Martin Lacey Jr wins Gold Clown at International Circus Festival in Monte Carlo

Now that's what I call circus!

Click here to read an exclusive interview with Martin Lacey Jr in The Stage.

A Message from Bobbo

Bobbo (left) tells Smartii
about this latest adventure

What does 2019 have in store for Bobbo, the Clown Prince of Mirth? Let's find out in his latest dispatch from the front line of clowning...

“Was going to send a smoke signal  as you might have known that the first one I sent said “HELP, MY BLANKET  IS ON FIRE!” ...and then I was going to send it by Morse code, but as I was  in need of a slash I didn’t bother ...and as I already sent you a postcard with last year's news, I thought of sending you a tin of meat, but as most folk don't read their SPAM  mail I didn’t  bother.

“I was going to send you a old style pen and paper letter as I once had dancing lessons through  the post but some went missing and I don't know where they went, so I asked my postman if he knew and he said he didn’t, as he fox trotted  down my lane. The butcher did tell me that this year the Post Office is bringing out a set of stamps with well known ladies of the night on them. The price is 45p, but if you lick them they go up in price  to £2 .

Bobbo packs his boots
- a pair handmade by his dad.

“I was then  thinking I could tell you my news on the phone but Trump and May are constantly calling me for advice. As Mr T said, “Since this clown is trying to run the USA I might as well get advice from a professional clown.” Mrs May, meanwhile, has told me she has more important things to worry about, like what will all the HGV drivers eat if they can't have a full English breakfast -  or was it brexit she said?

“So after all that thinking  I thought  I’ll send you a Facebook message, as most people now put everything on Facebook, like what they had for dinner and where they are. It's just a pity Facebook was not around before as we then might have found Lord Lucan and my marbles, as I lost them a while back.

"So here is my news. From March, I will be touring the UK with a circus again, not just a short time like I have done for the last two years but from March till November. I will still be playing homage  to the past masters of clowning but trying to bring it up to date a little. Not too much. I will still keep the red nose and the baggy trousers as lent to me from Boris Johnson. So looking forward to seeing old friends and hopefully  making new ones along the way, and maybe seeing you on the road somewhere.

"Take care, Bobbo the fool.

"PS, not the complete fool, as some parts missing.”

What big top will Bobbo be appearing in? Watch this space for further news.

Click here for more on Bobbo.

Sarah Darling joins the circus!

Country star Sarah Darling (third from left, back) has teamed up with Cirque Musica and a full symphony orchestra for Wonderland - a Christmas tour of circus acts and holiday hits that will be travelling across the USA until December 23.

Wonderland will also be the name of Darling's new album, recorded in the UK with some of the writers and producers behind the recent hits of Kylie Minogue and Ellie Goulding, which will be released on March 1. More info: www.sarahdarling.com

Bobbo's Diary of a Clown, Part Two: Back in the Big Top!

Bobbo

Last summer saw Bobbo Roberts starring in the Circus Funtastic Summer Spectacular at Billing Aquadome in Northampton,

In this latest peek into his diary, he gives us a clown's eye view of life in the big top...

"With the school holidays approaching, most people start to think, ‘What can we do with the kids?’ Well I had other things on my mind, I’d just been sent a contract for 6 weeks back under the big top. My worry was that after last year’s prankster craze with people in rubber masks tarnishing the good name and work of us fools, would my new boss want me in my normal slap and motley (make up and costume)? I don’t wear a lot of slap anyway but I thought I’d check, as I had been working on a new look for some of my gigs at the music hall and this would give me a chance to try an even subtler look for Bobbo.

Bobbo sets off
circus style

I grabbed my new costume: a lovely grey number that sets me apart from the stereotypical brightly coloured clown look, and started to pack my cases. I got to thinking as I was packing, ‘I wonder who will be there?’ as most times I turn up, there's always someone I know. With so many years in circus under my belt and my family being in the business, you can always rely on meeting at least one old friend or family member. So I said goodbye to my wife and kids, knowing I’d be seeing them in a couple of weeks when they come to join me on this new adventure, and made my way to the train station. I must have made quite the sight with multiple suitcases riding a unicycle to the train station. Although I was leaving my house I felt like I was going home.

