Charlie Bicknell says that describing herself is “a tricky question.” Ultimately, though, she settles on describing herself as “a middle-aged woman who is convinced she is still 25 and behaves like a demented child for a vast percentage of the time.”
Bicknell originally trained as an actress, she tells us. “[I] played many, many dysfunctional people on TV/Film and stage prior to stuffing myself into a balloon and being spun around like a rocket ship singing ‘Don’t Pop me now’. That gives you some clue as to the show that Bicknell will be taking to this year’s Glastonbury Festival where she performs in the Theatre and Circus fields in the Circus Big Top and Outside Circus Stage.
She finds her position on the line-up “baffling – I always think they meant to book someone else.”
How do you approach a festival like Glastonbury we ask – particularly with seven sets across the weekend? The answer, she says, is to “rehearse as much as is humanly possible … also, practise squatting in preparation for the loo situation.”
As for her plans for the shows, she’s shaking things up a little bit this year. “I have a new acrobatic base, and doubles straps partner (Solomon Bain) who is fabulous and very young and attractive,” she says. “So all eyes will be on him this year I have no doubt. We are Flash Gordon and The Supersonic Woman, it’s very funny, very risky and enormous fun to perform.”
But plans only go so far. “Come see the show,” she says, “it’s different every time.”
As for her plans for when she’s not performing: “Flo and Joan are a must in the Cabaret tent. I always enjoy Bexi in the Big Top and I will try and make it as far as the dragonfly on my final night… providing I survive.”
Charlie Bicknell performs in the Theatre & Circus fields at Glastonbury Festival 2025
