Cottle started by doing menial tasks, but worked his way up to have his own juggling act, billed as Gerry Melville the Teenage Juggler,[6] and then to own his own show,[7] which opened in July 1970, with just five performers.[8] He established his Big Top in 1974 and ran it until 2003.[9] By the mid-1970s the Gerry Cottle Circus was touring Britain with three shows.[10] In 1975 he purchased a unimproved plot in Surrey for £40,000 and lived there for 30 years, eventually selling it for £3 million.[11] He also presented the Moscow State Circus and Chinese State Circus in Britain.[8] In 1995, he co-created The Circus of Horrors with Doktor Haze which debuted at the Glastonbury Festival and has toured the world since then.[12] This was a collaborative venture with Archaos, a French contemporary circus.[13]
In 2003 he auctioned off much of his circus paraphernalia in order to concentrate on running Wookey Hole Caves, a tourist attraction in Somerset.[7] In 2012 he celebrated fifty years in the business with a new show, Turbo Circus: 50 Acts In 100 Minutes, on a 31-week tour.[14] Cottle and his Magic Circus undertook another months-long tour in 2017.[15]
Gerry Cottle's Circus originally toured with a variety of animals including horses, zebras, elephants, lions, tigers, monkeys, and llamas.[16][17] The 1980s saw an increase in public opinion against animal acts. Cottle sold his last elephant and by the end of 1993 had a non-animal circus. In 2012 he said that he now reluctantly supports the ban on circus animal acts, which he says will improve the image of circuses in Britain.[16]
After purchasing Wookey Hole Caves, a tourist attraction that featured show caves, penny arcades and restaurants, he added a theatre, circus museum, hotel and circus school. At the latter, local youth were trained in a wide range of circus skills, and performed at the theatre and in Cottle's touring show Turbo Circus.[18]
He married Betty Fossett, youngest daughter of circus showman Jim Fossett, in 1968. The couple had three daughters and a son.[6] In the 1980s he became addicted to cocaine and was jailed.[5] His daughters set up Cottle Sisters Circus.[19] He was separated from Betty and had another partner, Anna Carter of Carters Steam Fair.[when?] They had also separated.[20][21]
