We sit down for a chinwag with Britain’s only undead ringmaster, and he explains how and why The Circus Of Horrors all began.
Did you ever see yourself as the ringleader of the Circus of Horrors?
Dr Haze: I did, because I started it all back in 1995. It’s only ever been me who’s been the ‘undead ringmaster’ here. It’s something I always thought I could do.
Fair enough, did you know you wanted to do that for a long time?
I’m a firm believer that if you like something enough other people will like it too. I just always thought the Circus of Horrors is something that I’d like to go and see if I wasn’t in it, which consequently I thought other people would like to go and see.
I know that in the past some venues have stopped you from performing. Have you ever considered to toning down your shows?
There are very, very few cities now that actually stop the Circus of Horrors performing but we never censored it. We stood our ground and said no, we’re not doing anything wrong; what we’re doing is a good, alternative rock ‘n’ roll circus.
You’ve been touring for a while now with the Circus, why did you decide to enter Britain’s Got Talent last year, why not earlier?
I wasn’t asked earlier. Seven years ago I got a phone call from a producer saying, ‘We’re starting a new TV show, it’s like a talent competition and we really would be keen on you coming on’. I said, ‘Yeah that’d be interesting, what sort of money is it?’ And she said, ‘No money, you have to do it for free but there’s a big prize if you win’ and I thought: I’m not bloody working for nothing!
What changed this time?
Last year was a little different, we got the normal emails and then I got another in December from Talkback Thames, it didn’t say what show, so I said I’d do it and I got a call from the researcher who said it’s Britain’s Got Talent and I thought, ‘Oh god you’ve got me’. Anyway she said, ‘Why don’t you wanna do it?’ and I said, ‘Because you don’t get paid and you could be humiliated. You’re gonna say it’s John from Preston, not it’s Dr Haze from the Circus of Horrors’. She came back the next day and said, ‘There’s no reason why you can’t do it as the Circus of Horrors’. So I said yes. You can get 10 million people watching us in one hit, we could get humiliated but probably won’t, we won’t win so the money doesn’t come into it. With the repeats and all the different times it was shown, 35 million people saw us.
Since your appearance there seem to have been a lot more unusual entries on the competition, do you think that your appearance helped widen the scope of what is classed as talent?
I think we did. There was a programme called ‘Don’t Try This At Home’, that would have been the late 1990s and the early 2000s and I started putting acts on that. We used to put really diverse things on there and it’s the sort of stuff you would never normally see on early evening TV. I think in doing that we took the extreme to the mainstream and they didn’t get loads of complaints, they got people saying, ‘Wow, these were great acts’ and so I think we opened the door for a load of other people by doing what we did, right back in the 90s.
In the UK we’re quite interested in unusual things and things that are a bit painful, but how well are you received in America, which is traditionally more conservative?
That’s yet to be found out because we’ve never been but this year coming we’ve got a few offers. I think they’ll be fine, as long as we keep out of the ‘Bible Belt’ then it won’t be an issue really. Other countries aren’t a problem either, we went to Japan and it went down an absolute storm. We’ve been to Germany, Scandinavia; we’ve never really had any issues. People do like to see these bizarre, wonderful, beautiful and extreme circus acts.
What about Brighton? Do you get any adverse reactions here?
Brighton is a very special place to us; it’s the first place we went to commercially with the Circus of Horrors ever. Brighton was also the first place we got banned in. We went to see a guy at the Marina who was very keen to put a show on but we showed him a mock-up of the poster and his face just dropped. Afterwards we found out he was a religious fundamentalist and although he thought the Circus of Horrors commercially would be very good, he thought it wouldn’t be right for his venue. The council were so keen on having us in town, they found another site at the Racecourse and since then we’ve been to Preston Park, The Level, around the centre and now we’re going to the Theatre Royal which is beautiful. I’m very much looking forward to coming.
The Circus of Horrors are performing their show ‘The Ventriloquist’ at the Theatre Royal, Sunday March 4th. Photo courtesy of the Circus of Horrors.
