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07:00 - 14-May-2008
Loud and hearty, with the sort of round face destined to register shocked surprise, this exuberant performer first tottered into the big top's spotlight when he was four.
Three decades later, his capering – rubber chickens, audience teasing and the rest – is one of the centrepieces of Billy Smart's Circus, which arrives at East Park this month.
“I am the fifth generation in my family to be in the circus, as it was our business back home,” said the 38-year-old Mexican, who spent his early life touring South America.
“And when you start out you end up doing almost everything, plate spinning, acrobatics – but it was the clowning I loved, it felt so natural to me. I could not see myself in an office being funny, this is where I belong.”
Having married a British acrobat, Catherine, he relocated to England and gravitated towards Billy Smart's, a circus with a history stretching back 60 years and an intriguing story of its own.
Smart was an English fun-fair operator who sensed the post-war taste for entertainment after the gloomy years of the Second World War and bought a touring circus on a whim.
This ebullient character – rarely seen without his trademark Stetson hat and cigar – proved a shrewd media operator, cropping up on TV to promote this vast touring spectacle. At its height during the 50s and 60s, Billy Smart's Circus toured Britain with a 6,000-seater big top, for a show which included elephants, polar bears, camels and sea lions.
While political correctness put a full stop on the use of animals, today's circus retains the international flavour of performers – including acrobats from Kazakhstan, French trapeze artists and Alex the Fireman – a Dutch performer with an alarming ladder-balancing act.
And, in between the death-defying bits, Chico with his rubber chicken.
“It is one of the most important jobs in the circus,” he said.
“Everybody comes to see the clown, just like everybody comes to see the trapeze artists, it is about getting that emotional response – that reaction from the crowd.”
Billy Smart's Circus performs at East Park, Holderness Road, Hull, from Tuesday, May 27, until Sunday, June 1.
Tickets cost £8-20. Call 0870 4441505.
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Chico Rico, a clown with Billy Smart's Circus
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