This is the story, it seems Ming of Harlem - Wikipedia. It has a happier ending, at least for the tiger, than I might have imagined. The guy who kept him along with some other animals sounds like he needed, as we used to say, his head examined. At one point the tiger at least tried to examine the insides of his arm and leg and that’s when someone called the NYPD.
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Proper wrestling 
Imitation/flattery:
Giant Haystacks / Big Daddy 
They knew a bit about fiten’ fizeeks backinnaday 
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Giant Haystacks wrestled in North America briefly near the end of his life under the name Loch Ness. He was actually being set up for a run of matches against Hulk Hogan at the time he was diagnosed with lymphoma
Haystacks, in interviews, claimed to eat 3 pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs for breakfast everyday to “maintain his strength”
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Very different times 
I did get to see that travelling wrestling circus once in about 1974 or 75 when it came to & sold out our local Civic Hall. Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki, Big Daddy et al. It was an entertaining ‘show’ but you’d only have gone once. One of the most amusing participants was Nagasaki’s trolling manager ‘Gorgeous’ George Gillette who was incredibly good at winding the audience and the other wrestlers up into a frenzy.
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I’m pretty envious. I have very nostalgic memories of watching the wrestling on the box with my grandad, but sadly his health was failing and he died suddenly in 1975 at way too young an age. No-one else in my family was remotely interested, so I never got to see an actual show.
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Several school friends & I enjoyed watching it on tv every Saturday so when it came to town we couldn’t miss it. I think it was also relatively cheap to get in.
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I used to watch it with my grandad on World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon. I also remember Mick McManus (always the villain), Jackie Pallo and later Rollerball Rocco.
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Aah, the outside bog.
I remember it well, next door to the coalhouse in the back yard.
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Cold - That is what I remember of my Nans, that and really bad bog roll.
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Yeah, skidded off your arse
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Good for brass rubbings not so much for the anus.
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First 12 years of my life we had an outdoor netty - freezing cold, heaving with bloody-great spiders, pitch black cos no light - used to scare the shit out of me, literally, never knew what constipation was, and you’d be in-and-out so fast that if it wasn’t for the godawful clanking of the flush you’d scarce know anyone had been there. Somehow the smells were slow to dissipate, tho…
Infants and Junior schools were all outside too. Wasn’t til I went to Comp I discovered other people mostly didn’t live like it, after that I did all my shitting in school 
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This week I have been mostly eatin’, timbales.
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I loved the smell of fresh Izal, but I think it was designed to take your nick off along with the shit in one surgical move… 
You were lucky . . .
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