- 1 week ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I introduce to you, the circus.
00:30As the Second World War passed into history, Britain looked to an old friend to cheer itself up.
00:46There is something quite amazing about that corner in the park that suddenly has a circus arrive on it and becomes something like Las Vegas.
00:55The travelling circus brought some much-needed dazzle to an age of austerity.
01:02For a generation brought up on war, the big top was the stuff of dreams.
01:09They would come in so excited, looking everywhere, everywhere. They know where to look next.
01:16Circus was pure magic to young eyes.
01:21The atmosphere, the smell, the artistry.
01:25It was beyond belief. It was an explosion of delights.
01:30Exotic people. At that time, we never saw people from other countries and other nations who spoke other languages.
01:42I thought, now, who are these people? Where were they yesterday? Where are they going to be tomorrow?
01:47In the immediate post-war years, circus rode the crest of a wave.
02:00With big operations such as Bertram Mills and Chipperfields travelling the length and breadth of the country to meet the growing demand.
02:08It was into this bright, sequined world that a new circus came to town.
02:18And it seemed to arrive from nowhere.
02:25My father always wanted to own his own circus.
02:28When we started the circus back in 1946, my God, we didn't know nothing about it at all.
02:33Billy Smart was a showman by instinct. A big man with big ambitions.
02:47My father always went for the best, you know. When he wanted something, he went for the best.
02:53And quite honestly, he couldn't afford it, but he managed it and he did it.
02:58And any money that we made in the business was always poured back into the business, you know.
03:04Smart Circus quickly became very successful, and Billy Smart gained celebrity status.
03:11He would go on to be the face of circus for the next 20 years.
03:18Although Billy was most definitely the governor, he had the support of a wider working family, including his son, Ronnie.
03:26It's the only way you can do it with a big family, and we had a very large family.
03:30They didn't all perform in the ring. Only one person performed in the ring, and that was Kay.
03:37But it had to be a family concern. There's no doubt about it.
03:41Kay Smart, Ronnie's wife, had been a performer in the music hall, but then trained to become a trapeze artist.
03:48The hardest thing I had to do was to learn to walk up this rope ladder. It was 30 foot up, and it just was terrible hard trying to walk up a rope ladder.
03:59In the middle of nothing, with not a wall near to hang on to. I got it.
04:03You look down, and you can see how full the house is, or if they're enjoying it, and all that sort of thing, and you know the trick you're going to do next is a good one.
04:13And you do it better if you see they're all with you.
04:17Of all the thrilling and dangerous spectacles of the circus, the aerial acts are perhaps the most glamorous.
04:27I fell in love with the high wire app ladies. I definitely did. I think my first erotic stirrings were caused by watching women 30 feet above me.
04:49And they had their hair done fancy, so they were something else altogether.
04:54As a young trapeze artist, Lotse Andres enjoyed all the attention.
05:00It's a wonderful thing, flying trapeze, you know, you're the star act normally in the show, you know, when you're 18 and 19 years old.
05:06You know, the girls, pop star status, the girls all the way, you know, you can live with that when you're 18 and 19, 20 years old.
05:14There's something about the high wire and its blend of grace and danger that taps straight into the realm of fantasy.
05:24When I was very tiny, we went to Bertram Mill Circus at Olympia. I was completely entranced. The aerial acts were just wonderful.
05:32We went back to school and we started hanging upside down off the wall bars wanting to be trapeze artists.
05:36But the one that sticks in my mind, there's a girl on a crescent moon in a sparkly costume, Gina on the moon.
05:44And, you know, all our lives we say, remember the girl on the moon.
05:55The things in the circus for me are the skill and the beauty. It has to be, the whole act has to be aesthetically pleasing.
06:07But if they're sparkly, in the traditional circus, sparkle is everything.
06:12If they open an umbrella and glitter falls out, it's just so special. Every time, it doesn't matter how many times you've seen it, it's wonderful.
06:19But behind all the glitz and glamour lie years of training. One mistake, and the consequences can be devastating for the performer.
06:36I was twice paralysed, you know, from the neck down. You know, my right hand side was completely paralysed.
06:43I was hanged by the neck by the doctors in Austria for days before they'd gone back in place and had many, many bones in my body.
06:51I mean, I had one fall, we had 14 bones. Bones broke in my body, you know, falling down for 40 foot high without a net.
07:00I fell in the net and I broke my neck in the net.
07:02The circus thrives on the elemental appeal of danger, and aerial acts push human ability to the extreme.
07:13For the first time in your life, as a child or even as an adult, you were faced with something which was a matter of life or death.
07:21And it's a wild, crazy emotion to be observing somebody taking their life into their hands.
07:29And this is what circus performers appeared to be doing. The idea that somebody is actually for a split second in mid-air doing a somersault to catch hands with somebody else that they trust.
07:43That's life and death. And it's an incredible visceral thing.
07:47You have to have the danger in circus. It's part of it. It's part of their lives. You have to have the beauty and skill.
07:57Britain wasn't alone in rediscovering the power of circus. The big top was big business in post-war America too.
08:08Ever the entrepreneur, Billy Smart headed across the Atlantic to see what he could pick up. He was mainly looking for new acts, but he ended up with a tip from a Hollywood film director.
08:21We went across to see the Barnum & Bailey show, actually. And I think they'd just made the film the greatest show on earth.
