Gerry Cottle: Showman behind one of Britain’s most successful circuses

He toured around the world and reinvented his enterprises after pressure from animal rights protesters

Cottle celebrated 50 years in the business with a 2012 tour (Getty)

Gerry Cottle, who has died of Covid-19 aged 75, ran away to join the circus when he was 15 and learnt juggling and fire-eating, but he quickly decided that performing was not his ultimate ambition.

“I never wanted to be the greatest juggler or trapeze artist,” the showman with a swagger told the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs in 1984. “I wanted to be the big boss.”

Gerry Cottle’s Circus started pitching up around the country in 1974. A year later, as the big top moved around British coastal resorts, it was chosen by the BBC as the venue for its new travelling TV variety show Seaside Special, featuring top singing and comedy stars, and the catchy theme song “Summertime City”, written and performed by Mike Batt.

Riding the crest of a wave, as his circus became Britain’s biggest, Cottle also took it abroad. He shipped 16 lions, six tigers and three elephants to Hong Kong, while a Middle East tour included a trip to Oman, where the circus was staged as a birthday present for the sultan.

The big-top impresario later reflected: “I guess those glorious years in the mid-Seventies were my heyday. I felt pretty invincible.”

Gerald Ward Cottle was born in Carshalton, Surrey, in 1945 to Joan (nee Ward) and Reg Cottle, a City of London stockbroker

Seeing Jack Hilton’s Circus in Earl’s Court, London, when he was eight made the youngster determined to have a career in the business.

He learnt juggling, mainly with oranges, and his father, a grandmaster in the Masons, had his son performing at his lodge for a ladies’ night.

For two summers, Cottle helped with the ponies at Chessington Zoo Circus, where he learnt to ride the unicycle.

Leaving Rutlish Grammar School, Merton Park, without taking O-levels, he headed for Robert Brothers Circus, in Newcastle, where he was paid £6 a week as an apprentice.

“I only learnt how to put up tents and pick up rubbish,” he said. “I got training and became Gerry Melville the Teenage Juggler.”

He added stilt-walker, acrobat, clown and trick rider to his CV and, on moving to Gandey’s Circus, he learnt about the management side of the business.

Switching to James Brothers Circus, he met Brian Austen. In 1970, two years after Cottle married Betty Fossett – from a famous circus family renowned for its bareback riding – both men and their wives formed Embassy Circus, with its first event in a small secondhand tent in Sturminster Newton, Dorset.

With just five performers – the two couples and Austen’s brother – Cottle described himself as “chief clown” while Austen walked the wire and rode a unicycle.

The outfit soon changed its name to Cottle & Austen’s Circus but, in 1974, the couples went their separate ways when Gerry Cottle’s Circus was born.

Alongside its big top being featured in the first four series of Seaside Special (1975-1978), the circus had one of its elephants, Vicki, in the TV sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum in 1976, seen following Lofty (Don Estelle) into the wartime concert party’s camp and leaving a trail of damage.

However, a trip to Iran in 1979 coincided with the revolution and ended up bankrupting Cottle when a 6pm curfew meant that people were not allowed to leave their homes and he had already booked the acts, including ice-skating chimpanzees from Italy.

“We never got paid, ran out of money and had to do a midnight flit from our hotel,” he said.

He briefly earned money by taking work as a ringmaster in someone else’s venture, but – as the tide of public opinion was turning against animals performing in circuses and local authorities were legislating against it – he bounced back in 1981 with his Rainbow Circus.

It was an animal-free extravaganza where clowns, acrobats and magicians lined up alongside stunt artists rather than elephants, chimpanzees, lions, tigers and polar bears.

Cottle’s three daughters also performed their own act in it and a big band dressed in military uniform played Queen’s Flash Gordon film theme tune.

But the comeback was thwarted when a slump in audiences following a recession meant that Cottle had to take the show off the road.

Thinking outside the box, his next idea, the Gary Glitter Rock’n’Roll Circus, married the big top with the musician’s live performance, but audiences were even smaller and Cottle quickly pulled the plug after completing just a few short runs in 1981 and was soon selling trucks and trailers to keep money coming in.

The following year, he joined forces with a rival for a successful run of the Gerry Cottle-Richard Chipperfield Circus in Hong Kong.

With an elephant at his home in Addlestone Moor in 1992 (Rex)

Gerry Cottle’s Circus was then revived for tours of Asia and back in Britain, where he found a public appetite for the big top again, and he occasionally teamed up with Austen for joint ventures, as well as reintroducing a few animals – and protesters continued to target him.

When Cottle was fined £500 in 1992 after admitting possession of cocaine, he said his addiction was caused by the stresses of his work.

In the 1990s, as he struggled to find a winning formula again, he staged a show under the big top at Wembley Stadium with Jeremy Beadle as ringmaster and joined Austen in promoting the Moscow and Chinese state circuses on tours of Britain.

He announced his retirement in 1993 but was back two years later, when he co-founded the gothic-themed Circus of Horrors – based on French circus Archaos – with singer-songwriter and big-top performer Dr Haze, making its debut at the Glastonbury Festival.

With tours of Europe, South America and Asia, as well as a 28-week run at London’s Roundhouse, it remains Britain’s longest-running alternative circus, although Cottle eventually sold his shares to his business partner.

The circus entrepreneur decided to leave his big-top career behind him in 2003 when he was refused planning permission to expand his Addlestone Moor headquarters, the centre of his Surrey-based company for 30 years.

He sold off his equipment to Austen and put his memorabilia up for sale while directing his energies into a new venture at the Wookey Hole caves, in Somerset, adding circus performances to the tourist attraction.

The showman hit the road again in 2012 with a British tour to mark his half-century in the business, and followed it up with his Magic Circus tour in 2017.

His autobiography, Confessions of a Showman: My Life in the Circus, was published in 2006.

Cottle and his wife split up in the 1990s. She survives him, along with their daughters, Sarah, April and Polly, and son, Gerry.

Gerry Cottle, circus entrepreneur, born 7 April 1945, died 13 January 2021