My run in the Whitehall theatre came to an end in early October and I went to Malta for a months work in a wonderful night club run by an old friend, I took my girlfriend with me and from the start the trip was eventful, in those days to get to Heathrow you took an airport bus from Victoria Station, a little nervous of flying we had a few drinks to calm our nerves, by the time we got to the Terminal we were as calm as newts .
We were put into the VIP lounge at Heathrow had a few more Chardonnays and found out that travelling on the same plane was a well known Magician /Illusionist whose main trick was the famous ‘Bullet Catch’, now this was ’73 and the latest threat was plane hi jacking , (it’s how Cuba got a tourist industry) so security measures were strict including the transportation of the guns and bullets for the Magicians act, now in those days there were no moving walkways , jetways or other ways to get from Terminal to the plane just a walk from the building across the tarmac to the front for first class or the rear for everyone else so on this particular evening approaching the front of the plane was a line-up led by the cabin crew, the pilot at the front carrying the gun, a steward following with the box for the bullets , the magician, his assistants and bringing up the rear me and Mary staggering ever so slightly , I can’t adequately describe the different looks we got from the passengers queueing at the rear door waiting to board but I can guarantee that we were the subject of many stories when they got back home . There was more drinking on the plane but the biggest surprise was to come at Valetta airport where a press conference had been arranged to herald the arrival of both me and the magician, he was appearing at the other famous Maltese nightspot the Buskett roadhouse , around the press office were posters advertising the two different clubs mine was black letters on a dayglo green background with the following text
———————————————————————– THE NIGRET NIGHT CLUB AND RESTAURANT
IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MALTA
A SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE
by
DAVID KONYOT
* A STAR IN LONDON AND MOST PLACES IN ENGLAND *
————————————————————————————— —-
It was probably around then I sobered up and started to re-consider my future.
Malta was an absolute blast, we had a beautiful apartment and Paul , the club owner, gave me use of his Chevrolet Camaro while we were there, I worked about 3 nights a week mostly to British army Soldiers
and Staff who were stationed on the island so a good time was had by all.
But,
there’s always a ‘But ‘
before I left for Malta Terry and I had another of our conversations about my future, I had been thinking quite a lot about this during the West End run and a certain amount of realism and logical thinking had entered my brain, I was hoping it would leave quite soon but it resulted in an honest and in my opinion a true assessment of my situation, I made a mental list of my pro’s and cons, on the plus side I could sing, dance, do good impressions, tell a joke plus play a couple of instruments and over the previous 9 years I had built up a decent reputation as a good all-round entertainer, privately I had a decent flat in Hendon, a new Ford Capri and money in the bank, on the con side the cabaret/club circuit was changing and working alone was not what I wanted any more. Another option was to try to get into musicals and maybe dramatic theatre but that was a part of show business that always had a 80% unemployment rate and I liked to eat so there was a lot to think about .
While I had been working at the Star and Garter I had got a strange phone call from an old friend Micheal Austin.
We had known each other since we were kids and he was one of the few Circus friends I’d kept vaguely in touch with over the years, The phone call was to offer me a job with a Circus he was taking out, Co incidentally it came on the same day I got the part for Pyjama Tops so
I politely declined.
This was 1973 and mobile phones were not around yet and for Michael to trace me had taken some effort and I wanted to thank him for thinking of me so when I got back from Malta I found out that he was working for Chipperfields Circus at the Bingley Hall in Birmingham so I drove up to see him , a journey that would have life changing consequences.
What happened over the next week was strange, I could call it Serendipity, Fate, Happenstance, Re-alignment of the Stars or just life, It started when Gordon Howes got a sore throat, Gordon was a wild animal trainer but was Ringmaster for this winter season of the circus and for obvious reasons a sore throat is not a good thing for a Ringmaster to have, Had I not been there that would have been the end of the story but I was and it wasn’t, so someone suggested that because I was a comedian/ entertainer and was used to talking in public I could be RM for a day or two until Gordon got better, This was eventually proposed to me and I said OK but I only have my day clothes so I’ll do the announcing from behind the curtains which was fine until Gordon’s daughter Barbara came out with his Red Tailcoat so that was that .
