Irrepressible showman who turned his entire life into a circus
GERRY Cottle, who has died aged 75 after contracting Covid-19, was an irrepressible showman, whose decision as a teenager to run away and join the circus became a marker for his entire life. From his beginnings as a suburban kid in a humdrum town, he went on to own the biggest travelling circus in the UK.
At his 1970s peak, Cottle provided the Big Top venue for BBC TV’S Saturday night variety show Seaside Special, which he also hosted. As with his entire career, he did this without pretensions, retaining the enthusiasm that first inspired his lifelong love of circus.
Cottle was also quick to move with the times, and was always one publicity stunt ahead of the rest. Prior to pioneering the UK’S first animal-free circus, he won a case against Edinburgh Council regarding the use of wild animals on city land. In the end, only a duck that quacked in time with wind instruments remained in his show, before Haringey Council convened a special meeting to outlaw it.
There were other elements he couldn’t control, and during one run in Galashiels his Big Top was destroyed by a gale. It would take a lot more than natural disaster, however, to keep Cottle down.
His personal life was something of a high-wire act, too, as he became ringmaster to a his own misfortunes. Bankruptcy, cocaine addiction, sex addiction and rehab were all on the bill, as he juggled with the highs that everyday life couldn’t provide.
Even Cottle’s grandest failures were memorable. A Rock and Roll Circus and a shark show were but two of his schemes. More successfully, he produced the Chinese State Circus and Moscow State Circus, and co-founded
Circus of Horrors. Latterly, he bought and ran the Wookey Hole entertainment complex in Somerset, where he opened a circus school and museum before embarking on a new set of adventures.
Gerry Ward Cottle was born in Carshalton, Surrey, to Reg and Joan Cottle. His father was a stockbroker and freemason, his mother a former air stewardess. Such an anonymous middle-class background was presumed to guarantee a respectable future for their son, who attended Rutlish Grammar School in Merton Park, the alma mater of another circus boy, the future Conservative prime minister John Major.
But a family outing to see Jack Hilton’s circus at Earl’s Court, London, in 1953 opened the then eight-year-old Cottle’s eyes to another world, and subsequently changed his life.
He began juggling in the family garden and was hired by his father to perform at Masonic ladies’ nights, soon graduating to local fetes. He began helping out at the permanent circus at Chessington Zoo before running away to Robert Brothers’ Circus aged 15.
He recorded a message announcing his departure for his parents, which a friend played to them down the line from a phone box. When he was eventually brought home, he received surprising support for his vocation from his headmaster, and he never looked back.
With the circus world a tight-knit dynasty, Cottle was regarded as an outsider, and began his career cleaning up elephant dung. As he told Roy Plomley in a 1984 edition of Desert Island Discs, he always wanted to be boss, and kept a notebook of his observations of how the business was run.
From Robert Brothers, he spent three years with Gandeys Circus, juggling and clowning as he learnt the managerial ropes. He then joined the James Brothers’ Circus, partly to keep an eye on a teenage trick horse-rider, Betty Fossett. The pair married in 1968, and stayed together until the 1990s.
In 1970, Cottle set out on his own, co-founding the Embassy Circus on a pig farm. What was initially a fiveperson operation housed in a flowershow tent soon expanded. Within a few years, The Gerry Cottle Circus had two shows on the road, employing 60 staff.
By now the king of British circus, Cottle became the cover star of
Radio Times on the back of a documentary, What Do You
Expect, Elephants? He came a cropper, however, after losing a fortune from a doomed tour of Iran just as the 1979 revolution kicked in.
Cottle’s taste for the high life led to him entering rehab, where he was diagnosed as primarily a sex addict. He gave up his excesses for good after being stopped on the M25 by police, who found 14kg of cocaine in his car.
With old-school circus not the draw it once was, Cottle attempted to reinvent his art form, co-founding Circus of Horrors in 1995. He nevertheless remained sceptical about slick, modern spectacles by the likes of Cirque du Soleil. “They’d die in Basingstoke,” he said. Latterly, he toured new shows with his circus school graduates. The high-octane Wow! was billed as “a circus like no other”.
A cavalcade of Cottle’s adventures were contained in Confessions of a Showman:
My Life in The Circus, his 2006 memoir, co-written with Helen Batten. As the self-mythologising title suggests, Cottle can be regarded as the last of the great old-time hucksters, who turned his entire life into a circus.
He is survived by four children – Gerry Junior, Sarah,
April and Juliette-anne, known as Polly. He is also survived by several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
At 15 he ran away to join a circus, recording a message for his parents, which a friend played to them down the line from a phone box