STEPHEN LEWIS is sent to the Big Top on work experience.

I'm standing with my back against a painted board, the bright lights of the Big Top in my eyes. A few paces away, six ugly-looking knives clasped in one hand, stands Jayde Hanson. He's the world knife-throwing champion - and he's about to throw those knives at me.

Dimly, I hear Jayde's partner Yana Rodionova giving me advice. When Jayde was demonstrating his throwing skills live on television in August, she was hit on the side of the head with a spinning knife. "It would have needed two stitches," she says cheerfully. "But I don't like stitches, so I asked them to use tape instead."

Now she's telling me to cover my nether regions with my hands, just in case. "Don't sway. You mustn't sway! And keep your elbows tucked in. It hurts if they hit your elbows."

Jan Erik Brenner, resident clown and organiser of this little stunt, chips in. "Watch Jayde's eyes!" he tells me. "Then you can tell if he's going to hit you." He pauses with impeccable clown's timing. "If his eyes are closed, he's going to hit you!"

Before I have time to gulp, the first knife whirls through the air and thuds into the wood beside my left leg. The second lands just wide of my right leg. The third slams into the wood to the left of my waist. Another joins it on the right.

Then, scariest of all, a fifth knife whistles past my left ear and into the wood beside my face, and the sixth and final knife smacks into the wood by my right ear. Jayde grins.

So that's what it's like to be a circus performer. The Cottle & Austen Electric Circus - "Europe's Greatest!" - is in town. And I've been invited to see if I've got what it takes.

Step Two in my circus education is to take part in a Human Pyramid with The Kenya Boys - aka leotard-clad Kenyan acrobats Goha Mwinyi, Ramadhani Nguzo and Mohammed Dulo.

Their muscles ripple. I feel puny and inadequate. In a trice, Ramadhani has braced himself, his powerful legs firmly set - and I'm hanging off one side, arms and legs outstretched, Mohammed is hanging off the other, and Goha has scrambled nimbly up to sit on his shoulders. We strike a pose, grinning like loons, and then dis-assemble ourselves.

Nothing to this circus business. Not, at least, until you're told you're going to ride a motorcycle at 40 miles an hour across a trapeze wire stretched 30 feet above the Big Top floor. Step Three in my education.

In fact Igor Makarov will be riding the bike. I'm to be slung a few feet beneath it in a glorified metal trapeze. "Just hold on tight," says Jan Erik. "There is nothing to be frightened of - as long as you don't let go and fall off. And if you do start to fall, relax. It makes a better fall if you relax."

Thus heartened, I climb up a metal tower and take my place on the trapeze. Eight feet or so above me, Igor peers down past the engine of his bike, grins crazily, and guns the motor. A plume of blue exhaust streams out, the engine screams - and we're off, shooting along the high wire.

Half way across, Igor applies the brakes and we come to a juddering halt. I swing, petrified, my eyes on the motorbike tyre balanced precariously on the wire above me. It's going to fall off, I think.

The world stands still. Then Igor guns the engine again, and we go backwards. He brakes once more, guns the engine a final time - and we race off across the roof of the Big Top, the floor dizzyingly far below, and come to a screaming stop, high above the ground on the far side. My heart is thundering in my chest, the adrenaline flooding around my body. But God, was it fun.

Safely back on the ground, I meet some of the performers. There are lots of clichs about how a circus becomes your family, but see these people together and that's almost literally true. You do find your family in the circus, says Jan Erik.

Everyone has gathered under the Big Top lights for a photocall. There is Russian contortionist Karina Grigorieva, a feline young woman who flips effortlessly into a handstand for the picture, Jayde and Yana, Tito the clown and Pityu, the "world's smallest superstar", a man with the smouldering good looks of a Timothy Dalton - except that, astonishingly, he is only 27 inches tall.

Jan Erik tells a joke about Pityu. Someone once asked if he got half-price air tickets, the same as children. "No, cheaper," says Jan Erik. "He goes as hand luggage!" He mimes tucking Pityu into an overhead locker and howls with laughter.

It may not be very PC but Pityu doesn't mind. The little man from Budapest appears happy. He's fourth generation circus, he says. He has a home in Budapest where his wife and 16-year-old daughter live. Is his wife, well, as small as he is? "No," he says with a grin. "She's normal size. Like my grandfather and his wife, and my father and his wife."

This circus business obviously runs in the family. Yana describes herself as "sixth generation circus" while Jan Erik is third generation. Tito, meanwhile, comes from a Portuguese family of circus clowns and jugglers.

Until 16 years ago, he was part of the family act. "Then I met a circus lady with long legs," he says. "An ice skater. I'm a short man, and I fell in love with the long legs!"

Her name was Lesley, she was English, she's now his wife - and they have two daughters, Kimberley, nine, and Jessica, seven. The family have a home in Kent and a flat in Spain, but spend most of their time on the road. The children, like all circus children, go to school in each town the circus visits. So that's virtually a different school each week. Doesn't he worry about their education?

"They did stay at home for six months one time, but we decided we missed them growing up," he says. "And they may be in the circus, but they don't miss one single day of school. The teachers say they're doing very well."

Outside, the fun is still going on. Jan Erik has just been helping throw a custard pie in the face of a reporter from Radio York.

"It's the cannon next," he says, as the man wipes himself down. "It's been brought back especially from Iraq. Surrendered twice, but never fired!" He guffaws.

Who needs PC, when you're having as much fun as this?

The Cottle & Austen Electric Circus is on Knavesmire, York, until Sunday.

Performances: until Friday, 5pm and 8pm; Saturday and Sunday, 2pm and 5pm. Tickets: £8-£20 or £6-£15 concessions. Box office on site. Website: www.cottleaustencircus.co.uk

Updated: 11:54 Wednesday, October 01, 2003