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.

NATURE WATCHED

Did you see Nature Watch the other night? It was all about my fellow chimpanzees and how dashed clever we all are and how - breathless hush - we have even learned to use tools. Frankly, I thought it was all a bit patronising.

They showed you one of my "brothers" poking away at an old log so that he could feed off the creepy crawlies inside. Big deal! Give me a decent Black and Decker and leave me alone for a couple of hours and I could build Stromboli a DECENT bookcase. I'm sick of looking at the rickety thing he's got at the moment. It's hardly a fitting home for Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zola, Mickey Spillane and all the other literary greats.

Later in the show the scientist chappies gave these monkeys at Edinburgh Zoo a film camera in a shockproof case to see what they did with it whilst, at the same time, making much of the fact that our D.N.A. is 98% the same as yours.

With that sort of percentage and a decent budget,they could probably have got a better end result than the people who make Emmerdale! All of this prompted me to wonder what percentage of MONKEY D.N.A the people who make "Live From Studio 5" and the "Wright Stuff" posess.

98% of human D.N.A. eh? I'll bet that you are all shifting nervously in your seats at the moment because if we had 98% of your rights you'd be in serious schtook. We'd be competing with you and yours for jobs and housing, wouldn't we? We'd be cheaper to employ than your average Lithuanian.

You'd see us everywhere. Delivering your post, serving up big Mac's in the local McDonalds or taking your fare on the good old No.37.

Just imagine us moving in as your next door neighbours. Just as you and your family and friends were enjoying your BBQ on the one hot day in Summer we would be up the tree in our own garden cackling, gesticulating and waving our backsides in your direction. Well, what do you expect when Carlsberg Special is so cheap?

Worst of all, imagine the look of horror on her loving Papa's face when some little Britnee or Chelsee brought her latest agile, if hirsute, beau home to meet the folks saying, "yeah, he ain't much to look at but he's "murder on the dance floor" an' he can spin round on his head faster than any of 'em others".

Relax, folks, relax. As you were. It'll never happen. A number of things stand in our way at the moment but for the sake of brevity I shall mention just three. We're short,we're hairy and we're bandy legged.

McDonald's? We couldn't reach the counter. We would have to sit on it.Health and Safety would never stand for it. Well, you wouldn't want your tray sharing space with a monkey's behind, now would you.

A postman's round? Leave it out! With these legs? It takes me all my time to cross the circus ring.

Mind you, from what I have seen of bus conductor's, we might be in with a shout there.

I can't help feeling that our day will come though. You have seen Planet of the Apes haven't you? HAR! HAR! HAR!

p.s. If anyone out there has a Black and Decker I'd still like to have a bash at that bookshelf!

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

It has been brought to my attention that certain shortcomings in my behaviour need to be addressed and so, with Stromboli looking over my shoulder, (he means well) I commit my New Year's Resolutions to paper:

1. I shall not feel obliged to eat all the unsold toffee apples at the end of each day.

2. I shall not bite the hand that feeds (literally).


3. I shall not water the plants in other people's homes (metaphorically).


4. I shall not drop my spangly shorts and "moon" at members of the audience - even if they have been throwing things.


5. I shall not pick the spangles off my spangly shorts just because I am bored and have nothing else to do.

6. I will sit still while the nice make up lady combs my parting and puts on the Brylcreem.


7. I will not eat the Brylcreem.


8. I will finish things once I have started............


Wait a minute Stromboli has just gone out to see the Boss about something. Just time for me to nip out and fill up on toffee apples. It was a slack night to-night. There's probably tons left. Anyway, what sort of resolution is it if you can't break it? Eh? Eh?



Happy New Year to all my fans! A big sloppy kiss to you all!
P.S. did you know that because of my extra wide and elastic
lips I can kiss at least three people at a time - not that I
ever get the chance.

Cheery,

Marcel

CIRCUS MONKEY REVIEWS THE B.B.C.'S "BIG TOP"

I have been out of action with a bad case of groin strain these past few days (that bl**dy tricycle again) and have consequently been watching far too much T.V. for my own good.

