“The Sun Clown”, as he is also known, never fails to enthral young and old with his oddball character based on a figure from Russian folklore — one who appears stupid but really is quite the opposite.
“I love to make people laugh, also in private,” the Russian said on a recent tour in The Hague with laughter sparkling in his lively blue eyes.
“I am very happy, if I could live my life over I would become a clown all over again.”
As the drums rolled under the travelling big top of the Great Russian State Circus, the ringmaster heralds “the one, the only, the unique Oleg Popov!”
To loud applause, a small man with a shock of straw-coloured hair shuffles into the ring — just as he has done for six decades.
Accompanied by a circus orchestra, Popov and his 49-year-old German wife Gabriela also juggles and does magic tricks.
“The work of a clown is interesting because it is art, and art is like an endless ocean,” the octogenarian said.
Popov joined the Russian State Circus school in Moscow at the age of 14. His big break came in 1954, when he stepped in for the head clown who had broken his arm.
Popov tours each year for six months, giving more than 200 performances mainly in Germany but also in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
“For the rest of the time I watch birds flying in the sky,” he says.
Ringmaster Thierry Dourain said, “He does not assume any airs, not even when [Russian Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin phones him on his birthday.”
And quitting is out of the question.
“He thinks he will die in the circus, that one day God will call him from his dressing room or the ring,” said circus director Willem Smitt.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 8th, 2011.
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