08:32And they had a blue big top. Now the blue big top was something new because Cesar DeMille, who was the producer, director, he wanted to film during the day.
08:43So therefore, he had to have a blue tent so he could get all the colours and all that sort of thing. So we came back and we said, we're going to buy a blue tent. And we did. Blue big top. Never been heard of before.
08:56The blue canvas meant the acts looked just as spectacular during the day as they did at night, drawing ever bigger crowds.
09:04Well, it was a regular, say, five, regular 5,000 people twice a night, anyway.
09:11A huge operation like Smart's required a great deal of organisation. By the 50s, they had to employ a large staff.
09:19We had tent masters, second tent masters, electricians, second electricians, you know. We had a complete good working thing, you know.
09:30But everybody had two jobs. A shirt sleeve job and a spangled job.
09:35When it's going up, in it goes, the circus ring. It was the clown's job to set this exactly right so it didn't part and all the pieces joined together like a good jigsaw.
09:46And then it was, say, the Arab act who did tumbling. Now, it was to their benefit that there wasn't any stones.
09:55So that was what they did. And when the stones were all gone, then the good sawdust went in and it all and a bit of glitter on top of it.
10:03So where you were working was really some place you wanted to be.
10:07As well as being a trapeze artist, Kay orchestrated the music for the acts.
10:15This was a crucial role.
10:17In the circus, everything was choreographed with split-second timing.
10:22And that included the animals.
10:23I ended up putting the music to the horses and to the bears and to the lions and different things.
10:30And the elephants knew it. They all know the music. The animals, the horses, every animal knew its music.
10:36Because if its music started, there was...
10:39Behind the curtains, you know.
10:42Performing animals were a key draw for the circus back in the 50s,
10:45when attitudes were very different to those of today.
10:53For many, it would be the first time they had ever seen a wild animal.
10:58It could be a terrifying experience.
11:02There's a great clattering as men in overalls arrive and start erecting a cage all the way around the arena.
11:10And then inside the cage, these stuns are put.
11:12And then we can see a tunnel.
11:16And then a man with a very large whip and a gun arrives.
11:21And it's...
11:23And then in come the lions.
11:25Now this is frightening.
11:28I know what these things can do.
11:31And there they are, growling and snarling.
11:34And this guy is poking them with his whip.
11:37And they're jumping up and they're doing this, that and the other.
11:39But then he brings in a tiger as well.
11:44Lions and tigers, surely this cannot be.
11:47And I'm absolutely staggered, captivated and can't believe that there can be any life more glamorous than having a whip and a gun and a lion.
11:57The threat of danger was never far from the surface in the circus, both in the minds of the audience and the performers.
12:08This element of risk gave rise to some unusual beliefs among circus people.
12:12They're so funny, the old superstitions. A bird flying around the tent is meant to be unlucky.
12:18You should never sit with your back to the ring.
12:20You would never put your circus ring directly on top of the circus ring where the previous circus had been.
12:25You'd actually move it just a little bit to one side.
12:27You should never whistle.
12:28You wouldn't see circus artists wearing green.
12:32Circuses are full of superstitions.
12:34Oh, it's a nightmare.
12:36This deep-rooted folklore goes back to the origins of the circus.
12:41Its history is over 200 years old and it was born out of very tumultuous times.
12:46Circus started in the United Kingdom in 1768 when equestrian horseman called Philip Astley set up Astley's Amphitheatre in London.
12:56This was a period of fierce nationalism and imperial conflict.
13:02In 1763, the Seven Years' War came to an end which led to the discharge of large groups of former British cavalrymen and horse grooms.
13:11Philip Astley was one of those veterans and he had embarked on a career in trick riding which was popular at the time.
13:20He had the idea to rope off a piece of land and put a wall around it.
13:28The creation of the ring was just the starting point.
13:32Astley was an entrepreneur, a showman, who started out with a simple aim but quickly spotted an opportunity to create something truly important.
13:41Astley's initial remit for himself was to show the expertise on horseback.
13:55Astley could see that there was an appetite for trick riding and no shortage of skilled people to take part.
14:01But he wasn't the only one and so he decided to try something new.
14:05He introduced other performers such as acrobats, jugglers and clowns, acts that he found in the fairs and marketplaces of Britain.
14:18This was a defining moment. By combining all these different acts in one circular ring, Astley became the father of the circus.
14:27It wasn't long before his show was in demand, far and wide.
14:33He travelled all over Europe and built 17 amphitheatres so his roped off piece of land with a wooden wall turned into an amphitheatre and he then built 17 amphitheatres right across Europe.
14:44But the horse axe still remained the driving force for the shows and Astley made them spectacular.
14:54He loved to sort of reenact, like he reenacted the storming of the Bastille and I can kind of imagine that being sort of like the news at 10 so people in London could hear what's just happened in France, hear about the revolution and then they could go to Astley's and see it being performed, see what was happening.
15:10So it was almost like a news flash or something.
15:14Astley had lit the touch paper. His circus spawned many imitations and the circus was soon a hugely popular and established form of entertainment.
15:25Right from the beginning, entrepreneurs realised the huge potential audience and wanted to take the circus beyond the fixed venue of the amphitheatre building.