I did a couple of shows and went back home but returned the following week because it had been fun and the company was good, as I was wandering around Dickie Chipperfield Jnr called me into his waggon and offered me a job as Ringmaster for the upcoming season, without a moments hesitation I said yes.
Over the last 46 years I have thought about that decision and it’s ramifications many times, but never, ever, not for a moment, have I regretted it .
As I drove back to London I realised that my flat would have to go but that wouldn’t be a problem I still had my caravan parked at Rosaires farm, I would need a proper Ringmasters Red Coat so I would have to
visit my tailor, yes I had a tailor, a lovely guy in Hammersmith who made my dinner suits and working costumes, I still had a couple of months work on the clubs and Chipperfields didn’t start for a while so I had time to make all the arrangements.
For quite a few years despite the uncertainty of show-business I had worked regularly, I had been paid well plus the last couple of years in London and my stint in the Whitehall theatre had pushed me way up on the salary scale so the fact that I’d just accepted a job for £45 a week was a little surprising, and there was still the conversation with Terry to be had, I thought it would be uncomfortable but it was the opposite, he agreed that the cabaret scene was undergoing a dramatic change, with smaller stages to accommodate more seating the predominance of Organ and Drums duos replacing live bands of 5/6 musicians and with the amount of comedians and impressionists on TV it was hard to keep up with new material that an audience hadn’t seen the night before, Terry accepted my decision with his normal good grace, he was and still is a very good friend and over the years we kept
in touch he now runs a very good swing band raising funds for the British Legion, we actually did some shows with him a couple of years ago which was fun and an enjoyable trip down memory lane.
Before the season started I arrived at Chipperfields winter quarters nr Chipping Norton a place I remembered from my childhood, they had bought the farm in the late 50’s when the show was at Bingley Hall for Xmas, My father was in charge of the Elephants at the time and had journeyed there to check out the stabling for the animals, I was with him so we were the first to see the now famous or infamous farm , co incidentally that show saw the first “Grimble Clowns ‘ the story that I understood was they had employed a troupe of continental clowns who had backed out at the last minute and Uncle Dick Chipperfield had come up with the idea of getting my Dad, who was a good clown, to put some sort of act together The previous season dad had worked in the show with Richard Hearne the famous ( for anyone over 60 ) Mr Pastry, For the advertising posters there had to be a name so Uncle Dick came up with ‘The Grimble Clowns’ the act was my Dad , Tommy Fossett, my mum and Bill Smee who was the shows signwriter / painter. From this mix came a very good clown act and a name that Tommy Fossett later took over with outstanding success, many years later Tommy was the inspiration for me to start my own musical clown act.
My Father was, in my opinion, one of the best clowns I ever saw, he was also very good with animals, if he had been as funny and as good with his family our lives would have been very different.
OK back to the timeline, it’s coming up to Easter ’74 and I have arrived at the Chipperfield winter Quarters , there was a lot going on and somewhere in the middle of the lot going on I got a job fixing the lights on the transport, after 40+ years on I know my way around a tool kit and I can wire a plug but in ’74 I knew sod-all so off I went to and auto shop in oxford bought a book and a whole load of auto electrics went back to the farm and gave in the bill to Auntie Myrtle (Mrs Dick Chipperfield) it was then I learnt an important lesson , Circuses don’t like to spend money ! I’ll emphasise that CIRCUSES DON’T LIKE TO SPEND MONEY !!!!!!!!.
That evening slowly but surely my caravan filled up with people until there some playing cards others talking and drinking there was a hum of chatter and laughter from everywhere and I realised what had been
missing from my life for a long time .