The Big Top in Billing Aquadome

Being on the train gives you time to think, so I was busy writing notes on my upcoming performance. It was a very pleasant journey but I couldn't help thinking of all the towns we passed, seeing the names and remembering being there with my dad’s own show and  the other shows I've been on. I remembered little bits of what happened there, if the business was good and if there was any good book shops and chovey shops (second hand shops).

Hand balancing

I arrived at Northampton, my new but old home as lot of my ancestors had came from there and nearby. As most of you know, I’m a Roberts and a Fossett too. I got picked up by Josh Mack, my new boss. We both knew of each other but had never met. We both grew up in the circus, though, so as we drove to the tober (circus ground) we were chatting ten to the dozen about people we both knew.

As we arrived and passed through the gates he explained the venue had been double booked and they had another event happening, so we were not going to get built up and open on the day they had planned. We did get the big top up the next day but  by golly it was so hot and took a bit longer then normal. Luckily there was a pub nearby and they kept us topped up with lovely jugs of ice water.
There were a few acts to yet to arrive, but we got the tent up and wagons in place around the tent (someone once said cowboy style).

Original aerial apparatus

There’s not many jobs where you can walk from your home to your office in seconds. I suppose that’s one of the many things I love about circus. As I took a walk for the first time into the big top and set about getting my light and music cues sorted, some of the other acts started to turn up, like the Garcia sisters whose family, like mine, are the backbone of many a circus. The vast array of different acts they do adds to the stew pot of a successful show. In this one they were doing a magic act and an exercise ball act with acrobatics that I saw last time I worked with them on Charles and Rebecca Chipperfield’s Bollywood-style circus. They were also doing a Slinky act, and one of the girls was doing a trapeze act but with a giant spring prop that can only be described as a big version of one of those big twisted stakes that you use to leash your dog on. I've not seen it before but it was very nice and it gave Kelly lots of moves to do from walking up and down it to toe-hanging.

The other acts we had on the show were a couple who did a roller skating act & a rola rola act, both very nice acts with lovely costumes. We had a lovely young Swiss girl doing two aerial acts. Both were very good strong acts. And a Bulgarian who did a hula hoop act that she on a walking globe while going up a very large ramp. She normally performed this as two acts but this time combined it into one act which always got the audience cheering and clapping.

Hula hoops and globe

A Hungarian man did aerial straps, with costume and music from the film Spider-Man. He did many poses and tricks and normally the case in these acts is the kids get bored but he kept them engaged for his whole act. His second act was a hand balance act using blocks, using two hands and one hand, and as my brother-in-law has done this act I understand just how hard it is..

Completing the show were two of our youngest performers 14 and 15-year-old Enrique and Diego - strange names but their dad was a maths teacher (he-he!). Their first act was in mascot costumes having a dance-off to all the crazy dance moves from the classics to modern ones like the floss. I prefer candy floss, but it went very well. The brothers had an agreement: every day the audience chose the winner of the dance-off and the brothers kept track of who won the most throughout the season. At the end of the season whoever won had to buy the other a gift of their own choosing. It was always fun to watch as the boys was giving it their all. Their second act was a comedy trampoline act done in the style of the Blues Brothers, costume and music all matched the themes in a well thought out act that used the music to great effect.

The cast with children from a local blind school
who enjoyed the sounds and smell of the circus

They also had some clown called Bobbo (that some of you may have heard of). I never got to see his act as I was always busy in the ring when he was on, but I think the audience enjoyed it. My gags were very short but to the point. That is all I need to make an impact, though. Sometimes I wore my full make-up and sometimes I didn’t, but every day I wore a red nose and big boots. If you’re a fellow clown you should try without make up one day. It’s not easy but it is fun to try. I’ve only recently started working without the slap but now I love doing both. It was great to be back in the ring and I had a fab time being back in the business I know and love, working with lots of like minded people, and having lots of barbeques. It was very caveman-like as we all sat around a fire talking and laughing.  We were all from different backgrounds and countries but each of us had two things in common: we want to perform and we love circus."

Bobbo on Clacton Pier
in 2017

For more insights into life in the big top, click here to read Part One of Bobbo's Diary: Chovy Shops and Unicycles.

Bring in the holographic horses, as Circus Roncalli rides into the future

With animals steadily disappearing from circuses around the world, some traditional big top fans may see Circus Roncalli's latest attraction as another surrender to animal rights activists. But as we celebrate 250 years of the first modern circus - created by horseman Philip Astley - it's important to remember that the circus tradition is a tradition of innovation.

