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Filling the Pews With Floppy Shoes
In an annual tradition, clowns gather at Holy Trinity Church in East London for a service honoring Joseph Grimaldi, a Briton who died in 1837 and is widely considered the father of modern clowning. The service also celebrates the human need to laugh.
(By Andrew Parsons -- Press Association Via Associated Press)
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Vaughan, who calls himself "Conk the Clown," said he has been a full-time clown for a decade, a career that began while he was depressed after a failed marriage. Faced with seeing his children only on weekends, Vaughan said, he dreaded going home alone. He slapped on the paint and red nose and began providing a service with a smile.
"I did it to hide my true feelings," said Vaughan, whose serious tone contrasted with the bright red smile painted beneath his old-fashioned British police hat. "You can't be upset. You forget your worries and you put on a happy face."
Albert Alter, a clown from Portland, Ore., who attended the service, said clowns delight in "bringing down the high and lifting up the lowly." With his pink face, porkpie hat and red bow tie, he explained that he used to be a chemical engineer.
On Sunday in East London, the clowns mixed the unabashedly goofball -- honking silly horns and wearing hats adorned with such things as yellow ducks -- with solemn remembrances of clowns who had died in the past year, including French mime Marcel Marceau and "The Unknown Clown."
Surrounded by the church's old whitewashed walls and statues of Jesus, they listened to a Gospel reading about the paralyzing effects of worry: "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"
But nothing stayed serious too long. The clowns even parodied all the sit-stand-kneel rituals of the church service, popping up and down every few seconds like bread in a toaster gone haywire, to the hysterical delight of the packed church.
When the service ended, a parade of clowns filed out past a plaque with the "A prayer for Clowns," which asks God's blessing for men and women in slap "who make the world spin merrily on its way/and somehow add more beauty to each day."
The raucous line of clowns exited the church to the playful oompahs of "The Hot Codlings Polka" as hundreds of regular churchgoers applauded.
Alex Melville, 22, a film student who brought his mother and grandmother to see the clown service, laughed as he walked out in the fading afternoon light.
"I wish church were like this every Sunday," he said.
