Bobby Roberts’ Circus

Last year I taught students about the issue of animals appearing in cirucus’s. With that background I was very curious to visit Booby Roberts’ Circus as it not only has animals perfoming but has the last remaining elephant — called Anne — appearing in a UK circus.
It was a moral dilemma attending — but I’m one of those people that believes in witnessing things and then making an informed opinion.
To get in you had to pass about 10 vocal hippy protesters. They were very emotional and I would like to have spent more time talking to them, but the show was about to start. I did read their literature though which was compelling if one-​sided.
The thing that immediately struck me about this circus was that it just had an incredible feel of being old, tired and broken down — as though it’s hay day was some decades past.
There was nothing new in the venue. Every sign was tatty. The toilets were in a dodgy, smelly caravan. The lines the ringmaster and the clowns spouted had been polished within milimetres of existence — and the most tired thing of all, was that poor old elephant. A real metaphor for the whole show.
Actually it was worse than run down — it seemed sad and it seemed desperate.
The stalls were only a tenth full — affected no doubt by the protesters. The ringmaster twice spoke directly and bitterly about those idiot’s outside.
Also I think because community attitudes HAVE changed towards circus’s with perfoming animals.
What made it even worse was that five times at least the show was stopped so that more money could be pulled out of the audience. Raffles for really hopeless prizes and photographs with the elephant being some of them.
Now it wasn’t all bad! There were some really good acts. The HUMAN acts, particularly the trapeze artists and the juglars were fantastic.
The other animal acts I didn’t like — just because I find it in bad taste — but I couldn’t conclude from watching them perform that it was abusive. I’m used to working animals — and these horses and dogs looked well kept and cared for. The kids present loved the animals and it was a joy to see the wonder on their young faces.
I’m really glad that animal based circus’s are on the way out and I think that the acts in these types of shows will actually improve because of it.
As for Bobby Roberts’ Circus — I feel that it’s fate is tied to that last elephant. Both, very sadly, seem to be nearing their end.