Khalil Oghab

Khalil Oghab was a sickly child who grew up to be the Hercules of Persia. He performed in more than 37 countries, lifting weights with his teeth and allowing buses to be driven over him.

The strongman was particularly popular in Britain, where circus owner Gerry Cottle called him “probably the best act I ever had”, and in his homeland, where he became known as the Father of the Iranian Circus.

Khalil Tariqat Peyma, better known as Khalil Oghab (and Oghaby on UK circus posters), was born in Shiraz, the capital city of the southern Iranian province of Fars, in 1924. His parents feared their physically weak child wouldn’t make it to adulthood, never dreaming that he would grow up to excel in the Iranian martial art of Zurkhaneh.

During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Oghab drew crowds of up to 50,000 people to watch him toss weights over his head with his teeth.

In 1971, Oghab emigrated to Ireland where he worked for Tom Duffy’s Circus. It was there that he was headhunted by Cottle. “I knew he had to be mine,” Cottle wrote in his autobiography. Strongmen were Cottle’s favourite circus act because their performance could be dressed up in endless publicity-grabbing gimmicks.

Posters for Cottle’s circus featured a painting of Oghab lifting a weight in each hand and one with his teeth. They promised: “He lifts an elephant!” and the prospect of him being “Crushed beneath the weight of a huge American limousine!”

The elephant was a baby, but Oghab nevertheless stood on a platform and hoisted it off the ground twice a day at the age of 50. He is still listed in Guinness World Records for ‘heaviest elephant lifted’. The animal weighed two tonnes.

Oghab also featured on the Saturday-evening TV show Seaside Special, which was broadcast from Cottle’s Big Top. His feats included using his legs to lift a beam carrying 10 female dancers and presenter Roy Hudd.

In 1991, Oghab returned to Iran and founded the country’s first circus, Circus Khalil Oghab, with his sons Shahrzad and Ebrahim. He performed until its closure in 2017 and died on April 20 at the age of 98.