The cabaret circuit meant a different town and a different club each week you made friends along the way but they were transitory, a six week panto or a decent summer season was good for flirting and a couple of parties but then it was over and off you went again , In my caravan on that evening in that far flung desolate piece of middle England I laughed and enjoyed myself more than I had for many years and made friends that I still have to this day, a confirmation that my decisions was good .
The work of lights on the transport was taken very seriously , at least by me , at the time I didn’t know of the reputation that Chipperfields had about their transport so I carried on regardless. Every day at some point John Chipperfield jnr would pass by whatever lorry I was working on or under, he’d stop and say “it’ll all end in tears “ day after day very quietly he’d just appear and repeat “It’ll all end in tears “ a couple of days before we set out for the season all the vehicles were done, any lorry could be coupled up to any waggon and the lights would work, my job here was done now I could buckle down to the new challenge of being a RingMaster. On the day we set out, the lead load, an Albion tractor with two trailers, was driven by Dickie jnr, as he exited the farm he turned right instead of left and scraped every light off the right hand side of the load and – you guessed it, standing behind me was John jnr who looked at me and said , very quietly “I told you it would end in tears” I loved John jnr like a brother, we had met over the years at Circus re-unions and always got on, he had a dry sense of humour loved Neil Diamond and not a day went by that we didn’t laugh over something or nothing , Sadly he was taken from us a few years ago re-inforcing the saying that the good die young , in Johns case way too young.
Jim Stockley gets a whole paragraph to himself, another one of the Chipperfields family his Dad, Jim snr had been the transport manager on the show at the same time my dad was there and they were good friends as their sons would be a few years later, his mum auntie Marjorie became my surrogate mother she was a wonderful lady with a wicked sense of humour a constant twinkle in her eye and an ear that would listen to any problem with sympathy and a cup of tea. OK back to Jim and the rest of his paragraph , I never saw him flustered , , during and after any crisis Jim was a steady balanced figure who never ran or seemed to hurry anywhere, his long lanky figure would lope, yes thats the word I’m gonna use, he would lope
into view and generally sort things out or not as the case may be, his sense of humour was just as sharp as john but a little more subtle, in his later years he has turned out to be something of a historian, he knows and has learned lots about the family and their ups and downs through the generations and is the go-to authority on all things Chipperfield , he lives in S.A and one of the great joys of social media is the ability to be able to connect with those friends and family who are spread throughout the world, Jim and I meet regularly on FB, the last time we met face to face was a few years ago when he was visiting the UK and we were both driving around the M25, with phone calls and sat-navs we met up on a slip road nr gatwick and had a few minutes of re-union and like all good friendships the years in between slipped away for a few moments before we split to go our seperate ways.
We opened the season in Basingstoke with a strong but temporary programme, two of the acts wouldn’t arrive for a couple of weeks, Visa’s, work permits, travel arrangements etc made life hard for travelling performers, this was 1974 before the EU and freedom of movement made life easier, ( we have now left the EU and are back in those dark ages )
My approach to being a Ringmaster was the same as when I was a compere except instead of a Dinner Suit I wore a Red Tailcoat, I love people especially when they are together and called an audience and I liked to talk to them and not at them. The comedy in the show was handled by Charlie Bale ( Jacko Fosset for the first couple of weeks) and the Enos family, Phil with his comedy car, Colin and Rudi doing reprises, luckily we all got on well together and had lots of laughs both in and out of the ring, Phil’s wife Doreen had been my babysitter when she worked on Fossetts circus with my parents, my relationship with the Enos family was to take on more importance many years later, you’ll read about it in later chapters if you stick around and I’d recommend that you stick around, it’s more fun than watching re-runs of TV sit-coms.
