Pav’s Patch; What ever happened to freak shows?

A MATE of mine is thinning on top and for that reason cuts his hair only two or three times a year. I suppose he has a modern-day version of the Peter Swales comb-over.

No one could ever accuse him of taking a pride in his appearance, but his hair can become particularly straggly and unkempt, and at this point my aged uncle will say to him: “Get thi hair cut. Thi looks like Ashenalae Bulgo.”

Mr Bulgo, I am told, was a music hall act. He was a very hairy man and the people of Oldham — because that’s where my uncle’s family are from — would pay just to look at him.

My mate can never accept this. He will always reply: “But he must have done something. You wouldn’t just pay to see a hairy person.” And uncle then retorts: “What about the bearded lady?”

And what about the bearded lady, notwithstanding the fact that I think I’ve been out with her? What ever happened to the freak show? Are current times too PC for such things? There’s “Britain’s Got Talent”, of course, but that’s not quite the same thing.

As a young lad I can remember being taken to Belle Vue where we watched something called a flea circus. A woman would tell you how the little critters could jump 50 times higher than a human and then little bikes and things would start to move around the miniature circus ring.

I imagine they were powered by fleas, but for all I know it was all done with magnets.

Next door, there was the amazing Spider Man. I was never taken in to see him, although I understand you could see a man’s face at the heart of a huge spider’s body. This was a trick with mirrors but people still paid to see it.

I suppose life must have been boring in the past. I was once asked to give a talk at a school and the thing the seven-year-olds found hardest to accept was that when I was a child television didn’t start until 5pm, there were only two channels and they were in black and white. They were totally spooked by that.

If you do like alternative entertainment, there used to be a man in Hyde called the Ratman.

He did things with rats, ate cockroaches, and would also draw a dartboard on his stomach and his partner would throw syringes at him.

One night, so I’m told, Ratman broke down on the Snake Pass after a gig in Sheffield.

The RAC man took one look at the rats and left him to it.