Colonel Crackpot's Circus was a strip in The Beano. It started in 1960 and ended in 1963. It was the first Beano comic strip drawn by Malcolm Judge, who later went on to draw Billy Whizz and Ball Boy for the same comic, as well as The Numskulls for The Beezer.
The strip was about a circus and the slapstick adventures of the circus folk and often involved Colonel Crackpot (the circus ringleader) trying not to pay his workforce what they were worth. In its Beano incarnation the main characters were Colonel Crackpot (the ringleader), Charlie Globes (the strong man his name is a play on Charles Atlas) and Cynthia the fat lady.
The comic strip was later revived in The Dandy, under the title Pinky's Crackpot Circus, in a strip drawn by Nick Brennan and later drawn by Gary Northfield. This revival first appeared in October 2003. Characters during this time included Pinky, the ringleader, Spanky and Blotto the clowns, Brenda the bearded lady, Rick the human cannonball, Thomas the tightrope walker Lenny the lion tamer and Mehmet the elephant.
Famous quotes containing the words colonel and/or circus:
“The Colonel went out sailing,
He spoke with Turk and Jew
With Christian and with Infidel
For all tongues he knew.
“O what’s a wifeless man?” said he
And he came sailing home.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)