Frank Turner on Joseph Grimaldi
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2016
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Frank Turner chooses Joseph Grimaldi, the first celebrity of Pantomime who changed the face of Clowning forever. Matthew Parris presents, and Mattie Faint is the expert. Grimaldi was born into a theatrical family, making his stage debut aged two dressed as a monkey and being flung around the stage on the end of a chain by his tyrannical father. The chain snapped but Grimaldi survived, making the papers and turning Grimaldi into a little celebrity. His performances as 'Clown', combining acrobatics, satire and music, made him a big draw for the crowds, and his role in 'Mother Goose' turned him into a huge star. He developed the make-up we now associate with clowns but behind this iconic look was a man suffering from depression, extreme physical disintegration and a series of personal tragedies. Frank Turner, former punk and now folk singer-songwriter, sees himself primarily as an entertainer and has developed an interest in Pantomime and Music Hall. For him, Grimaldi gave everything to his audiences and physically destroyed himself in the process - something he sees as honourable. He describes Grimaldi's farewell speech as one of the most beautiful eulogies to the business of being a performer.
Producer: Toby Field
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:05.3 | Imagine him sat downstairs beneath the Sadles Wells Theatre in London. |
| 0:10.3 | His face has been described as an encyclopedia of wit, with a thousand odd twitches and |
| 0:16.6 | unaccountable absurdities oozing out of every poor. |
| 0:20.6 | His eyes would carry on without the aid of each other. Even his nose described by one witness was capable of exhibiting disdain, fear, anger and even joy. |
| 0:31.0 | Now he's applying grease paint to every exposed inch of his face, neck and chest. |
| 0:36.7 | He covers this in powder and then paints his mouth in a wide blood-red grin, |
| 0:41.3 | adding thick brows above his eyes and a wig on top of his head. |
| 0:45.6 | He has been working on this look for days, but now his new creation, Joey, is ready to take |
| 0:51.7 | centre-stage. The man behind the grease Joey is ready to take center stage. |
| 0:54.0 | The man behind the grease paint was Joseph Grimaldi, and as well here, he became the most popular |
| 1:00.0 | entertainer of the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was, became, the very definition of a clown. |
| 1:08.0 | The man choosing him is singer-songwriter Frank Turner. |
| 1:12.0 | Frank began his career in the punk band is singer-songwriter Frank Turner. |
| 1:13.0 | Frank began his career in the punk band Million Dead, |
| 1:16.0 | but has gone on to become one of the country's most admired singer-songwriters, |
| 1:20.0 | wearing his heart and his politics on his sleeve, a sleeve I should add that covers a multitude of tattoos, |
| 1:26.6 | though actually he's in a t-shirt today so they're not covered. |
| 1:30.6 | He's performed sold-out shows at Wembley Arena and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as appearing at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. |
| 1:39.0 | He won Celebrity Mastermind in 2014, and his sixth studio album, Positive Songs for Negative People, |
| 1:47.0 | was released last year. Frank, Positive Songs for Negative People sounds like a soundtrack for a life |
| 1:53.4 | life lived as a clown. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.