I must say I did like "CASH IN THE ATTIC". You know, that's the cosy one where kind hearted folk sell off all their bits and pieces to buy a state of the art wheelchair for an aged relative. Of course you also get the selfish sods who blow the kids' inheritance on an overpriced round the world cruise but, then again, what did the kids ever do for them!

I've got to say, though, that I've seen enough naked middle aged ladies to last several monkey lifetimes (Gok Wan's "HOW TO LOOK GOOD NEKKID"). I have news for you, my supercilious oriental friend, I have always looked good NEKKID and I am well into my middle monkey years.

One morning while rubbing my tender groin (an image you could probably have quite happily got by without. Sorry!) I thought that the Simian race had actually taken over the airwaves but it was just Matthew Wright, a big eared, loud mouthed twerp with a rubber mug, just like those hooligan bonobos I was neighbours with back home, hosting one of those interminable daytime Talk Shows.

You know the kind. They always have a panel of z list celebs of no obvious great intelligence who, by virtue of the fact that a television camera is trained on them suddenly become expert on all the rich panoply of human affairs. Proper bl**din little Oracles of Delphi - and I don't think!

If you want a worse example of talk T.V. (oh you do? do you. You little masochists you!) may I direct you to LIVE FROM STUDIO 5, which goes out in the evening, or, as I call it, AN OIK AND TWO SLAPPERS. A little hard? A tad too cutting? Well, watch it and tell me I'm wrong!

I'll save the best till last - O.K. I'M BEING FACETIOUS. The B.B.C. are trying their hand at family entertainment again. Just out of interest, why do their Press Releases always make Family Entertainment sound like an Orwellian concept - straight from the Ministry of Laughter?

Speaking as a circus performer myself I have to say that it is not very realistic.
It's too colourful. Our establishment is a monument to the faded and the grubby. What's not faded is usually stained with some unidentifiable substance, or another, of which soup is the least problematic.

It's too glamorous. Amanda Holden's legs? Pleeeze. Apart from the divine Mariella, who is so far above us that she is not really part of this shambles, the owner of the best legs around here is Montezuma, the Circus Horse.

There was one note of reality, though, that clown who put the ferrets down his trousers. I could see Beppo, our chief mirth maker (O.K., I am being facetious again) doing that. The only difference being that he would not be doing it for the benefit of his act but for idle curiousity.

Actually, when you think of it, THAT'S funny!

SOMETHING ABOUT PETTIGREW (PART TWO)

You may remember that we left our hero, and future owner of this circus, Algernon R. Pettigrew, making his way into the fair city of Edinburgh after being left to his own devices by the Raggle Taggle Gypsies because they were sick and tired of having to scour the Greenwoods for him every time he got lost.

He found lodgings at the "Bide A Wee" Guest House run by Miss Agnes Flotsam, an Edinburgh landlady (of whom it was often said...... but never, ever proved!) who was kind enough to feed this waif up and wise enough to leave him to his inner turmoil - as long as that turmoil didn't involve a lot of noisy crying which would upset the other guests.

After a day or two he felt fit enough to face the world - even that bit of it called Edinburgh - and so, on a fine Spring afternoon he strolled through town, buying a lottery ticket on his way.

Then, that same evening, as he watched T.V. with Agnes Flotsam, he found that he was now a multi-millionaire ex sandwich board man. His eyes lit up. Who needed sandwich boards now. Who needed all that running through Greenwoods anyway. He was sure that was the quickest way to catch Dutch Elm Disease.

At the news of Algernon's good fortune, Miss Flotsam let out an involuntary whoop, apologised and left the room carrying an empty biscuit plate.

Our dancing rover sat staring at the T.V., like a hypnotised rabbit trying to make sense of his new reality.His new position in life was a little daunting but it was certainly more exciting, than squirrels, strange flowers and trees with bark in the shape of a human face.(see previous posting for enlightenment).

Then it dawned on him that Miss Flotsam had been away longer than was strictly necessary to replenish a plate full of "Jammy Dodgers". He was just thinking of getting up to look for her when she burst back into the room, a vision in pink chiffon, the scent of "A Night In Tangiers" wafting all around her and carrying a plate of little pink and yellow cakes which she set down before him on the coffee table.

