Gerry Cottle
Circus owner
BORN APRIL 7, 1945 – DIED JANUARY 13, 2021, AGED 75
ONE DAY when he was aged 15, Gerry Cottle left his mother and father a taperecorded message sure to send a shiver down any parent’s spine.
Delivered down a phone line by a school friend, it said: “Please do not under any circumstances try to find me. I have gone forever. I have joined the circus. You do not understand me. You are not listening to me. I do not need O-levels where I am going.”
Cottle, the Surrey son of a stockbroker and Freemasons Grand Master, had not acted on a whim.
His dream was to own Britain’s biggest circus, an idea lodged in his brain, aged eight, after he became spellbound by a performance at Jack Hilton’s Circus in Earl’s Court.
After forming a relationship with the owners of the Roberts Brothers Circus, he started his new life with them as the back end of a pantomime horse but was viewed as an outsider by other circus performers. This didn’t matter too much as Cottle’s desire was to run the show rather than perform in it.
And by the mid-1970s he had succeeded, creating the biggest circus in Britain home to audiences of 1,500 people and 150 trucks for the accompanying elephants, lions and horses.
He dropped the animals entirely during the 1980s after welfare campaigners decried such live acts. By that point his reputation was in decline because of his cocaine binges and sex addiction. His wife, Betty Fossett, stood by him until the 1990s when the marriage broke down, but they never divorced.
He filed for bankruptcy several times and sold off his circuses in 2003.
He died after contracting coronavirus and is survived by Betty and three daughters and a son.