Back to the rain , not until Saturday night did I realise the significance of the weeks downpours , these were the days of Lord Chamberlain when Circuses and some other forms of live entertainment couldn’t work on Sundays so Saturdays comprised of driving my caravan through to the next ground , coming back changing into my RM outfit wherever
there was a space do 3 shows pull down get into my 2nd load which was the Crocodile bus, drive through to the next town get up Sunday and build it all up again , fun, fun, fun, all the way, I had never done a pull down on a big show, the Circus in Wales that I referred to in Chapter 1 (bet you wish you’d read it now ) was a 1 pole small tent about 60ft across and was easy work, most of you reading this who have any circus experience will have grown up in a world with Plastic tents , winches , forklifts all of which makes the actual manhandling a lot easier, Chipperfields was a big show with a huge canvas tent and on that Saturday night it was getting heavier with each drop of rain, describing the whole pulldown will probably bring on a migraine but suffice to say at 03.00 am Sunday we were still rolling up the sections of the tent by hand.
About midnight Dickie’s brother in law Dave Thomas , who was and still is a huge Everton FC supporter and the word ‘huge’ doesn’t adequately describe his love and adoration of the Blue side of Liverpool, suddenly ran into the middle of this mayhem of wet canvas , mud, skidding
lorries and muddy skidding people and shouted, nay screamed across to Dickie “Dickie Dickie, I’ve got to go back to the farm , It’s really urgent” everybody stopped and looked at him , “I’ve left my Everton tie in my old waggon and I’ve got to go back and get it “.One bright funny moment in a tough wet night, eventually we managed to extricate ourselves from what had become a huge morass of brown windsor soup by which time it was morning again.
Over the next weeks I became used to a totally different lifestyle and realised how readily I had been accepted by the community, many of them had known me as a child or we were related in some way and most of us were of a similar age , I wrote somewhere that with the shared talent we had between us we could have done anything but we spent most of our time laughing and joking and there wasn’t a situation that we couldn’t turn into humour, much of it was directed at Dickie Jnr who was an affable character but not a ‘joiner in’ , I think he felt the huge responsibility of his name and what had gone before under the Chipperfield banner. We had no such restrictions, very few nights went by when there wasn’t something happening somewhere in somebody’s waggon, usually John Jnr’s , card games , listening to LP’s, telling jokes, drinking and generally having a good time, in this manner the season rolled merrily along.
All went well until we got to Chelmsford .
The normal build-up routine was that Mike Freeman his brother Dave and I got up and set about putting the Kingpoles up , at the same time Jim Stockley, John Jnr, Tommy and Charles would build-up the stable tents , sort out the wild animal waggon line-up and the Zoo in general, when the poles were up I went for breakfast while the tent was going up and came back to set the ringfence , bandstand and get everything ready for the first show. That was normal– until Chelmsford !
During the season a new tent had been ordered and had arrived a few days previously, unlike most circus tents at the time which were made in Germany by a firm called Strohmier this one had been made in Chester by a firm which normally built marquees. It was a different configuration from the 4 Pole canvas tent we were used to, this one was a 6 pole, 4 king poles 2 queen poles ,one on the left one on the right , from above it would have a diamond shape, this meant a more complicated rigging system for the wire cables , the fabric for the tent was new and was supposed to be resistant to tearing and ripping which was always a problem with canvas tents especially older ones. As far as we knew the tent was not going to be used until the next season but we had now been told that we were going to put it up in Chelmsford, hey ho, co-incidentally during the pull down on the Saturday Dickie had driven the seating waggons out , a job normally done by the Freeman boys and while taking the last one out he ripped a great hole in the old tent which was in the way of being a ‘fait accompli’ there was now no choice ,the Green Monster had to go up . Also taking place on the Monday in Chelmsford was Colin Enos’s wedding to Dorette , an event to which we had all been invited and were looking forward to with great eagerness especially the party in the evening. The build-up didn’t start off well, Dickie took charge of putting the poles up and not to put to fine a point on it he didn’t have his finest hour, after we had put them up and down 3 times due to the rigging being wrong the 4th time we left them up and re rigged by climbing up the poles and changing the shackles in situ .I say we, from my memory it was mainly me, Alex Storey and Charles, by midday the poles were up , hoo-bloody-ray !
