mmm... doen't look familiar.... Definately not Mills' or Aspinall's though. Possibly Chessington or somewhere similar?
With the animal trailer and the animals looking particularly tame could this be a circus winter home ?
Yes, quite possibly. Chipperfields( or was it Bertram Mills?) had their winter quarters at Winkfield, near Windsor in Berkshire. That is another possibility.
it was billy smarts that had there winter quarters at Winkfield . Bertram mills quarters were at Ascot .
Its fairly obvious that the film is in America(and probably not a publicly open collection) ..Gordon Mills incidentally co-wrote "Its Not Unusual"...its almost certainly 1965.
A further bit of trivial zoo/pop trivia is that Jones` records came out in the US on the Parrot label rather than ,as in the UK ,Decca.
I also wondered if 'Monkeyfeatures' who responded in 2011 on this thread saying she is Mills' daughter, was the inspiration for the Gilbert O'Sullivan song 'Claire' which was about him babysitting GM's daughter (he was also managed by Gordon Mills of course). Or maybe he had more than one daughter...
Hi all. I am new here and also stumbled across this thread. I went to school with Gordon Mills' children, Clair, Tracey and Juliette in Oatlands. Also my Godmother was Gordon's secretary for a while. I was lucky enough to go to Little Rhonda on a few occasions and can vouch for the zoo. It was in the back garden but was just like a proper zoo and tended to professionally. As Juliette says there were an array of fine animals there and Gordon would often go in the cages himself. The back garden was huge with an outdoor pool, a sunken trampoline, a Gypsy caravan to name but a few things. And it was the first house I had been in that had a cinema room! In the 70's that was a novelty. I was also lucky enough to meet Gilbert O'Sullivan there as Gordon Mills managed him, and his song Clair was written about the youngest daughter. Such lovely memories.
This is a picture of Topaz who came to live in the Zootopia collection in Bognor Regis from Gordon Mills' private collection, photo by Gordon Brown and given to me, so please don't share. Sadly Topaz was not long lived after coming to Bognor.
I know I’m a bit late but are any of his orangs still alive? I’ll assume janey/Jane has since passed as she would be in her 60s by now but are they any other survivors? Didn’t janey or louie have a daughter named josie? What ever happened to her Anything would be great!
Janey passed away in 2016 at the San Diego Zoo. Memba passed away in 2015 at the San Diego Zoo. Winston still lives with his troop ay the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. He was wild born in 1972.
