WELCOME to the freak show, and the tenth year of shock'n'roll from those twisted travelling folk The Circus Of Horrors, on their first York visit.

Circus was dead, or so it was said - but now it is undead, exotic animals replaced with erotic girls, nocturnal critters, vampires and men who hang buckets from their appendage, or fire fireworks from their backside. For sure, not everyone will be enamoured of this Rocky Horror Circus - and sissies are impolitely invited to, er, go away at the start - but there is no more nudity, bad language and ill-advised female dressing than on Friday night on the Micklegate Run. What's more, these dark circus arts are tongue-in-cheek, albeit pierced tongue in cheek.

Our hammy-horror master of ceremonies is the faux American vampire Dr Haze, essentially another slice off the Meat Loaf block, who determines to have his blood-lusting way with the virginal, aerobatic Ragen, while leading us from Victorian freak show beginnings to 666 years into the future with the aid of his lumbering heavy rock band, The X-Factor.

Along for the ride are lithe Kenyan limbo dancers; the sword-swallowing Blackheart the Barbarian; the 5ft 9in contortionist girl from Mongolia squeezed into a Perspex bottle; Satanica, the hair-hanging vampire; Garry Stretch, with his extraordinary stretchable skin that he clamps with bulldog clips; and rope-swinging Jesuit Priest Willie Ramsey.

The world's smallest man had been on the billing too: so small in fact that we must have missed him.

Updated: 10:51 Friday, December 03, 2004