Coco the Clown

When holidaying in the East Midlands last September - I was pitched near Stamford, on my way to the Peak District - I came across the grave of Nicolai Polakovs (the Latvian version of his name), alias Coco the Clown. He was born in Latvia (then part of Czarist Russia) in 1900 and died in in Peterborough Hospital on 25th September 1974, so that when I saw his grave in Woodnewton churchyard on 19th September, it was very nearly the exact fiftieth anniversary of his death. What an odd coincidence!  

The village of Woodnewton is in the green countryside between Stamford and Oundle: an area of farming and woodland, steeped in English history, in the north-eastern corner of Northamptonshire. But an unexpected place for a world-famous circus entertainer, and a foreign-born person at that, to retire to. Even though he and his wife had long become naturalised Britons, and clearly regarded England as their permanent home. Possibly there was some very practical reason for being there. But if one has a choice, one's last years are generally lived where the family is, or somewhere linked to past memories of great significance. What significance had Woodnewton possessed? 

The village is a pleasant place, but not especially remarkable. I went there twice. I drove around it. I got out and walked about. It has an ancient church and the remains of a medieval layout, but there is plenty of modern development. It's neat and tidy and faintly suburban in the way of a village whose professional residents mainly commute to larger places, such as Peterborough. It's not at all unrelentingly posh, but there are certainly some expensive homes. Here are a few shots, so you can see what Woodnewton typically looks like:

Well, it has become the home of Clownfest, an annual celebration of circus clowns, and I suppose you have to imagine hundreds of clowns descending on the village once a year and milling about in their costumes. Bizarre! The village hall, built with money donated by Polakovs and his connections, would be the nerve centre for Clownfest. I wonder what the residents opposite the village hall think, when they see the road outside thronged with clowns of all types? Maybe they love it. 

There's a blue plaque on the village hall to acknowledge Polakovs' help in creating - first - the smart recreation field behind, and then getting the hall itself built. I took several shots of all this, including some posters connected with Coco the Clown:

In the churchyard is this grave for him, complete with a small stone bust set in the headstone:

Did I ever see Coco the Clown when I was young? Well, no. I didn't like clowns. I was a timid and rather fearful child, and thought they were scary. I couldn't see what was funny about them. So if ever a circus appeared on TV - as it still might at Christmastime in the late 1950s and early 1960s - I didn't want to watch. 

I went to a real circus only once - it was Billy Smart's, in Cardiff. Dad took me. It was just he and me. (I don't know where Mum was at the time. Possibly she was having an operation for varicose veins, or recovering from one at home) I'd be eight, nine or ten. I remember the circus was in a huge green area. Lots of tents and brightly-painted vehicles and caravans. An immense white Big Top, with guy ropes all around: and being a clumsy child, I surely tripped on one. I could smell animals: a jungle smell I didn't like. It was noisy, confusing, and very strange. So many people too: circus people, but also a torrent of paying customers. The inside of the Big Top was vast. The tiered seats were hard and uncomfortable. The show itself, hosted by a commanding red-coated Ringmaster cracking his whip, with prancing horses in headdresses, with acrobats in sparkling outfits doing crazy things high up, with lions, tigers and at least one elephant, have all merged into a blur. The clowns seemed to be the main stars of the show, tumbling or flat-footing into the ring amid wild applause, shouting to the audience, looking jubilant one moment, then pathetic the next, and generally messing about with custard pies. It must have been very clever stuff, requiring split-second timing; the result of many hours of careful practice. But I didn't understand what was going on. It was spectacle after spectacle, loud and dazzling, but it didn't touch me. I didn't enjoy myself.

I came away feeling that I'd disappointed Dad in some way, by not being enthralled. We never spoke of it again. I never asked to see another circus. 

I thought of that long-ago experience when walking around Woodnewton, and when contemplating Polakovs' grave. I wanted to tell him that I'd been a strange and awkward child. A failed child, despite redemption in adult life. That my lifelong negativity about circuses and similar events was not his fault. It was inbuilt, a deficiency of my own. That if I hadn't been moving on to the Peak District I would have stuck around to see what happened in Woodnewton on the fiftieth anniversay of his death in 1974. Wouldn't it have made a fine series of photos? Maybe I'd shoot some custard pies flying through the air. Maybe I'd get besmirched by one. Wouldn't it make a great selfie? Wouldn't I laugh! Alas, it couldn't happen.

Surely, in 2024, the great days of traditional circuses are long over. They don't fit into the modern digital world. I still see circus posters everywhere, but they are apparently small affairs akin to glorified cabaret acts, shrunk in performance scope to humans only - no animals. And totally geared to modern entertainment tastes. I don't want to see them. Circuses have become last-century, a relic, just as Punch and Judy on the beach has become a relic. It's kind of sad, but no matter what amazing performing skills are on display, they are not in tune with life in the 2020s. 

It was once common for pop songs to make references to circuses in their lyrics - to clowns especially: Cathy's clown; send in the clowns; ha! ha! said the clown; the tears of a clown; death of a clown. I hear those lyrics daily when I play my music, which is predominantly the music of my teens and early twenties in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm certain that clowns don't feature in lyrics anymore. They are no longer the kings of knockabout comedy. If anything at all, they have become the frightening stuff of shock-horror movies, the very opposite of what they once stood for.   

In fact, I do wonder whether any contemporary youngster has ever heard of Coco the Clown, and what he stood for, and what he actually achieved in real life. Dare I ask?

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