For hundreds of years, the travelling fair
has brought a carnival of joy to towns across Britain.
Rides, like the dodgems...
waltzer...
and dive bomber, that thrilled us.
I can remember going on that ride and, on the first dip, being totally convinced
that I was about to be killed. Absolutely convinced.
Exotic and bizarre shows that amazed us.
I used to stand like that and put the head in my mouth,
and that was called The Kiss Of Death.
The fairground even had its own unique taste.
There's somebody with a candyfloss, which is bigger then your head.
You're eating it and it's sticking round your face.
You emerge plastered in sticky pink sugar.
# Out here in the field
# I fight for my meals... #
And the fair has always been a place to showcase
the latest innovations in popular entertainment.
The fair has been the catalyst, or crucible,
for all forms of modern entertainment that you think of.
In the 1890s, they brought the cinematograph.
Professional boxing as a sport came from the fairground.
Even something like bingo owes its allegiance to the fairground.
35. Three and five, 35.
But behind the bright lights and candyfloss,
the fairground has also been a place on the edges of society,
where excitement and danger await.
And you have sort of unholy alliance between youth
and bright lights and...
things going fast, and popular music.
# Sally, take my hand
# Travel south, cross land
# Put out the fire
# Don't look past my shoulder... #
No wonder the arrival of the travelling fair
sparked such a special kind of magic in us.
# The happy ones are here... #
The ears are pounding with the beat of the popular music.
The lights are flashing on the ghost ride, the dodgems...
Everything is heading towards a massive sensory overload
that can carry you away into another dimension of being,
a realm of transcendence, a place of beauty - not quite tranquillity
but certainly a place of maybe.
# Teenage wasteland
# It's only teenage wasteland
# Teenage wasteland... #
'The amazing bat girl. Yes, she's alive, ladies and gentlemen.
'The first time at your fair. The head of a girl, the body of a bat.'
Not a wax model, not a mechanical figure.
In grey 1950s Britain, the fairground offered a rare glimpse of the exotic...
Come inside!
..as people flocked to see an array of lurid illusions known as sideshows.
'She is real, she is alive, young and beautiful.
'She is the legendary princess
'on the inside, depicted in living flesh and living form.'
I've loved going to fairgrounds ever since I was a tiny child,
and at those times, there were show rows of sideshows
and it's that part rather than the rides that really interested me,
the wonderful row of colour and excitement
of the people outside trying to get you into their show.
The Biggest Rat In The World,
Why Men Leave Home,
A Girl In A Bubble Bath, of course.
'Alive and human and waiting to meet you on the inside
'is the smallest, the most intelligent and the most charming little man
'that you've ever laid eyes upon in your life.'
I was born in Ireland, in the town of Lisburn,
eight miles from Belfast.
My father, mother, brothers, sisters, were all normal persons.
I'm the only one in the family who never grew up.
I'm a leprechaun from Ireland.
Three key ingredients were needed
to attract the public to these sideshows.
A bizarre story, a sense of horror and a touch of sex.
Horror or sex.
That seems to be right down the show row,
all the way down. Everybody's getting very close together now.
We're getting horror and sex in together.
I've said I will gamble to put a show on,
with just "girl" on the front of it,
a big question mark,
it will take money.
..presenting a famous dance,
which some people call striptease. No.
We call it art, grace and beauty...
Now, if you were 12 years-old, a boy in the 1950s,
there were no Page threes, and you wanted to see a girl,
and notice they were all girls in those shows,
the headless lady, the girl in the goldfish bowl, the living half lady,
they were all girls. All performing in those shows,
so sex was an important ingredient, of course.
The young lady will take you around the world,
take you down to gay Paris.
She'll guide you down the Garden of Eden as Eve.
I can remember my brother urging me, pushing me to go in
and see the Invisible Woman.
She's alive and on view the moment you enter the doorway.
A dozen, two dozen of us were pushed into this room
and there was a woman in a bikini, the professor,
the mad professor pulled a switch and suddenly she disappeared.
There'd would be crackling. "Oh, where's she gone?! We must bring her back!
"No, the Electrons have gone wrong!" Then there'd be a crackling and pushing.
Suddenly, she'd shimmer into view again.
Apparently, it was technology brought from Russia.
Drawing a crowd to this kind of attraction was a fine art, performed by the showman,
a figure who had been orchestrating all the fun of the fair since the Victorian era.
Gentlemen, when the seventh and last veil falls,
she will make the shirts spray up and down, just like a Venetian blind.
