The circus is a waking dream for kids young and old

A maligned form of entertainment remains a spectacle like no other, writes Martyn Mclaughlin

The magic of the circus is how it gives too much of everything, yet leaves you pining for more. I remember my first visit, when the dreich red blaes of Greenock’s Ravenscraig pitches was transformed overnight into a harlequin township. Wagons and Harley Davidsons squatted in the spaces between lorries and caravans, while the evening air hung heavy with the smells of diesel, cigarette smoke, candy floss and hot dogs. It was the smell of temptation, wrapped in a warning.

Even before I caught sight of the big top at the epicentre of this strange new world, I wanted to be part of it. Two hours later, bewildered and exhausted come the show’s finale, I had resolved to run away and join its ranks, an aspiration thwarted by my lack of any discernible talent and the child locks on our Ford Escort.

When that feeling began to ebb is a memory less potent. I would visit now and then, cheering along to the ever changing shows. Eventually, however, enthrallment gave way to appreciation. In the end, the fascination faded altogether. At least, that is how it seemed at the time, having given no heed to the possibility that it was not the circus which might have lost something.

Whatever the cause, that delight packed up and moved away, capturing another boy in another west of Scotland town. An absence spanning years segued into decades, until Saturday past, when I was reaquainted with a spectacle both familiar and revelatory, its sensory eruption an immediate corrective to my adulthood-induced amnesia.

Within a 13-metre diameter ring, thrown up overnight around the joggers, jakes, and amateur cricketers of Glasgow’s Queen’s Park recreation ground, a troupe of knife throwers, acrobats, clowns, jugglers, horse riders, and motorcycle stuntmen from Zippos Circus brought that early euphoria rushing back. With it came a newfound understanding of why their storied vocation is so special.

Beside me, my elder daughter, on the cusp of her third birthday, gasped as trapeze artist Kimberley Souren swung from the rigging above, then cooed as Odka Amraa swirled a dozen glittering hula hoops from her slight frame. At one point, she turned to me, her breath warm and buttery from the popcorn, and whispered of her wonder.

It would be easy to hold up such family rituals as a response to critics of the circus who scoff at the very idea of categorising it as an artform. They regard it as an anomaly and a triviality, a vulgar, exploitative sideshow of sugar and sequins which wallows in the most base form of entertainment since Emperor Honorius decreed an end to gladiatorial contests in his failing Rome. They are, of course, right. It is these very things which make the circus great.

In what other walk of life might you find such a dizzying hybrid of mediums which, twice a day, celebrates a hundred little moments, each a constituent part of a larger extravaganza? Nearly every act – rooted in American tradition and east European folklore – has been passed down from one generation to the next, before being refined and honed with such unerring precision that, cumulatively, they conjure up the illusion of spontaneous havoc.

In adulthood, you marvel not just at the show, but the organisation of it all: the army of backstage helpers; the logistics of taking such a show on the road; the way the performers, glistening with sweat, help sell sweets and toys during intervals.

At the centre of it all stands the