For the past 3 years around October / November I would receive an e-mail from one or another researcher from Britain's Got Talent asking if any of our acts would be interested in auditioning for the show.

My answer was always the same, ‘Hell would have to freeze over first’.

The  winter of 2010 was a little different, I had already received the ‘stock’ e-mail and gave my stock answer, In  December though, I received a different e-mail, titled ‘ media enquiry’ upon opening it I found it simply asked who was the media contact for The Circus of Horrors, it did not specify any particular TV show but it was from Talkback Thames. I replied that I was the media contact and gave my number.

The next day I received a phone call from the same researcher, this time explaining that she was from Britain's Got Talent and asking if we would be interested in auditioning, of course I refused but she was persistent and asked me why. I explained, there were 3 reasons, 1 you don't get paid, 2 you can get humiliated and 3 the do not say where you are from, they may say John from Preston but are they really going to say Dr Haze from The Circus of Horrors?

The next day the same researcher rang again, and said, why don’t you do it as ‘The Circus of Horrors’, suddenly my ears pricked up as I thought to myself, yes you could still get humiliated, no you don't get paid, but 10 million people would see 2 minutes of The Circus of Horrors.  Suddenly it seemed a lot better idea.  I spoke to the rest of the cast and they all agreed that it was worth the risk & we agreed to do it.

We were on tour while the auditions were taking place and the only time we could fit it in was when BGT were in Birmingham Alexandra Theatre, a venue I knew well as we perform there every year. We were in Stoke the night before & Hereford on the night of the audition so the only way we could do it was if we went on first at 2pm, then got away quickly to get to Hereford in readiness of the show that night.

We put together a really exciting piece with loads going on, jamming everything into a 2 minute 20 second segment It was still touch and go as to whether we would perform after seeing the release form but after various assurances from the shows producers we agreed to do it.  I was still conscious that we were a professional act, and the fact that people would think we shouldn’t be there, the only way I could see around this was to tell it as it was, in the interviews with Ant & Dec I referred to the time I appeared on their Saturday Night Take Away show,  I also spoke of the Royal Command performance we appeared on.   When it was our time to take to the stage, I again told the judges & the audience why we were there, I simply thought it was a great promotional tool, I explained we normally play Theatres of that size and maybe perform to 1,000 people each night but doing Britain's Got Talent  would allow us to be seen by 10 million people in one go, Michael McIntyre even applauded what he described as my ‘business acumen’

All  my references to previous media exposure were edited out of the final cut but at least I knew my conscience was clear & I hadn’t tried to hide anything.  We went on and did our 2 minutes 20 seconds and got a 5 minute standing ovation & comments from David Hassloff , ‘Fantastic, That's what I call entertainment’ and said ‘I want to party with you guys’, Amanda Holdon said ‘It was gruesomely good’ and claimed we were ‘like Rocky Horror on acid’.   So off we went feeling pretty triumphant.

The next few weeks, email’s were passing back and forth, the next round, the 2nd round, was when they revealed who went into the semi finals. It fell however on day’s that we couldn’t make due to touring commitments.

The dates however got changed on two occasions due to the sad news the Amanda Holden had lost her baby, a new date was set for April, this was after our tour, 6 of our group could actually make it.

It was 2 marathon days, meeting in a hotel walking across to Hammersmith Apollo numerous time’s along with around a 1,000 others. I discovered there were a few people also in the same round as us that I knew, the magicians David & Karen, Strong Man John Evans & a young lad called Pooper Hoffman who although only 11 years old, did a brilliant act where he rode a motor cycle in The Globe of Death.

On the Sunday we were all taken back to Hammersmith & split into 3 groups A, B & C, we were in C & Pooper was in A, to my surprise he was in the group which unceremoniously were told they would not progress into the semi finals. I couldn’t believe it & genuinely thought he could win.

We were to survive for a little longer and were paraded in front of the judges again, Amanda spoke to us & after scaring us to death told us the judges were ‘unanimous & we were fit for a queen’.