The tent presented other problems as we got it up you could see the stitch-holes where the makers had gone off line on the seams and lacing it up around the 6 poles was damned near impossible ,Oh and did I mention that it had rained all day ?
The tent was up and the seats were in very late in the day and everyone was knackered I told the Ringboys to have a lay-in on the
Monday morning just to make sure that the seats were clean and tidy and I’d be back from the wedding at 2.00 pm and then we could set the props, ,sawdust the ring and the front of the Box Office and still have plenty of time to be ready for a 4.45 pm show. I actually arrived back at around 1.00 to find that Dickie had had the boys working from the morning doing those same jobs , I said that it was silly to do the Box Office too early as the rain would mess it up by showtime and also the boys deserved a break as they along with us had had a stressful weekend, we had a few words during which Dickie recommended that I seek out a job involving sex and travel, further advising me to follow the Biblical entreaty to “Go Forth and Multiply “.
It was a small ground and the caravans were quite close to each other and I couldn’t easily get mine out so I said I’d need some help to which Dickie said anyone helping me could ****** off as well which resulted in
the crazy sight of the artists and men from the show lifting my little home and carrying it to the gate . I was sad that it ended the way it did but I wasn’t sorry because I wasn’t prepared too be verbally abused by anyone , I had taken enough abuse from my father to last a lifetime and wouldn’t tolerate it any more , during build-ups and pull downs there’s a lot of shouting and yelling but most of time it’s an emotional outburst and not aimed at anyone in particular and yes, I’m as guilty as everyone else, sometime it just gets too much and you have to explode but in my experience most of the time it’s deflated with humour and is not a huge problem ,
It’s the measured abusive response of someone who has run out of a logical or convincing argument that proves to be the proverbial ‘Straw that breaks the camels back ‘ for me . My greatest teacher in this was my stepdad Ron as I wrote in Chapter 2 ( go back and read it again in case you missed it ) ! .
I went back to Rosaires farm wondering what to do next, quite a few Circuses were around so I went visiting and had a couple of offers for the next season which was 5 months away so I worked a few clubs to take me through the winter while I made my mind up, ! 1975 saw me with Robert Brothers Circus , Michael Austin was on the show and when
I arrived I found he was in Viet-Nam with a boxing Kangaroo , he got all the good jobs !
This was a very different show, more of a ‘them and us’ between the directors and the artists, once again I was in a strange position because they were from the Fossett family the same as me so we were cousins a couple of times removed but I had spent a decade away from
Circus and in an age without social media or instant communication it was a case of ‘out of sight out of mind’ . My responsibility as RM was also a lot less, I had no control over the show itself, it started when Bobby Roberts Snr gave me the signal to start , the ringboy’s answered to the family not too me and I was not involved in the actual programming of the show all things that were part of my job on Chipperfields.
I managed to steer around the in-house politics which is a part of every circus and probably every business in some form or another and the season progressed fairly well .
I bought Michael Austins 4 wheeled showmans waggon which was more comfortable than my little one and a few weeks into the season I heard that Timm Delbosq a friend from my youth was back in the UK from a couple of years in Scandinavia and was working odd days for a small circus not far from us, Bobby jnr and I went over to see him and he was doing a spinning plate act in a one pole tent , all through his act he kept looking at the pole in the middle of the ring until finally he grabbed a plate , ran out of the ring after a couple of seconds came back in and shook the pole as though there was a plate on top , funny gag , end of the act he took all the plates off the props in the ring took a bow and as he walked out he kicked the king pole,== a plate dropped from the top and he caught it ! Funniest thing I’d seen for years , after the show Bobby had a chat with him which resulted in Timm coming to work with us, If I remember he took over presenting the wild animals , he was and still is an accomplished animal trainer and he recently retired after an illustrious career working for some of the most prestigious circuses in Europe. Before his return to the UK he had a burgeoning film career in Scandinavia but gave it up for his love of circus . Anyway he arrived on RBC ( Robert Brothers Circus, acronyms are easier than the full thing ) with no transport so he moved in with me for the rest of the season, It was a bit like ‘Men Behaving Badly’ but awkward if we chatted up any girls after the show, two sex-bombs– one caravan , OK I’ll wait for the laughter to die down and carry on when you’re ready.
