DAD AND DAUGHTER ARE NOTCH Pair start circus act after leaving day jobs

DAD and daughter Neil and Eve Travis quit their jobs to be a circus act.

They now pay the bills by dicing with death around Britain and abroad.

Former warehouse worker Neil, 50, thrills audiences by placing cabbages on 24-year-old Eve’s tummy before chopping them with a huge knife.

Other times, Eve smashes breeze blocks on her dad’s chest while he is lying on a bed of nails.

Eve quit her law degree when she realised she would rather be risking life and limb and she persuaded her dad to leave his job too.

But every stunt the pair dream up has to be run past mum Deborah first.

Eve said: “It’s much easier to trust my dad than anyone else on stage. There’s no one else I’d rather put my life in the hands of. Some people might think it’s mad but I trust him 100%.

“I know most dads wouldn’t dream of slicing up vegetables on their daughter’s belly but we’re not like most families. My friends think it’s cool.

“I’ve worked with other sidekicks in the past and some have been so unreliable. I needed someone I knew wouldn’t let me down, which is why I asked my dad to come out of retirement and start an act with me again.

The pair walk on broken glass, lie on a bed of nails, juggle with knives, breathe fire, tightrope walk, unicycle, stilt walk, climb ladders made out of swords, chop cabbages and shatter concrete blocks on each other’s stomachs.

Shockingly, their audiences can also watch Eve pierce her own cheeks CHARLES WADE-PALMER and drink from her dad’s nose after she hammers a nail into one of his nostrils.

Neil said: “I love working with my daughter. She’s the most important thing to me in the world and my priority is taking care of my little girl.

“Because she’s my daughter, it makes me practise even harder to make sure I’m never at risk of hurting her.

“People ask how I can attempt such dangerous things to do to her, but everything we do is well rehearsed and I’d rather be the one doing it than someone else.”

It was not long after her first steps that Eve was introduced by her parents to the art of the circus. But no one expected the talented tot to use those skills as the basis of her career.

Eve, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, could walk on stilts when she was three and was tightrope walking at four.

She said: “I thought I should get a proper education but when I started at uni I realised how much I missed performing. My friends saw me performing and said, ‘You’ve got all these skills, you are too talented to work in an ordinary job’.”

Neil said: “What we do is dangerous but there’s also a bit of comedy.” “I love the idea of getting paid to give people something to talk

about.”