So jubilation again, and our status at BGT seemed to increase too as the packed lunch we were given of a sandwich, apple & a small bottle of orange had increased to a almighty jacket potato, & a can of Coke,  we’d hit the big time.

There were a few issues in the contract but these were rectified quite quickly so we started getting ready for the semi final, from the 10,000 original contestants we were now down to the last 40.

On the eve of the screening of the new series of Britain's Got Talent, the media decided to publish the fact that we had already appeared on TV and in particular on Ant & Decs Saturday Night Takeaway. Nothing new there we had openly told everyone about this.

To be honest, I believed it was our right to appear on the program & the producers had every right to ask us, we still had to audition and we could still have been kicked out at the audition stage the same as everyone else.

Think of it like the FA cup, the beauty is that a amateur team can knock out a professional team, like Whitely Bay being paired against Man Utd.

The possibility of the underdog winning which I suppose, inevitably is what happened to us.

We were on show 4 and I was really pleased with the edit, we stormed it & over night were installed as between 3rd to 6th favourites by the bookies.

Over the next few weeks however something strange was about to happen, our odd’s which had been as good as 6 -1 had decreased to anything between 16 -1 to 25 -1 and I couldn’t understand why.

The Daily Mirror did a double page feature entitled ‘Britain's Gore Talent, but I cant see how that would have been significant, the other thing I found strange was the You Tube hits, some acts were getting 1.5 million were we were getting 200,000. Still a lot but a massive difference, its as though virally people weren't seeing as much of us, but why?

The show in Birmingham was aired while we were at the Brighton Festival and business certainly took an up turn once we had been on so hopefully the decision to do BGT was working.

It was great to see all our fans & friends rally round & pledge their votes to us, plus the support from Bizarre magazine & the alternative community, even Preston North End urged their fans to vote for us, the question was, would there be enough of them.

Judgement day came on, 1st June, I was so nervous I hadn’t slept all night or eaten for 24 hours, the rehearsals went well though despite the restrictions on our Ariel acts by the set.  Instead of Denis & Asia flying out over the crowd they could only be pulled straight up & down, this certainly lost a lot of the dynamic.  A further problem was when one on the BGT crew over filled our water tank and broke it, leaving Denis to emerge from a tank of smoke as opposed to a tank of water.

Despite all this I thought we did pretty good and received another standing ovation, now for the judges comments.

Surprisingly, although not bad, they were all downbeat and I knew at this point we had reached the end of the road, if David Hassolhoff said it ended fantastic but started a little slow would have been much better than saying, you started too low but when it got better it was fantastic. Simon Cowell even corrected him on this and after declaring ‘He loved it’ S C went on to rightly confront the Hoff and state ‘every show has to end big, which is exactly what we did.

The other strange thing that any one watching may have noticed was that Ant & Dec didn’t hand the mic to me to give me the right to reply, which they did for everyone else. I wasn’t going to make excuses but I would have corrected the Hoff and Amanda Holden & obviously thanked our fans.

After returning home & seeing the dreadful editing by the producer & thinking about the judges comments, it was no surprise to me that we didn’t make it.

Since then there have been loads of conspiracies,

The blog of alleged fixing that appeared on the internet the next day.

People claiming they were voting tactfully to get one of the silly acts such as the bell ringers to get more votes to stop some of the singers winning, if that was the case it failed. Why was the winner of our group Les Gibson added to our night only two days previously.   Who knows the real reason, the facts are, for whatever reason we didn't get enough votes & we have to take it on the chin, maybe it was simply that most of our fans just wouldn’t watch BGT.   Never the less I would like to offer a huge thanx to all of you who supported & voted for us.

And I leave you with the final thoughts:-

Did it serve the purpose of increasing our profile, definitely.

Did I enjoy the experience, NO.

Would I do it again, Only if Hell froze over.

Haze & Cast - Circus of Horrors