‘Loony’ EU to take fun out of the circus

TRAPEZE artists with Ireland’s most celebrated circus could soon be forced to wear hard hats to comply with new EU safety rules.

The same goes for jugglers, tightrope walkers and other acrobats with Fossetts, the oldest continually touring circus in the world.

“Oh, no. Not another regulation,” exclaimed family spokesman Charles O’Brien when he heard about the latest Brussels safety rules yesterday. “We already have so many.”

The requirement to wear safety head gear stems from regulations covering workers employed at heights greater than the average stepladder. “There is no way our acts will have hard hats,” said Mr O’Brien. “This is another loony law from Brussels. It’s right up there with straight bananas. Can you imagine a flying trapeze artist with a hard hat on? It is absolutely ridiculous.”

Earlier this week the consortium of insurers that provides cover for circuses in Britain and Ireland, including Fossetts, warned the Moscow State Circus, currently touring Britain, about the necessity for safety helmets.

Mr O’Brien said circuses already bore a heavy burden in insurance premiums. “Our insurance through this consortium has gone up over 100% in the past two years. It is costing us over 50,000 a year,” he said, adding that the new regulation was ill thought-out and unnecessary.

“Wearing a hat limits visibility and could actually endanger high-flying circus acts. In any case, they depend for their living on staying healthy and are pernickety about safety to the point of obsession. If they even break a finger it means they cannot perform and they don’t get paid. All our high-wire acts have safety harnesses attached to them and if they fall more than six feet the apparatus kicks in.

“Bringing in a regulation on the basis of stepladder height is frankly ridiculous. Our riggers wear them, of course, but we could never ask our acts to do so. We have a girl who rides on back of elephant over stepladder height and if we were to implement this regulation she would have to wear one. Window dressers fitting wigs on a mannequin sometimes have to work over that height and so do ballet dancers. Are we about to see Swan Lake performed with Bob The Builder hats? This is crazy,” Mr O’Brien said.

Fossetts Circus has been touring Ireland since 1888. It is currently in Tramore, Co Waterford and moves to New Ross on Thursday, then to Dungarvan and Youghal, Co Cork, for the bank holiday weekend.