The hair upon your very head will stand out straight,
like the bristles on a porcupine's back.
The showman's a quintessentially Victorian figure.
He's the person who runs the business of the fairground,
the one who searches for the act, the one who books the act.
And he is a figure of great authority.
A kind of artistic figure but a commercial one too.
Woman and child should see this most remarkable, thrilling and...
The showman was, I suppose like a music-hall proprietor in the Victorian time.
Have you done any wrestling? You look a bit small to be.
Come up here a moment, let's have a look at you.
He was a manager and an entrepreneur
and an innovator, but he was also an actor.
He had a persona that he would adopt.
The showman was often on the front of the show, calling people in,
telling them about the attractions that they would see inside.
You will stand back in wonder and amazement.
You may not believe it at first but it's there before you...
The showman had emerged in the 19th century,
as fairgrounds began to develop into the popular entertainment industry
we recognise today.
The most famous showman of the Victorian era was Tom Norman.
I think he was a charismatic personality.
There is a wonderful photograph of him where he has a shiny topper
and a very sharp moustache and he's brandishing his gavel
because he was not only a showman, but an auctioneer.
And the auctioneer and the showman have a lot in common.
They have to be able to talk
and I guess that was one of Tom Norman's great qualities,
that he could talk up an act, just as he would talk up the material
that he was going to sell in his auction.
Norman captured the imagination of Victorian fair goers
by displaying human oddities with extraordinary talents
in what became known as the Freak Show.
SINISTER MUSIC PLAYS
The appeal of the freak show has been there since the Middle Ages.
And the fairground freak has been there since the Middle Ages
and by freak show, I mean a display of human oddity or human curiosity.
Somebody who was different physically.
Norman would intrigue fairground audiences
by concocting an incredible story for each freak show he mounted.
And so this was never the person who had a dreadful skin disease.
This was somebody who was born like this
because their mother had touched an alligator.
Jo Jo, the dog-faced boy covered in hair.
He was the dog-faced boy because his mother was frightened by a dog when she was pregnant.
This was an accepted medical term. It was called "maternal impression."
Spinning a tale to attract the curiosity of Victorian fairgoers
was Norman's stock-in-trade.
He advertised Jacko, the talking fish,
which of course is a sea lion.
He would advertise these fish that could play the piano forte.
And he would advertise anything
and it was always the latest wonder of the age.
But his motto always was it was not the show but the tale you told.
His famous one, I would say, was John Chambers, the armless wonder.
The whole thing about freak show attractions, or side show or curiosity attractions
is you didn't just go and look at somebody. You looked at somebody who had a talent or skill,
so you'd see them doing what to us are normal things, but to them is extraordinary.
John Chambers, the armless wonder, would actually be a carpenter with his feet.
All of these people would actually have a particular skill
which they'd learnt from adversity because there was no other way of making a living.
Although shocking to modern sensibilities,
the fairground freak shows offered a secure income
to those with disabilities or deformities.
I think when we look back on the 19th century
and that culture of the exhibition of human oddities,
we lump these people together as though they were just a sort of...
..people who'd had no individual existences,
but really, these people were celebrities.
You could buy carte de visites of them,
you could put their pictures on your mantelpiece.
People like the dwarf performers, Charles Stratton, General Mite, Tom Thumb,
these were amongst some of the most famous people in Europe and America.
They were not cringing victims, locked up in the back rooms of shops.
They were ubiquitous in 19th century culture.
There was often more to freak shows than simple exploitation,
even for the most famous act of the time, Joseph Merrick,
who would become known as the Elephant Man.
When we think about entertainers like Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man,
who was managed by Tom Norman, the great British showman,
we think of Merrick as being this cringing victim of a cruel system.
Our understanding of the plight of the Elephant Man
comes largely from a fictionalised account of his life,
which was brought to the screen by film-maker, David Lynch.
Ladies and gentlemen...
The terrible...
..Elephant...
..Man.
HE KNOCKS ON WALL
Stand up.
Stand up!
We see the film by David Lynch
and we see that showman figure, Bytes,
who's drunk, who beats the guy, whips him,
keeps him in the most terrible condition.
Bytes, don't!
Where have you been?!
Actually, Lynch had to invent that character, Bytes.
Because in real life, he never existed.
The accounts we have, the dominant account of the life of Merrick
comes from Doctor Frederick Treves, Anthony Hopkins in the movie.
This is not a very accurate account of his life.
Treves doesn't even get the man's name right.
