More L. Bertolotto News

News just in.... from Legislature of the Province of Ontario 1908 vol 5

"And here I would say that I am indebted for the most of the information that I can give, respecting Bertolotto and his Fleas, to D. Jewell, Esq., broker, who was intimately acquainted with Bertolotto, Lt. Col, Gray of H. M. Customs, who was a member of the Stadacona Club during the time of Bertolotto's stewardship, and the Rev. E. A. W. King, M.A., Rector of St Peter's who witnessed on of Bertolotto's exhibitions in Boston. Mass."

This is another tantalising snippet that I found from google books when searching for "exhibit of trained fleas", I'll try to track down if there is more of this article. Apparently my nearest copies are in the USA or Canada.

• Legislative Assembly of Ontario
• Stadacona Club
• Bertolotto in Port Hope

Professor Cockerill's Flea Circus

Professor Cockerill has put a taster video of his real flea circus on Youtube, with three acts, Tight rope, Club Juggling and Football Juggling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gauReGP_Tps

Little people in the street

Perhaps these people have seen fleas on their travels through the streets?

http://little-people.blogspot.com/

Spanish Fleas

The weather in Spain is mostly warm and dry. So Javier aka Magic Puk is in the ideal location for his Circo Magico De Pulgas.



The newly upgraded circus has been created with the advice of world flea trainers. The act includes a new springboard, trampoline, the swimming pool, a tricycle and a central circus ring. The circus has been equipped also with an external monitor to provide a larger view of the circus.

Puk is also a charitable type and aims to help retired fleas and fleas rescued from "Freak Flea Circus" shows.

For more details see: http://magicpuk.blogspot.com/2007/11/flea-circus.html

Paul O' Grady Fleas

I looked at my flea circus site google analytics stats this week and noticed that there was a bit of a change. Rather than my usual 20-30 hits per day, I recieved 301 on Wednesday.

My first speculation was that perhaps the showing of a flea circus on the Paul O' Grady show had sent a bunch of people in my direction, there were a lot of google hits but there were 241 from a site called StumbleUpon.com. For those of you who don't know stumbleupon is a way of sharing interesting sites with other people who have similar interests so it looks like I must have been mentioned there. Sorry Paul/Malcolm you can't claim credit for this one.

Anyway, hopefully my digibox recorded the Paul O Grady show as I did not have time to watch it as I was donating blood (for people not fleas) last night. I'll let you know more once I've seen the show.

Paul O'Grady 29th November 2007

The Paul O'Grady show on Thursday 29th November 2007 will have a guest Flea Circus performer and pupetteer, Professor Malcolm Jephcott from Devon. The show starts at 5pm on Channel 4.

It's been a life long ambition for to Paul to perform a flea circus so next week Malcom is training him on how to handle fleas and perform the acts.

Max von Sydow named after a Flea

In a recent interview the actor Max von Sydow comments that he was named after a flea. The swedish actor appeared in Conan the Barbarian, perfored for Bergman in The Seventh Seal, won an oscar for Pelle the Conqueror and more recently appeared in Minority Report and Rush Hour 3.
Max was origionally named Carl Adolf after his grandparents but in the 1940s the name became less popular. During swedish national service he performed for his comrades in an imaginary flea circus. And the star of that circus was a flea called Max. Following this the colonel of regiment started calling him Max and the name stuck.