Astley wasn't the first trick horse-rider of his day - there were many like him, newly returned from the wars, who found a new use for their equestrian skills. Astley's innovation was to put horse stunts in a circle, as opposed to on a long straight, which gave his displays a more theatrical setting. He then added a series of other acts, from tumblers to strongmen and clowns, that made up the variety show format of circus as we know it.

The strength of that format has always been its ability to include new, different and never-before-seen acts designed to keep the crowds coming back each season.

Over the past 250 years, circus promoters have been tireless in finding new spectacles: the flying trapeze, wild animals, freaks of nature, acts from different cultures around the world, be it American cowboy knife-throwing and lassoing or oriental plate-spinning and martial arts.

From hippos that sweat blood to the chainsaws and motorbikes of Archaos, circus has always traded on the new.

And so it is with Germany's Roncalli. Established in 1976, the company was among the first to update circus by linking acts with themes and storylines, which paved the way for the mega-success of Cirque du Soleil. For 2018, they now bring us holographic horses, elephants and giant fish.

Is it a surrender to the animal rights movement or, as I prefer to see it, the latest step in the big top's ever forward-marching quest to give audiences something brand new to go "Wow, I've never seen anything like that before!"

The answer, for me, lies in those shots of jam-packed seats. Sure, it's possible to miss the real animals, but for all the sense of tradition that sometimes surrounds it, the circus has never thrived by looking back - it's lifeblood has always been the new.

When I set out to write Circus Mania, I didn't want to write a history book. Yes, there is history in it, because there are glimpses of tradition everywhere you look in the big top, and it's hard to look at any new act without seeing the ghosts of performers from fifty, a hundred or 250 years ago. My real concern, though, was to explore the lives of circus performers as they are lived today. As such I found myself backstage in a world of constant innovation as predominantly young people strove to create new acts and new styles of show that moved the old traditions forward. The Mail on Sunday called Circus Mania "A brilliant account of a vanishing art form." But is it really vanishing? Some of the older styles are, yes, just as the past is always receding into the distance. But, just as a snake leaves its old skin behind, the ever evolving circus itself keeps coming up fresh and new.
Take a glimpse into the ever-changing world of the big top by clicking here to order the new and revised second edition of Circus Mania from Amazon.

Off to the circus!

With his bags and unicycle, Bobbo heads
for the circus!

Following his summer season on Clacton seafront last year, Bobbo Roberts will this year be wowing families in the rural surroundings of Billing Aquadome leisure park in Northampton.

It was circus matriarch Tanya Mack who put Bobbo forward for the Clacton pier show and this year she's booked him for her own Circus Funtastic, which runs from July 23 - September 27.

Here's what the funny man had to say:

“They say you can shake the sawdust out of your socks but not your heart so with that in mind, after being on Clacton pier last summer where he had so much fun in the sun, Bobbo is puting  his motley and clobber on again in a whole new adventure in Billing Acqadrome Circus.

“As most of my family is from Northampton I’m looking forward to going to the library and finding out as much as I can about my family. As I’m fond of saying, the Roberts and Fossetts don't have a family tree, we’ve got a forest  - and I’m one of the nuts who have fallen from the tree.

“I might have gone on a different branch but my roots remain in circus, and I might be barking up the wrong tree but I’m looking forward to this new challenge and hope I can get to try and sneak in some of my new gags that I've been working on. A clown is very much like a plant - it needs water (an audience) to branch out and grow.”

Click here to find out how he got on!

Bobbo catches up with his reading
- Circus Mania, of course!

Diary of a Clown - Part One
Click here to read about Bobbo's adventures on Clacton Pier last year.

When Rick Astley met Philip Astley (sort of)

I always wondered if 80s singer Rick Astley was a descendant of Philip Astley, the equestrian who founded the modern circus 250 years ago this year. It seems not, since Philip had only one son, who never had children of his own - which also explains why you don't come across many, if any, Astley's in the modern circus.

Rick did briefly run away with the circus, however, in this video for his 1991 single Never Knew Love.

My thanks to actor and ringmaster Chris Barltrop for bringing it my attention. The clip was filmed in the Circus Berlin big top in London's Acton Park with performers including Rani, a well-known elephant on the scene at the time.

Barltrop features in the video as ringmaster.