"Can I interest you in a Fondant Fancy, Algie?", she said in a voice quivering with desire and marinated in Gordon's Gin. "The'yre very moreish."

She licked her lips lasciviously and fiddled with her under wiring suggestively and, for good measure, she fluttered one false eyelash so vigorously that it fell into her mug of hot chocolate.

Algernon was finding that life was suddenly becoming so much more interesting. All of life's pleasures - even the forbidden ones - were being laid before him on a plate. Oh, he sighed, with guilty pleasure. Guilty pleasures, guilty, guilty, guilty, pleasures.

He eyed Agnes' swelling bosom and the curve of her hips. It was his turn to lick his lips now. It was all there, just in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and take it.

So our hero reached out and........picked the pink Fondant Fancy nearest him!. Then he picked another and another. Then he fell asleep in front of a repeat of Holby City and Agnes retreated to the kitchen and sobbed her heart out and didn't care whether the other %^@~~~** guests heard her or not.

Miss Flotsam was disappointed in a sort of Olympian way at the failure of her seduction attempt. Coming second to a fondant fancy is hard even for the most philosophical of women and the nearest Agnes had come to Greek Philosophy was the kebab shop owners musings on Edinburgh's local business rates.She was not a quitter,though. After all there were multi millions at stake if she could hook this "slippery little minnow".

Next morning there was an extra sausage on his plate at breakfast and she had taken the trouble to stuff his mushrooms with some delicacy, or another, which on questioning, she was slightly evasive about. Algernon was suspicious. Even his stint n the Greenwoods had not taught him to trust mushrooms. Things could go either way with mushrooms.When Miss Flotsam went pack to the kitchen to get more toast Algernon saw his chance and stuck them down the back of the settee, hoping that by the time she found them he would have moved on to pastures new.

On the day that his winnings cheque cleared he sought refuge from Miss Flotsam's attentions at an afternoon performance of the circus which had just arrived in town.

He had never been to the circus before and was absolutely enchanted. Then, it suddenly dawned on him. Here was the family he craved. This was the biggest and best family in all the world and, what was even better, was the fact that if he owned it and was paying the bills they could not leave him behind. Why, even if he got LOST they would HAVE to look for HIM.

Without wasting another second he went to his bank and came back in a couple of hours with a suitcase full of money.

He burst into the owner's luxury caravan and demanded to buy the whole show "lock, stock and barrel".

He fully expected to have to haggle but five minutes later he was the proud proprietor and the slippery little sod of an ex owner, whose character I have already given you, had burned tyre marks into the grass outside the caravan and was already history.

Pettigrew sat down on the couch with a contented sigh. Was it all a dream? He pinched himself. No, it wasn't! He was home, home at last.

Just then the door flew open and there stood N. Osferatu, the circus business manager/accountant/sword swallower. He was not a happy man, but then he never was.

Still, that's another story!

Our last picture shows the aforementioned Mr. N. Osferatu in one of his better moments.


ONCE AGAIN, WE DEDICATE THIS POSTING TO THE SUBLIME HARRY LANGDON, CINEMA CLOWN EXTRAORDINAIRE!

SOMETHING ABOUT PETTIGREW (PART 1)

I thought it an opportune moment to start an occassional series featuring some of the Dramatis Personae of this travelling "Circus of Dreams" and where better to start than our proud - if often perplexed owner - Algernon R. Pettigrew.

He took over the circus shortly after I arrived myself and is generally regarded as a decent sort, if a little child like and naive. He is certainly an improvement on the previous incumbent of whom it was said, "if he entered a revolving door behind you, he'd be waiting for you on the other side, ready to pick your pocket".