In the film and in Treves' book, he's called John Merrick.
In real life he was called Joseph Merrick.
He was on what most modern entertainers would find a pretty good deal.
He was on a 50-50 box-office split with Tom Norman.
You can see Merrick as a victim if you want.
You could also has see him as a man who has managed to find a way
of making his physical extraordinariness
into a way of making a living, a way of having a place
and an existence in the world.
Throughout the Victorian era,
freak shows continued to draw crowds at fairs across Britain.
The people also went to the fair to experience the first rides,
which had emerged at the beginning of the 19th century.
These early rides were built from wood
and powered by hand or pulled by ponies.
They would soon be transformed by the invention of steam power.
In the second half of the 19th century.
The 19th century fairs are kind of divided into two eras -
the pre-industrial and the post-industrial.
And the industrial revolution hits the fair a lot later
than people realise, it's about the 1860s.
Actually, in 1861 at Bolton New Year Fair,
when Thomas Hurst brought a steam-powered roundabout.
So, what they did was bring the latest modern aspect
of the Industrial Revolution - steam power -
into an old fairground ride - which was a hand-turned roundabout -
put them together, and we get what's called the merry-go-round.
So, the British invented the merry-go-round,
the classic roundabout that we see all over the world now.
At first, these steam-powered merry-go-rounds were run
by an engine, which was fixed to the outside of the ride.
This technology was improved by an engineer from King's Lynn -
Frederick Savage.
He went to a show in his native Norfolk
and saw there a small fairground ride
that was being powered by a steam engine.
It is said that Fredrick Savage looked at this and thought,
"I know how I can do the job better."
And what he did - and this was the most important thing about it -
was that, instead of having the steam-engine outside the ride,
he put it at the centre of the ride, hence the term "centre engine".
Savage's innovation would mean bigger and more ornate rides could be built...
..carrying more people, and as a result his fairground business
became one of the largest in Britain.
His workforce increased to about 400,
and he was producing rides for showmen
the length and breadth of the country.
None of the designs that he built were in a sense original to him,
but he was a great one for taking other people's ideas
and making them work.
This succession of rides that he built from the 1870s onwards
became the star attractions at the fairs
in the last three decades of the 19th century.
First you had the galloping horses...
..then there were the switchback rides,
and they were the grand rides of the fairground.
And the Razzle-Dazzle -
a rather strange machine, which spun round and tilted as it did so.
It was the sort of ride that was described in its day as "a oncer" -
you went on it once and never again.
It would have been quite atmospheric, really,
lots of steam, the centre engine would have been mounted on a gantry,
so it would have been a lot of hard work, as well,
because you would have to stoke the boiler and get steam up,
to produce the power to drive the thing round.
It would have had an organ playing as well,
a paper organ or barrel organ,
so you would have had the military waltzes and marches, that sort of thing,
a bit of industrial noise from the steam engines
and then the sort of entertainment element was the organ music.
FAIRGROUND ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS
Some local authorities banned them
because they were like Satan's inferno because of the noise,
and they were quite dangerous at one point,
because there was no way,
people didn't realise just how fast these rides could go,
and a really powerful steam roundabout from the 19th century
with steam power at full speed is quite a scary thing.
Nowadays, when you see the modern steam fairs,
they're quite gentle and old people go on then,
but at the time they were the white-knuckle ride of their day.
Beginning with these new steam-powered rides,
the Victorian fairground was at the forefront of industrial
and technological innovation.
By the end of the 19th century, the fairground has become
as much a showcase of Victorian technology
as the Crystal Palace or a trade fair.
The same technologies that are transforming
Britain's communications and travel systems, the same technologies
that are sending steam ships out across the world
and creating advances in armaments, all sorts of stuff,
they're also transforming how Victorians have a night out.
They get into these devices that hurl them about at great speeds
and steam is at the heart of it.
By the end of the 19th century, the people who ran
Britain's travelling fairs had become recognised as a distinct community.
The showmen will tell you that showpeople are born, not made.
But this crucible of the 19th century, the mid-19th century,
you got people coming, you had people coming from Ireland,
you had some aspects of the travelling community coming in,
you had people who were theatrical people, strolling players
and becomes this crucible of mixing everything in
until they become the showmen.
Unlike other popular entertainments that emerged in the Victorian era
like the circus, the travelling fair
has traditionally been the domain of a closed community.
I think the difference my family and people always said,
the difference between the circus and the fair
is that you can run away to the circus but you can't run away to the fair.
