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The Sandow Family Circus Variety History- Part Seventeen.
Sandows Circus Funtime – a great success 1976 – 1977.
For the next two summer seasons Sheila and I ran the show engaging the best of British talent with always the same small three mast marquee. It seemed to have a charm about it and something the public found highly novel and acceptable. As did local authorities – we had the right formula. The press too gave us great cover like this one at Formby Lancashire. Packed houses for the full week.
Full house business within reach of Liverpool, and the Leisure Services Manager (who had supplied us with several parks and recreation grounds) saw the show at Formby, and probably impressed with the massive press cover, he immediately said, ‘I want to book your services for the Huyton and Kirkby Suites and will talk with associate fellow departments in the area and feel sure we will put together four or five weeks of Civic engagements under guarantee. And allowing you to book the acts for a grand children’s Christmas package.’ (!) Obviously this was fantastic news. We now had secure tours until the Sping of 1977.
The Civic Theatre runs Christmas 1976 and Christmas 1977.
Circus ‘Politics!’ Not always nice.
This was the initial engaged company for the 1976 Christmas Civic run including the Huyton Suite in Liverpool. During this event our first ‘fall out’ occurred with the (then) Circus Fans Association. One of its representatives arrived to one assumes to review the show. The person made no prior approaches to us and that was impolite (they proved just as impolite for our grand charity event at the Spa Theatre Bridlington in 2009). The Huyton Suite is a wonderful Civic theatre and the above show played to total capacity twice each day. It had been opened by Harold Wilson. However changing facilities were not best considered but performers are used to these things. We like privacy as much as any other person but are willing to ‘pitch in’ without complaint if necessary. This particular fan, who we later learned was a CFA Council member, entered the large one room changing area to the rear of the stage without knocking or without approaching us first. In the circumstances I requested that she leave. I did not complain to the C.F.A. I thought that to be the end of the matter but this person chose to write the most venomous ‘poison’ letter to the Knowsley Borough Council saying ‘it is disappointing that you should book a company like this when there are other circuses much better known with wild animals.’ Of course we were outraged and told the CFA so, but instead of them backing us (as in supporting the employment of the above acts and the future employment of acts) they sided with their member Councillor with, ‘she has a right to her opinion.’ Subsequently we banned the CFA with public notice from any of our future performances. No doubt we have had visits but not to our knowledge. We have suffered since a constant flow of biased negativity and sarcasms – mostly in public – without our right to reply. (Mostly within their sites on Facebook or closed websites). This has been a ‘vendetta.’ To mention the company; Running Fox and Juanita toured with Joe Gandey along with myself for the three seasons. Jock was no doubt one of the finest fire acts. Also clowning with me, above, as Oxo. The Ricardos (trapeze and unicycles) toured with Circus Funtime throughout the 1976 season along with Steve Sabre. The pigeon act was Sheila’s and this will be covered in a further section. (Note for the current CFA, the Huyton Suite had and still does have a platform stage! Rather dotty for the CFA to expect wild animals on a platform stage).
