I returned to a very different Cottles circus , It was smaller and the performance was a very good production built around an old tale from Uzbekistan about a travelling magician and puppeteer (played by Chris Barltrop) whose dolls come to life , Carlos and Guillermo Cardinal arrived a couple of days after me, we had a coffee and straight away there was a connection and a good feeling, we practised a couple of times then we were in the show , how they slotted us into an Uzbeki childrens story I can't remember but thats the magic of circus , Suspended Disbelief I think it's called , anyway we were working and getting ready for Hong Kong.
There was one problem which none of us had foreseen, Part of the Cardinalli's routine which they had performed for years involved a singing duck ,well a quacking duck actually, I played the Blue Danube on the Trumpet and at the appropriate moment after the first five notes = Altogether now, DA, DA, DA, DA, DA , The next four notes were
quacked by our Duck QUACK QUACK < QUACK QUACK , you get the idea .
The show moved to Alexandra Palace and after the first night someone complained that we had a 'performing animal ' and we were threatened with closure by the council which at the time was led by Bernie Grant, remember him ? Ken Livingstone on steroids, Chris Barltrop got his publicity machine going full pelt and we were everywhere, I did a long interview with Brian Redhead on the Today Programme on radio 4 , we had photo's in the press , one with me sitting on a suitcase playing the trumpet with the strap-line 'Clown looking for a new job' It was really a lot of fuss over nothing but the left wing administration of Haringey tried to politicise it.
In Gerry Cottles Book this story is related but has the incident happening with the Hazard Clowns in 1994,
It didn't , it was 1986, Alexandra palace , I was there.
We were ready for Hong Kong but some of us had to stop in Sharjah in the UAE on the way to put on a show for an international fair, I went to do a paste act with Willie Cottrelli and Graham Butterby ( little Bean) two Cottle stalwarts, also in the show were Juggler Luis Garcia and his sister Pilar who had a super foot Juggling number, she was a little perturbed when she found that the Dress Code for female artists in Arab countries stated they had to be covered from wrist to ankle with no exposed skin, Pilar had some beautiful costumes, some quite small but all covered in sequins and stones so they glittered and shone like diamonds, now she was loathe to give them up, her answer= she bought the tightest thinnest tracksuit she could find and wore that with her costumes over the top!
After the short break in Sharjah I flew on to Hong Kong to be met at the airport by Alan 'Doody' Dudley an old mate who's journey into Circus was started by my uncle Hans Vogelbein who once took out a small Circus and employed young Alan , as he was then, to travel with the show, he liked the life and stayed, he worked for a few shows and ended up on Cottles, universally popular, easy going with a great sense of humour he was a good companion and not too shabby as a cook , cakes and cookies were a speciality of his and were enjoyed by many of us, but sad to say he was taken from us way too soon.
For the Hong Kong season I was asked if I would also Ringmaster repeating my Barum experience, I knew I wouldn't be announcing the show, they had a Chinese Radio DJ to do that but they wanted me to run the performance , I could handle that and the clown act , no problem .
Hong Kong was an experience like no other , four months of pure delight , I had worked a lot of european countries where the only difference was the language and the scenery , This was another culture , !
Before we left the UK Sonny Fossett and a group of carpenters had made complete sets of flat pack furniture, beds, wardrobes, tables and other vital pieces, they were packed into the contain ers with the tent , equipment and artists props with the intention that when they arrived and were emptied the flat packs would be assembled in the containers to make the accommodation , Apart from a Skeleton staff brought from the UK we employed local Honh Kong workers, many spoke english but I learned a little Chinese quite quickly, I like to speak the language of the country I'm working in, I think it shows respect even if you pronounce it badly , because of this I got the job of procuring what else we would need to make 'Container Alley ' habitable ,
Bedding, cutlery, washing machines, shower equipment, mattresses, in fact everything that couldn't have been constructed in the UK or indeed was cheaper in HK, They bought a runaround car and I would make regular trips to Hong Kong town , Kowloon side or Stanley to get what we needed, it was great fun - and I was getting paid to do it .
The only things that didn't come in those containers were of course, the animals , Marcel Peters would be presenting his Lions and Gerry had employed Carlos Rosaire to come with his Crocodiles, I knew Carlos from my younger days , he's Joan Rosaire's cousin and he lived in Spain so his first journey was to England by road , I then accompanied him to Southampton where his truck compete with tank and crocs was craned onto the ship, he said later it was the best trip of his life, there was only him and a small crew aboard, they had a pool and great food what more would you want ?.
The Tent was built up in Ocean Park just a couple of Km's from the main shopping district , Hong Kong itself was over the water on Kowloon side just a ferry ride away, a bustling, busy, hectic city where you could get a suit made in a day and that was about how long it would last, Nearly every day I would go down to Wan Chei or Central because there was always something that was needed on site, I soon got to know the traders and became friendly with many of them and had fun haggling with them in english and my little bit of Chinese .
