Ride of a lifetime: From the fairground to a university career

There probably aren't many university professors able to boast that their aunt was a professional contortionist and can-can dancer. And for whom family visits involved remembering the names of more than 50 first cousins, taking money from punters for the "big wheel" and doing shifts on a candyfloss machine.

Professor Vanessa Toulmin is the first to admit that her background isn't entirely conventional. As the daughter of parents who ran Morecambe's Winter Garden fairground, where Toulmin was born, to everyone but her family she's always been a bit different.

Taunted at school with names such as "tinker" or "gypsy", she felt ambivalent about her family, fantasising that one day she'd come home to find they'd metamorphosed into "something out of Enid Blyton". But as Toulmin – the first academic in her family – got older and studied to become an entertainment historian at Sheffield University, she realised "with shame" that she was ignoring the story on her doorstep: the history of the fairground. She is now research director of the university's National Fairground Archive.

"My nana was known as 'Queen of the Winter Gardens'," says Toulmin. "She and my grandfather had lots of children, and while my aunts and uncles married travelling showpeople and worked all over Wales, Lancashire and Lincolnshire, my mother stayed home and helped to look after the fair.

"I was the fifth of six children – which was considered to be quite a small family – and because the fair was in Morecambe, we were known as 'sandancers' – it's what show-people call those who live by the sea."

When she was two, Toulmin was sent off to live with an aunt on a travelling fair. "The story goes that my mum only came to get me when I stopped recognising her," she laughs. "It sounds awful now, but it was normal in my family; my aunt was just another mum."

Toulmin had a conventional schooling although, she admits, she had "the worst attendance record in the place". As well as working on her parents' fair, she spent summer holidays travelling with various aunts and uncles "putting up rides in the middle of the night in the mud" for 12 weeks at a time. "You might think 'child slave labour', but we were brought up to work from an early age." Her uncle Arthur – who was a boxer, showman, painter and, latterly, travelling evangelist – had a motto: idle hands make idle minds. "And I grew up believing that."

Besides, she was considerably better off than her schoolmates. "One year, I remember getting a postcard from a girl from my class who'd gone to the Canary Islands. I'd sent her one from Wales, where I had spent the holidays potato-picking – but I didn't care, I'd earned £240, and I was only 14."

But there were problems. "I didn't really have any friends until I went to university," she says. "There were my cousins and my brothers and sisters, but I never had a best friend. I was bullied – it was a stigma being from the fair." And it wasn't just her peers. The teachers were equally prejudiced, particularly when she announced her desire to continue her education. "One said to me, 'People like you don't go to university. You're getting above yourself.' I just thought, 'I'll show you.'" She learnt instead through books. "I'd been reading since before I went to school. By 13 I was on Jude the Obscure while all the girls at school were reading Mills & Boon."

Despite being stigmatised, Toulmin thought the fairground life was "very glamorous". It was only as she got older that it began to feel suffocating: "I couldn't go anywhere without bumping into a relative." At university, she gained friends and independence – and then came full circle.

"I wanted to be a historian but I hadn't really appreciated my own history," she says. Uncle Arthur was a particular inspiration: "He was a walking encyclopaedia. Every time we went somewhere he'd tell me a story about that place. Until he died, I never knew he was illiterate – and never understood how important that oral history was."

These realisations were the beginning of Admission All Classes (AAC), an 18-month project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, focusing on the seaside fairground town with which Morecambe has always had a friendly rivalry: Blackpool.

AAC, now gearing up for its grand finale, aims to "change people's impressions of Blackpool through culture and history". To this end, Toulmin has hosted entertainment-themed historical tours of the town, put on a "neo-variety evening" in the Grand Theatre that combined performances by the Blackpool Variety Veterans – including the world's oldest pickpocket and a trombone troubadour – alongside a new generation of variety entertainers, burlesque artistes and modern cabaret organisations.

There is also a new exhibition of fairground advertising posters dating back to the 1850s and a grand Haunted Fairground Ball in the pipeline for Halloween. "I see Blackpool as a mecca," says Toulmin enthusiastically. "I'd been going there since I was a child, but it wasn't until I approached it from an academic angle that I fell in love with it."

Toulmin fell in love not with the resort, but the town's "entertainment mile", the Winter Gardens, where Frank Sinatra sang in the 1950s; the Tower, the piers, the Grand Theatre where Mae West once performed. "The Grand is one of three buildings in Blackpool, out of just 24 in the entire country, designed by Frank Matcham, who was the 19th century's foremost theatre architect."

Toulmin is especially enthusiastic about the Winter Gardens. "It has everything – a ballroom, an opera house and this incredible room called the Spanish Hall, made entirely from plaster. If it was in London, it'd be in every magazine in the country."

But the seaside town had an image problem: people were more likely to think of it as a tacky playground for hen and stag parties than a centre of culture. The council was keen to collaborate with her – the town also has a staggering 23,000 theatre seats to fill each day, and was failing to do so.

Is Toulmin's project having an effect? The fact that she has been commissioned by other local authorities including Sheffield and South Yorkshire to replicate the project would suggest she's hit on something.

"Eighteen months ago, you had to drag people up from London to come to Blackpool," she says. "Now they want to come." Perhaps most importantly of all for Toulmin is that her family also approve. Though, she admits, her mother did complain that the contortionist she'd employed for one show wasn't a patch on Auntie Brenda. n

Top of the Bill, an exhibition of fairground art, is at the Grundy Gallery, Blackpool, until 26 July, www.admissionallclasses.com

Fairground attractions: Four classic sideshows

The boxing show

A sideshow stalwart, inviting members of the public to spar against trained fighters. Ron Taylor, who died two years ago, aged 95, was the owner of the country's last such booth. He was famous for his invitation to potential punters to "Put your hands up" for the chance of winning a fiver "and a bloody good hiding".

The freak show

Huge in Victorian times, attractions included the Siamese twins Eng and Chang; Patrick O'Brien, the Irish giant; the lion-faced lady; Tom Thumb; numerous fat people – so popular that Hull Fair featured five in 1890; and, most famously, "Elephant Man" John Merrick.

The wall of death

Originating in 1920s America and last popular in the 1970s, this daring display of motorbike prowess involved at least two riders doing "death-defying" stunts across a steeply sloping wall. Only three travelling walls of death are left in Britain today.

The travelling menagerie

Often known as "the beast show", the history of the portable zoo can be traced back to the Roman Empire, when the keeping of exotic animals became a sign of high status. The travelling menagerie reflects the increasing wealth and influence of showmen in the 19th century, as well as a growing interest in natural sciences. KB

www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk