The Circus Funtasia Story

From knife-thrower's assistant to ringmaster, Tracy Jones reveals how she ran away with the circus as a teenager and set up her own Big Top.

There aren’t many jobs in which the new girl gets knives thrown at her by the boss. But standing in front of a target while circus owner Phillip Gandey threw blades that hammered home within inches of her was Tracy Jones’ baptism of fire into life in the big top.

“I trusted him completely,” says Tracy, who ran away with the circus as a 16-year-old and today is ringmaster of her own show, Circus Funtasia. “I think because I was young, I didn’t have much fear. I’d try anything.”

Growing up in a tiny Welsh village, Tracy had no idea that a life of spotlights and sequins awaited her.

When she was 15, she took a weekend job looking after the horses of local stunt rider Gerard Naprous, who went on to work on films such as Rob Roy and TV series Game of Thrones. 

One summer, Gerard announced that he was joining Gandey’s Circus for a short engagement and Tracy went with him as horse groom.

“I didn’t even know what a circus was!” she laughs. “We were meant to be there for four weeks, but I loved it so much that I went home and said, ‘Mum, I’m going to join the circus.’ Mum was mortified. She tried to talk me out of it, but my heart was set. I packed my bag, they put me on a train and off I went. Later on, once my parents had visited the show and seen what it was about, they loved it.”

One of Tracy’s first jobs was parading around the ring with a snake draped around her shoulders.

“I was a little bit scared of snakes,” Tracy confesses. “But you get used to it. Then people start to teach you things. I learned a bit of trapeze, and trick riding on horses.”

Her speciality became twirling and throwing poses on a vertical rope called the corde lisse.

“Now I'm a ringmistress and stay firmly on the ground,” Tracy adds.

As well as travelling all over the UK, Tracy performed across the globe in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Dubai.

In 2000, Tracy was touring with Gandey’s sister show, Circus Starr, a non-profit organisation that gives all its tickets away to ill or disadvantaged children as well as raising money for hospices and women’s refuges.

It was there that she met her partner Julio, a member of a visiting Bulgarian acrobatic troupe.

The danger with circus romances is that couples will be separated at the end of the season as work takes them to different shows and different countries. Tracy and Julio decided that wasn’t going to happen to them.

“As soon as we got together, I knew that wherever he was going to go, I was going to go and vice versa,” Tracy says.

At the end of the season, Julio joined the circus full time as a tent master, so they could stay together.

Julio’s skill at building and moving the big top came in handy when he and Tracy decided to start Circus Funtasia 10 years ago.

“We said if we can get a loan from the bank we’ll open a circus and if we can’t, we’ll carry on working for other people,” Tracy recalls. “We got the loan, and that money went very quickly, buying seats and a few vehicles.”

Their first show was in the Staffordshire village of Penkridge and was a box office disaster.

“We died!” Tracy laughs. “We didn’t do very much business because we didn’t do the postering right, we didn’t do the publicity right. We were very naive, but we learned as we went along and it gradually picked up.”

Tracy’s daughter, Nia, has been part of the show since she was four.

“She’d go in the ring with her dad’s troupe and dance with them. Then he’d pick her up and do a jump with her. She loved it,” says her proud mum.

Now 19, Nia is the show’s juggler. She also edits the show’s music and programs the lighting effects.

Nia’s most daring feat is standing inside the Globe of Death while a motorbike loops the loop all around her, missing her by inches. 

Travelling from town to town with a circus is unlike any other branch of show business, says Tracy, who lives beside her big top in a 52-foot-long wagon that she likens to an apartment on wheels.

“We all do everything. We’re in the ring one minute, selling popcorn the next, then pulling down the tent in wellies and overalls after that. The worst things are the rain and mud. The best thing is the audience. You can’t beat the feeling they give you at the end of the show.

“It’s a way of life, but it’s a wonderful and exciting way of life. It’s very sociable, like one big family. Especially in the summer. Everyone sits outside together. We have barbecues. It’s lovely.”

Her plans for the next 10 years? “Just to keep going and enjoy every minute of it.”

For more tales of life in the big top, read Circus Mania - The Ultimate Book for Anyone Who Dreamed of Running Away With The Circus.

Click here to buy from Amazon.

 

Alexis Gruss, 1944 - 2024 - Farewell to a Knight of the French Circus

Alexis Gruss and wife Gipsy in one of his final visits to the ring

The death of French showman Alexis Gruss on 6 April highlights the difference in how circus is viewed on the other side of the Channel.

No English showman has ever been knighted. The Victorian impresarios Sir Robert Fossett and Lord George Sanger adopted those titles themselves.

France, by contrast, made Gruss a Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters and a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

When he died, his contribution to the arts was praised by French minister of culture Rachida Dati.

I don't recall any member of the British government marking the recent passing of English showmen Phillip Gandey and Gerry Cottle, despite their huge contribution to entertainment worldwide.

British circuses, meanwhile, have all but completely removed animals, including horses, from their rings - Giffords Circus being a rare exception in preserving the equine spirit of Philip Astley's first circus, 250 years ago.

Gruss, by contrast, built his fame on horseback.

In 1974, he founded Cirque à l’ancienne – ‘the Old Fashioned Circus’ – to mark the bicentenary of Astley’s first circus in Paris.

Eschewing the wild animal acts that had come to dominate circuses elsewhere, he returned the circus to its roots, with a focus on horsemanship, clowning and acrobatics.

The latest edition of his family's show, les Folies Gruss, is titled 50 Years in Paris, and is as dominated by horse acts as it ever was, with no less than 50 horses passing through the ring.

Among the artists are Gruss's grandsons, Charles and Alexandre, who won a Gold Clown at this year's Monte Carlo Circus Festival with their juggling on horseback.

Astley, who was buried in Paris, would be proud.

Horses and sawdust at les Folies Gruss in 2024

 

Big Kid Circus presents Europe's only all-female Globe of Death

"For the first time ever, in any circus in the UK..." Those are the words you want to hear, bellowed through the air in a big top. 

The new, the original, the unique. Those are the commodities that the circus has always thrived on. That is what will get you rolling up to a big top to see: something you can't see anywhere else.

In this case, ringmaster Kevin Kevin (yep, he was so good they named him twice) was introducing this year's new season attraction to Big Kid Circus: Europe's only all-female Globe of Death riders.

The globe of death is itself nothing new. In some recent reviews, I complained of seeing too many of them, with one closing almost every circus.

But there are ways to refresh the act, with bikes leaping over the globe at Circus Extreme, Circus Zyair and Planet Circus (read my review here).

The all-female trio at Big Kid provides another welcome twist, and one likely to generate something that circuses depend on: news coverage.

My preview of the Daring Dames Festival - Europe's only all-female circus festival looked at how some circus disciplines such as clowning and strongman have traditionally been almost exclusively male preserves - and how a new generation of women is now venturing into those areas.

The Globe of Death is definitely one such male dominated arena, making Big Kid's women motorcyclists remarkable.

The troupe comprises Julia from the UK, Vanessa from Brazil and Ronica from Iraq.

You can see their death-defying display on Big Kid Circus' next stop in Brent Cross.

 

RIP Fred Van Buren and Greta

Fred Van Buren and his wife and assistant Connie Greta (pictured above) put the magic in the circus - literally.

Performing in the circus rings of Gandey's, Fossett's and Chipperfields', Van Buren developed a style of illusion that could be viewed from any angle in-the-round. There was no back to his props that the audience couldn't see.

His most famous stunt was the Vanishing Motorcycle and Rider, while completely surrounded.

Van Buren's fame led to TV appearances including the David Nixon Show and Seaside Special. He was personally chosen by Walt Disney to create magic effects for Snow White on Ice at Wembley, and was an adviser on The Muppet Show.

Since Fred and Connie's retirement from the stage in 1997, the family tradition of spectacular illusions has been continued by their son, Andrew Van Buren.

Fred Van Buren was 91 when he passed away on 6 March this year, Connie having predeceased him in 2020. 

 

Philip Astley Centre opens in Newcastle-under-Lyme to celebrate the Father of the Circus.

More than 250 years ago, Philip Astley invented the circus as we know it today. Two and a half centuries later, on 9 March, a Philip Astley Centre opened in his hometown of Newcastle-under-Lyme to celebrate his legacy as the original greatest showman.

Giving new life to a formerly derelict shop, the Staffordshire visitor centre will host exhibitions, talks and circus workshops.

Astley was born in the town in 1742 and fought in the Seven Years War before using his equestrian skill to establish the first circus ring, in London in 1768.

The 42-ft diameter circle in which he performed tricks on horseback became the standard size of a circus ring throughout the world to this day. He also added acrobats, strongmen, clowns and novelty acts to his equestrian displays to create the variety show nature of a traditional circus show.

The Philip Astley Centre is the brainchild of magician Andrew Van Buren, who described it as "a necessary and long awaited addition to the town infrastructure, providing a chance for visitors to learn about and experience the Astley legacy through access to exhibitions, archives, and related physical skills."

For more information, visit www.philipastley.org.uk

 

Cirque du Soleil breaks world records in London

Setting world records has long been a way for circuses to gain publicity, whether it was the Chinese State Circus balancing the most performers on a bike or the Circus of Horrors suspending the most people over the Thames in a 'human mobile'.

Cirque du Soleil took time out from its current run at the Royal Albert Hall to clock up two new entries into Guinness World of Records.

The UK's Lucie Colebeck, above left, set a new record for 36 back handsprings on a trampoline in 30 seconds.

In the show, she normally does five in a row. Doing so many continuously "felt like flying," she said.

Mongolia's Oyun-Erdene Senge beat her previous record of 21 with 24 contortion roll push-ups in 30 seconds.

What's a contortion roll push-up? First you get yourself into the position in the picture, above right, then you do push-ups!

Easy, right? Well, it is for Senge who said, "I've been doing these push-ups since I was six-years-old. It's part of my daily life."

Cirque du Soleil's show Algeria is at the Royal Albert Hall until 3 March.

 

10 Best Circus Acts of 2023

From big stunts to quirky moments, and the funny to the thrilling, here are the ten best things that I saw in a British big top in 2023. 

10 Nia Nikolova Jones, Treadmill, Circus Funtasia

Sometimes the simplest things are the best. I'm not sure if Nia walking on a treadmill to Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 really counts as an 'act'. It's the lead-in to her juggling routine. But it's such a fun and engaging moment, and such an original use of a prop, that it really did steal the show. 

9 Whip-cracking, Circus Cortex, Kingdom of Winter

The front row of a circus is always a dangerous place to be. You might get water-pistoled by a clown, or conscripted into an act. But ringside was never scarier than at Circus Cortex's Christmas show, when the whip-cracker's female assistant stood right against the ring fence, a couple of feet from the audience and held up playing cards that were sliced in half by her whip-cracking partner. She then went through the fence and stood among the audience while he sliced straws in half. People were literally fleeing their seats for safer parts of the big top! But that's what the circus should be: dangerously exciting!

8 High-wire, Circus Vegas

Circus Vegas opened their show with a big act: a male and female high-wire duo. The crowd-wowing finale saw the female wire-walker stand on her partner's shoulders for a long and precarious descent of a sloping wire to the ground.

7 Kevin Kevin, Ringmaster, Big Kid Circus

Ringmasters are becoming a rare sight, with many shows opting for off-stage announcements or no introductions at all. But Kevin Kevin (yep, he's a double Kevin) really helps to engage the audience in the acts, especially during the opening flying trapeze act (notable for a flyer flying blindfolded and a climatic head-first drop to the net) when his commentary built up expectations for each trick. Ringmaster should be one of the safer circus acts, but Britain's first black ringmaster took his life in his hands by standing amid the circling motorbikes in the Globe of Death. He was also the assistant in a magic trick, vanishing from the cabinet before La Loka the clown shoved a set of metal spikes through it.

6 Mr Popol and Kakehole, Kakehole's Taxi, Snowstorm 3

You can't beat a clown car, and Britain's best-dressed clowns did a hilarious version of the taxi routine on the ice rink of Manchester's Trafford Centre. The climax saw the back of the car fall off, ejecting Popol, then pulling off his trousers as it left the arena. (read my review of Snowstorm 3 here)

5 Motorbike globe-jumping, Circus Zyair

I'd rather watch motorbikes jumping over a globe of death than spinning inside it. It's an incredibly powerful and unexpected sight to see a motorbike roaring high in the air in the indoor environment of a big top. I first saw the leaping bikes at Circus Extreme, and their bikes still probably go highest, because they have the headroom. A similar display caused a wow at Planet Circus. But there was something particularly raw about seeing the stunt performed in the relatively small space of the Circus Zyair tent. Rather than a climax to the act, they also used the the leaps as an entrance, with each biker leaping over the globe before joining his teammates inside it.

4 Laura Miller, Hoop and water plunge, Circus Extreme

Half aerialist and half mermaid, Miller's act involves being periodically plunged into a tank of water, then hoisted high into the roof of Britain's biggest big top to strike poses on a hoop with the water spraying off her. The climax saw the surface of the water set on fire, turning the tank into an inferno. The crowd let out a collective gasp as Miller abruptly let go of the hoop and plunged several body lengths into the water, the splash extinguishing the flames. (you can read my review of Circus Extreme here)

3 BMX Bikes, Cirque Berserk, Winter Wonderland

In a high-octane show as a whole, the real edge-of-the-seat moment had to be a biker standing up on his front wheel and hopping over the limbs of a lady laying in a star shape on the ground, missing her by inches. (read my review of Cirque Berserk here)

2 Duo Stefaneli, Quick change, Planet Circus

The Duo Stefaneli performed a truly death-defying series of hangs from a flying saucer trapeze bar during one of their acts at Planet Circus. But it was their other act, a fun and frothy quick change routine that stole the show, thanks to their personal chemistry, charisma and probably the catchiest music in any big top this year. In a business that is good at producing 'acts' but rarely produces 'stars', as in personalities we can identify as individuals, rather than by what they do, these two have real star power. (read my review of Planet Circus here)

1 Alex the Fireman, revolving ladder, Circus Fantasia

Earlier in the year I posted about Alexandru Lupu under the heading, Is This The Best Circus Act In The UK Today? (You can read it here) And although I've seen many great acts since, none has beaten it. Mixing slapstick and thrills, fire and water, Alex spinning perilously on his ladder is the best bit of physical comedy since the great stunts of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd in the days of silent film. Alex the Fireman isn't just the best act in the circus today, he's a one-man circus!

Alex the Fireman
Photo credit: Bina Fellowes Photography

 

Review: Snow Storm 3 - Northern Lights

Phillip Gandey's name may not be as widely known as, say, Gerry Cottle, Billy Smart or the Chipperfield family. But that's only because, apart from his eponymous Gandey's Circus, which he inherited from his father, he didn't put his name in the title of the many shows he created. 

The Chinese State Circus, for example, was one of the most-attended circuses to tour the UK since the early 90s. But China didn't have a state circus. The show was created and named by Phillip Gandey. He has had equally long-running success with The Lady Boys of Bangkok, in which he took a traditional form of Thai cabaret and adapted it to British tastes with contemporary pop music. His other big successes include Spirit of the Horse and Cirque Surreal - both of which may have been attended by many who didn't associate the shows with his name.

With his ex-wife Carol Gandey, he in fact headed the world's second-biggest producer of circus entertainment after Cirque du Soleil

At the time of Gandey's untimely death, aged just 67, on 12 December 2023, he was responsible for the Great Circus of Europe, at that time playing in the Arab Emirates, and Snow Storm 3, at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. 

Snow Storm 3 was a fine show with which to bow out. Perhaps more of an ice show than a circus, it's an ideal confection for Christmas. With a non-stop soundtrack of yuletide favourites, including Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, All I Want For Chrismas is You, Walking In The Air and Fairy Tale of New York, it fills its frozen rink with a swirl of highly skilled ice dancers, in duos and large-scale groups, dressed in a different outfit for each number.

But it's also held in a big top and features a strong circus element.

Britain's best-dressed clown, Mr Popol (Paul Carpenter) opens the proceedings in his glittering purple costume and tall hat, playing White Christmas on trumpet.

Later in the show, Mr Popol is joined by his regular auguste, Kakehole (Chris Freear) in a couple of classic clown routines. The funniest one involves Kakehole's comedy car, licence plate URA 1 (You are a one!).

Popol also shows his vocal talents, when he joins the ice dancers in a white wig to sing Mr White Christmas.

Elsewhere in the show, Phillip's daughter Hayley Gandey - a fourth generation ring star - performs an elegant cloud swing routine, including an audience-wowing upside down hang, after being driven on to the ice in another of no less than three comedy cars to appear in the show. The third mini-vehicle features in a topical pink-themed skating routine to the music from the movie smash of the year, Barbie.

The best mix of circus and ice comes from an aerialist introduced as Arina, who skates around the rink between rising into the air and assuming various poses on an umbrella-like prop with a hook-like handle - something seldom seen with a performer wearing ice skates.

A laser sequence recreates the Northern Lights of the title before a joyous ensemble finale to the arm-waving music of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.

When I interviewed Gandey for The Stage in 2020 he said:

“My ambition is to leave the company in a good position for our daughters to carry on. If I was given the choice of somewhere to finish, it would be watching one of our shows with a full house.”

I guess this would have been the sort of show he had in mind.

RIP Phillip Gandey, one of the world's greatest showmen.

Snow Storm 3 runs until 1 January.

 

Review: Big Apple Circus meets Circus Theatre Roncalli in New York City, 2023

2023 was the year that Ringling returned with The Greatest Show on Earth, its new animal-free spectacular (you can read my review here). Opening a new era for American circus, it was certainly the biggest show on Earth. 

In New York City, meanwhile, the Big Apple Circus has completely revamped its traditional Christmas stand by bringing to the Lincoln Centre one of the greatest shows in Europe, Circus Theatre Roncalli.

When I reviewed the Big Apple's offering last year (read it here) the procession of solo acts had a decidedly threadbare feel. While the acts themselves were good, there was no sense of a production, no razzmatazz. It certainly didn't look like the jewel in the world's jazziest city. Nor did it look like a show celebrating its 45th birthday, surely an occasion that deserved a bit of glitz. It looked more like a forgotten attraction barely hanging in after a decade of decline and bankruptcy - which, alas, it was.

The arrival of Circus Theatre Roncalli has changed that, and turned New York's resident big top into a must-see attraction once more. Ringling's arena show may be the biggest show on Earth, but Roncalli's one-ring show is undoubtedly the brightest, filling the tent with a non-stop swirl of colour and making a trip to the circus a truly theatrical event.

The immersive experience begins outside the main tent, with an adjacent circus museum full of pictures and costumes from Roncalli's and Big Apple's history. This is something that British circuses should really invest in. The Great Yarmouth Hippodrome has had a backstage museum for the past decade, and each of the travelling shows must have a wealth of old posters, props and costumes in storage. If they were presented in a separate tent beside the big top, the circuses could earn extra revenue with a token charge to walk through circus history in the way that they used to charge visitors to see the animals in the 'zoo' after the show.

In New York you can also buy a ticket to a VIP area where you can sip wine and have your picture taken with the performers while being serenaded by Roncalli's 8-piece jazz band.

Yes, Roncalli has a band! While most circuses these days rely on recorded music with a contemporary pop feel, Roncalli has a live band, seated on a balcony above the plush red ring doors. The music is distinctly old style - including a bit of the traditional circus music Entrance of the Gladiators - and helps to transport us into a dream-like circus world.

The music goes perfectly with the costumes worn by the artists, including traditional red circus tailcoats, and a team of half a dozen Broadway-style dancers whose dresses evoke a variety of eras, from Victorian vaudeville to the royal ballrooms of 17th century France.

The show is performed on a raised circular stage with no ring curb to create a barrier between the action and the audience. It begins with Angelo, an exquisitely costumed traditional white-face clown playing a saxophone while solemnly circling the stage.

The quiet opening captures our attention before the show suddenly bursts into life.

Two more clowns descend from the ceiling in a hot air balloon and basket. While the balloon is removed from the stage, a circus train comprising a small lorry and two huge circus wagons circle the perimeter.

The opening sequence sets up the loose theme of travel, reflected in the show's title, Journey to the Rainbow.

In keeping with the theme, a contortionist performs atop what looks like a tall but narrow ship's funnel. He then folds himself in two and slides down the inside of the tube and emerges from a door in the base.

Also on the travel theme, a cyclist pedals around the inside of a basket made from wooden slats that is hoisted into the air, swinging and swaying about like a lampshade, while he rides around the basket's sloping walls with nothing but an open hole beneath him.

It's not an act I've seen before, but America's No1 ring-watcher Showbiz David reported on one in his review of the Zoppe Italian Family Circus in sunny California a couple of months back (read his review here), so maybe it's a new trick coming into fashion (or perhaps it was the same performer). David wasn't impressed by what he called a "refreshing prop in search of a payoff." And it's true that it is a one-trick act. But in Roncalli's fast-moving programme it doesn't last long. It would definitely make a change to see such an act in a UK circus instead of the ubiquitous motorcycle Globe of Death (which isn't featured in the Roncalli ring).

While Ringling fields big acts, like a crisscrossing flying trapeze and a human cannonball in its big arena spaces, Roncalli goes for more intimate music hall-style acts. Emma Philips is one of the most entertaining foot-jugglers I have seen. Dressed as a vintage showgirl with a feather in her hat (she made her own costume, too) she spins a table atop her feet while spinning a parasol in each hand.

A juggler wows with a one-handed juggling of three clubs. A tightrope walker bounces back and forth between two crossed ropes. A clown performs a comedy springboard act, flipping a teddy bear into a chair atop his head. 

Elsewhere in the show, a male and female aerial routine is romantically dressed with candelabras flickering around the ring and a female vocalist singing a romantic ballad while a pianist plays a baby grand beside the ring doors, conjuring the feel of a cabaret supper club.

Just as Ringling has ditched its animals - and with them a whiff of controversy that has dogged the circus industry for decades - this is the first year that the Big Apple Circus has featured only human performers. Last year's show featured just one act with small dogs, and it looked like a token reminder of a bygone era of entertainment.

And yet, the ghost of circus past haunts the Lincoln Centre's tent this Christmas. The strangest act in the show features three performers dressed as polar bears. These aren't the big, jolly cartoon-like costume characters that lumber around the ring at Zippos Christmas Circus in London, however.

The Roncalli bears move on all-fours like real bears. Guided by a female trainer with a whip, they recreate a traditional polar bear act, standing on their hind legs on podiums and walking across a see-saw.

It looks like a dream sequence, a memory of circus as it was... and anyone who finds circuses creepy may well find it disturbing! I can't see anyone who disliked the idea of animals being 'forced to perform'  enjoying this reminder of what they came to an all-human circus to avoid. But then, maybe circus directors can't help giving us a little shiver now and then. As much as the industry decries the image of cruel lion tamers and scary clowns, perhaps there is a little dark corner of the circus' heart that enjoys being sinister.

Playing to that other-worldly image of mysterious circus people, the show concludes with a bewitching bubble-blowing act by Paulo Carillon, a steampunk clown who drives into the ring in a bizarre vehicle apparently made from scrap metal that, being a former engineer, he made himself.

His moodily lit act shows the artful beauty that can be created by a clown in a tent. And then, after that spell-binding moment, everything is suddenly all light and colour again for the full-cast finale.

It's a show that truly takes us on a journey, through a multitude of moods and, alongside the completely different but in its own way just as impressive Ringling show, suggests that the American circus industry is on the upswing into a bright new era.

New Yorkers certainly seem to be lapping it up, with Roncalli's run extended by two weeks until 15 January.

 

Who will fill their circus shoes? RIP Phillip Gandey, John Haze, Gerry Cottle and Nell Gifford

It was a shock this week to hear of the death of Phillip Gandey (pictured above with the cast of Gandeys Circus) at the tragically young age of 67.

When I interviewed Gandey for The Stage in 2020, he was a man full of life. Having just reopened three big tops in Butlins holiday centres, after lockdown restrictions were lifted, his one regret was that he didn't have his usual "five or six" shows simultaneously running in locations from the Edinburgh Festival to the Far and Middle East.

Gandey was born into the circus world. A clown aged three, and a knife-thrower at 11, he inherited his father's circus and became the world's youngest circus director at 17.

With his wife, Carol, he established Gandey World Class Productions as the UK's premier exporter of circus shows. When Gandeys Circus stopped using animals in the early 1990s, Gandey became one of the industry's great innovators, seeking fresh ideas to fill the gap left by big cats and elephants.

He brought a Chinese troupe of acrobats to the UK and created the Chinese State Circus, which became one of the country's most successful touring shows. He also created the cabaret-style Lady Boys of Bangkok, Cirque Surreal, Spirit of the Horse and the fundraising Circus Starr (which you can read about here).

One of his newest creations, the circus-on-ice show Snow Storm 3 is currently delighting audiences at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. His Great Circus of Europe, meanwhile, has toured Hong Kong, Singapore, and is currently in the Arab Emirates.

Gandey's passing leaves a huge hole in the circus world, and follows the loss of another great British showman, John Haze, who died in April this year at almost exactly the same young age.

Haze, like Gandey, was both artistic director and businessman, creating the long-running success story the Circus of Horrors and currently the UK's biggest big top show, Circus Extreme (read my review here).

Sadly, it was only a couple of years ago that both Haze and Gandey were paying tribute to another great showman, and a collaborator with both of them, Gerry Cottle, probably the best-known name in UK circus since the 1970s, who died in January 2021, aged 75.

Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson
with Gerry Cottle (left) and John Haze.

It was not long before that, that the circus world was shocked by the loss to cancer of Nell Gifford, aged just 46. (Read her story here)

Nell Gifford

In the space of four years, Britain has lost four of the most important circus impresarios of modern times. Each was an innovator and energiser, breathing new life into a world of big top and circus ring that was created in London by Philip Astley more than 250 years ago. 

They formed a generation of circus-producing talent fit to be remembered alongside their predecessors in earlier eras: Billy Smart, the Chipperfields, Bertram Mills, Lord Sanger and Astley himself. 

Like four king poles, Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford lifted the tent of British circus high. But with their departure, the big top will not fall.

Although all four were driving forces and figureheads, they were not one-person companies. Each left behind a creative team and/or family members to carry on their legacy. Giffords Circus, the Circus of Horrors and Circus Extreme continue to tour without their creators and the many shows of Phillip Gandey will doubtless do likewise, capably overseen by Carol Gandey and their daughters.

We still have another of our greatest showmen, Martin 'Zippo' Burton, whose twin shows in Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland this Christmas reveal the Zippos brand to be at the top of its game.

And a new generation of circus blood is rising, inspired by the generation that came before. People like Tracy Jones who ran away with the circus when she was 15 and learned her craft having knives thrown at her by Phillip Gandey himself. Jones travelled the world with Gandeys Circus, an apprenticeship that stood her in good stead to start her own show, Circus Funtasia, which is this year celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Also on the ascent are Paul and Irina Archer who spent many years working with Haze in behind-the-scenes roles on the Moscow State Circus and Circus Extreme before launching their own colourful and contemporary-styled big top show Circus Cortex two years ago. The show is currently starring at the indoor Kingdom of Winter attraction at ExCel London. 

Around the country, Planet Circus, Circus Zyair and Big Kid Circus are providing top drawer circus entertainment to big audiences in what feels like a thriving scene.

It's easy to see the passing of giants like Phillip Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford as the end of an era. But in the circus, there are no ends. The show will always go on. And as much as they will be missed, I'm sure that Gandey, Haze, Cottle and Gifford would want it no other way.