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Gerry Cottle
Gerry Cottle
Born	1945
Employer	Wookey Hole
Known for	Circus Owner
Spouse	Betty (separated)
Children	4

Gerry Cottle (born 1945) is the former owner of Gerry Cottle's Circus, the Moscow State Circus and the Chinese State Circus. He is now the owner of Wookey Hole caves near Wells in England.

Early life and circuses

The son of a stockbroker, Gerry Cottle first experienced circus performances when aged eight. He was taken to see Jack Hilton's Circus at Earl's Court, London. Finding the circus to be the antithesis of his staid and conventional upbringing, Cottle idolised the performers and was delighted when he finally learned to juggle. He attended Rutlish School in Merton, southwest London.

Using his mother's oranges, he was hired by his father, a grand-master in the Masons, to appear at a Ladies' Night when he was 13. He also got a part-time job while he was still at school litter-picking at Chessington Zoo. The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the British circus, when the arrival of a show in town was seen as a major event, and for Cottle it was an instant passport out of middle-class life and onto the open road.

Gerry Cottle was 15 when he ran away to the circus in 1961, leaving a tape-recorded message for his parents that ran:

"Please do not under any circumstances try to find me. I have gone forever. I have joined the circus. You do not understand me. I have gone."

Leaving behind any pretence at attaining educational certificates, he skipped school and caught a train from his home in Cheam, Surrey, to Newcastle and joined Robert Brothers Circus.

His early days were extremely tough, partly because the circus is a deeply incestuous and frequently unfriendly world, dominated by a handful of spirited, intermarried families – the Gandeys, Roberts, Fossetts and Paulos. Cottle was known in circus speech as a "josser", an outsider to be distrusted and humiliated.

At Robert Brothers, he was first offered the job of "lion tamer" but decided against a career working with the caged lions because their previous trainer had been mauled to death. He then attempted to become a horse trick-rider but gave up after several falls. His first appearance in the ring was as the back of the pantomime horse, at which he was also not very good. Mostly, he just did the menial work of shovelling elephant manure.

He moved to a smaller show working for Joe Gandey, where a lack of paying customers meant that performances were cancelled and wages never materialised. He stayed with Gandey for three years, however, learning the skills needed to run and manage a circus. He also developed the skills of a showman, essential in the role he had chosen for himself.

"But Cottle did not simply want to work in a circus. His ambition was to own the biggest circus Britain had ever seen."

Cottle realised that acceptance in the circus would be easier if he married into one of the great circus families. He first saw Betty Fossett when she was 12 years old, appearing in her family's circus presenting ponies and courted her relentlessly. By the time she was 16, they had moved into a caravan together where they were both working on the James Brothers Circus. He married Betty and they had three daughters, who followed their mother into the ring, and a son, Gerry Jnr.

Gerry Cottle's Circus

Cottle says that he never had ambitions to be in a circus act himself. "From when I was a kid I always wanted to be the boss of one." His father loaned him £60 to get started, he explains, and some while later, he teamed up with a friend, Brian Austen, to form today's Cottle Austen Circus. In 2003 he decided to retire and bought Wookey Hole in Somerset, transforming it into a mixed entertainment complex including a circus museum, daily circus shows and other attractions.

Cottle and Austen Circus

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_13-4-2003_pg9_8

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1655810,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4103210.stm

Moscow State Circus

Chinese State Circus

Circus of Horrors

With the growing resentment of the public to circuses involving animals and the animal cruelty charges brought before fellow circus owner Mary Chipperfield

Gerry Cottle’s Circus Limited v City of Edinburgh District Council 1990, Scots Law Times 235 http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/research/pdf_res_notes/rn00-36.pdf

However, an application can only be refused on the above grounds. For example, in the case of Gerry Cottle’s Circus Limited v City of Edinburgh District Council 1990, the court ruled in favour of the petitioner, Gerry Cottle’s Circus Limited, after Edinburgh District Council refused to grant the circus a temporary public entertainment licence. In his ruling, Lord Dervaird concluded: “That it does not lie within the powers of the district council as licensing authority to use those powers to refuse a licence for public entertainment involving performing animals on the sole ground that the council considers the whole concept of animals performing in circuses to be wrong

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/264109.stm

Former circus impresario Gerry Cottle has accepted the changing fashion by abandoning touring circuses.

He says he is adapting to the marketplace and has not used animals for six years. Instead he now concentrates on travelling theme-parks.

His Circus of Horrors uses bizarre and sexually explicit material which may not be to everyone's taste. However, he believes the audience demand is complex.

"In London the public do not want to see circuses with animals. But in the country they do. Even with our radical Circus of Horrors we still get people saying it is not the same and asking where the elephants are," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2006/01/18/insideout_circus_feature.shtml