Daredevils and Divas: A Night at the Circus
BBC4
My nephew and I have been making regular jaunts to the circus for the last decade – since he was about two and I was a lot older than that. We are circus connoisseurs. We’ve been to Zippos, Cottle’s and Giffords; we’ve watched trapeze artists, tumblers, jugglers, fire-eaters, Cossack horsemen, a Ukrainian strong man run over by a lorry, and a troupe of dancing budgerigars.
On the whole, we prefer old-time spangles and sawdust to the arty-farty modern-dance ones – but the moment the music strikes up, we’ll ooh and aah at whatever the Big Top produces. Our all-time favourite, though, is Tweedy the clown; and our most thrilling moment of what circus scholars might call the theatre of embarrassment was when Tweedy made me jump into the ring and pretend to be a seal while he threw sweets in my mouth. I am no longer allowed even to think about front row tickets.