Bello Nock is more than the 9 inches of red hair that stands so perfectly straight up off his head it seems God is pulling him to heaven.
A few years ago when Time magazine celebrated a milestone anniversary by picking the world’s greatest everything, Bello, as he is professionally billed, landed the blue ribbon for “world’s best clown.”
But Bello steadfastly declares he is not a clown, at least not in he common understanding of the word.
“People think of a clown as someone who is just going to wear a big red nose, big shoes and a big colorful wig,” Bello said in a recent phone interview. “And that is not a description of a clown at all. It is a type of clown. You know what I mean?”
Come Wednesday, Bello and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus open a 19-performance run at the Denver Coliseum.
Bello always shows up for work dressed in a well-pressed tuxedo. It looks a little big on him, as though it was tailored for a sideshow fat man.
The tux is part of the act. Even though Bello is not a “clown,” he gets paid for making audiences laugh. He also creates chills and thrills by performing breathtaking daredevil stunts.
It’s all in a day’s work.
“I grew up in this business,” he said. “I come from a long history of daredevils, not clowns.”
So what do you get when you mix a genetic predisposition for risk-taking with an innate desire to make people laugh?
“Being a natural daredevil and loving to take risks and putting my life on the line for other people’s enjoyment and at the same time being a class clown in school, out of school, at home, at work, constantly, is just who I am,” Bello said. “And the words ‘comic daredevil’ just described it.”
Sometimes the risk-taking involves getting laughs. The danger in the humor side of his act is that some crazy stunt could anger his boss, circus owner Kenneth Feld.
“A clown has to take chances, has to put his neck out: ‘Well, I know this is funny. I know I’m going to get in trouble. But I’m going to do it anyway,”‘ he said. “It’s the same thing as a daredevil taking a motorcycle and jumping a few cars.”
Bello recalls one stunt in which he unexpectedly introduced water balloons into an opening spectacular.
“The show called for me to be 40 feet in the air,” he remembered. “There was a song called ‘Where’s Bello?’ The entire cast, like 125 people, is looking (around) and singing ‘Where’s Bello?’ And the entire audience can see me, the entire audience. The cast has to pretend like they can’t see me.”
One day someone bet Bello that he couldn’t hit someone with a water balloon during the number.
Hmmmm, Bello thought: One balloon, one chance. He took six water balloons up with him on the wire.
“And I’m dropping water balloons on some of the performers, who are friends of mine and loved it,” he said. “Not looking up, not allowed to look up at Bello, they’re dodging water balloons in the middle of the show.”
The audience loved it, rewarding him with hysterical laughter. Feld, however, saw no humor in the water-balloon stunt. “He about threatened to fire me,” Bello said.
The daredevil Bello has done his ancestors proud. One of his most spectacular aerial stunts was hanging by his toes on a trapeze under a helicopter flying above the Statue of Liberty.
Another time he walked a 350-foot high wire stretched 500 feet across a baseball stadium in Houston. It was, he said, the largest stadium walk ever done.
“When people think I am a clown, I am a daredevil,” he said. “And the minute they think, ‘This guy is a daredevil. He can do anything,’ that’s when I do something funny and make them laugh.”
Still, the first question people asked him after a show remains, “Is that your real hair?”
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
LEGENDARY SHOW|Denver Coliseum, 4600 Humboldt St., 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday and Oct. 12-16, 11:30 a.m., 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and Oct. 15-16, and 11 a.m. Oct. 13 |$15-$70|303-830-8497 or ticketmaster.com
