Filling the Pews With Floppy Shoes
Homage to an Innovative Clown Has Britons Rolling in the Aisles
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 4, 2008

LONDON, Feb. 3 -- A clown on a unicycle, with a Bozo-orange wig and a beep-beep red nose, rolled down the center aisle of Holy Trinity Church just before a reading from the Gospel of Matthew.

In pews on both sides sat scores of giggling men and women wearing huge bow ties, lime and pink wigs, poofy checkered pants, floppy shoes and, of course, big red noses.

"As soon as you put your nose on, you are a different person," said David Vaughan, 59, an office administrator-turned-clown in a powder blue Keystone Kops outfit, who sat in the front row for the annual Anglican service celebrating clowns and their art.

The Sunday service pays homage to Joseph Grimaldi, a Briton who died in 1837 and is widely considered the father of modern clowning. But since it began in 1946, the service has become something more elemental -- colorful and fun as a gumball machine, a celebration of the human need to laugh and of the people devoted to nurturing that need. the rest