A daredevil with a foot-tall strawberry blonde quiff crashed a Fort Worth weather segment this week, and it wasn't an accident. Bello Nock, the seventh-generation circus performer known for stunts far riskier than a TV prank, pranked CBS Texas weekend meteorologist Lauren Bostwick live on air ahead of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's arrival in North Texas.
The stunt, aired by CBS News Texas, was timed to promote Nock's role as a special guest when Ringling Bros. lands in Dallas-Fort Worth this month. Nock is joining the circus's touring production as it plays Dickies Arena in Fort Worth Friday through Sunday before moving to the American Airlines Center in Dallas the following weekend, running August 28 through 30, according to Ringling Bros.'s tour schedule. The North Texas stops are part of a limited national engagement that runs through December.
Bostwick, the target of the on-air ambush, is an eighth-generation Texan and Fort Worth native who joined KTVT's First Alert Weather Team in June 2025 after stints broadcasting in West Texas and Denver, per background compiled by CBS Texas. She earned her meteorology degree from Texas A&M University before returning to her hometown market, making her something of a hometown fixture for the segment Nock hijacked.
A Circus Legend With Real Daredevil Credentials
Nock is no stranger to stunts that make a weather-desk ambush look tame. Throughout his career, he has set multiple Guinness World Records, including walking 429 feet on an unsupported high wire above a cruise ship at sea, and he has completed feats such as hanging by his toes from a helicopter over the Statue of Liberty and rappelling off Madison Square Garden, according to reporting from Your Observer. He performs those feats without traditional safety nets, relying instead on physical conditioning and precision engineering.
His ties to Ringling run deep. A seventh-generation circus performer descended from an 18th-century Swiss circus dynasty, Nock became the first performer in Ringling Bros. history to have an entire production named after him, a show titled Bellobration, during his run as headliner in the 2000s, according to the Circus Ring of Fame. He joined Ringling in 2001 and starred in four national tours before branching into independent projects. Time magazine named him “America's Best Clown” in 2001, and he was inducted into the Circus Ring of Fame in 2009 as its youngest inductee, notably performing without traditional clown makeup and instead relying on his signature quiff as a visual trademark.
Part of a Larger Texas Swing
The Dallas-Fort Worth dates are one leg of a broader Texas tour for Ringling this summer, which also included multi-show stops at Houston's Reliant Stadium and San Antonio's Alamodome, as Hoodline has previously reported from San Antonio. That statewide footprint underscores how central Texas has become to the circus's comeback strategy, with additional dates in Edinburg rounding out the swing.
The production Nock is joining looks nothing like the Ringling of the past. Parent company Feld Entertainment relaunched Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey in September 2023 as a completely animal-free show, following a six-year hiatus after elephant acts were retired in 2016 and the circus fully closed in May 2017, as previously reported by CBS News. In place of animal performers, the reimagined show relies on a 75-member international cast recruited from more than 18 countries, including Ethiopia, Mongolia, Ukraine, Argentina, and Cuba, performing music-driven acrobatics, aerial stunts, and unicycle tricks.
That shift tracks with a broader wave of state and local restrictions on wild-animal performances, including California's Circus Cruelty Prevention Act, passed in 2019, which imposes fines of up to $25,000 per day for using wild animals in shows. California is one of 12 states and more than 150 local jurisdictions that now restrict wild circus animals, a trend that helped push touring productions nationwide toward human-only formats.
Cheaper Tickets Aim to Win Back Families
To rebuild family attendance amid shifting entertainment spending, Feld Entertainment introduced $15 to $20 youth ticket pricing across its 2026 tour, including the Fort Worth and Dallas stops, according to details published by Dickies Arena. The discounted pricing is paired with pre-show interactive fan experiences meant to draw new generations of circus-goers who never saw the old animal-driven version of the show.
For North Texas families, the appeal is straightforward: a piece of circus history performing his own outlandish tricks under Ringling's new banner, backed by a marketing push that turned a local weather segment into a live promotional stunt.
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