Coventry Standard, 13 Nov 1959

I talked this week with a man who has made millions of people laugh — including Hitler. He is a man who has performed before royalty in many different countries with enormous success, but prefers to hear the crystal-clear laughter of children — Charlie Cairoli, a naturalised Briton of French descent, now clowning his way into the hearts of thousands of people at the Coventry Theatre’s Birthday Show.

As I chatted with Mr Cairoli and his pretty, black-haired wife Violet in the theatre’s No. 3 Dressing Room, they recalled some of the highlights of their many years in show business.

Such as the time King Frederick of Denmark asked Charlie not to be so funny because the sound of the monarch’s booming laugh was being stared at by a delighted audience.

Then there was the time the late Queen Mary paused for a moment to speak with him at a Command Performance.

“When she found out that I was from France,” says the man with the lilting accent, “she carried on a conversation with me in French for so long that people asked me what on earth we had to talk about! And her French was very good.”

"Blood Thirsty"

Although children may be one of Charlie’s great loves, he has no hesitation in admitting that they are basically blood-thirsty.

“The harder you hit, the harder you fall, the more they like it,” he says — and he showed me his scarred legs to prove the point.
“If I were to attack my assistant, Paul, as often as they would like me to, then I would have to find a new replacement every night!”

Mr and Mrs Cairoli have three children of their own: two daughters aged 20 and 16, and a 13-year-old son.
Are they going into show business to continue the Cairoli tradition? I asked my young …son that the other day, says Charlie, “and he said he didn’t think so-so he was happy the way he was right now.

A man of many parts — that is Charlie Cairoli.

On stage, he is a clown: a funny-faced, red-nosed, bowler-hatted performer who can play almost any musical instrument you can name, and who can bring a smile to your face by just lifting one of his white-gloved fingers.

Off stage, he enjoys family life, leather carving (his dressing room is liberally sprinkled with beautiful leather work in various stages of completion), and fishing.


In fact, he enjoys everything that makes up the everyday business of living.

Maybe that is the secret of his success, for although he has many imitators, he has few equals.

1959 BIRTHDAY SHOW

THE COVENTRY THEATRE

Box Office open 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
Telephone: Coveentry 3141 (3 lines)

UNTIL 5th DECEMBER
Monday–Friday 7:30 p.m.
Matinées: Thursday 2:30 p.m., Saturday 5 & 8 p.m.
(Thursday matinée has the best availability of seats)

1959 BIRTHDAY SHOW

Arthur Haynes
Charlie Cairoli & Paul
Edmund Hockridge
The King Brothers
Joe “Mr Piano” Henderson
Freddie Frinton
Doreen Hume
The Dior Dancers
The Ghezzis
The George Mitchell Singers
and 16 Joan Davis Dancers

Reduced prices available for Old People’s Associations for Thursday matinées.

26 Different Acts — and Charlie Still Has to Think of More

Charlie Cairoli, a Frenchman whose job is to make people laugh — or, as he puts it, “make them forget all their troubles” — is currently troubled by a problem of his own. He and his comedian partner, Paul, now appearing in their fourth Coventry Birthday Show, are wondering how on earth they can continue producing new material for their act.

Charlie, who normally generates most of their ideas, is finding it increasingly difficult to create fresh routines to present to the public.

The reason is simple. For 16 seasons these brilliant clowns have appeared in the Blackpool Tower Circus, performing three shows a day during a season that runs from mid-March to October. Because so many holidaymakers return to the North-West resort year after year, it is essential for Charlie and Paul to keep their act fresh by constantly changing it.

Across those 16 seasons at Blackpool Tower Circus, they have presented no fewer than 26 entirely new acts — and in the current Birthday Show they are presenting yet another.

It is not surprising, then, to hear Charlie admit that after long hours of work and little sleep he feels utterly exhausted. It is easy to understand that even his fertile imagination is beginning to struggle to keep up with the demand for new material. And he fears he may now have reached that point.

“So Peaceful”

Speaking in the living room of the ivy-covered Bablinton hotel where he and Paul always stay when visiting Coventry, the stocky, moustached, gentle-natured Frenchman told me, in English coloured by a strong French accent:
“We like it here — it is so peaceful.”

Before joining forces with his comedian partner 10 years ago, Charlie had worked from the age of seven with his father and mother, who ran a family circus in France. He has followed his father’s belief that comedy should never be aimed at only one type of audience. The same material, he says, must entertain children, adults, and even royalty.

They performed before Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg in the mid-1930s — and the Führer was so impressed with their act that he attended the show three times.

Duke Waved

Charlie has appeared before royalty many times. Once, when he was very young, the King of Portugal went to see him and his father perform. He was so impressed that he sent them a gold sovereign. Charlie’s most recent Royal appearance was with Paul in last year’s Royal Command Performance at Blackpool.

With a mischievous glint in his eye — the same look he wears on stage when he’s about to “attack” his partner in their frantic slapstick routines — he told me how, during one performance, he impulsively waved to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was seated with the Queen in the Royal Box.



“And the Duke waved back… Everyone said to me afterwards, ‘How could you dare do that?’” Charlie recalled. “At the Royal Performance everyone was a bit scared. But me, thank God, I have never been scared my whole life. It has been a great help to me.”

Charlie is a direct descendant of a very old and distinguished Italian family — they settled in France only during the last century. His great-grandfather was a famous Italian Prime Minister, and Charlie says that almost every town in Italy has a street bearing the family name Cairoli.