14 DAY TRIAL // Leighton Buzzard is a UK town with a population of 28,000 but all it took for a circus to see all its promotional posters brought down was the complaint of one woman, who claimed she suffered from severe coulrophobia.
Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, might be relatively newly documented but it’s real. Apparently, it’s also enough to get the John Lawson’s circus in trouble because now the other 27,999 people of Leighton Buzzard won’t know they’re in town for a limited time.
Metro reports that the Leighton Buzzard Town Council granted the woman’s complaint after she told them that she was terrified every time she drove past a poster for the circus, because it showed a clown.
“We take complaints on a case by case basis but this was a short-term, easily solvable problem,” a spokesperson says. She adds that the circus will be able to perform and advertise its stay as long as it uses a poster that doesn’t include clowns.
As you can imagine, the circus owner (who is also ringmaster) John Lawson isn’t happy about the ruling. As he sees it, no offense to the woman who is afraid of clowns, it was stupid to ban the posters just because one person complained about them.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. There’s about 28,000 people in Leighton Buzzard, and our posters get taken down because of one person. What does she do when she drives past McDonalds, I wonder? It’s victimization,” Lawson says for the same media outlet.
He still finds it in him to offer the woman an olive branch. “We don’t know who it is, but if we did, we’d gladly offer her tickets to come and see that our performance to show that our friendly clown is nothing to be scared of,” he adds.
While we’re sure John Lawson’s circus doesn’t include clowns in the vein of Pennywise, this is probably not how you treat coulrophobia.