So it's this closed community, which was described
in the 19th century as a village on wheels.
But despite the popularity of the travelling fairs,
the fairground community were often viewed with suspicion and hostility.
These negative attitudes towards travelling people were a hangover
of stereotypes, which date back to the medieval era.
I think there is a mistrust, and it still exists,
for all travelling people.
You do have this sort of the influx of foreigners as it were
and by that, I mean people from other parts of the country.
It was then therefore easy to blame them for things that happened
in the town so for instance, towards the end of the 19th century
and into the 20th century, showpeople were blamed for spreading disease.
They were thought of as being the carriers of measles,
so measles epidemics were often based on,
"Oh, well, there were fair people in the town, they must have been the carriers."
And so it was therefore easy to say,
"Well, we don't want these people in our town."
And the great and the good often did do that.
This hostility led to a proposal in Parliament
that the fairground community should face limits
on their ability to travel around the country.
In response to the bill, the leading showmen of the era
met to defend their transient lifestyle.
A meeting was called at the Black Lion Hotel in Salford,
attended by the leading lights of the day.
Pat Collins, the Studs, the Whites from Scotland, and so on.
And they agreed that they would form a group to be known as
the United Kingdom Van Dwellers Protection Association.
And its aim was to oppose
and hopefully defeat this bill that was being proposed in Parliament.
It took them four years to do it but eventually they made
enough friends in both Houses of Parliament
to have this bill kicked out.
This group was renamed the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain
and would now represent the community
who ran Britain's fairgrounds.
It's a very effective organisation but it was there firstly
to protect the organisation of the showmen but then it was there
to protect the fairs and it's still very effective.
These showmen would orchestrate the showcasing
of the latest technological innovations of the age.
In the final years of the 19th century,
Victorians raced to the fair to wonder at the marvel of the cinema.
It was on the fairground that this most important cultural invention
was first widely shown.
And the cinematograph was shown in February 1897
at King's Lynn Fair but also in December 1896
at the Royal Agricultural Hall at the World's Fair
and it was classed as the wonder of the age, the dawn of modern life.
And people loved it because what the showmen did,
they would go to the town a week before, make a film and then show it
at the fair and say, "come and see yourselves on the screen",
showing ten shows a day.
They showed continuous film shows every 15 minutes, they brought films
from all over the world, they commissioned titles.
Melies, Pathe, all the big film makers and film companies
sold direct to the showmen.
You would have 14 cinematograph shows at Hull Fair alone in 1901.
One after another and the people screamed
for this wonderful new attraction
and it wasn't until 1909 that permanent cinemas
were built so for the first 13 years of its life,
cinema belonged to the fairground and was born on the fairground.
Into the first decade of the 20th century,
Britain's industrial heartlands were expanding
and these growing urban communities demanded popular entertainment.
In areas like South Wales, it was the travelling fair
that was the first to meet this demand.
Something that could burst into the town and like a rocket,
explode all over it.
The these were very much workaday towns, workaday villages,
terraces, particularly in the South Wales coalfields, springing up overnight.
They didn't at this stage, let's say 1890s, early 1900s,
particularly have the later workmen's institutes, libraries, and gymnasiums.
They didn't necessarily have music hall theatres.
The Empire in Tonypandy is opened in 1909.
What they did have, therefore, breaking into their workaday existence
were the traditional aspects of working-class life,
even from rural working-class life, and that is festivals and feast days.
Or in this instance, the coming of the fair.
In these communities working men were drawn to the fairground boxing booths,
where they could challenge the showmen's prizefighters.
You'd have guys coming off night shifts,
you'd have ready money to spend because these were young, very fit colliers by and large.
This was a very masculine kind of society.
They would arrive and see, let's say, Black Jack Scarrott's boxing booth,
and Black Jack would have his picked men parading in front of the crowd.
He would say, "My man here will have his hands tied behind his back
"and if anyone can land a blow on him within a minute, here's a golden guinea."
A golden guinea, that was a lot of money.
Just to hit this guy whose hands are tied behind his back
and you must have fancied your chances because you could be
up against someone who was, say, seven stone or even less, soaking wet like Little Jimmy Wilde
and you're five foot ten or even five foot eight,
you're 10 stone, 12 stone, you're a collier, of course you'll knock this guy out.
Only you don't.
Fighters like Jimmy Wilde and fellow Welshman Jim Driscoll emerged
from the fairground boxing booths to become world champions
in their own right and were later inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame.
I think the classic boxing story in terms of the boxing booth
would be Jimmy Wilde.