There was an English pub in Central called the Groom and Jockey , I'm not a pub-goer usually but it was a link with home, they had the daily papers so I could keep up with Chelsea's progress and they had a Phone so that I could keep in touch with the family in the UK.
My friendliness with the local traders had a mild downside when during the run-up to Chinese New Year in February I was downtown buying supplies and other goods and in every shop or stall I went to I was offered a glass of 'Mi Jiu' to celebrate, ( MiJiu is Chinese Rice Wine much like Japanese Saki ) in Asian countries it's rude and discourteous to refuse a gift so having visited a few of my regular stalls and partaken of many MiJui's I was a little , shall we say , unsteady or in journalistic parlance 'tired and emotional' I don't remember driving back to ocean park but I do know I spent a long time in the shower before I had to do the show.
Returning from Hong Kong I agreed to stay with Cottle's because I wanted to start my own clown act with me doing the comedy, The show was going to Ireland and they had booked Yasmin and Dany with their horses so the chance to renew our Austrian adventure was irresistible, especially with the prospect of making Martini's with Irish Poteen .
Through various circumstances the start of the season was a little tough,
Gerry was indisposed so Chris Barltrop and Betty Cottle took the show out with Chris covering Gerrys normal role of doing the business and overseeing the whole thing, because of this change I agreed to be Ringmaster until Gerry came back and Chris could take over again, This happened in the middle of the season and I finally got to do the clowning, I started off with a simple paste act working with Willie Ramsey and a couple of reprises with Chris, Juat after the summer Yasmin and Dany tragically lost one of their main horses so they returned to Belgium and were replaced by Pam Enos and her football dogs. The Enos family had been on Chipperfields, father Phil performing his Comedy Car with pamela hidden inside working the gadgets, sons Rudi and and Colin were the shows run-in Clowns.
In the 40's Phils wife Doreen and my mother and father had worked together on Fossetts Circus, Doreen had looked after me and been my baby sitter while my parents worked their acrobatic act so our families already had a history , which was about to get even closer.
A little while after Gerry had returned we were told that he had talked with Martin Lacey and had asked him to take over running the show on a permanent basis, this was a surprise because Chris Barltrop had done an excellent job under difficult circumstances but thats the way it was,
We arrived back in the UK and built up in Middleton in Chesire the Lacey family were already there , Martin, Sue and the kids Martin jnr, Alex and Richard.
I had met Martin a few times over the years, most notably backstage at the Belle Vue winter Circus in the mid '80's, we were sitting in the the backstage area having a coffee and chatting when a particular circus director who was known to both of us, walked past, instinctively Martin and I both stood and saluted, not out of any feeling of deference or esteem, quite the opposite in fact ,It was pure bloody mindedness but we realised we had a similar appreciation of some members of our profession and that was enough to bond a friendship
Martin asked me to stay on to to do the clowning and over the next few weeks we found we had many other things in common , the same sense of humour, a liking for Mateus Rose wine and importantly similar ideas about the future of Circus.
My personal life took a turn , in February 1987 Pamela and I were married at Cottles winter quarters in weybridge . We started the season with our musical clown act and Pamela's Football dog act and settled down to married life.
Towards the end of the year we were offered the chance by Gerry to do the winter circus at Wembley ,the show was being presented in one of the halls and there would be a lot of noise from the Fairground rides in the same hall and it wasn't a good atmosphere for a clown act so I declined , instead we went to France to the Jean Richard Circus for the Gala season back to the UK for Xmas in Worthing for Gandeys and the following summer 1988 we were going to Ireland for the season with Fossetts Circus , they had booked us because 50 years previously they had my Grandfather and the Konyot Springboard troupe on the show and they thought it would be decent publicity to bring back the family name for the anniversary
By this time we had a good musical clown act with Pamela and myself as Clowns, our White face was Martin Crosswell and our other partner was Andy Kemp a lovely young guy who was , to use the awful PC phrase ' Vertically Challenged ' He was with me for 6 years through good times and bad, a wonderful partner , a good man , nothing got him down , he could do anything a 'normal' could do and most important , he was Funny !!!! , later on he married and had a super family, No-one deserved it more.
On August 20th in Tralee my lovely daughter Olympia was born , named after my great aunt Olympia Konyot she has grown into a beautiful talented young lady of whom I am extraordinarily proud, she herself is now married to Marian and has two children of her own so the Dynasty carries on.
