HALF a century ago, circuses used to announce their arrival in York by taking the elephants for a walk around the city centre.

An Evening Press photograph of Jumbo helping himself to some fruit outside a greengrocer's was priceless publicity.

Tastes change. Today the thought of exotic creatures plodding through choreographed routines night after night is considered old fashioned, even demeaning, by many people.

That is why the Great British Circus is one of the few to still incorporate animal acts. The public has little appetite for a performing zoo any more.

So there will be no animals parading through York tomorrow to advertise that the circus is in town. Instead it is enjoying effort-free publicity, courtesy of the morons who give animal rights campaigners a bad name.

Everywhere that the Great British Circus goes, there are organised protests. This is the legitimate voice of the animal rights lobby, passionate people who exercise their democratic right to publicly oppose this form of entertainment.

But their work is so often undermined by the fanatics. This week Lorna Marchi, the York riding stable owner who is hosting the circus, has received a number of threatening phone calls. These were extreme enough to warrant the intervention of Special Branch.

Mrs Marchi is not sensationalising when she describes the phone calls as terrorism. The perpetrators are trying to scare her into withdrawing her support for a legal activity.

This sort of behaviour is utterly unacceptable. It brings to mind the late animal rights activist Barry Horne, whose hunger strike in York brought him national notoriety. He sought to protect animals through violence.

Sadly, as today's report confirms, this warped mindset is still detracting from the peaceful campaign to improve animal welfare.

Updated: 10:09 Monday, March 22, 2004