ROLL up! Roll up! The Great Moscow Circus is in town as part of its 50th anniversary tour, and if your listen to entrepreneur Michael Edgley, it’s all fresh.

Not just that, the two-hour show will be happening in what he calls a “virgin tent”, to be pitched for its first time in the Majura Park precinct.

I’m talking to Edgley by phone at his Gold Coast home, where he and his young family are struggling with the flu. But that doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm as he tells “CityNews”: “My father first brought The Great Moscow Circus to Australia in about 1965 and since then it’s been here 15 times and something like eight million people have seen it – it’s obviously been popular.”

You can say that again. The three-year, 80-city tour of Australia opened in Queensland and now it’s coming to Canberra for the school holidays. “We’ll be doing a wonderful charity show on April 6… so far we’ve raised $700,000, a success for everybody,” he enthuses.

Edgley speaks of his long association with Canberra publicist Coralie Wood, telling us: “We’ve been at least 30 years with Coralie, she is wonderful and we love her dearly.”

He’s wrong, it’s nearer to 40 years since his father, Eric Edgley, died in 1967 and Michael took over, often hiring Wood to publicise his circus up and down the east coast of Australia.

A lot’s changed since then. In the early days they could only bring the Russian circus in for three months at a time because officials feared circus members defecting, so they balanced the books with rock shows, operas, musicals and Russian ballet.

After the Soviet empire broke up, Edgley says, they formed a solid relationship with the Moscow Circus, which now releases its artists for up to three years.

“We now live in the commercial world and Moscow sends us guys who are at the top of the profession, who speak either very good or fluent English because they have to,” he says.

“We don’t want people to get bored so we are bringing a totally fresh company.”

He singles out “a wonderful flying trapeze act… we haven’t had that for a few years” and the South American clown Nino, of whom he says, “words don’t do him justice”.

Even better, the motorbike riders will take their thrills to a new level with six bikes in the Globe at once, a Guinness record, he says.

And though Edgley stresses the commercial slickness of the 2016 circus, there’s a nostalgic nod to the ballet days in a duo act from China — “Ballet on the Shoulder”.

The Great Moscow Circus, Majura Park, April 6-25. Bookings to 1300 667269, thegreatmoscowcircus.com.au or at the on-site box office.