Britain's last remaining performing bear died last year, after a lifetime of imprisonment.

Such circuses have become a byword for cruelty - and with good reason.

A major undercover investigation by Animal Defenders discovered that animals in some circuses were battered with iron poles to make them perform.

In one circus, a lion was filmed being hit in the face with an iron bar. In another, a baby chimpanzee was thrashed with a riding crop.

MPs sitting on the All Party Parliamentary Animal Welfare Group discovered equally disturbing scenes.

Their report revealed that animals are often driven insane by life in the circus. They frantically chew the bars of their cages for hours on end. Others endlessly pace backwards and forwards between the walls of their cells.

Circus lions and tigers can spend up to 90 per cent of their time in cages, and in extreme cases, big cats may have less than 35 cubic feet of space each - equivalent to the inside of a small car. It's about as far as its possible to get from their natural life roaming free across Africa and Asia.

Circuses, of course, want you to see only the glitz and glamour of the Big Top. But when I went undercover to visit two of them that still use wild animals, I found conditions were still deeply unsettling.