Jimmy Wilde, born in 1892, growing up in the Rhondda,
a tiny man, very long arms, not somebody you would've ever imagined could be a boxer
but of course in that time, in that place,
and with his physical fitness and stamina, he soon was.
And he naturally would've gravitated towards the boxing booths
and very quickly proved himself, despite looking tiny and sickly,
as an expert knockout artist.
That's the key of course with Wilde, he could knock people out
by a combination of, I don't know, technique and efficiency
yet at the same time, if you saw him, you think you'd have a good chance.
One Easter Bank Holiday in Jack Scarrott's booths in Swansea,
he knocked 22 men out.
And in Wilde's case, very rapidly, this boxing booth phenomenon,
1900s to 1908, 1909, was going to gravitate towards
the growing professionalisation of the sport
and the ability of working men like Wilde to become, by 1916,
champion of the world, which he remained until 1922,
but absolutely straight out of the boxing booth.
The boxing booths eventually declined
as the sport began to become fully professional.
But these fighters from the fair established much
of what is modern boxing today.
'All the elements that you see in modern boxing today'
are from the fair. The way that the people come on to the ring,
the way they issue the challenge, the whole showmanship.
"Are you ready to rumble?", that's just like, "Roll up, roll up".
And I think the reason why boxing as a sport
actually also has this kind of weird reputation
is because of those showman aspects of it, the showman roots.
People don't think of it as a sport, they think of it as entertainment.
SHE SHOUTS
After the First World War, the fairground entered a new modern age
with the introduction of electricity.
'What's interesting, the Victorian age'
and then the Edwardian age, is known as the golden age of the fairground,
but what I find fascinating is the next form of transformation,
which is the 1920s, and I call it the push-button fair,
where suddenly you get the electric fair,
the fair becomes modern, sleek.
You get the waltzer, which is a ride
that every generation thinks is theirs.
In the 1920s, there's Mr Jackson's Waltzing Cars.
How mundane does that sound!
In the 1950s, it's the rock'n'roll waltzer.
In the 1970s, it's the disco waltzer.
In the 1980s, it's the rave machine.
What an amazing ride!
The same ride has been exciting children, or people, or teenagers,
for over 80 years.
The invention of electric lights would change the experience
of a trip to the fair.
Electric lighting was probably seen by most people for the first time
at their local fair.
They didn't have lighting in their houses.
They'd been used to paraffin lamps, candles, whatever.
But to go to the fairground
and see the rows of bright bulbs
was something remarkable.
But it was the arrival of one electric ride from America
in 1928 that really caught the imagination.
The "sssh-k" of electricity, the connectors at the top of it.
"How does it work? Can I get that person back?"
You bash, you clash, you go round in circles,
you never get where you're going.
The dodgems caused a sensation on fairs around the country
and would go on to become the most popular ride of the 20th century.
The great beauty of a ride on the dodgem is that it is the only ride
on the fairground where you are in control as the rider,
the man behind the steering wheel.
This is why you fought over it as a kid
cos you wanted to be there, you wanted to drive that car
and of course, you were probably not old enough to have a licence
and drive a car on the road, but you could drive a car on the dodgem track
and more to the point, you could bump into another car.
With the coming of electricity to the fair, the bulky steam rides
of the Victorian era were replaced by electric-powered attractions,
like the dodgems, which could offer a faster, more thrilling experience.
The advance of the fairground rides is entirely dependent
upon the technology to support them,
not just the engines that drove them, but also, the metals,
the engineering that could actually build the rides.
They are actually quite simple in concept.
I mean, they all depend on arcs and circles.
You either go round and round, or you go up and down,
or you go up and down and round and round.
But it is all based on a sort of simple concept.
But the complications are introduced by the advances in technologies.
Out of this new electric age emerged many of the rides
that we see today.
In the years leading up to the second world war,
the dodgems were soon followed by the Ghost Train,
the Skid,
the Mont Blanc
and the Speedway.
BOMBER ENGINE WAILS
BOMBS EXPLODE
At the outbreak of the Second World War,
many fairs were forced to close down and the fairground community,
like everyone else in Britain,
did their bit to help defend the country.
All walks of life contributed to the war effort.
Our community lost quite a lot of showmen fighting in the war.
But what the fairground community did, they got together
and raised a fund to pay for an aeroplane, a Spitfire.
And that Spitfire was called The Fun Of The Fair.
