the Greater London Council has gone and Wandsworth now rules over the coloured lights. But to further confuse her sense of political geography, she has been there before, hired out to the GLC in the days of its pomp, so that Mr Ken Livingstone could pass like Haroun al-Raschid through Battersea.
For she is not just a circus performer: she is the first and only elephant to be licensed to appear in public under the ‘Dangerous Wild Animals Act’. For £1,000, her daily rate, you can invite her to your wedding, once the appropriate environmental health officer has been contacted and has given his permission after sturdily invoking the Deity a few times. She has appeared at supermarkets, Indian restaurants, once wriggled her way into a village hall, was most recently in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and will be familiar to millions from her endorsement of videos, rice, Turkish delight and cornflakes in TV advertisements. She has, it is claimed, opened more things than the cast of EastEnders.
‘Once a day, nails,’ said her keeper, Robert Raven, a railwayman’s son from Norfolk. ‘I oil them, for they’d crack otherwise. Twice a week I grease around her eyes. I wash her, brush her down, wait on her hand and foot.’ It is a seven-days-a-week job, from 7.30 in the morning, when she has her bran and maize, with hay, so she can make little sandwiches, to 10.30 at night. He scratched his head, incredulous that it should have come to this, when his ambition once had merely been to join a circus. (‘You have these ideas, when you’re a little boy.’) An elephant’s servant, muttered Mr Raven.
He has been in service for eight years, during which time he has managed to fit in a marriage. ‘The wife’s convinced she’s jealous of her. We went for a walk once, the three of us, and I must have said something for the wife started hitting me and I shouted, “Help.” The next thing we knew, the elephant was rushing towards us. I managed to stop her, but when you’ve seen an elephant running towards you it’s a sight you don’t forget in a hurry. I am very careful now.’ Things are even further complicated by his baby son, who is fascinated by the animal, and whenever he manages to get out of their caravan crawls towards her tent; the elephant is nervous of small things.
The tent is a lean-to, with the flaps down to prevent the draughts to which an elephant is susceptible. Inside this she is chained, mainly on account of her curiosity. Water she associates with a black hosepipe, and with the number of black electric cables lying around the encampment a curious elephant wandering around would be a major hazard. ‘Plus the fact that she’s badly spoiled,’ said Robert Raven. ‘She was very ill once and went to stay with a vet, who let her do anything she wanted on his farm. She made a hole once in a barn wall just to see what was going on, and if she wanted to go into a field she’d just walk through a closed gate. He’d stand there smiling and smoking a cigar.’
The illness was in 1977, when her skin began flaking away, a condition that baffled the vets and was cured only when details were sent to Bombay University. It was suggested that the vegetables and fruit in her diet be increased. ‘We were so worried, and then she recovered,’ said Gerry Cottle. ‘I suppose that made her special.’
Cottle bought her in 1973, a tiny elephant from north-west India who turned up at Stansted with her mahout. He has good reason to remember it, for when he got there he was informed that VAT, which had been introduced a week earlier, applied to elephants. He lost £250,000 in the next two years because circus audiences appeared to agree with the councils that animals were a persecuted minority. When he went back into animals he had a vicar in to bless them and, to cock a snook at authority, added a turkey. The turkey, which does nothing except walk up and down, is called Lucky.
Twice a night, for seven minutes at a
For she is not just a circus performer: she is the first and only elephant to be licensed to appear in public under the ‘Dangerous Wild Animals Act’. For £1,000, her daily rate, you can invite her to your wedding, once the appropriate environmental health officer has been contacted and has given his permission after sturdily invoking the Deity a few times. She has appeared at supermarkets, Indian restaurants, once wriggled her way into a village hall, was most recently in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and will be familiar to millions from her endorsement of videos, rice, Turkish delight and cornflakes in TV advertisements. She has, it is claimed, opened more things than the cast of EastEnders.
‘Once a day, nails,’ said her keeper, Robert Raven, a railwayman’s son from Norfolk. ‘I oil them, for they’d crack otherwise. Twice a week I grease around her eyes. I wash her, brush her down, wait on her hand and foot.’ It is a seven-days-a-week job, from 7.30 in the morning, when she has her bran and maize, with hay, so she can make little sandwiches, to 10.30 at night. He scratched his head, incredulous that it should have come to this, when his ambition once had merely been to join a circus. (‘You have these ideas, when you’re a little boy.’) An elephant’s servant, muttered Mr Raven.
He has been in service for eight years, during which time he has managed to fit in a marriage. ‘The wife’s convinced she’s jealous of her. We went for a walk once, the three of us, and I must have said something for the wife started hitting me and I shouted, “Help.” The next thing we knew, the elephant was rushing towards us. I managed to stop her, but when you’ve seen an elephant running towards you it’s a sight you don’t forget in a hurry. I am very careful now.’ Things are even further complicated by his baby son, who is fascinated by the animal, and whenever he manages to get out of their caravan crawls towards her tent; the elephant is nervous of small things.
The tent is a lean-to, with the flaps down to prevent the draughts to which an elephant is susceptible. Inside this she is chained, mainly on account of her curiosity. Water she associates with a black hosepipe, and with the number of black electric cables lying around the encampment a curious elephant wandering around would be a major hazard. ‘Plus the fact that she’s badly spoiled,’ said Robert Raven. ‘She was very ill once and went to stay with a vet, who let her do anything she wanted on his farm. She made a hole once in a barn wall just to see what was going on, and if she wanted to go into a field she’d just walk through a closed gate. He’d stand there smiling and smoking a cigar.’
The illness was in 1977, when her skin began flaking away, a condition that baffled the vets and was cured only when details were sent to Bombay University. It was suggested that the vegetables and fruit in her diet be increased. ‘We were so worried, and then she recovered,’ said Gerry Cottle. ‘I suppose that made her special.’
Cottle bought her in 1973, a tiny elephant from north-west India who turned up at Stansted with her mahout. He has good reason to remember it, for when he got there he was informed that VAT, which had been introduced a week earlier, applied to elephants. He lost £250,000 in the next two years because circus audiences appeared to agree with the councils that animals were a persecuted minority. When he went back into animals he had a vicar in to bless them and, to cock a snook at authority, added a turkey. The turkey, which does nothing except walk up and down, is called Lucky.
Twice a night, for seven minutes at a