15:34So what they would do was to be to find wasteland or an available space, get an architect to draw up a plan, take the plan to the local wood yard, buy the wood, hire a builder to put the building up, stay there for as long as an audience would pay to come and see the show.
16:00And then when they'd exhausted the audience, dismantle the building, sell it back to the wood yard and move on to the next town and repeat the process.
16:09For now, circuses were either open air or confined to makeshift or permanent buildings.
16:15But as the circus moved into the 1800s, it continued to develop.
16:22And thanks to Victorian ingenuity, it took on many of the aspects we are familiar with today.
16:28Circus in the Victorian period really was one of its high peaks.
16:33And there was 15,000 people performing in the circus. Isn't that extraordinary?
16:37More and more variety was introduced.
16:45Certainly the horses were still there as the sort of focal point, but with sort of exotic animals and animal trainers, which had started to come in as well.
16:56The idea of performing wild animals was born out of the menagerie tradition, which may have held a fascination for Victorian audiences, but dated back as far as the 12th century, when royalty and title gentry kept exotic animals.
17:14In 1842, this very British creation benefited from the arrival of an American import.
17:24The big top had arrived.
17:29This and other technological advances of the period, like steam power, allowed travelling showmen to take more and more elaborate circuses out on the road.
17:38The most celebrated of these was Lord George Sanger.
17:44He travelled around towns and villages with at least 10 wagons loaded with equipment, requiring 150 horses to pull them, in a convoy that would stretch for miles.
17:57Sanger took the circus to the people, and everyone flopped to see it.
18:03He boasted that there would not be a town in England with a population more than 100 that a Sanger's circus wouldn't have visited.
18:18He was so successful that in 1871 he purchased Astley's thriving amphitheatre in London.
18:25Permanent shows were still drawing the crowds, and the Victorian period saw more and more intricate and glamorous buildings spring up to showcase the circus.
18:38Every major city in the United Kingdom had a permanent building.
18:42And the giveaways in the name, when you see something called the Hippodrome, you know its roots was a circus building.
18:49The word Hippodrome comes from the Greek words hippos for horse and dromos for race or course.
18:57One of the most impressive circus buildings was created in the seaside town of Blackpool.
19:03We are now in the Tower Circus, which is the oldest continuous circus in the United Kingdom in continuous use.
19:10It was founded in 1894.
19:13The wonderful interiors that you see now, 1899, 1900.
19:19And this is still the permanent site for circus in the United Kingdom.
19:24Always has been, always will be.
19:25But this Victorian heyday was not to last.
19:37By the end of the 19th century, the circus faced a rival for the public's affections.
19:43Music Hall had been growing in strength, and audiences in large towns suddenly had a more diverse choice of entertainment on offer.
19:50As a result, the circus suffered a decline in popularity, and some of the permanent buildings were forced to close.
19:59It was years before a showman came along who would turn the fortunes of the circus around.
20:06In the 20s, you get Bertram Mills who comes on and takes over the circus at Olympia,
20:12and turns it again into something that Londoners see as part of their everyday holiday.
20:16Bertram Mills put on the most lavish circus shows that the Capitol had ever seen.
20:22He made circus a real event again, and became renowned for showcasing performers of the highest caliber.
20:29I think the thing about Bertram Mills was that he really was interested in quality.
20:37He would bring people in from all the big international shows and made British circus again a truly international phenomenon.
20:47And people considered it a very prestigious thing to be able to work for Mills.
20:52He had established his position where it was awfully good for your prestige to have work for him.
20:57Bertram Mills presented the circus at its best, combining glamorous, highly skilled performances with comedy and exotic novelty acts audiences couldn't find anywhere else.
21:09And now for the pièce de résistance.
21:14So he had things like the tight walking line.
21:16Walking along a double tightrope looks easy, but the animal knows that it's the directing eye and hand of his trainer that'll see him safely over.
21:24One slip and the whole act will end in pandemonium, and perhaps injurate a man and beast.
21:29It's a fine act that will earn the greater pull.
21:32He had this amazing female magician called Coringa, who could actually mesmerize crocodiles.
21:42The crocodile looks fierce, but watch her quietly.
21:47See how stiff it's down, proving that it's completely under her control and will do anything she willed it to.
21:55Bertram Mills managed to reignite the popularity of the circus, but he, like other circus proprietors,
22:01faced a new adversary.
22:04An organisation called the Performing Animals Defence League had been lobbying Parliament to pass a bill prohibiting the use of performing animals.
22:14A select committee was set up in 1921 to investigate.
22:18Although a resulting bill in 1925 did introduce regulations, it did not call for a ban.
22:26So the circus was able to continue, as it had always done.
22:31Over the coming decades, it was to prove more popular than ever, thanks to the new medium of television.
22:41TV pioneers were quick to recognise the visual richness of circus and used it to demonstrate the new medium in 1946.
22:49Then, in 1950, the BBC deemed it important enough to take centre stage in the first live outside broadcast from France.
23:02August 27th, 1950, as our film pictures end, and live sound and vision reach out across the dark waters of the Channel.
23:13Probably you'll realise that, should the girl miss the edge of the table as she comes down,
23:20with her hands, it would be her neck that would hit it.
23:25Three chairs.
23:30Broadcasters saw that the circus worked well on television,
23:34and were excited by its potential to pull in viewers.
