Dee Burkett

speaker

125 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 27 Jun

Dee Burkett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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CountryWide · Granuaile · 27 Jun 2026 podcast

I was late running away and I got to a point I actually already had a child.

And I always, all my life, wanted to run away to the circus.

I had that dream inside me, which other people grow out of.

I just never grew out of it.

It was like a knot in my heart.

And I got to a stage where I thought, if I don't do it now, I never, ever will.

and ran away to an Italian circus.

And I was what's called a general hand, so I helped build up the tent.

It was a very traditional circus.

And then one of the elephant girls had an accident, and they came to me and said, can you take her place?

And I said, but I've never ridden anything, not even a horse.

And they said, never mind, just get up there.

So I suppose I learnt on the job.

You got up there.

I got up there and I learnt on the job.

My elephant was called Julia.

Very quickly she was the only female older than me in the ring.

She was in her 50s.

I loved being part of a travelling community.

There were over 25 different nationalities in our circus, yet we didn't only all communicate and get on, but every single day we relied on each other literally for our lives.

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