Club fascinated by fakir in the family

Barrie, centre, as Otaki

At our July meeting our speaker was Diane Hardman, who told us all about her uncle Barrie Walls and his life in the circus. Barrie styled himself as a fakir whose act involved lying on a bed of nails or climbing a ladder of upturned sword blades, although he actually started as a ventriloquist (at the age of five, according to him), then ran a Punch and Judy show when he was 12, before starting to “stick pins in himself” at 19. He was also an accomplished fire eater and clown as well as a fairground painter and sign-writer. As a fakir he styled himself as the “Prince Kheper-Re”, exponent of the “Egyptian torture bed”, and later “El Hakim”, as well as a Native American fire eater named Otaki. (Not sure you’d get away with that in these culturally and racially sensitive times.) He also appeared as a traditional ring master in red tailcoat, curled moustache and monocle. Later in life he was still sticking bodkins through his flesh as part of the Circus of Horrors, in which he appeared as a strange baby with nappy and dummy.

You can see a video of Diane’s talk on our YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/live/eEqhZP7x-I8.