The next season Timm had his own transport which was great and made ‘dating’ easier ,
For the winter RBC had two shows out, one went to Spain as ‘Circo de Inglaterra’ the other went to Leith in Edinburgh , you know Leith, where the polithe dithmitheth you ? ( another one for the oldies ) Timm went to Scotland with my lorry and waggon , I went to Spain and 46 years later I still don’t know who got the better deal .
PART: 7
So we’re off to Spain , lovely sunny Spain, Land of Flamenco, Sangria, Senoritas, Tapas, Chocolat y churros and all the rest, well not so much, from the moment we left RBC winter quarters things didn’t go well, I was driving a short AEC Mandator with a trailer full off seats, poles,ring-fence, props, basically everything, the load was grossly overweight and on the way to Southampton docks I managed to half jacknife the whole thing and bent the drawbar, everyone else buggered off but Michael Austin stayed behind with me to get it repaired, We got help from Jimmy Chipperfield and had a nice couple of days staying at his home while we got the job done,which was the best bit of the whole exercise. We met up with the rest of the convoy in France so that we could cross the France /Spain Border together, Britain had only recently joined the common market so protocols were still being observed which usually meant long waits for the paperwork to be examined by both sides of the. The Elephants and Ponies had a contract for the Xmas Circus in Madrid and we were the rest of the RBC circus into Spain with the intention of touring the south coast with ‘Circo de Inglaterra’ ( RBC with a Spanish accent ), That was the plan and you know what happens with plans !!
Logically we should have opened up in the first Spanish town we got to but after crossing the border we then drove another 1000km to the South coast , with a stop in Madrid on the way, I say we, I very nearly didn’t make it.
Going through any town in a convoy is always risky, Nowadays with Sat Navs it’s easy peasy, but this was rush hour in Madrid in 1975 , I was last in the line so problems arose, I could see the elephant waggon about half a mile ahead and it turned right onto a big piece of ground which was presumably where we were going to park for the night so I just carried on, The traffic was horrendous and slow when all of a sudden a Spanish Police officer jumped onto the running board of my tractor and shouted “Ve, Ve, Mas Rapido” which I , at the time didn’t understand , I thought he was welcoming me to Spain and hoped I would enjoy it’s countryside and be sure to visit it’s many places of beauty , I was wrong , how did I know I was wrong you ask , and even if you didn’t ask I’m going to tell you , I knew I was wrong ‘cos he POINTED A BLOODY GUN AT ME ! You can believe me I ‘Ve,Ve’d as rapido as I could Rapido, we kept going straight for a while until we got past the
main traffic , me desperately trying to remember the way back to the where the rest had turned off , As suddenly as he had arrived the policeman shouted “Basta” which I presumed was either stop or “would you like coffee” I stopped and he jumped down off the
running board stepped into the road and did the scene that you see in all Cop movies, pointed his gun at a car coming up the road and when it stopped got in and buggered off .
