In the blink of an eye the two sisters leapt at my feet - only to collide in mid-air. They scampered off in a haze of sawdust before bumping into each other again.

Like all youngsters, the tiger cubs wanted to do nothing more than rush around and play.

But as soon as the cubs strayed from the circus ring, where they were being rented out for £100 a time to pose with the public, a sinister look came over their trainer's face, and she would grab them roughly by the scruff of the neck.

The poor cubs could do nothing against the trainer's strength. The best they could manage was to growl weakly in a pathetic attempt to sound fierce.

I was handed a bottle of milk and told to feed the tiger cubs as you would a babe in arms. This, I was told, always makes for a good photo. And indeed it does.

But behind such images lies the story of one of Nature's most awesome species reduced to a demeaning party trick, and of the terrible Government betrayal that has made it possible.

For after 20 minutes of 'freedom', the two cubs, Meena and Dehra, were dragged back to their pen on the back of a truck as their mother, a bored-looking Bengal tiger, looked on helplessly. They had been snatched away from her when they were just a few weeks old.