TRUE CONFEZIONS

Talk about feeling dirty and unclean and generally tainted! Stromboli (the Circus Strong Man) and I have been sitting pursed lipped and in high dudgeon in our shared caravan all this past week.

Indeed, my lips are so pursed I could easily suck the filling out of an individual fruit pie through the whole in the top - and try drinking tea with pursed lips and not making a noise. Impossible!

Both Stromboli and I have been badly let down. Our usual high standards in matters moral have been betrayed. We are disgusted, distressed and utterly discombobulated.

The reason for this dramatic upset? Gather round my little playmates and lend an ear. Beppo, the clown, (both in the professional and personal sense) has been exposed.........being, well, exposed. It seems that in his dim, distant and dirty past, before he donned the fright wig, the big shoes and the big red nose, he turned a coin appearing in dirty films.

It was all quite some time ago, back in the days when such items were shown in dodgy clubs in Soho or sold under the counter in plain brown wrappers and he was quite the little star for a while. All his films had an exotic, or should that be erotic, Eastern theme with titles such as "The Nabob Of Neasden", "The Peckham Potentate" and last, but not least, "The Sultan Of Surbiton". Talk about typecasting.

In most of these insults to the art of cinema (or should that be sinema) he was dressed in a fez, baggy trousers and those funny pointed slippers that turn up at the toes. I believe in one film they even had silver bells on the end. Not much chance of him sneaking up on an unsuspecting member of the harem there!

Now it's Beppo's toes that are turning up - in embarrassment - and its all his own fault. Instead of turning his back on his old life completely ( like they do when they join the Foreign Legion) and, before YOU say it, no, there isn't much difference between that and Circus life (Camels and animal droppings feature heavily in both) he hung on to one reel of film, presumably as a memento of his time as a rising star.

He might even have got away with doing that if he hadn't fallen out with Zippo, another member of his troupe, and gotten him fired.

Zippo, a four foot three inch ball of tightly coiled venom and vengeance strode over to Beppo's caravan with the intention of standing on a table and headbutting his malefactor but, finding Beppo was out, Zippo had a forage through Beppo's belongings looking for something of intense sentimental value to steal and sell and found.........you guessed it.

Before you could say "social work report" Zippo had sold the story to the local newspapers and T.V. stations and posted a clip on YOU TUBE. Quelle Scandale. Quelle Horreure! You didn't know I was bi-lingual did you? I said bi - LINGUAL you at the back!

Anyway, we are all laughing stocks now. Our collective skills and talents are set at naught. In the eyes of the public we are merely second fiddles to a loathesome lothario with a spotty bum (the film may be old but its crystal clear).

I feel for Mariella, I really do. An angel like that should never be tainted by the wickedness of ths world. I wonder that girl ever sees fit to come down from her high wire at all!

NEWSFLASH! UPDATE!

Just had the busiest week since I first came to the Circus. Box office is "Boffo" as they say in Variety. Since that clip of the aforementioned S.B. was posted on You Tube the public has flocked to us.

I half think they expected to see Beppo in some triple x rated confection but how they think he could get up to anything wearing shoes two feet long defeats me - as it would Beppo.

Anyway, who cares. Beppo's misdemeanours were all a long time ago, mustn't be judgemental and all that and besides Stromboli and I have both embraced the joys of pragmatism.

The audience are still throwing things, but this time it's money - after each act.
We've been cleaning up. Stromboli, ever the scholar, bought himself a new Thesaurus and I got a catering size jar of Dill Pickles. Oops pardon!

THE UNKINDEST CUTS OF ALL

N. Osferatu, our esteemed, if strangely nocturnal circus accountant has got himself into a lather of almost hysterical activity of late. All the more alarming since he is usually a very inanimate fellow who has been known to sit motionless for hours at his office desk rather like one of those tropical reptiles who only show signs of movement when their overlong tongue flicks out to catch some unfortunate passing insect whose only crime was to be in the vicinity. Osferatu 's tongue, by contrast, usually flicks out to give some unfortunate an ear bashing for spending money - even when it happens to be their own.

All that is by the by, though. No, the real reason for the hysteria is that someone gave him a year's subscription to the Financial Times (you know the big pink paper that you often see worried looking financial types reading across from you in the train or in your local coffee shops).

Osferatu, glad not to have to rely on the financial page in the Daily Star any more, has been drinking in every word of it. But one word has made a bigger impression on this cold fish than all the others. The word in question is "cuts".

He has got it into his head that massive cuts are needed in the circus expenses. He feels it is his duty to make swinging cuts to prove his financial virility. He feels like a veritable little "Master of the Universe".

To him the word has become a talisman, a slogan, a leitmotif.......a sort of verbal accountants Viagra. Mind you, that last one conjures up images too horrible to contemplate.

Anyway he is bandying the word about, wielding it like a sword and generally waving it in people's faces. He loves the power it gives him. The only time you see anything like a glint in those cold dead eyes is when some poor lackey is standing before him, knees knocking at Osferatu's not so veiled inference that the aforesaid lackey should brush up his C.V.

He doesn't even bother with Labour's pretence that his cuts won't hurt you because they are kind cuts. No, he is taking pride in the fact that his cuts will involve much bloodshed.

In fact, on the subject of blood...when the lion tamer made the mistake of taking back Charlie the lion's dinner pale before the King of the Jungle felt he'd finished there was much blood. I wouldn't go quite as far as to say there was carnage but.......... As the medics fought like, well lions, to make sure Solly kept his right arm, Osferatu, I have no idea what his first name is, hung around the scene leering and whetting his lips over and over again. There is something not quite normal about the man and one day I'll find out what it is.

Anyway, like many other dreary, bloodless little men, he takes a pleasure in weilding power over the helpless. He started off in a small way by cutting the length of the sticks on the toffee apples and replacing the useless Latvian jugglers china plates with plastic ones. Takes all the fun out of Laszlo's incompetence if you ask me.

Now he has had the nerve to ask the divine Mariella to wear something a "bit more plain and sensible", if you please. I'm speechless just thinking about it. The man's a barbarian.

What's next, hiring three legged circus horses for goodness sake? I'll tell you something, I'm hiding my spangly shorts until that subscription for the Financial Times runs out.