Chris Barltrop
as Philip Astley

Today, Barltrop is keeping the Astley name alive (Philip that is, not Rick!) with his one man show, The Audacious Mr Astley. Find out more, here.

And click here for 15 Facts about the Father of the Circus.

The Vegan Agenda - Why Circuses Were Just The Thin Edge of the Wedge

Warning from the big top

For decades now, campaigners such as ADI (Animal Defenders International) and Peta (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals) have been saying that circus animals are cruelly treated. And it's worked. Animals have been gradually squeezed out of the circus ring on both sides of the Atlantic by local legislation that prevented circuses operating in prime municipally owned venues and, increasingly, national bans, such as the one has has this month come into force in Scotland.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus, the self-proclaimed Greatest Show on Earth and arguably most iconic circus in the world, was forced to close after more than a century because of such legislation.

The evidence does not support these bans. In 2007, the UK government-commissioned Radford report found circuses were as capable of meeting their animals' needs as zoos or other captive environments. Since 2012, a licensing scheme has regulated the use of wild animals in circuses and has produced no evidence of mistreatment.

The government has announced, however, that when the licensing scheme expires it will not be extended, bringing in a ban by default.

Why are circus animals being banned if there's no evidence that they are intrinsically cruel?

Martin Burton

When I interviewed Zippos owner Martin Burton for my book Circus Mania he explained that the campaigners were motivated by a deeper agenda: they didn't believe people should even keep pets or eat meat.

At the time, I confess that I didn't fully connect the dots. Yes, I thought, anti-circus campaigners may well be anti-vivisectionists and vegetarians and so on... but I couldn't see that side of their agenda catching on with the wider public. It's one thing to support a campaign against perceived or alleged cruelty (whether proven or just suggested) another to turn your back on meat and pets.

In the last couple of years, however, the mass media push for veganism has been impossible to miss. You can't open a newspaper or magazine without reading about a new meat-free business or recipes for meat-free meals.

Today the circus,
Tommorow...?

Protests against fast food restaurants, supermarkets and local butchers are becoming as familiar as the demonstrations that were once confined to circuses. I have seen full-page national newspaper adverts against milk production, which shows how well-funded and/or connected the vegan lobby is.

The anti-circus campaigners, meanwhile, are revealing their wider hand. At the foot of a press release that came my way today, ADI outlined its mission:

Active worldwide to end the suffering of animals: animals in entertainment – film, television, advertising, circuses, and sport or leisure; animals used for food or fur; protection of wildlife and the environment; trade in animals; zoos, pets, entertainment, and laboratories.

Note the words "food" and "pets" - there for all to see.

It's very similar to Peta's slogan, as displayed on its website:

ANIMALS ARE NOT OURSto eat, wear, experiment on, use forentertainment or abuse in any other way

The ADI press release was in support of a film called Anima, in which representatives from 12 religions talk about changing our attitudes to meat.

According to one of the participants, Rabbi Singer: “Our belief in Judaism is that God never actually meant us to eat animals,” explaining “In the Garden of Eden, God shows us the fruit of the trees, the grass in the fields, and says ‘You may have any of this to eat.’ But God never mentioned animals.”

ADI president Jan Creamer, meanwhile, has this to say: “Millions of people across the world draw their beliefs and perceptions about the other species who share our planet, from their faith. There has never been a more important time to challenge themisunderstandings which have, in the past, been used to justify exploitation of animals. As Dr Lo Sprague says in ANIMA, every religion has compassion as part of its mandate. It is time to mobilize that.”


The film appears to say nothing about circuses, but the fact it is being promoted by ADI proves what the circus industry has been telling us all along: that the massive fundraising campaigns built around 'circus cruelty' were never really about circus cruelty at all, just part of a wider agenda.

As the post-circus campaign for worldwide veganism unfolds around us, it's a shame the warnings from the big top mostly fell on deaf ears.

Father of the Circus celebrated in Philip Astley's home town of Newcastle under Lyme

Celebrations marking 250 years of the circus have continued in Newcastle under Lyme, the birthplace of Philip Astley, the Father of the Modern Circus, with a new multi-part metal monument that forms the gateway to the town.

Located on George Street, the monument, which lights up at night, was designed by Candida Kelsall and built by 17-year-old Liam Robinson with funding from the Realise Foundation and Newcastle Business Improvement District. It depicts ringmaster Astley flanked by two rearing horses.