So recap , I’m a few miles from where I should be and I’m facing the wrong way so I drive until I see a piece of waste ground so I drive on and on the way out get stuck, not badly but I didn’t want it to get worse so I uncoupled the trailer, turned the tractor round so as to couple it from the front but the trailer still wouldn’t move so I uncoupled again got on the road and drove back , by this time it’s safe to say that I was mildly aggrieved and my mood didn’t get any better when I got back to the ground and found everyone in one of the caravans drinking tea , I had a small hissy fit explaining what had happened complete with expletives , details signs and interpretive dance moves , declaring that for me Spain could go away and take it’s police with it especially the fascist with the gun and the Starsky and Hutch impression . Michael calmed me down enough to explain where the trailer was and said OK lets go back and sort it out , He got the land rover and I said you’ll need more than that the trailer is really stuck, don’t worry said Michael, so I didn’t, we got back and I coupled up the trailer again knowing it was futile when I heard a whooshing sound , that was Michael emptying the Brake air tank on the trailer , those of you who have driven big stuff will now be giggling at my stupidity ,the rest of you just be content with the fact that I felt a complete pratt.! In my defence I had just had a Star Pistol next to my head for about three miles which tends to upset your equilibrium and turn your thinking capabilities to jelly . Suffice to say all these years later it’s one of the first topics of discussion whenever the trip to Spain comes up .
The rest of the tour was eventful but the business was awful and it came to a head when we got to a site which was a football ground on a single track road with a small gate and 2 concrete huts as payboxes on either side . Michael and I were always the last two loads he with the tent artic and me with my tractor, and now 2 trailers , Oh I forgot to mention that we had got a booking
office from a Spanish circus which was a small 4 wheeler with Ackerman steering , if you ever had a go cart or a pedal car you’ll know what that is , enough to say if you went over about 25mph it would start to tango all over the road, even uphill, thats why we were always the last. Anyway we arrived at said ground and realised we wouldn’t get through the gate with our loads , the others were walking the ground marking out where the tent , stables etc would go so Michael and I tagged onto the group occasionally mentioning that we couldn’t get into the ground but not being heard , this went on for a while until Michael suddenly erupted , now this is a man who speaks quietly but is always listened to because he’s well respected and he’s been around a while so when he raised his voice everyone stopped and turned , very slowly he explained the problem , what followed was a Monty Python sketch various solutions were mooted among them strapping to steel cables aroung the concrete huts and pulling them down , finding another place to enter and take down the hedge and bushes etc, and one , I kid you not ,which suggested that we could blow the huts up , one of the directors did a cowboy act and had black powder and ignition caps on hand ! In the midst of all this someone asked Michael what we should do and he said “I’m going to the next town” I was behind and said “I’m with him” so we got into our transport and went to the next town . The next day we were all around talking about what to do next when somebody said to Michael “What do you think we should do “ Michael replied “ I’m going home “ I was behind him and said , well you know the rest , we got our transport ready and early a.m. the next day we started the journey home with the wager between me and Michael that the last one home paid for the drinks. I won ‘cos Michael stopped at Oxford services for a tea . A lot more happened in Spain ,most of it’s painful but one story typifies Michael Austin and why he’s my best friend and for the last 25 years my Uncle and I love him dearly . We were opening the tour in Murcia on the south coast and everyone was away except for me, Mike and Kevin, he was one of our ring boys but so much more, anyway the ground was not the biggest so when we were pulling the poles up Mike had to back the tractor out onto the road so Kevin is on the ground making sure the stakes don’t pull and that the cables are OK , meanwhile I’m on the road
checking traffic ready to tell Mike when it’s safe to go , As I’m looking up the road I see two girls, well girls doesn’t do justice to the beauties that were strolling in our direction, all thoughts of work was put aside while we enjoyed the view, the closer the girls got the more we appreciated the difference in the sexes until they got real close to the tractor and one looked up and said in a thick Irish accent “Jaysus Chroist, It’s Michael Austin” ! . Very few times in life have I been lost for words and this was all of them . They were showgirls from a touring theatre company who had worked with Michael before on some other circus , Small world , made smaller and a little brighter on that day .