In '89 we were booked to appear with Circus Hassani in Chessington but for a month before I was in Kuwait as RM and producer for an Italian Circus touring the UAE this was arranged by Billy Arata and it was a super month but was a little bitter sweet as a couple of years later when Sadaam Hussein invaded Kuwait there were TV pictures of the Kuwaiti prisoners being held in a building which I recognised as the buffet where we had gone to eat every lunchtime before the show, to try to equate the fun and good time's we'd had there with the suffering and pain that was being endured by the local people was a sobering moment.
During the '89 season we were invited to the Clown Convention in Bognor Regis, Apart from the clown act Andy and I did our japanese reprise ,I had a large fat body suit ( no facetious comments please ) and was introduced as Satsuma the Sumo King, Andy was then announced as the Karate Kid and would run into the ring and do a high karate leap ,
in the show we followed Charlie Caroli and Claudie who had done a water gag and the ring was still a little wet , So, Andy came flying through the curtains leapt in the air with a scream , landed on the water, fell on his arse and slid the full way across the ring hitting the ringfence on the other side like a car crash , The laugh that followed was the biggest I have ever heard and just went on and on and on , I sat on the ringfence waiting for it to calm down then said to Andy “ we can't follow that” and hand In hand we walked out of the ring , another one of those happy accidents that could never be orchestrated or repeated but a wonderful memory.
For the winter of 89/90 Austen Brothers put on a huge Xmas circus in Battersea Park , we took part in one of the strongest circus shows seen for many years , Twice during the run we had Royal visitors , One was Princess Diana with the two young Princes , The other was Princess Margaret , both visits were private with minimum security but during Princess Margaret's visit she suddenly appeared in the ring doors during the interval wanting to see the animals, a line up was quickly organised and after her visit to the stables she came back and was introduced to everyone . In the show I was doing my 'Spaghetti Entree' as a semi-drunk waiter ,as she shook my hand the Princess said very quietly “ you remind me of someone at the Palace” Enigmatic or what ?
The Clown Act was going really well and 1990 we went with Circus Fiesta, Jeff Jay was my White Clown and what a good one he was , A talented performer and a great sense of humour ,
Xmas 90/91 was the second Battersea winter circus , again a very strong line up of artists which included Yasmin and Dany, another welcome re-union ,
The show was produced by David Hibling ,We had worked together a couple of times , he was an excellent Ringmaster and animal trainer with an impish sense of fun , a very long and self indulgent version of us doing 'the Busy Bee' in Worthing comes to mind . As a producer he had some very brave ideas and a sensitive and clever choice of music . , Over the New Year we put on a midnight Matinee with everyone doing a parody of each others acts , the undoubted hit of the night was David as 'Tasmin Tart ' , As I said an Impish sense of fun .
In 1991 we were with Chipperfields which was Circus Fiesta with a name change , a contractual dispute brought our season to an end In July, and at the urging of my brother -in -law Colin we took out a Circus for the last couple of months of the season, It made sense , He had a Tent hire company which meant that all the equipment was there , Calling in a lot of favours we got a good show together and it was a good chance to try some production ideas rather than just put up a running order of acts , we got Jeff Jay to come with us and he was invaluable ,he could turn his hand to anything, a real jack of all trades and master of them as well
Hippodrome Circus was a good experiment but disappointing in the end, it taught me an important lesson that the non-artistic side of running a circus was not for me , The paperwork and general admin is very time consuming and frustrating .
1992 was the year of Circus Berlin , It was special because it was also Olympia's debut in the ring, It was originally supposed to be a one-off , we had her dressed as a mini majorette to come in and do the march as a special treat for her fourth birthday, yea ,like that was gonna happen !!!! .
the next day she turned up dressed an ready and the day after that until we gave in and put her into the main act with a couple of little gags .
The end of 92 I was pretty low and a little disillusioned with Circus after the problems at Fiesta and the Hippodrome failure and I was thinking maybe we needed a change , We were parked at Fossetts Winter Quarters for a few weeks when I got a call from Martin Lacey ,We had been hearing stories of Gerry Cottle wanting to get out of Circus to run some sort of travelling theme park , Martin confirmed this and said that Gerry wanted to close the show putting Martin out of work, After looking at some other options Martin offered to buy the whole outfit and go out in his own right , would we be interested in going with him , ? we could carry out the ideas we'd talked about over our glasses of Rose wine in '87 , It was an offer I couldn't refuse so despite many problems and obstacles Circus Harlequin took to the road , It started out temporarily ( and with his agreement ) as Gerry Cottles circus with the intention of changing the name as soon as we could , This was hastened by Mr Cottle suddenly announcing to the press that he would never have animals in his circus again , and he was against performing animals , this was not so good as his name was still on the transport and we had all Martins animals , It was Easter ,we were at Southend and you've never seen so many trucks painted and re-lettered in such a short time
OK we'll leave it there and carry on with the 'Harlequin experiment '
in No11, not far to go now , your doing very well we'll soon be at the end
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