The unveiling was attended by the local mayor and mayoress, along with a delegation from the Circus Friends Association, Carol Gandey from one of Britain's foremost circus promoters Gandey World Class Productions, and performers from Circus Starr, the charity circus that is part of the Gandey organisation. Also present was Zsuzsanna Mata, executive director of Monte Carlo's Federation Mondiale du Cirque and illusionist Andrew Van Buren from the Astley Project, who for 30 years has campaigned for recognition of Astley's legacy in his home town.

For 15 Facts about Philp Astley, the Father of the Circus, click here.

For more about Circus Starr, the circus that helps kids, click here.

For more on the history and culture of the circus, read Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book For Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With The Circus! Click here to buy the updated second edition.

Aerialist by Rebecca Truman - Book Review

Rebecca Truman is the Grande Dame of aerial. “Cut me in half and I will have aerialist written all the way through,” she writes in this engrossing memoir.

In 1988, Truman founded Skinning the Cat, a pioneering all-woman trapeze troupe that performed principally at outdoor events throughout Britain and Europe, but also in circus tents and theatres. Truman was star, costumer, artistic director, rigger, truck driver... in fact, she did pretty much everything. Her reluctance or inability to delegate responsibility led to an punishing schedule that eventually brought her to the point of breakdown.

“My years as an aerialist are divided into before and after the falls,” she writes on the first page. “Those accidents changed everything. Before the falls I was running wild and fulfilling my fantasies. Afterwards, it became all too real.”

The Silver Tree rig

When Truman’s colleague Lou plunges head-first to a concrete floor, the dangers of trapeze are brought violently home to the reader. Was Lou’s accident Truman’s responsibility for running an un-funded company too close to the brink of exhaustion? When Truman subsequently breaks an ankle (that never heals properly) was it her fault for bringing a still-recovering Lou back to work too soon, or for not training her sufficiently on the lunge that would have prevented Truman’s accident?

Those are the questions that haunt her as company leader. But the show always goes on. Forced to hobble on stage on crutches, Truman creates a character that makes the crutch part of her act. In the air, the trapeze frees her from her disability.

Everyone in the circus has a colourful story to tell, but few can tell their own tale as well as Truman. In this gripping journey into the life and mind of a trapeze artist, Truman writes with all the evocative colour and underlying precision of the shows she describes

With a novelist’s eye for detail, she brilliantly evokes the glitter and grit of her surroundings at art school, in training gyms, in lorries and caravans, and freezing cold offices in derelict former woollen mills.

For students of the trapeze, Aerialist is essential reading. There’s an insider’s manual worth of detail on every aspect of how to run and rig a show, down to how to remove a cobblestone from a town square in order to drive in a stake to anchor the rig - or, if that doesn’t work, anchor it from a builder’s skip.

Chameleon rig

But this is also the story of a life. From a bohemian childhood scarred by sexual abuse by her grandfather, and the death of her father when she was young, to the nervous breakdown when all those unresolved issues eventually caught up with her, Truman reveals how her career on the trapeze was driven by the desire to escape.

Her narrative is broken up and enriched by the accounts of her mother, company members and, memorably, Zippos founder Martin Burton who recalls asking the Arts Council for funding in the days when circus wasn’t recognised as an art form. Sitting in opulent offices full of furniture he reckoned was worth more than his entire circus, he was told, “If we had any money we’d give it to you.”

Since they claimed not to have the money, he decided to steal the reception desk - a plan that failed when he couldn’t get it through the revolving doors.

Many years later, when Burton was appointed chairman of the Arts Council's Circus Advisory Committee, he told them, “You obviously don’t remember the last time I was here.” “Yes we do,” they said, “which is why the desk is screwed down.”

The text is also peppered with information boxes that provide a glossary of trapeze moves and equipment - Skinning the Cat takes its name from an aerial manoeuvre - plus some poems by Truman that offer insights into an aerialist’s connection to her work that mere prose couldn’t quite capture.

It all adds up to a thrilling read that sits with the best circus memoirs, such as Nell Gifford’s Gifford’s Circus - The First Ten Years (and Josser, written as Nell Stroud) and Gerry Cottle’s Confessions of a Showman.

Click here to order Aerialist by Rebecca Truman from Amazon.

See also: 10 Books for Circus250!