23:36So, in the early 50s, the BBC made overtures to Billy Smart.
23:44And the showman embraced the opportunity with both hands.
23:48I think they paid us a large sum of 200 pounds for a one-hour show, you know, and we were glad to do it.
24:04Smart signed to the BBC in 1952 for a deal that would go on to last over 20 years.
24:10Chipperfields were courted by ITV and took the plunge in 1955.
24:17But not everyone was quite so easily seduced.
24:21The Bertram Mills Circus had had to be rebuilt after the impact of Music Hall.
24:27They steered clear, fearing that television could have a similar negative impact.
24:32But the arrival of television actually was a boom period for the circus in the 50s,
24:36because allowing the smarts allowed the circus to be filmed, it actually got it to a wider audience.
24:42So, in some ways, it was their best advanced publicity they could get.
24:45They didn't need someone to fly the town anymore because they had the television.
24:49The love affair between television and circus was rewarded with massive viewing figures.
24:56One Christmas, I think, we had just over 20 million viewers,
25:00and we got what they call the Silver Camera Award,
25:05which you get when you've got 20 million viewers, you get the Silver Camera.
25:09But, you know, it wasn't a true story because, quite honestly, it was more than 20 million,
25:14because it went to 30 other countries at that time, at the same time.
25:19So, you imagine you had all that 30 countries, the 20 million,
25:23I don't know how many millions we'd be talking about, but we'd be a lot of people.
25:25I actually loved it on TV almost as much as I loved it in the flesh.
25:43It was in black and white, so you're deprived of perhaps 70% of what was actually the splendour of going to the circus.
25:51The fact that, in a circus, you're in a fixed vantage point, you're watching at one angle.
25:58The TV did have that advantage of three or more cameras,
26:02which bring to life the circus from all sorts of different viewpoints.
26:08For Billy Smarts and the BBC, it was a partnership made in heaven.
26:13The next day, you had a kill at your box office, you know, if the show was good, then it was good.
26:17As a result of their success, the Smart family began to mix with Hollywood stars.
26:28Billy's son, Billy Smart Junior, became a celebrity in his own right, and a tabloid favourite.
26:34He appeared in gossip columns, which hinted at liaisons with well-known starlets.
26:38He certainly was the playboy of the circus, there's no doubt about it, he was.
26:43Among his rumoured conquests was Jane Mansfield.
26:47Well, I don't think Billy got that friendly.
26:50But she did get particularly up close and personal to one of the star acts of Smart Circus, Burma the Elephant.
26:57She would lay down, and Burma would come in to the special music.
27:05And she was so scared, she kept calling for her husband,
27:07Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, I can't do this, I can't do this.
27:13But she did do it, and she got up and she was very pleased she did it, actually.
27:18The link to the wider entertainment world helped circus appeal across all the classes.
27:28When you had a big gala show, a lot of stars used to turn up, and they'd want to take part.
27:37Even the Bertram Mills Circus allowed the cameras in to capture the Queen attending a performance in 1952.
27:44All the ambassadors used to go, all the celebrities, the celebs, the celebs of the day.
27:51I remember going one year, and Field Marshal Montgomery was there,
27:55and Winston Churchill was there, and it was very interesting.
28:01Television pushed circus to the forefront of our popular culture,
28:05but with the success came pressure.
28:09Proprietors had to work harder and harder to seek out fresh acts
28:12to keep a mass audience interested.
28:18But circus had long been a global phenomenon.
28:22There was a whole world of acts out there to choose from.
28:29Even at the height of the Cold War,
28:32international borders were no barrier for circus people,
28:35as Ronnie found out when he went to Russia.
28:38I was booking a programme for the BBC, and the BBC had the entry to get into the eastern zone,
28:45you know, the other zone.
28:47And I remember getting in the cab and getting across the border.
28:51I was so surprised, actually, to get through the word circus.
28:54We're agents for the circus and BBC, and they just led us through, actually.
28:59But anyway, we did get there, and we did see some sensational Russian acts, too, which were outstanding.
29:05They quickly snapped them up for their show.
29:09The Soviets had long valued the cultural importance of the circus.
29:14There were over 70 circus buildings in the Soviet Union,
29:17as well as a network of specialist training schools.
29:22Thousands of circus performers were employees of the state.
29:26In the years following the war, they were so keen to show off the advantages of their people's culture,
29:33that in 1956 the Moscow State Circus was dispatched to London.
29:39The fruits of the Soviet system were to be seen by all.
29:43The British, it seemed, couldn't get enough of the circus.
29:50Demand was such up and down the country that all the major circuses did their best to satisfy it by taking their shows out on tour.
30:00They took them to every town, even the UK's most northerly city.
30:04In that time, Inverness was a smallish town. It had one very, very small theatre.
30:16But here was a West End show from London that came and parked, and it was absolutely fabulous.
30:23I was blown away with it. And they came every three years after that.
30:26The arrival of the circus was a hugely exciting event for the locals, and the circus proprietors made the most of it,
30:34putting on spectacular parades to announce that they were in town.
30:37People, I think, have forgotten how important a part of a social ritual it was in this country.
30:52And the parade would be clowns preceding them, giving out flyers. They'd be followed by ladies on horseback.
31:04Occasionally, if you were very, very lucky, a lion would be in a cage, pulled along by horses.
