Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bi G top man
Gerry Cottle was Britain’s greatest showman – the boy who ran away to the circus and stayed there for the rest of his life. One of our best-known Big Top kings, he died in hospital in Bath this week aged 75 after contracting Covid-19.
From virtually nothing he went on to run a string of circuses all over the world, and in later years reluctantly pioneered animal-free circuses.
His agent Mark Borkowski called him “the last of the great circus showmen”.
At the age of eight, Gerry first went to a show, Jack Hilton’s Circus at Earl’s Court, in West London, at Christmas and was captivated by a tiny woman making polar bears jump through hoops.
Vowing to own Britain’s biggest circus one day he went home and put on a performance for his family, with his sister and cousin on hand to impersonate the bears.
The showman later taught himself to juggle with his mother’s oranges and even bunked off school to go to Chessington Zoo circus.
He said: “I worked in riding stables for pocket money or free rides and at 11 I’d cycle the five miles to Chessington Zoo circus, where they taught me basics such as how to ride the unicycle.”
Seven years later, Gerry ran away to join the Robert Brothers Circus in Newcastle, leaving a tape-recorded message for his parents which said: “Please do not under any circumstances try to find me.
“I have gone forever. I have joined the circus.”
Gerry came from Surrey, with a stockbroker father and an air hostess mother who knew him as Gerald.
His grandfather had also been a stockbroker and it was assumed he would follow suit. But with grammar school exams just weeks away, Gerry took to the road.
Early tasks included shovelling elephant dung and scattering sawdust, but Gerry embraced circus life.
Sharing a bunk with Butter Bean the Midget, he made his debut in the ring as the back end of a pantomime horse and later Juggl unic
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r became Gerry Melville the Teenage ler, also trying his hand at fire eating, cycling and being a clown. never wanted to be the greatest ler or trapeze artist – I wanted to be big boss,” he once said. he travelling circus community was a tough one to infiltrate with most owners dating back several generations and he was known as a “josser” or outsider. In 1968, he married Betty Fossett, a skilled animal handler from one of the oldest circus family dynasties.
By the time Gerry was 25 he had set up his first outfit with partner Brian Austen. The Cottle and Austen Circus, jokingly ed the Smallest Circus on Earth, had staff working out of a converted ad van and an old flower show tent. heir first animals were a couple of tland ponies which back then to ry was just as exciting as buying a le herd of elephants. He said: “We were always doing stunts. My sister-inlaw walked the wire with washing hanging underneath, we’d take the zebras across zebra crossings.”
By the mid 70s Gerry was going it alone and was given a big break when the BBC invited him to host the Seaside Special variety show from his Big Top.
The Gerry Cottle Circus was soon touring the land with three different shows, 1,500-strong audiences and 150 trucks moving trapeze artistes, jugglers and clowns - not to mention lions, elephants, chimpanzees and polar bears.
His elephants would bathe in the sea in places like Weymouth.
“You had to keep an eye on them, though,” he joked.
“Given the chance, they would swim off to France.”
He became the proud owner of the world’s largest caravan, 55ft long, and the longest limo, 72ft, with a hot tub in the back. (“It wasn’t fun trying to get it around the South Circular,” he said.)
In Iran, Gerry’s iceskating chimps were impounded by customs and on another occasion, he flew four elephants to Oman for the Sultan’s festive party.
“It was a fantastic bit of publicity, if nothing else, four elephants getting on a plane,” he later recalled.
“They put us in the middle of the desert and I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight than our Big Top in the twilight with a long line of limousines coming over the dunes towards us.”
A man who “always tried to do things differently,” Gerry once said: “I’ve had a strong man who used to lift an elephant and then have a car driven over him – I love gimmick acts.”
Once he even put his head inside a crocodile’s mouth and staged the World’s Largest Custard Pie Fight Ever. The high-flyer met the Queen, saying “she reminded me of my mum”. And despite taking a different path in life to his father and grandfather, his dad remained supportive.
“He came the first couple of years when I had my own circus,” said Gerry. “He retired early but then died within a year when he was 60, from cancer.
“It was very sad and made me even more convinced that you have to grab life and live it.” Gerry became the first owner for decades to head into the centre of London, parking his four elephants on Clapham Common in the late 70s and early 80s. But there was an increasing backlash against using animals in the circus and they would soon be touring animal-free. He later recalled Haringey council in London holding a meeting to decide whether his clowns could use a live duck that quacked in time to music “encouraged by a secret tickle on the bottom”.
In 2014 he said: “I now support the ban. We may have gone from a country where a circus wasn’t a circus without at least one elephant to a place where you can’t even have a performing duck, but I have decided to move on.”
Instead the impresario vowed to continue his circuses with the help of “razzmatazz, daredevil acts and magic”.
He managed the Moscow State Circus and Chinese State Circus in the 1990s and launched the Circus of Horrors .
Retiring from travelling entertainment in 2003, Gerry bought Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, adding a clown museum and circus school to the attraction. By 2006, he had taken to the road again with the school’s graduates.
Gerry is survived by Betty, three daughters and a son, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.