Born: December 1st, 1954
Died: June 5th, 2026
Marion Fossett, who has died aged 71, was ringmistress in the family circus that bore her name.
A commanding presence while in the Big Top as well as outside of it, she was also an accomplished singer. She was a member of the all-girl pop group Sheeba (along with Maxi and Frances Campbell) which represented Ireland at the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Horoscopes.
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But touring with the circus was her true calling – one she embraced with gusto.
She was born in Dublin in December 1954. Her father was Edward (Teddy) Fossett and her mother was Herta, who came originally from the Czech Republic, then Czechoslovakia. Herta’s background was also in the circus: with her sisters and parents, she was a wire and perch artist performing as The Lordinis – she met the Fossett family when they came to work for them in 1952 and toured Ireland.
Marion was the first of the couple’s five children – the others being Eddy, Angela, Mona and Robert.
The family association with circus life began in the late 19th century and is replete with characteristically colourful individuals – chief among them their progenitor, the multitalented Dr J Powell.
Powell, aka Frank Lowe from Mallow in Co Cork, was a restless fellow and, like many of his generation, sought adventure, fame and fortune in United States in the 1870s. There, he joined PT Barnum’s circus and later toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
It is unclear when and why Lowe transformed himself into Dr Powell, or the Amazing Dr Powell as he was also known, but in 1888 he founded the Powell and Clarke Show and toured Ireland. What is known is that Dr Powell was his stage name, and he performed a one-man show that included ventriloquism, sharp shooting and magic.
He brought with him his daughter Mona, who met and fell in love with a young Englishman, Edward Fossett, an acclaimed bareback circus rider.
Edward and Mona married and had six children – Mary, Mona, Amy, John (also known as Johnny), Robert (Bobby) and Edward (Teddy), who was Marion’s father. Under Edward and Mona’s stewardship, the Powell and Clarke Show became Heckenberg’s Berlin Tower Circus in the 1930s, touring Ireland until the war and then changed in the 1950s, becoming Fossett’s Circus.
Edward and Mona had a long association with Tinahely in Co Wicklow, where they lived in Ballybeg. After their deaths, the family moved to Dublin in the early 1950s. Marion was raised in Blackrock and attended Loreto Convent school in Foxrock.
Her circus debut was as a baby – she was brought into the ring in a basket carried by an elephant. She developed her own act quickly, transforming herself as a young girl and teenager into a contortionist, wire walker, trapeze artist and sword balancer.
Music was a constant while she was growing up on both sides of the family. Her father Teddy, who was also ringmaster, had a great voice and loved to sing at family gatherings. Her great grandfather was an orchestra conductor and her grandfather was a violinist before joining the circus and so it was perhaps inevitable that Marion would entertain in that way too.
Despite illness in latter years, Marion Fossett remained active and engaged, save for the weeks before her death. At her funeral this week she was remembered for her large personality and big contribution to entertainment
She lived for a time in London, playing cabaret and featuring on Saturday night TV shows, such as Seaside Special and Name That Tune, with Tom O’Connor. While touring with her fellow Sheeba singers, she was involved in a car crash near Castlebar in Co Mayo which shook her and prompted a break from gigging.
At about the same time, her father became ill and soon Marion took over from him as ringmistress, a rare role for a woman. At about the same time, she co-presented The Big Top, a variety programme on RTÉ television.
But in Fossett’s she became the driving force in the circus behind the scenes while also fronting the show.
“She took on so many things,” recalled her niece Sonya Fossett. “She had a get-up-and-go attitude – she liked to get things done.”
[ ‘It’s our job to create magic’ – Circus ringmistress Marion Fossett dies aged 71Opens in new window ]
Things included the bureaucracy of running the circus and all its (literally) moving parts, orchestrating the spring-to-autumn touring season, which took the circus all over the island – to seaside hotspots such as Tramore, tourist destinations such as Bunratty, Waterville, Clonakilty and Skibbereen, and co-locating with annual events such as the Rose of Tralee Festival and Electric Picnic.
Other things involved organising straw from farmers for animal bedding, especially when the circus toured with animals.
They included horses and ponies, llamas and camels, a monkey, lions and a porcupine. The circus developed a special relationship with Dublin Zoo which, for a time, was having difficulty breeding camels but Fossett’s helped them over that hump.
As performing with animals fell out of popular favour, the practice declined but Marion remained an animal lover all her life.
She derived huge pleasure from her nieces and nephews, on whom she doted. She painted one of the rooms in her Blackrock home blue and turned it into a special place for reading stories with them.
Touring with the circus forges specially close family bonds.
“From a family point of view, one of the very blessed things about touring with the circus is that we are all together,” said Sonya. “There were four generations of us touring and so the family bonds are really strong. Marion was my aunt but she felt also like a mom to me.”
Between putting tents up and down and overseeing everything else with a travelling show, she found time for her nieces and nephews.
“She always made time in that busy life for picnics and sandwiches ... she found time for simple things with us – taking us to the cinema or to other shows,” says Sonya. It was Marion’s way of trying to enrich their lives with other forms of entertainment and art.
Despite illness in latter years, Marion Fossett remained active and engaged, save for the weeks before her death. At her funeral this week she was remembered for her large personality and big contribution to entertainment.
Condolences on RIP.ie included memories from Maxi, who recalled her “exotic beauty and sweet singing voice”, and fellow Eurovision singer Johnny Logan, who remembered her laughter. Moya Doherty and John McColgan wrote that her “talent, energy, commitment, joy enthralled us all inside and outside the tent”, while Ryan Tubridy wrote that she had “made the world a more colourful, kinder place”.
“She was a large personality,” said Sonya Fossett. “She just filled a room, not as a joke teller but she was the centre of attention in a great way.”
Delivering the funeral eulogy, she said: “For Marion, it’s always been stardust and spangles and dreams ... heaven has gained a diva.”
Marion Fossett is survived by her siblings Eddy, Angela, Mona and Robert, her brothers-in-law, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, grandnieces and nephews.