31:10The elephants would go up Market Street. And it happened in winter, in the bleak, miserable greyness of winter.
31:23Watching the parade lived long in the memory.
31:26But one lucky teenager in 1962 was given the opportunity to take part.
31:31When the circus, Billy Smart Circus came to town, and they were asking for girls to ride the elephants from the local train station where they arrived to where they were performing.
31:50There was a catch, you had to be wearing your bathing suit, and it was the middle of winter.
31:5916th of December, to be exact.
32:03So, my mother decided that I should volunteer. So, we went down to the auditions.
32:08Well, it wasn't really an audition. It was just whoever was brave enough to do it.
32:13And I got picked. So, we had to turn up at the station.
32:18And it was freezing. We all had our coats on, but underneath our, oh, and we had to wear high heels as well.
32:25And then the elephants arrived.
32:27It was like, oh my gosh, how are we going to get up on top of them?
32:36So, the one that I was stood next to, he just put his leg up like this.
32:41And the man said to me, put your leg up.
32:43So, I hauled myself up. He had like chains around his neck. So, I got hold of the chains and just hauled myself up.
32:53And then we set off through the streets. It must have been really well advertised because there was hundreds of people watching and cheering for the circus.
33:02If you put your animals on the train, they had to walk back from the station to the circus site. And of course, that's the best publicity that you could have.
33:13I mean, the girls, we'd have about six to eight girls and they'd ride camels and do elephant riding looking gorgeous and all that sort of thing.
33:22It was fantastic. Something that I've obviously never forgotten. I've loved elephants ever since.
33:29I mean, where is children going to see 20 elephants walking along the street amongst tram cars, et cetera, which we did.
33:39If a circus parade walked through Oxford Street now, I think it would be just as mind blowing as it had been 60 years ago.
33:46But the parade wasn't all about animals. Taking a lead role would be the clown, an important figure in every circus.
33:56You could say that the clown was the linchpin of the circus. He will fill in. He will tell the jokes that keep the audience amused whilst one act goes off and the other act comes on.
34:09Whilst a lot of the focus of the circus is on exceptional human ability and consists of performers at their physical peak, the clown is portrayed as the opposite, clumsy and silly.
34:23He wears big shoes. And of course, the idea of sort of the grotesque parts of the body are enhanced. So big shoes and a big nose signifies fool.
34:37One of the most famous clowns of all time was Latvian born Coco.
34:44You like that one?
34:50He has Coco to say hello. And not being able to raise his hat does the next best thing.
34:56But in fact, he wasn't technically a clown at all.
35:00The clown is the white face. A lot of people think the clown is the guy with the red nose.
35:06The clown is the white face clown with his sparkly costume.
35:13Coco was an Auguste.
35:15The Auguste is usually the one with the red nose, which people class as the clown.
35:20And I think technically it comes from the German word, a fool, Auguste.
35:26And he's the red nose, he's the one that gets everything wrong.
35:32Clowns are one of the few circus acts who have become celebrities in their own right.
35:37This may have something to do with the fact that clowns generally served long residences with individual circuses,
35:44allowing them to build up a lasting relationship with their audience.
35:47Coco worked for decades for the Bertram Mills Circus.
35:53With the advent of television, Coco became even more popular.
35:59A friendly face with a familiar sense of humour.
36:02In the 1960s, he appeared in a campaign to teach children about road safety.
36:07But whilst TV was kind to the clown, the exposure it brought was devastating for other acts that relied on the element of surprise.
36:16Once their act had been seen by the massive TV audience, it lost its novelty and was difficult to repeat.
36:22And this wasn't the only problem that television created for the circus.
36:27As broadcasting came of age, the choice of programmes on offer increased.
36:32And with television becoming a much bigger draw, live entertainment took a bashing.
36:37The fears of Bertram Mills were proved right.
36:41The circus began to lose some of its appeal.
36:44Business did drop off during the television times, of course, when television got stronger
36:48and people were staying at home and not going out to shows.
36:53I mean, we were doing okay, but not as good as we would like to have done.
36:59The television was now a rival to the circus.
37:03And this spelt disaster for some of Britain's biggest circuses.
37:08One of the first and most dramatic casualties was the Bertram Mills Circus in 1965.
37:14And now the Rolls Royce of circuses.
37:16The greatest road show of them all has ground to a final halt here at Ascot and is selling up.
37:25This is only one tiny part of the vast wardrobe which for 35 years has gaudily clad the Bertram Mills Travelling Circus.
37:35They're all coming under the hammer here at the Bertram Mills Winter Quarters at Ascot.
37:40The big top, the really big top, just doesn't pay anymore.
37:46The tented towns are disappearing, forced out of business by the sheer economics of the 1960s.
37:53So ironically, the Bertram Mills Circus, which had refused to be televised, was one of the first victims.
37:58His son had to suffer the indignity of a public auction.
38:04Mr Mills, you're one of the joint managing directors of Bertram Mills Circus.
38:07And how do you personally feel about the end of the Travelling Circus, your own Travelling Circus?
38:12Well, having been at it for about 35 years, naturally, I'm sad that it's over.
38:20Well, does this mean the death of all Travelling Circuses, do you think?
38:25Good heavens no. Why should it?
38:27Well, if it was very costly and uneconomic for you to run, why should anybody else be able to do it economically?
