Letters- April 4, 2019

Re: the forthcoming book on circus legend Charlie Carioli (The Gazette, March 27).

I, too, have a soft spot for the UK’s Greatest Show on Earth, aka Blackpool Tower Circus.

My Tower Circus days go back to the 1950s!

My hero Charlie Carioli and his sartorial partner, Paul, were my idea, as a 10 year old, as ‘Clowning Around’.

In my eyes, this was the perfect partnership. I was recently in possession (no longer) of an original poster for the 1958 Summer Season.

Acts on the bill included The Great Putzai (Tumbling Family) Act, The Morlidor Trio, tigers and lions, elephants, trapeze and dog acts.

This is what I would call the perfect circus bill.

Before the show, the happy elephants were returning, with their keeper, from their ‘paddle’ in the Irish Sea...so much for the lobby against animal ill-treatment in the circus!

Charlie and Paul performed a musical clarinet double act.

Not to be disappointed, Charlie, Paul and ‘Little Jimmy’, with his gormless look (magic), devoted their slapstick genius and used the ‘Water’ feature to bring the house down for the show’s finale. Yes, the unique flooding of the circus ring made for an ideal setting of Charlie and company marooned on a desert island in the centre of the flooded circus ring.

It was an amazing spectacle, which involved comedic heaven built around numerous custard pies and walking the plank.

Pure genius.

Wilf Riley

via email 
Pictured: Charlie Cairoli in his heyday at the Tower Circus with sidekick Paul

RESPONSE`

You didn’t say MP then lost his seat

Perhaps Barry Clayton (Your Say, April 2) should have continued his analysis of an MP’s roles and responsibilities by mentioning that, despite his argument about representing his constituents’ views, Edmund Burke - irony of ironies - lost his seat at the ensuing election.

s.bloom

via email

NOSTALGIA

Hairdresser’s sign was a give-away

I do so much enjoy seeing your ‘Looking Back” photographs each evening in the Gazette.

Sometimes you are unable to put an accurate date particularly to some of the older photos.

However your picture of Victoria Street at its junction with Corporation Street in Blackpool in Tuesday’s edition, you accredit as being undated but probably from the late 1970s.

If you notice that above the Reeco electrical shop there is a sign for Mames hairdressers advertising perms for 25 shillings (pictured) and as I recall our country went decimal on February 15, 1971. It might be possible that the photo was from the late 1960s or very early 1970s.

I know that I should get out more, but I can’t afford the exorbitant price of having my hair permed nowadays.

Mike Picewicz

via email

BREXIT

Addition to lexicon of ‘B’ swear words

Who would have thought that the country would be in the appalling political mess we are currently wading about in?

And that just one word - Brexit - could make everyone groan, silently or otherwise. It has joined the lexicon of B swear words that can offend, shock and irritate.

I am becoming increasingly inclined to swear myself at the incompetence and selfishness shown by our Westminster politicians and was particularly angered that the alternative suggestion of joining a customs union was rejected by just three votes on Monday night.

No, no, no, a customs union with the EU is the antithesis of the Referendum result. The 17.4 million who voted to leave did so for a variety of reasons but being free to make our own trade deals with whichever country we want was high among them.

We would be in a worse situation than we were before if that is part of the Withdrawal Agreement and so in my book a ‘no deal’ is a much better option. We didn’t actually vote for deal or no deal, we just voted to leave and the parliamentary shenanigans are betraying democracy.

This story has run and run for far too long and the moving of the goal posts makes you wonder if that was the Establishment’s plan all along. Voters have never been more alienated and the time for a new party to spring forth has never been greater.

Paul Nuttall

North West MEP
(Brexit Party)