That's Greg De Santo on the ladder getting a face full of high pressure water. Nasty Thompson is seen working the water in the base of the statue during the 1988/89 Ringling Blue Show recreation of Mike "Coco" Polikov's painter's gag.
From Greg...
We did the painters gag (in the days before video reference, the only clips we had were about 30 seconds of poor 8 mm footage of Coco & Co.) in 1988-89, the year they saluted 20 years of Clown College. In addition we did the Firehouse, Dentist Chase, Clown Car, and Cable Car (borrowed by Keith Anderson from a South African Ice show bit). The clowns had four Ring Gags in 1 show!
Trolle Rodin(sp?) walked us though the bits of the paint gag. Trolle booked the show all through the 60's and 70's, so he knew Coco and the Britzios versions very well.
The version they had put together at Clown College wasn't working out, and Kenneth was very unhappy with it. Of course all they had to do was call the home office and have them send down the video of the 1969 TV special with the Britizo's doing it and we would have had no problems.
I do remember looking at the music charts that Bill Pruyne handed out to the band for the gag and you could see it read Coco's Paint Gag-1963 on the original papers.
The second year of that tour in Kentucky, Coco came out with his wife and I brought him back to the alley and he was very complementary of our salute to his signature routine.