38:32Well, I don't know. Maybe other people are cleverer than we are.
38:34I hope they are, because I don't want to see it die.
38:36They weren't alone. Sanga's Circus closed in 1962, and within a couple of years, another of the circus giants, Chipperfields, emigrated to South Africa.
38:48And away went my very last day as a child
38:55The day that the circus left town
39:03Even Billy Smarts parked up their caravans and gave up regular touring in 1971.
39:10I think the overhead, you know, cost so much money to move from town to town. That was a sad time, actually.
39:17It looked as if circus might be over for good.
39:21But all was not lost, and the departure of the big circuses actually opened up new opportunities for smaller circuses to get a foothold.
39:28The spirit of Bertram Mills would live on, thanks to a young outsider who, like so many before him, had fallen in love with the circus.
39:38The first circus I saw was Bertram Mills' Circus Olympia.
39:42And I just don't know, from that day, I just wanted to be the boss. And that was it.
39:47And I never really wanted to be the world's greatest juggler or a flying trapeze actor or an animal trainer.
39:51I just knew I wanted to be the boss.
39:55At the age of 15, Jerry Cottle ran away from home and, after a few years of working for other people, achieved his ambition and started his own circus in 1970.
40:08He went into business with his friend, Brian Austin.
40:11But in order to make it work, they would have to do things very differently.
40:16They're an odd pair to be in partnership.
40:20Jerry Cottle is the outfit's tycoon, an ex-grammar school boy, the son of a stockbroker.
40:25He's the business manager of the public relations department, the publicity and advertising division.
40:31I'll just put it up the corner there.
40:33Tell everybody about it, won't you?
40:35It's a very good show.
40:37Enjoy it.
40:39We took a show out. We had an old tent that we bought in Ireland.
40:47We had a limited budget. We didn't have any facilities.
40:51They were determined to make a go of it.
40:58There's still a lot of heavy work before the show can be put on.
41:02Seats to be carried in and put up, cables to lay, lights to fix, the amplifier to rig, the props to check.
41:08Then there's the generator to service, a trailer wheel to change and diesel oil to fetch.
41:16It was very hard work.
41:18Yeah, it was difficult, but I just think we just did it. We had to do it. We went out. You know, circuses traditionally never started till Easter.
41:26But you know, we needed the money. We needed the turnover, not always the profit.
41:29So, you know, we'd start late February, half term in February, and the weather was terrible. I got pictures of his knee deep in snow.
41:36You know, a tent about to collapse, but we didn't think of anything else. It's what we wanted to do.
41:41Life on the road for a small circus was tough, unlike the big circuses that had come before they did everything themselves to make ends meet.
41:50It was relentless work.
41:53When we were doing the one day stands in the early days, you'd get up about five o'clock, you'd drive to the next town, you'd put the tent up.
42:00You'd get ready for letting people in the door selling tickets or starting the generator.
42:05One caution and three children.
42:09In between, you'd practice if you wanted to practice.
42:12You ready? Right.
42:15And then you'd do the shows at five o'clock.
42:20Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome to the circus. It's on with the show. Here comes the clown.
42:29Two pieces of string in the magic bag, and they come out tight.
42:32Here! Thank you!
42:35I'd better get off the female yogis company.
42:37Hang down, boys and girls!
42:40Oh, I say!
42:42Even after the show, there wasn't any rest.
42:46What have you done with that bowl, Brian?
42:49Everything had to be packed up before bed, ready to move on again in the morning.
42:56It was non-non-stop. I mean, I must have been a terrible husband because I just worked.
42:59You know, I wasn't really a great father in that respect.
43:02Hello!
43:03Oh!
43:05Come on in!
43:07On me, Debbie!
43:11For small circuses moving around from site to site on a daily basis, living conditions were fairly basic.
43:17There's no electric on all day long. You have to run generators for that, and there wasn't the silent generators like there is now. You know, there wasn't the washing machines.
43:27Every town you're in is different, so you've then got to find the shops or the supermarket.
43:32Another crucial aspect to life on the road was ensuring that the children were able to get an education.
43:42If you were born into the circus, life was anything but ordinary.
43:46A typical day would be the circus would move in the morning, so we'd get up at 6 o'clock, we'd drive through to the next town, probably only moving 15 or 20 miles.
43:56We'd arrive in the town, and my mum's first job was to find the local school.
44:00When you arrive in Coventry on a Sunday night, you've got to find a new school at 8.30 in the morning on a Monday morning in a city like Coventry.
44:08You know, and there is kind of some help for it, but it's not easy.
44:12And I actually went to some 350 different primary schools.
44:19Schooling often had to be fitted in wherever it could.
44:25They're usually very hard workers, circus kids. They're used to kind of erratic hours.
44:29And in between performing and schoolwork, there was practising.
44:34Mum would come and pick me up at 3 o'clock, and then it would be straight back, have a sandwich and a glass of milk,
44:40and then I'd have to get changed into my clown clothes, and we'd have shows at 5 o'clock.
44:44I'd do the 5 o'clock show, the 7.30 show.
44:47Invariably, children born on the road have the wanderlust in their blood, and stay in the circus game all their lives.
44:53Children often follow their parents into the same act.
44:58When you're born into clown aristocracy, the boots are very big to fill.