Anyway we were home and started building , painting and getting ready for another season , Timm was there for the season showing the lions, Michael was there as well so it was a fun season ,Timm
left before the end and even though I agreed to do the winter in Edinburgh I knew my time on RBC was coming to an end, I enjoyed the work but it wasn’t challenging enough , I wasn’t sure if they wanted me because I was a good RM or the fact that I drove a heavy load and built up the lights.
For 1977 I had a contract to RM the Hippodrome Circus in Gt Yarmouth at the time it was one of the most prestigious shows around , the big 4 were Blackpool, Yarmouth in the Summer and Belle Vue , Kelvin Hall in the Winter .
I had also been contacted by an agent who wanted me to compere some Sunday Shows on the south coast and with the agreement from Roberto Germains who was the Agent and Manager at Yarmouth I had a busy summer ,Saturday night I would drive to either Bournemouth or Eastbourne stay in a hotel and do two shows on Sunday with some great stars . Ken Dodd, Vince Hill, Mike and Bernie Winters, Frank Ifield, Lionel Blair, Anita Harris , Rod Hull and Emu just some of the names , alongside all this I was also doing cabaret spots on a Wednesday in the Gorleston Ballroom / Cabaret club just down the road from Yarmouth . By the end of the season I was knackered but my bank account was pretty healthy.
During the season I got an offer from Gerry Cottles Circus to join them as RM , Mike Denning was the normal RM but he was being moved up to General Manager and I was headhunted , seriously it was a compliment because at the time GCC was the best and most
innovative show on the road, He had the Seaside specials and was about to host the Circus World Championships in a Huge tent on Clapham Common and it was run as a business , I wasn’t expected to drive or build-up and pull down, my responsibility was putting the ringfence together making sure it was always painted , clean and full of sawdust, sort out rehearsal times , organise the ringstaff and run the show from when the public came in to the last note of the finale, I was also in the discussion on the programme running order , proper RM work .
Gerry and I had first met many years before when I was about 14 and my father and I were clowning( sic) on Gandeys Circus for a few weeks , this young guy turned up to join the show with a bag containing some juggling props and it was Gerry.
We didn’t have that much contact on his show, he was away most of the time doing PR or plotting his next venture , I had a credit card from the company for sawdust, dry cleaning ,paint etc and anything else I sorted out through Mike Denning . I knew everyone on the show and was related to most of them, Sydney Howes with the Lion act, Carlos MacManus presenting the Elephants, Horses and exotic acts , Julie and Baba Fossett with aerial acts , Barry Walls being anything anyone wanted , he would be an Indian chief for a western show, El Hakim the Fakir for his own act but whatever he did he put his heart and soul 100% into it , the most talented man I have ever known in and out of the ring. We used to get Milk delivered to the caravans , one of the jobs the advance team organised, one morning I woke to find bottles with my name on them on my steps, Barry had bought an engraving kit , His painting, signwriting and leather engraving was of the highest professional standard and he could have got a job anywhere at a lot more money but all he wanted to do was entertain , a wonderful man and he was gone way too soon.
The Clowns were Sonny Fossett, Matto and Jimmy Scott , Jimmy was the prime example of what a reprise( run-in) clown should be and I learned so much from him which was to stand me in good stead a little later in my life even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time . Matto was a young eager clown who had a wicked sense of humour and a talent beyond his years , Uncle Sonny, thats how everybody knew him ,was a clown of the old school , easy to work with a good carpenter outside the ring .
The Circus World Championship took place on Clapham Common it was one of the best things I’ve been involved in with some of the best artists taking part and some great memories, it ran for about 6 years and I was there for 3 of them as assistant to Norman Barrett. His years at the Blackpool Tower Circus, Big Apple Circus and latterly Zippos are a testament to his professionalism and his calm nature is a reassuring presence in any situation , working with him also made me realise that there was only room for one ‘number 1’ and Norman was and still is in the UK so If I was to make my name as a Ringmaster I had to travel further afield. I would be a couple more years before I could achieve this but I knew what I had to do.
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