The women operated the fairs,
they raised within nine months £4,000, purely from the showmen,
to buy a Spitfire for the nation because they didn't have any money,
the Government didn't have enough Spitfires.
So £4,000 they raised and we're rightly proud of that.
The years following the end of the Second World War
would see the fairground reach the peak of its popularity in Britain
with people keen to enjoy themselves after six years of conflict.
The post war years were a particularly good time
on the fairground.
We'd emerged from war, somewhat hard-up.
It was the age of austerity.
There was rationing.
But there was more or less full employment.
So, people were in work, they had money,
but they had very little to spend it on because of rationing,
so the entertainment industry in general, whether it be the theatre
the cinema, the fairground or the circus, the holiday camps,
did extremely well.
It was a very busy time for showman.
But the fair was changing.
Victorian favourites like the freak shows were on the wane,
in line with new social attitudes.
I can give you the reason in a nutshell.
20 years ago, there was plenty of fat ladies, tattooed ladies,
armless men, midgets, dwarfs etc.
But in those days, the people were poorer
and they were only too happy to have their children earn a living
and that was that the showmen came together and put them on exhibition.
But today, in a welfare state,
you never hear anything at all about these people.
Through the 1950s, freak shows were replaced in popularity
by Wild West shows.
One of the most famous Wild West show families
in fifties Britain was the Shufflebottoms.
Florence began performing in her father's show from the age of 13.
As I grew up, after the Second World War,
I was 13 and I joined my father, their little sideshow that they had,
and I used to stand for my father to do the shooting
and the knife throwing. And I did love dancing.
I love dancing now but I can't.
My knees are gone.
The Shufflebottom family had been presenting their Wild West show
for three generations.
Legend had it that Florence's great grandfather was a cowboy.
who came to Britain in the 1880s with the popular American showman
Buffalo Bill.
Buffalo Bill came over to England in the 1880s
and according to the family's story,
Texas Bill came over with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
But I don't think I've ever heard of an American cowboy
called Shufflebottom.
More like the real tale is that he came from Lancashire,
because his name was Shufflebottom and that is a Lancashire name.
And I do know for a fact that he worked for Buffalo Bill,
because in my grandfather's day, everybody had horses
and he was very good with horses, I believe.
Then he had ten children and each of them had a Wild West show.
My favourite one was the Colorado's and Florence Shufflebottom.
Her father was known as Ricardo Colorado.
Florence was such a skilled performer that
she soon became the celebrity face of the fairground in the 1950s.
And the smash-hit musical Annie Get Your Gun
was on at the West End and we went to see it.
So, of course, doing the sharp-shooting
and wearing these costumes and Annie Get Your Gun being popular,
I got a lot of publicity out of that because I was known as
the British Annie Oakley.
# Anything you can do
# I can do better
# I can do anything better than you
# No, you can't # Yes, I can... #
She could do Wild West, she could do sharp-shooting,
she could do knife throwing.
Any showman of a certain age will go weak in the knees
when you talk about Florence Shufflebottom.
She was the pin-up girl. Such an amazing performer.
# No, you're not
# Yes, I am... #
But my father wanted me to do the sharp shooting
and I didn't really want to
because I didn't like firearms then and I don't like them now,
but I wanted to help my father, it made it easier for him,
and he trained me to do the shooting.
But Florence's career as a Wild West sharpshooter ended
after an accident during one performance.
I was very good at it, although I say so myself, I was very good.
I was very confident, until one day when I had an accident.
And it wasn't my fault. I shot my mother in the finger knuckle.
She was holding three pipes in a spray fashion like that
against the target board, and I was laid down on the floor
and I had to shoot that way.
Now, the rifle I was using was a pump-action rifle
and as you did that, the empty cartridge, the empty shell,
went over your shoulder.
And a little boy in the audience jumped up to catch it, knocked me,
and the rifle came up and the bullet went through my mother's knuckle.
From that day on, I lost my confidence, I really did.
I knew I could do it, but I didn't enjoy it any more.
Where before, I used to enjoy performing,
I didn't enjoy doing the shooting.
# There's no business
# Like show business... #
But this accident didn't dent Florence's fairground career
as she soon began performing with live snakes.
# Soon you'll be appearing... #
We had three, actually.
We had a small one and two big ones.
We used to take the small one out of the box and show it to the audience
and put it round me and most people would go, "Ohhh, snakes!".
And when they got used to seeing me with the small snake,
then you'd go and pick up the big snake.
They were really amazed at that.
I used to finish the performance by doing what they call
the kiss of death.