45:04My father was Charlie Cavalli. Carletto, he's been known in France, Carletto.
45:09And my mother was Violet Fratellini, from the Fratellini clowns.
45:16Charlie was born in Milan to a travelling circus family of French origin.
45:22He began his performing career at the age of 7.
45:25He went on to become an international star.
45:28In due course, his son, Charlie Junior, joined him in his act.
45:31I did laugh with my father. I had nine years with him, where I started off as a stooge, and I ended up doing the white face, and I laughed.
45:40He's a backer.
45:47He would do things like, his noses were made out of putty.
45:51And he used to varnish him, and redden him, varnish him every day.
45:54And some days, he would get a dead fly, because there was animals there, and stick it on his nose.
45:58Now, you walk in the ring, nobody could see it.
46:02But when you're working very close to somebody, he'd be going...
46:05Like that. And you just wanted...
46:07All you wanted to do was pull this fly off.
46:13Oh, I got the other one.
46:17He just did joke after joke after joke.
46:20Charlie Cavalli had a long-reaching career, and performed every summer season at Blackpool Tower Circus for 40 years.
46:29Many circus performers lead much more transitory lives.
46:33Acts from all over the world come together for maybe just one season, and then go their separate ways.
46:39But for the time they are together, circus life is all-encompassing and thoroughly international.
46:46You can have this kind of extraordinary sense of an extended family and a small, supportive network.
46:52And it's great, and really good fun, and very sweet to see lots of different nationalities and people who might, you know, be culturally, politically opposed to each other just all getting on and having a nice time.
47:05You just think, why can't the world be like a circus? Just get on.
47:10Circus people are a distinct community. Over the years they've even developed their own means of communication.
47:17We have a proper language, a circus language, you know. I can speak to my kids in here in front of you, and you haven't got a clue what we're talking about, you know.
47:26So, you know, you have this own language, which is a mixture of Italian, a mixture of Latin.
47:31Romany, a little bit of Romany in it, I don't know why, a lot of kind of army slang.
47:36For instance, you would call dogs buffers.
47:39Munjari is food.
47:40Kind of Nanti Polari, don't talk to that person there.
47:43The ground where the circus sets up on is called the toba.
47:46Denari is money.
47:48Women are mozzies.
47:50These jags are the Noah's Ark, which means the person there is a miserable sod.
47:53And I could go on and on and on, there is a complete glossary of circus terms which only circus people would know.
47:58If you had an outsider, they used to go, pfft, he's a josser.
48:02And a lot of times, the jossers had to prove themselves more.
48:07If you were from a circus family, you accepted, oh, yeah, he's from a circus family, he'd be all right.
48:11If you were a josser, you had to really prove yourself, and it was hard.
48:15Yet it was often the jossers, or outsiders, who had come in and turned around the fortunes of the circus.
48:22Whether Bertram Mills or Billy Smart, and now Jerry Cottle, too, was reaping the benefits of all his hard work.
48:32Tickets, please.
48:34The big top was paying again.
48:38Those children who had grown up in the golden age of the circus in the 50s and 60s were now eager to take their own children along to share the experience they'd had.
48:51A whole new generation were experiencing the thrill of the circus.
48:55But proprietors, like Philip Gandy, tried not to repeat the mistakes of the past by keeping the circus on a manageable scale.
49:07We actually made a conscious decision never to buy wild animals.
49:12We didn't want to be stuck with very expensive animals that perhaps we couldn't move on and wouldn't want to move on,
49:17because they did become part of the family.
49:19So we hired them in, and because the bigger circus had closed, we were able to hire Billy Smart's elephants.
49:23We hired Mary Chipperfield's lions and tigers.
49:27So we didn't have to have that expenditure, which enabled us to buy property and invest in other things.
49:34Success bred competition, and circus owners found creative ways to make sure they gained the upper hand.
49:41Oh, the rivalry was quite nasty, really, but good fun. I don't mind that at all.
49:49Oh, no, no, we had absolute what we call billion wars, taking each other's posters down and all that nonsense.
49:55I remember another time, my nephew, we were having trouble with his other circus, so they'd had a day off, and they came over to us, and then Bo took them out drinking, and got them completely paralytic.
50:07He got them arrested, and the next day they missed the show. The police didn't let them go until mid-afternoon. They had a long way to go back.
50:13But those things don't happen very often, but they do make it fun, but it was quite nasty.
50:19In the coming years, Gerry and the other showmen came up against a problem that was not so easy to deal with.
50:25The debate about performing animals that had had little impact back in the 1920s would resurface.
50:30Reacting to mounting public opinion, some local authorities stopped allowing performing animals on their land.
50:37Animal circuses did survive, but this unofficial ban began to spread.
50:42One by one, all the major circus sites in the centre of the towns were being closed to us because the local authority would pass a ban saying no performing animals.
50:51So gradually, the big animal circuses were being forced out of the towns onto sites which probably weren't as lucrative, weren't as visual, but they just weren't as good for business.
51:00And I think people's taste was changing as well.
51:04An official ban on wild animal acts finally surfaced in 2011.
51:09As much as I loved seeing bears on bicycles, it's not what bears are designed to do.
51:15In the 80s and 90s, the traditional circus in Britain was suffering.
51:20It had become uneconomical yet again.
