Uncle Chuckles is the life and soul of the circus, or at the very least a circus. It's possible that whichever circus it actually is of which he is the life and soul did something horrendous in a previous life. Current speculation is that it involved a busload of nuns and a chainsaw.

It's Uncle Chuckles, the kiddies' favourite! If your use of the word favourite is followed by the words "target of beatings, thrown objects, and unexpected lovable pranks like the old landmine-down-the-underpants gag".

Uncle Chuckles loves to make people laugh any way he can! It's the one thing that brings joy to his existence! Well, other than when he gets a sliver of manky old onion in his Roadkill Surprise at dinner time. It's only your birthday once a year, after all!

Uncle Chuckles's jokes and jolly japes bring a happy tear to the eye of every kiddy in the land, especially the one that just kicked him really hard in the trousers and oh dear he's thrown up last night's Mud Soup again, quick, someone scoop that up, we'll use it for tonight's.

Uncle Chuckles is a master of the pratfall, comically tripping up on his giant floppy shoes to bring a peal of joyful laughter from the assembled audience of kiddies, at least one of whom will by that point be jumping up and down on his head until he stops moving, bleeding, crying, or some combination thereof.

It's a little known fact, but - and keep it a secret, kiddies! - your old pal Uncle Chuckles is a master of disguise! Sometimes the whole circus gets in on it, and collectively disguises itself as a Blood Bowl team. More often Uncle Chuckles is in his favourite disguise, that of a sad, broken Frenchman in constant blinding pain drinking a bottle of paint thinner and sobbing.

Uncle Chuckles isn't just the proprietor of Blood Bowl's only dedicated circus for the differently competent - he also ran his own television show! The Uncle Chuckles Circus Capers Power Hour is a beloved comedy institution among half a dozen goat farmers in Peru who bought the only tapes in exchange for not making Uncle Chuckles eat his own big red nose.

The joke was on those silly Peruvian goat farmers - Uncle Chuckles ate his big red nose anyway! Because it was that or take another beating from the men with sticks who'd spent the previous three hours taking it in turns to do a wee on his spinning bow tie and call him Mister Yellow Sprinkler Man. Despite that, Uncle Chuckles doesn't bear the Salvation Army any ill will, because one time they let him have soup that wasn't flavoured with road grit.

There's nothing Uncle Chuckles won't do for a kiddy in need of cheering up! Sometimes, the kiddies who come to the circus don't have very happy homes, so Uncle Chuckles will help out by being bottled in the face by the hulking drunk farmhand the kiddy calls his dad while everyone else in the audience cheers him on.

There's nothing like the roar of an adoring crowd to good old Uncle Chuckles! There's certainly nothing like it any more! Mostly what we get is empty seats and howls of derision! But the roar of the adoring crowd found in other, better, non-rubbish circuses where the acts don't look forward to Sundays because that's when they have food made of actual food... there's nothing like that to your old pal Uncle Chuckles!

We didn't! We didn't we didn't we didn't! We didn't make him this way so that he could hurt all the time forever! We didn't do it! And we definitely didn't do it because we were trying to make it stop!

We're all just Uncle Chuckles moving very quickly! Or being temporally displaced! Or begging for it all to stop because this is the purgatory of an angry Chaos god that thought circuses were muscling in on his territory as a purveyor of Wholesome Family Entertainment But Also With People Falling Over And Getting All Their Teeth Punched Out! If we believe the lie then the lie has no power and then the only thing that matters is putting on a Good Old-Fashioned Show for all the kiddies!

Have you ever met any kiddies? I've never met any kiddies. Rail thin urchins with pinched faces and fingers like boning knives, yeah; disgusting snot monsters that delight in producing goo not found in nature from every orifice imaginable, of course; tiny sociopaths who love nothing more than to hold down a grown man with a rusty straight razor to his neck and make him eat his own balloon animals, ten a penny. But never any kiddies. They go to the real circuses, with Ferris wheels, and trapeze artists, and fire-eaters, and strange clattering metal contrivances that serve edible versions of your grandad's ear hair but dyed pink and on a stick. Kiddies love the real circus, the real red and white big top made of weatherproofed canvas, or at least something that isn't mouldering old grain sacks held together with bent paper clips and hope. That's where the kiddies go, when they're not up the Blood Bowl with their dad. That's where you'll find the little rosy-cheeked cherubs turning purple with joy at the opportunity to be a child and love it for all this week buy tickets now to avoid disappointment. They want the circus. They don't want us.

We just wanted to make people happy.

But not like this.

Uncle Chuckles is a source of joy and laughter wherever he goes! Okay, so the laughter is mostly directed at the times when a big man uses his face as an automated fist polishing kit, and the joy comes from the fact that at least the crowd aren't Uncle Chuckles, but that still counts! It definitely still counts! Probably!

We've never met anyone like us, you know. Someone who was compelled to suffer like this. But of the people we do meet, and of the people who don't try to kneecap us with rusting agricultural equipment, a lot of them say they couldn't cope if it was them. That they'd go completely mad. That they'd just end up screaming naked at the bad moon rising over them and going WHY! WHY ME! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ME?

And maybe it's all the kicks to the disappointment churro over the years, or maybe we really did go mad, but that's not how we think about it. We're not like that. You know how we think about it? At least it's only us. At least it's not someone who wasn't used to getting hurt already. At least it's not someone anybody'd miss. We'd rather get pounded into the turf of a Blood Bowl pitch and used as tees for the world's worst golfers - again - than see this happen to normal people, or someone vulnerable, or gods forbid a child. Because we might be compelled to suffer and feel unrelenting pain, but hey, that's showbiz.

If we get another win, we're going to pool the money and go to a real circus. We'll have apples dipped in sugar and plums dipped in sugar and bread products dipped in sugar and then deep-fried. Yes, they're not good for your teeth, but neither is being smashed in the gob by a giant lizard and we've had to deal with that loads. We'll sit in the big top. We'll gasp at the trapeze artists doing incredible stunts. We'll be agog at the amazing bravery of the lion tamer. We'll stand in awe and amazement at the man taking a sledgehammer to the chest while lying on a bed of nails and wonder how they knew what had happened to Uncle Chuckles last Thursday. But you know what we'll do most, and do with all our hearts?

We will cheer and whistle and raise the whole damn roof...

For the clowns.