A circus showman with a wild side

Gerry Cottle, who has died of COVID-19 aged 75, ran away to join the circus aged 15 and later founded his eponymous circus, the biggest in the world; the circus flourished until a growing addiction to cocaine led to his arrest and a series of bankruptcies, though in best circus tradition he always bounced back.

In the course of some 40 years in the ring, Cottle worked as a juggler, unicyclist and clown, stuck his head in a crocodile's mouth and performed with a duck that quacked in time to a trombone. He shared a bunk with Klemendore, the India Rubber Man from Sri Lanka, took sensational ice-skating chimpanzees to Iran (where they were impounded by customs) and staged the World's Largest Custard Pie Fight Ever.

Some minor dramas and mishaps, in Cottle's view, were part and parcel of the circus life. He loved the immediacy of the live spectacle, believing that audiences do not want highly polished performances; they come for rawness, vulgarity and the sense that things could easily go wrong. “Circus,” he opined, “has to be a bit in your face.” He was unimpressed by the slick Cirque du Soleil.

Traditionally circuses are family affairs and Cottle was unusual in being an outsider. It was this, perhaps, that allowed him to see the business dispassionately and change with the times. When local councils started voting against allowing animal acts on their land, Cottle was one of the first to realize that the days of the traditional circus were over.

He replaced the animals with “razzmatazz, daredevil acts and magic,” helping to revive the fashion for circus-going in the late 1990s.

Gerald Ward Cottle was born at Carshalton on April 7, 1945. His father was a City stockbroker and grandmaster in the Freemasons; his mother was a secretary. Young Gerry's prevailing memory of childhood was being forced to wear grey.

Throughout his career as a showman Cottle's own life was filled with drama: he lived to excess, becoming a serial adulterer and a cocaine addict.

By his son's estimation, Cottle went bankrupt seven or eight times.

Despite his fame, Cottle had no grandness about him, and never lost the passion that had inspired him as a child. “It's daredevil stuff,” he told the Telegraph in 2012.

Gerry Cottle's marriage to Betty Fossett broke down in the 1990s, though they never divorced and remained on good terms. She survives him with their three daughters and a son.

Gerry Cottle