Trapeze artists swinging from a woman’s hair and a creepy ventriloquist doll can only mean one thing – the Circus of Horrors is in town. Chris Price got spooked by their ringmaster and founder Dr Haze.

Being ringmaster of a blood-curdling travelling theatre show is not your average job description – but Dr Haze has no average job.

“If people call it freaky, we have got no problem with that,” said the head-honcho of the Circus of Horrors, which had a successful run on Britain’s Got Talent last year.

“That is how we wanted it to be. We want to be different. It would be boring if everyone supported the same football team for example. The beauty of life is the diverse characters.”

Diverse is a very reserved way of describing the show which Dr Haze, real name John Haze Slater, has fronted for the last 17 years. Their new touring show, The Ventriloquist, is no less strange than in previous years. There is a girl who fires a longbow with her feet while contorting and a girl who ties a trapeze to her hair, hangs upside down and allows trapeze artists to swing from the bar attached to her luscious locks. There are flying aerialists, gyrating jugglers and its new-found star, the evil Ventriloquist himself.

It seems strange to think that the circus came about after a gap in the market opened when French contemporary circus Archaos went bust in the early 1990s. Dr Haze pitched his idea for a rock and roll circus act to impresario Gerry Cottle and after much deliberation The Circus of Horrors made it’s debut at the Glastonbury Festival in 1995.

“I always thought it would do well but whether I thought it would be going another 17 years later is another thing,” said Dr Haze.

“A lot of people thought it would be over within a year but I knew I really liked it and I thought that there must surely be enough people out there who would like it too.”

That theory was borne out when the act appeared on Britain’s Got Talent last year, making it to the semi-finals and being made 4-1 favourites to win the competition at one stage.

Dr Haze had turned down the advances of Britain’s Got Talent every year the show had been in existence until he finally gave in. His decision was made after the producers made it clear he could perform as part of the Circus of Horrors and not as himself, which had been suggested before.

“They said to me Diversity had done it as an established group, as had Spelbound .

“At the end of the day we were watched by 35 million people over the course of the show so to get that amount of exposure in a short space of time has got to have helped us. And we didn’t do it by conforming – we did it our way.

“To be honest, we have always been relatively high profile but the big difference now is we have taken the extreme to the mainstream without compromising.

“When we first started we appeared on TV, but late at night, whereas now we are on prime-time shows like Britain’s Got Talent, Daybreak and Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.”

The Circus of Horrors: The Ventriloquist comes to Bromley’s Churchill Theatre on Sunday, January 22. Tickets £13 to £22. Box office 0844 871 7620. It returns to Kent at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre on Thursday, March 8. Tickets £15 to £25. Box office 01322 220000. It is then at Margate’s Winter Gardens on Friday, March 16. Tickets £15 to £21. Box office 01892 296111.