Peter Ross: Tough at the big top, but it's still the greatest show on earth

PEOPLE talk about running away to join the circus, but if Bobby Roberts had rebelled as a boy he would have had to run away from it. Now 66, Roberts was born and raised in the big top, and still spends most of the year on the road. He is one of Britain's few remaining traditional circus proprietors. On Friday afternoon in Galashiels, peering through the deep sea gloom of the unlit tent, I meet him.

Roberts, originally from Edinburgh, is dapper in a houndstooth jacket. He has sly, wry eyes and a gingery quiff. From within his shirt, he proudly pulls a golden rodent on a chain – proof of membership of the Grand Order of Water Rats, an exclusive fraternity of showbiz stars. "My family was in the circus before Nelson's time," he says. "You know, him with the one eye."

Starting as a clown at four, Roberts soon had his sights set higher. "I wire-walked above the lions one year as the Boy Wonder. I was eight or nine." He is an expert trainer of animals, continues to ride a horse in the show, and is no slouch with a pistol. He and his wife Moira used to perform a Wild West act, but one night at Glasgow's Kelvin Hall it went horribly wrong.

"I did the sharpshooting and Moira, coming from a fairground family, was very good with the bow and arrow," he explains. "So we did this act together, and that's how I came to take her finger off. Yeah, her wedding finger. She used to blow a balloon up in a cage, and I used to shoot it. One night the balloon got stuck, she put her finger up, and I accidentally blew it off."

Did they manage to reattach it?

"No. She went across the road to that big hospital, but they couldn't put it back, so they just sewed it up. Anyway, the marriage survived and we found her engagement ring in pieces a week later. She's still got her wedding ring with the bullet stuck in it."

Such is family life in the circus. Bobby and Moira Roberts raised their children on the road, and now they are doing the same with their grandchildren who are home-schooled. Bobby Roberts Jr, who performs as Bobo the Clown, says that when he was growing up he'd be in a different school every week, and rather than have him participate in lessons, the teacher would usually sit him in a corner and hand him a book. "By the time I was nine I was reading Shakespeare and Charles Dickens."

His son Logan, named after family friend Jimmy Logan, is only five but already planning to follow in his father's big footsteps and become a clown. His niece, Summer, 16, performs with ponies.

Summer and Logan are the tenth generation of the family to work in the circus. For Bobby Roberts, this is the best way. Circus schools teach performance skills, but Roberts says they can't teach how to handle the hardships of life on the road. "The people from schools don't realise that some days you might get no water or no electric, or they might find themselves up to their knees in mud. So they drop out."

Everyone has more than one job too. Carolyn Roberts performs dressage on an ex-bullfighting stallion and looks very smart in her Spanish outfit; I hardly recognise her when, later, she's wearing a red pinny and working on the hotdog stall.

Although the performers live in huge caravans – wagons, they call them – with satellite TV and internet connection, there is something undeniably old-fashioned about the circus. The tent is blue and red with stars on the roof, strung with lights and hung with flags. Wagons encircle it, Pioneer-style, and there is an evocative aroma of fried onions, sawdust, grass and dung. Each week, ten tons of manure is offered for free to local farmers.

Typically, the circus arrives in town late on Sunday. By 6am, having worked all night assembling stables and other structures, everyone helps raise the big top. When the town's people come out in the morning, the circus appears to have sprung up in the park overnight like some great psychedelic mushroom. Bobby Roberts has been coming to Gala for 50 years, so for locals the circus is synonymous with summer.

I speak to queuing punters. One solitary red-faced lunatic responds to my asking why he has come along by barking, "I'm a great fox-hunter!" But most people are happy to talk. Bill Lamb, here with his wife Evelyn, has been a huge fan of circuses for most of his 73 years. "It's a real family show," he says. "There's no smut with a circus, like on TV every night of the week. It's all four-letter words now. Crap!"

Balinda Ball from Kelso has come along with Daniel, four, and Jamie, seven. They are keen to see the clowns and the elephant. I don't tell them that there is only one clown this year, down from three in 2008, proving that even the circus is not immune to the recession. Hopefully the redundant clowns had something to fall back on.

The elephant is more controversial. Anne is the last elephant in a British circus. She is 56, arthritic, and no longer performs, though the public can have their picture taken with her. Animal rights activists say she should be sent to a sanctuary. The MSP Christine Grahame has called for a boycott of the circus. The Roberts family find this upsetting. They say they love Anne and think of her as part of the family. Were she to leave the circus, they argue, she would pine away. The performers are used to seeing animals in this context and find it difficult to understand public unease. Bobby Roberts Jr grew up around elephants and camels. That was normal, but once, confronted by a turkey, he was terrified.

It's not easy running a traditional circus these days. Health and safety legislation is complex, costs keep going up, and the animal rights people are always on his back. But Bobby Roberts has no plans to hang up his guns just yet. "I've seen old circus people retire and they die real quick."

So on some level does he need life on the road? Does he need forward momentum? Does he need the roar of the crowd?

"No," he says. "I need the money."