Are you a saver or a spender?
Spender. I’ve got a collection of circus and showbusiness books like Barnum & Bailey’s UK tour, 19th-century books, Dame Laura Knight paintings and The Grand Parade by Edward Seago.
We’re insured, but I’ve never had faith in insurance companies. I had two generators catch fire in the 1970s and a caravan squashed by a runaway lorry, and did I have to fight to get the insurance! It’s a bit like that with banks. I’ve been 50 years with a high street bank, but when the crunch came in 2008 it let us down big time.
We’d built this 58-bedroom hotel and they did lend to us in the end, but tried to bully us into using consultants who’ve since gone into liquidation.
When the Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable came to talk to Somerset businesses having trouble with banks, we sent a photograph to the bank of us shaking hands with him and they changed their tune. I’m now with the Swedish bank Handelsbanken – different people altogether.
Are your circus memorabilia valuable?
The stuff has to be quite old. Posters from Bertram Mills Circus that closed in the 1960s are worth £500. I had lovely posters done by Frank Bellamy, who drew Dan Dare in the Eagle comic, so a quarter of a million pounds all up. I’ve collected since I was 10.
Do you have Isas?
I had some then cancelled. I didn’t like the salesman, thought he was trying to trick us. I’m not always right.
Have you saved for retirement?
I don’t want to retire, but always had a good pension. I had a £1,000-a-month endowment mortgage in 1985 with Legal & General and it went up to £240,000 then down to £85,000. In the end I got £25,000 cash and I now get £400 a month, less tax, and it’s been swapped to Prudential. It paid off a mortgage of £85,000 but it should have matured at £440,000.
Have you invested in property?
When I had the small circus I bought some derelict land near the M25 as it opened in 1975 for £40,000. I bought a few more acres and sold it in 2003 for £3m. That helped buy Wookey Hole, which cost a few million.
So you’ve been a millionaire and you’ve been bankrupt?
I suppose so. I was always adventurous. I took my circus to the Middle East. We were a birthday present for the Sultan of Oman. We took a fortune in Bahrain, then went to Iran in 1978 during the revolution and didn’t get paid. We had a big stadium in Tehran for our 8pm show and they imposed a 6pm curfew.
The hotel they gave us was deplorable; we had to pay our own and to ship people back, losing £100,000. In 1979 that company went into liquidation, making sure private things were paid first, but I bought it back at the sale. Door-knocking for money in Singapore, I came home demoralised, but circus jobs came up in Hong Kong, then Macau, Hong Kong again, Singapore, Malaysia, and it got us out of trouble. The second liquidation was VAT, our biggest killer of live entertainment; we lost £200,000.
Does money make you happy?
I don’t agree with Arts Council money given to shows, but here I am more in debt than ever. But I’ve got this lovely visitor attraction and two big caravan sites we borrowed money to buy. It gives you security, and the money allows me to play with these circuses.