I never, and if you look at all the photographs of me,
I never held a snake's head like that.
I always let the snakes be free. I had my hand underneath the snake
and they used to do it of their own accord.
I'd stand like that and open my mouth and they'd put their head in my mouth
and that was the kiss of death and used to finish my performance.
# Let's go on with the show... #
While Florence was thrilling fifties crowds,
the sights and sounds of the fairground around her
were about to be revolutionised...
by the arrival of rock'n'roll.
Rock'n'roll was made for the fairground.
And it was the only place really you could hear
loud rock'n'roll for absolutely nothing.
And you have a sort of unholy alliance
between youth and bright lights
and things going fast and popular music.
# Jailhouse rock
# Everybody, let's rock
# Everybody in the whole cell block
# Was dancing to the Jailhouse Rock... #
It was not a place for your parents' music,
it was YOUR music.
In the 1950s, it was rock'n'roll.
# The whole rhythm section Was a purple gang
# Let's rock... #
It was hand in hand with the idea of Teddy Boys,
with the beginnings of youth culture, with youth fashions,
that was happening in the post-war period.
Kids had money to spend and they could go and spend it
wherever they wanted.
And the fairground was an essential part of that...ostentation.
SCREAMING
# I want to stick around I want to get my kicks
# Let's rock
# Everybody, let's rock... #
With the fairground, you've got this amazing arena,
because you've got the technology that can pump this stuff out.
But you've also got a stage, upon which Mods and Rockers
can come and preen and exhibit themselves.
Stand under flattering electric lights.
# They say the joint was rocking Going round and round
# Yeah, reeling and rocking, with a crazy sound... #
The coming of rock'n'roll
led to the birth of Britain's first youth culture.
And with fairgrounds reverberating to the new music,
the fair now seemed to belong to teenagers.
# Rose out of my seat just headed down... #
I can remember seeing my first Teddy Boys at a fairground
and being absolutely fascinated by this idea of the exotic.
The Edwardian velvet collars and the cowboy bootlace ties.
# Yeah, reeling and rocking... #
These were the people our parents warned us about.
But we wanted to be them. They were so magnificent.
Peacocks in their splendour, as they paraded through the crowds of people.
Throughout the '50s and '60s,
fairgrounds became a place where boys and girls would go to meet.
# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
# Louie, Louie... #
It's hard for us to imagine these days,
but there were very few places for courting in the 1950s.
And the fair would arrive as this zone of liberty.
And young couples could go there not to transgress particularly
but just to shout at one another, to eye one another up.
To do la marcha - the girls would walk down one side, the boys would walk down the other.
You'd eye each other up. Fashions would be spotted.
# Louie, Louie
# Oh, baby, I've gotta go... #
Our October fair was the high point of the school year.
You had to have a boyfriend for the fair. You couldn't go on your own.
If you went with a girl who went with you, your best friend,
you'd sort of failed.
There's a sort of sexual charge about the fairground, too.
It's the kind of place where boys and girls might get together, away from the parental eye.
You'd go down the Tunnel of Love, or up on the Ferris Wheel.
You know, your dad can't see what you're doing up there.
And where young people go, in packs and gangs,
and can face each other off.
By the 1960s, new rides had arrived at the fair,
which added to the youthful edginess of the whole fairground experience.
# Boom boom boom boom
# Going to shoot you right down... #
There were rides which originated in the United States.
There was a ride called the Dive Bomber,
which sent you through 360 degrees.
# Boom boom boom boom... #
And the Ferris Wheel became very popular
after the war, made by an American company.
If you think of a big wheel, or this Dive Bomber,
it was a teenage boy and girl situation. You took your girlfriend up there.
Or the Ghost Train, you took your girlfriend in there.
SCREAMING
And you hoped that boys would take you on a scary ride
because then that would give them the excuse to put their arm
round you, to make sure that you didn't fall out.
The idea of a girl being frightened next to you as you come down,
whoomph, into the water flume or up on The Big One...
The word The Big One, come on, who are we kidding? We know what this is about.
SCREAMING
You've made out, you've copped, you've got to first base,
you've done whatever, because it's an area where anything goes.
It's a no-man's land, it's a ground zero of emotions.
And they were also areas that were considered quite dangerous by boys
because you could go into a fight with another gang.
Or, the girl you fancied might go off with a fairground boy.
The romanticism of the gypsy, and Gypsy Davy,
"Late last night, when the squire came home,
"looking for his lady."
But she's gone with "the raggle-taggle gypsies-oh."
