MARCUS LA TOUCHE

Getting on for two years' ago (November, 2013, if you want to check) I wrote of Marcus La Touche, former circus Clown Roma and children's entertainer, who a couple of decades before had rested his tiny homemade caravan on a riverside meadow in Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk and, with his dog Viscount, declared himself retired from show business.
Marcus, who died several years' ago, was a gentle, approachable man who deliberately and contentedly lived a life of great simplicity, but who had nevertheless lived an actual life which had been far from simple - circus in South America, filming wild animals in Africa, Hollywood, children's entertainer back in Blighty, and so on.
At the time I also lamented the fact that I'd found little additional information about him. I believe many of his scrapbooks and souvenirs were destroyed in a caravan fire, too. Well, thanks to the internet, now I do know a little more.
His real name was Arthur Edward La Touche Aston - a surname, hitherto unknown to me, and a fact which had thrown me right off the scent - and he was born on November 12, 1909, to Helen Edith Johns (nee Buck), an actress, of 27, Mount Pleasant Lane, London, who in 1908 had married John Edward La Touche Aston. In 1911 the family of three moved to 50, St Leonard's Road, Mortlake. They also had links with Greenhead Farm, near Cheadle, and Mill Street, Macclesfield. 
First piece of this fresh info is a very short British Pathe Studios film showing Marcus, in smart blazer and flannels, with his dog Viscount. Marcus asks Viscount simple mathematical questions, and Viscount barks the answers. The film is dated 1939.
Second is another short Pathe film from 1940, titled Good Dog, showing Viscount - very much with the War in mind - collecting 'important' messages and racing across fields and roads to deliver them to a police post.
Then in 1943 another Pathe short, filmed at Greenhead Farm, Kingsley, near Cheadle, Stoke-on-Trent, showing Marcus and Viscount - he had a succession of dogs which took the same name - performing their outdoor act in front of a female audience. This was evidently filmed at harvest-time, so the audience may have been Land Army girls working on the farm.
Yet another item of interest is a poster from the V&A collection, dated 1970, advertising 'Clown Roma's Fun Time,' autographed by Marcus (Clown Roma) at the time. Scenes in the show evidently included Crazy Camping, The Birthday Party, the TV Studio, and Road Safety.
Also, I have a faint recollection of Marcus telling me that he intended to donate his clown's costume to the Strangers' Hall Museum, in Norwich. But I have no knowledge of what happened to it.
A final echo of Clown Roma's life and times comes with the realisation that he had, for over 20 years, been caught up in 'hostilities' surrounding the performing animals controversy. In December, 1942, Marcus appeared on BBC radio in a debate about 'performing animal cruelty,' arguing among other things that cruelty in training was not necessary.
Then on January 7, 1960, a 'cruelty' campaigner demanded of the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire that he charge Marcus - whose dog had died in another caravan fire - for having an out-of-date dog registration form. I have no idea of the outcome, but clearly hostilies had not subsided.