A town council in England has taken down promotional circus posters after a complaint from one woman – in a town of 28,000 – who happens to have a fear of clowns, according to the Daily Mail.
A council has removed posters advertising a circus following a complaint from a woman who is scared of clowns.Leighton Buzzard Town Hall Council said it took down the adverts after one complaint – in a town of 28,000 people.An unnamed female resident told the authority the posters were scaring her whenever she drove past them, explaining that she suffers from coulrophobia.The council removed all of the posters and told the circus not to come back to the town unless it uses promotional material without clowns on it.‘We take complaints on a case by case basis but this was a short-term, easily solvable problem,’ said council operations officer Lisa Jarvis.‘The circus is on the park which is our responsibility and we are responsible to our residents, so something like that is in our gift to fix, so we fixed it.’Circus owner and ringmaster John Lawson said the decision was ‘absolutely ridiculous’ because the circus is only in town for a couple of days.‘What does she do when she drives past McDonalds, I wonder? It’s victimisation,’ he said.‘We don’t know who it is, but if we did, we’d gladly offer her tickets to come and see… that our friendly clown is nothing to be scared of.’
Apparently, even a phobia expert said this was the wrong way to address the issue, saying, ‘The council have merely accommodated her fear.’
Lawson said he was hoping to speak to the woman to see if they could come up with a compromise for when the circus returns next year, according to BBC News. He told the Leighton Buzzard Observer, “On the poster the clown is very smiley, he’s not sinister at all.”
Well, now he’s a sad clown.
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