Algernon was born to a travelling rat catcher and a mother who was, well let us just say, "well travelled". Times were tough when little Algie arrived in the world but, as well as his rat catching work his father had just started a side line in organic sausages and, not to be outdone in the entrepreunerial stakes, his mother toured the dockside bars of their hometown singing bawdy songs and selling kisses to sailors who did not seem at all "put off" by her glass eye and missing front teeth. She was one of the few among us who could truly say (to paraphrase the song)that she'd seen what the boys in the back room would have - particularly as she was the one thatgave it to them. As long as they paid for it she didn't care!

Algernon was a fey, dreamy child and while his peers were playing games during the break, he could be seen staring up at the passing clouds. It was during these childish reveries that his dinner money was invariably stolen - so he was a fey, dreamy AND skinny child!

He left school with no qualifications other than a gold star for being in charge of Miss Winterbottom's Spring Bulbs in Primary 7.

A succession of jobs followed. He was briefly employed putting holes in doughnuts at a local bakers but he left after a couple of weeks complaining bitterly about it being an empty experience.

Being fey and dreamy and forgetful was not much help in his next chosen occupation for, after the third time of finding himself in the High Street without a stitch on because he had forgotten to put his clothes ON AGAIN, he was fired from his job as a life model at the local Art College.

It was third time lucky though. He answered an ad. placed by an Oriental Carpet Merchant who was holding an exhibition of his wares at a prestigious nearby Hotel and needed a Sandwich Board Man to tell the world about it.

Algernon's ability to walk up and down half a dozen streets over and over again, stand motionless at strategic street corners for half an hour at a time in the wind and rain and go for a very long time without needing to go to the toilet stood him in good stead.

Soon he was advertising everything from hats to holidays and carpets to car doors and he would have jogged along quite nicely too if some jobsworth on the local council had not decided that sandwich boards were an Elf and Safety ishoo. Overnight sandwich boards were banned from the town.

Algernon was distraught. He took to covering his old round and standing motionless on street corners with his arms held out to mimic his missing sandwich board.

No-one is exactly sure but it's reckoned that it was about this time that he came into contact with a representative of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies (you know, the ones that "laughed and sang as the Greenwoods rang") who suggested that a spell with them might help him to see the world afresh.

Well, young Algie saw a good many Greenwoods and did his fair share of laughing and singing in them in the next few weeks. The whole experience did him a power of good. It really took him out of himself. It was a real tonic and much better than expensive therapy. There was just one problem.

Algernon had a bad habit of getting distracted as he danced and skipped his way through the woods with his merry companions. It might be a flower he had never seen before, a squirrel, or a peace of bark that looked like someone's face - the result was always the same.

As the strains of "a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no" drifted off into the distance our hero would be staring like a hypnotised rabbit at whatever had taken his fancy this time.

A half hour would go by before his Gypsy host's would realise he was no longer among their number and then a great "hue and cry" would echo through the trees until he was safely back in the bosom of his adopted family.

After the umpteenth time this got to be rather wearing for the Gypsies. You can't really blame them. After all, it takes away from the joyous sponataneity of the "laughing and singing" bit if you have to break off to launch a full scale manhunt every so often.

One morning, thinking it the kindest thing for all concerned,the Gypsy Folk rose extra early and left him asleep under a tree on the edge of a wood near Edinburgh.

Rosie, the pretty young girl in charge of the tambourine had formed quite an attachment and she brushed away a tear as she looked upon the baby faced troubador for the last time.

She knelt down and gently placed a four leaved clover in the breast pocket of his jacket, blew him a kiss and then parted forever. It would be quite a while before the words "hey nonny no" passed her lips again.

When Algie awoke. He ran through a gamut of emotions: mystification, shock, panic, anger. One moment he had a family and the next he did not.He wondered what he had done wrong and knew in the bottom of his heart how much he would miss them all but he knew he would miss Rosie most of all. Never to hear the jingle of the little silver bells around the edge of her tambourine again was a terrible prospect.

Eventually, he realised he could not sit in the woods forever. They were damp with dew and he did not want a flare up of the old trouble again. He had enough to deal with as it was.

Reluctantly, he rose from his woodland bed, yawned and made his way into the fair city of Edinburgh.



THIS POSTING IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THAT SWEET CLOWN OF THE EARLY CINEMA - HARRY LANGDON