"Why do you leave your goose feather bed?
"All for the love of Davy."
# It was late last night when the boss came home
# He was asking about his lady
# The only answer he received 'She's gone with gypsy Davy
# 'Gone with gypsy Dave...' #
Well, you see, you see them walking round
and you look at a few and, you know, they look a bit...
they've got some money, well, you don't bother with them.
Look for the ones that's going around a bit poor looking, you see.
And you've got more chance with them.
A bit rough looking. Know what I mean?
A bit rough? Now, what do you mean?
Well, you know you see some going round that wouldn't speak to you
look at you, or anything like that.
You know, you call them over and they just look at you like that and walk away again.
If they come over, you know you're onto something there, you see.
They start chatting to you.
# There in the light of the camping fire
# I saw her fair face beaming
# Her heart in tune with the big guitar
# And the voice of the gypsies singing
# That song of the gypsy Dave... #
And they were always so cool.
They'd be in the middle of the dodgems going round, and they'd be
leaning there, looking for all the world as if they owned it.
And they'd walk out as the dodgems were going round.
If I'd walked out, I would have fallen flat on my face.
They'd come out and lean on a dodgem as the girls were there.
And they knew what they were doing.
But this was the high tide of fairground popularity.
Fairs continued to travel the country,
but through the 1970s, other attractions emerged that
began competing for teenage time and money.
While the rides and the candyfloss remained,
the side shows went the way of the boxing booths and disappeared.
In the 1980s, a new style of entertainment from America
pitched up in Britain.
Theme parks were the ultimate in white-knuckle rides.
Places like Alton Towers quickly became among the most popular
tourist attractions in the country.
But these high-tech amusements also drew a low-tech response,
in the form of vintage fairs,
which tapped into a now growing feeling of nostalgia
for the traditional fairground.
Nowadays with the fair, people have a nostalgia for the type of fair
and I think the best example of the kind of really beautiful,
perfect, ideal fair that people think of from their childhood,
now we're all getting older, is the fair of the Carter family. Carter Steam Fair.
Steam Fair, it's not, it's actually Carter's Fair
because they've got everything from the 1900s to the 1950s on their fair.
All the equipment is beautiful, it's impeccably looked after.
They're only like those entrepreneurs and showmen
from 100 years ago who came into the community
and added something new to it.
Today, crowds are attracted to Carter's Steam Fair for
the experience of being taken back in time,
to the golden age of the fairground.
We give the public a much more novel experience because our rides,
some of them are steam-driven.
So they're ranging from 1895, right through to rock'n'roll.
So they come along,
and I mean, it's been described as more like a film set than a funfair.
But they can ride on everything. And we play old music.
It's just like going back into the past, really.
And we're very non-aggressive...
BELL RINGS
..so we attract families, and we just like to give them a really good,
old-fashioned experience.
What fun was like before it got too technical.
TRADITIONAL FAIRGROUND MUSIC PLAYS
Now, it's become part of the nostalgic world of
the fairground, so that the steam fair is now something where,
you know, it's almost like going to a farmers' market, or something
like that, where middle class people might go to buy posh cheeses.
Here, they go to put their children on little wooden ducks that go up and down.
And enter this absolutely staggeringly beautiful,
painted world, that's been commuted out of the 19th century
and has somehow been allowed to survive into the 21st.
SCREAMING
For over 200 years, travelling fairs have brought their special magic
to towns across Britain.
Through innovation and invention, the fair's characters,
shows and rides, created our first popular entertainment industry.
And there are still 4,000 show families,
putting on around 200 fairs a week.
As ever, the allure of the fairground lies in the way
it arrives in our midst.
And then, just as suddenly, disappears.
# Say goodbye
# My one true lover... #
I think that idea of fairs being transitory.
Not illusory, because it happened,
and you might have the goldfish,
or your girlfriend might have run off with the dodgems guy.
But you've been there and taken part in this thing that's disappeared.
And there's something quite magic about that.
You've been there, you've taken part in it and it's disappeared.
The next day, there's just this little muddy field where things had been.
They've packed up their tents and gone into the night.
# Dawn is breaking... #
It was the marks in the grass, the rings in the grass.
The rings appear, the fair's there,
and then they go. And as they vanish,
they grow back again just in time for the fair to come again.
# Until I die
# Oh, the carnival is over
# I will roam until I die
# Oh, I will roam
# Until I die
# Oh, I will roam
# Until I die
# I will roam
# Until I die. #