51:23Being the entrepreneurs they are, circus showmen looked for new opportunities elsewhere.
51:27Times were pretty tough and I was always quite adventurous, you know, and I mean, we went off to the Middle East, Bahrain and Oman, you know, then a bit later on we went off to Hong Kong and Malaysia and Singapore.
51:38Philip Gandy also looked for untapped markets.
51:43We sort of identified that where we wanted to be was where there weren't circuses.
51:48So we looked at the Middle East, which didn't have a tradition of circuses, but had this culture which was becoming westernised and looking for the West.
51:55And we had a huge contract for the world family in Saudi Arabia and we took not one but two circuses simultaneously to Saudi Arabia.
52:04We took a 4,000 seat big top in one city for one prince and a 2,000 seat big top in another city for second prince.
52:10Whilst the classic circus still appealed to international audiences, the British had grown disenchanted with it.
52:18But in 1990 audiences in the UK were treated to something altogether different.
52:24I'd never seen anything like it.
52:31It was men wearing leather jackets, basically having huge chainsaws, dropping down on steel wires.
52:42Our Chaos was created in France by Pierrot Bidon.
52:46He took the circus and reimagined it for the modern era.
52:51Our Chaos was dangerous, very dangerous.
52:56But in this new world, it was the chainsaw and not the lion that would strike fear into the audience.
53:03The globe of death, billed as one of the most dangerous acts in the circus world.
53:08Two motorcyclists passed within inches of each other at 60 miles per hour.
53:12The last time it was performed in Britain, a man died.
53:15This edgy, all-human circus embodied the idea of a circus where physical ability was pushed to the extreme.
53:22It appealed to a new audience of young adults.
53:27Our Chaos toured throughout the UK, culminating with a sell-out residence on Clapham Common for 12 weeks.
53:34It was chaotic, it was mad, it was amazing.
53:36Our Chaos had succeeded in transforming circus into a new kind of spectacle.
53:43But it wasn't until 1996 that, thanks to the arrival of another foreign production, this modern version of circus would itself be refashioned for a mainstream audience.
53:55State-funded Canadian circus Cirque du Soleil had a distinctive artistic approach, which combines street entertainment with traditional acrobatics.
54:10They came to the Royal Albert Hall in London, and that's when people started to take notice of contemporary circus.
54:16The fact that this circus appeared in the Albert Hall gave it a theatrical stamp and put it on a par with the other arts, raising the status of circus in many people's eyes.
54:30People who would not go to a tent to see a traditional circus, suddenly there was Cirque du Soleil, and it was everywhere.
54:38This was performance theatre, and an unashamedly grown-up experience.
54:47All the papers, you know, all the colour supplements had massive picture spreads on them.
54:56Cirque du Soleil has been phenomenally successful, expanding rapidly.
55:00They have now performed across the globe to an estimated audience of close to 100 million people.
55:14Cirque du Soleil have had a massive hand in creating a kind of global circus that everybody finds very enthralling.
55:22And that was sort of almost the start of a huge explosion in interest in circus.
55:32Circus is riding the crest of a new wave.
55:36In a world of computer-generated images, it seems the thrill of watching what real human beings are really capable of achieving is stronger than ever.
55:45And its impact is being felt right across the arts.
55:48You see circus absolutely everywhere.
55:54I don't think there is a performing art now which doesn't have circus artists in it, be it ballet, or be it rock concerts.
56:00The demand for circus performers is at an all-time high.
56:07There were two big pop tours out recently, Take That and Britney Spears, both called Circus, both with a huge amount of circus artists.
56:14Alongside this corporate entertainment market, there's even room for the emergence of local, small-scale heritage circuses, like the one run by Nell Gifford.
56:30Once again, a new circus is the brainchild of an outsider, a josser.
56:38Oxford graduate Gifford, who first ran away to join the circus, had 18.
56:44Just like the creation of Astley's first circus back in 1768, it's her passion for horses that started the whole thing off.
56:56The whole kind of notion of horses in theatre, I just find it really, really interesting.
57:01A horse's presence, it really creates a sense of occasion, like a sense of adventure.
57:12It's probably exactly what a small family circus in the 1930s was like.
57:18Heritage Circus taps straight into a deep-rooted nostalgia for our rural past and for communal experience.
57:25I think that the excitement of the circus arriving in a village is completely undiminished.
57:33I mean, you know, still now we get people who'll come out and have picnics and watch us putting the tent up and watch us taking the tent down.
57:40Or, like, children standing on doorsteps, like, watching the circus wagons arriving.
57:45It's genuinely exciting.
57:47The success of Giffords brings the story full circle.
57:51It proves that people are just as keen as ever to traipse over muddy fields to see the circus.
57:56The circus has got an incredible future.
57:59It's part of a whole enthusiasm and appetite for exciting live stuff.
58:06And, in fact, I think that the more sort of digital our experience of the world is,
58:09then the more that that live experience will also be sought after by the public.
58:18The circus has managed to fight off every threat that has come its way,
58:22from the music hall to television and the digital age.
58:28Incredibly, it has survived to leave its magical mark on all our imaginations.
58:33Stay with us. We're turning back the clock to 1980 here on BBC4 next.
58:44Top of the Pops in just a moment.
58:45See you then, in just a moment.
59:06.
Be the first to comment