The last time I went to a circus, I had to muscle my way through a cordon of animal rights protesters before taking my seat. Despite this ominous beginning, it turned out that there were to be no monkeys, bears or elephants whipped into submission by a sadistic ringmaster. Instead, the show's sole animal act consisted of a frisky green parrot pulling a fox terrier in a miniature cart.
While it's true the circus had made no attempt to replicate the natural behaviour of the animals - in the wild, fox terriers prefer to travel by taxi - it was hard to object to this act on the grounds of cruelty, although very easy to object to it on the grounds of tediousness.
There was, however, much to object to shortly afterwards, when a bunch of clowns tumbled on stage and proceeded to work their way through the world's worst visual gags. We suffered through banana skins, bottles on sticks, trick bikes, bottom jokes, the flourishing of multi-coloured handkerchiefs and an exchange of salacious gestures with a tuba player in the orchestra.
By the time a seemingly infinite number of gigantic-shoed fools had disappeared inside a Mini - an act so creaky and unfunny it could have been redeemed only by ending in a car bombing - I had come to the conclusion that circuses are far crueller to audience members than they have ever been to animals.
Naively, I assumed the end of tiger taming would also spell the end of clowning. With the slow death of the traditional travelling circus, clowns would become just another tale from the ancient world that we would blather on about to bore our children witless. There would be no further work for manufacturers of red noses, squirting flowers or orange wigs, and outfitters who had previously built up thriving businesses supplying gaudy jackets to the clowning fraternity would find Rodney Hide their last remaining customer.
How wrong can you be. Clowns - like backyard chooks, jam-making and TB - are enjoying a renaissance. Internationally, clowning is booming. Not only has the circus reinvented itself and gone mainstream, but clowns have become so ubiquitous that there's room for specialisation.
There are clown doctors, clown "laughter therapists", clown team-building facilitators and, even, clown evangelists ("Eleven clown ministers tell how they came to be clowns for Christ", is a typically gobsmacking excerpt from the 1982 Clown Ministry Handbook). This is all despite the fact that fear of clowns is one of the 10 most common phobias, and that a British poll of 250 children found that every single child was frightened by clowns.
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An increasing number of Wellington's buskers are either clowns or, just as reprehensibly, mime artists. Incredibly, I've seen passers-by give them money, rather than, say, a good kicking.
Barely a week goes by without there being yet another community workshop promising to "liberate your inner clown". It's hard to understand why anyone should feel the need to liberate their inner clown, any more than they feel the need to liberate their inner arsonist, yet there's a common perception that irritating other people with tiresome pranks is somehow good for your soul.
Clowns have become a distressingly regular feature of Wellington's arts festival. There are at least three major acts this year that involve elements of clown-related activities, including a show described in the brochure thus: "Two people trapped in their own definition of safety and success find their lives turned upside down when they encounter a circus company of charming and bizarre characters. Spectacular acrobatics, trapeze, clowning, mime, magic and illusion are delivered with cocky commitment."
This is precisely what I hate most about clowns: their cocky commitment to the idea that the rest of us are joyless, humourless cogs in the consumerist machine and can be freed only by cladding ourselves in oversized pants and learning how to twist a balloon into the shape of a sausage dog. Charming and bizarre characters, or relentless attention- seekers with flowers in their hats?
I have great sympathy for the clownophobic Labour Department staff member who, to much mocking, asked for clown posters advertising the department's carnival-themed Christmas party last year to be taken down. Who doesn't get the creeps from clowns? As Johnny Depp once remarked, their painted-on smiles make it "impossible to distinguish if they are happy or if they're about to bite your face off".
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