

DEATH THREATS

Bobby and Moira Roberts leaving court

But, of course, the damage caused by the ADI footage was done long before the case came to court. Roberts had a "financially disastrous" season last year and came off the road a month early. His wife was in tears in the programme as she described the additional pressure put on the family by email threats to shoot Bobby and kidnap their children.

BAN

In April, the animal welfare minister, Lord Taylor, announced a probable ban on wild animals in British circuses in 2015 and a new licensing and inspection programme in the interim. Rather than wait "till the bitter end" as he put it, Martin Lacey ended this year's circus season by closing his controversial Great British Circus. He is currently looking to rehome his tigers abroad and will continue next year in a new show, Big Top Circus, with just horses and dogs - although his liberty horse act is also up for sale as he "winds down to retirement."

Whether Bobby Roberts Super Circus will be on the road next year remains to be seen.

Updated 2nd Edition 
out now!

When Circus Mania was published, the Mail on Sunday described it as "A brilliant account of a vanishing art form." With chapters on my backstage visits to Circus Mondao and the Great British Circus, it may prove to be the final study of Britain's last generation of circus animal trainers. Click here to buy Circus Mania from Amazon before the circus as Astley created it disappears forever.

Meanwhile in The Guardian...

Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson's was
commissioned to share his views on circus animals
in The Guardian G2 at the time of Bobby Robert's trial