It was 20 years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play and it will be 50 years ago this year that the Beatles first recorded their epic concept album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Among the many classics on the album, one of the most intriguing and haunting is the dreamy, psychedelic Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, which promises a "production second to none" on trampolines, with "somersets through hoops and garters and hogsheads of REAL FIRE" and with dancing by a colourful cast of characters, including the talented Mr Kite, the Hendersons and Henry the waltzing horse.

The story behind the song is even more curious and astonishing.

On 31 January that year, John Lennon walked into a Sevenoaks antique shop where a poster advertising a February 1843 benefit for Mr Kite — "celebrated somerset thrower, wire dancers, vaulter, rider etc etc", pictured balancing on his head on a 12-foot-tall pole, playing a trumpet, of course — by Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal caught his eye.

Lennon bought the poster, took it home, put it above his piano and, a little over two weeks later, he'd written what he insisted was correctly called Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite.

"Everything in the song is from the poster," Lennon later said. "Except the horse wasn't called Henry, it was called Zanthus."

But who was the celebrated Mr K? Or the trampolining, somersaulting Hendersons?

And who was Pablo Fanque, the impresario of the Circus Royal who held the benefit, in which the entire night's takings would be gifted to his friend, the talented Mr K — which, at between tuppence and thruppence a ticket for crowds of up to 3,000, would be worth more than a hundred times the average weekly wage in those days?

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"Pablo Fanque was a remarkable guy," says Mike Dash, a historian and writer for The Smithsonian Magazine who first wrote about the story behind the poster behind the song in 2011, "although we know almost nothing about Fanque's childhood or parents, or even his date of birth — it could have been 1796, or 1810.



"He was born William Darby in Norwich, but we have no idea why he changed his name to Pablo Fanque, and there's evidence to suggest he and his children used both names interchangeably as a surname.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! lyrics: For the benefit of Mr. Kite There will be a show tonight on trampoline The Hendersons will all be there Late of Pablo Fanques Fair-what a scene Over men and horses hoops and garters Lastly through a hogshead of real fire! In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world! The celebrated Mr. K. Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishops Gate The Hendersons will dance and sing As Mr. Kite flies through the ring don't be late Messrs. K and H. assure the public Their production will be second to none And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz! The band begins at ten to six When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound And Mr. H. will demonstrate Ten Somersets he'll undertake on solid ground Having been some days in preparation A splendid time is guaranteed for all And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill.

"Although Lennon said Henry was just the name he gave the horse for musical reasons, Fanque was renowned for training his horses to actually waltz in time to the music, something few other horses in Britain could do, as the band usually had to keep an eye on the horse's hooves and keep changing the tempo to match its steps.

"Fanque's horses — of which he had up to 30 at any time — kept to the music's rhythm."

In addition to being a skilled juggler and adept acrobat, Fanque's other signature tricks including riding through towns with up to 12 horses "in hand" (all on a single rein) and jumping a carriage on horseback with horses still in the traces in time to music.

In addition to regularly holding such testimonial benefit performances for circus workers down on their luck or struck down by injury, Fanque would also donate regularly to veterans', widows' and orphans' charities, and, as Dash says, "he was of the highest probity; he expected all his performers to attend church on Sunday!"

"For many, many years, his great popularity, consummate ability and great business perseverance kept him well in the front of the equestrian profession," remembered the chaplain of the British Showmen's Guild after Fanque's death.

"He was a genius, both in the training of humans and dumb beasts; many were the splendid equestrians he trained, and great was his power with horses and other animals."

Fanque's stomping — or waltzing — ground was the grim, industrial, Satanic-mill-filled north of England, touring factory towns from Manchester to Leeds and up as far as Oldham and Scotland, where he'd put up his tent for a couple of months at a time, and where often, the circus was not only the entertainment highlight of the year, it was the only entertainment.

As one old timer remembered: "In those days, Manchester Fair without Pablo's Circus was not conceivable."

Everything in the song is from the poster, says Mike Dash, except the horse was named Zanthus. ( Supplied )

But could Mr Kite's benefactor have ended up down under? Researching his circus family's history in the British Library, renowned Australian circus historian Mark St Leon made an astonishing discovery.

In his book The Circus in Australia 1842–1921 St Leon reveals that there was another Pablo Fanque in Australia in the 1850s and 1860s, a tightrope walker who made his debut in Melbourne's Cremorne Gardens in 1857.

"It was common in colonial circuses for performers to adopt the names of their better known counterparts overseas," St Leon wrote.

"Although, knowing what I do of circus genealogy, it's littered with adopted and illegitimate children, half-siblings, pseudonyms and alternative spellings. Or, as in Pablo's case, the use of one or both names as first or surnames."

Fanque's stomping — or waltzing — ground was the grim, industrial, Satanic-mill-filled north of England. ( Supplied )

On stage and in the ring, this second Pablo was fêted as never making "a false step on the rope even when his feet were enveloped in bushel baskets, and throwing somersaults from end of the rope to the other, and standing on one foot on the rope after the last somersault".

But outside the big top, life for this "handsome, intelligent, vigorous man who never understood the word fear" was full of false steps and run-ins with the law and bankruptcy court.

He died destitute in Sydney in 1869, and his children were dispersed to children's homes and even jails around New South Wales. Who this Australian Pablo really was, and exactly what his relationship to the English Pablo was, remain as mysterious as the fate of Zanthus, the waltzing horse.

And like Zanthus, and the dancing Hendersons and the talented Mr Kite, the English Pablo's astonishing feats and inspiring life were forgotten until John Lennon walked into that Sevenoaks antique shop, recounting Mr Kite's celebrated abilities and Pablo's exemplary generosity, in a song heard the world over.