In the Spotlight
JOHNNY HUTCH
Johnny Hutch (1913-2006) was one of the great British acrobats of the twentieth century, and one of Britain’s most beloved circus and TV personalities. His career spanned seventy years, from his debut in 1927, with a Moroccan troupe of tumblers, to his last job as a stunt coordinator for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1997. Most of it was spent in music halls and circuses, but he also became universally famous, in 1988-89 (and for years thereafter on reruns), as a sidekick of comedian Benny Hill in Thames Television’s
The Benny Hill Show. The son of a docker, he was born John Hutchinson in Middlesbrough, England, on August 8, 1913. When Johnny reached fourteen, his father, John, decided that it was time for his son to get a job. Johnny was rather short for his age (in adulthood, he was five feet tall), and the jobs available around were not for him. So, his father suggested that Johnny train as a
jockeyClassic equestrian act in which the participants ride standing in various attitudes on a galoping horse, perform various jumps while on the horse, and from the ground to the horse, and perform classic horse-vaulting exercises., but his mother, Margaret, thought it was too dangerous. She eventually saw an ad in a local paper: A troupe of acrobats was looking for a "small boy" to perform in their act as an apprentice. (
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