Squirty umbrellas, big buttons and pineapple hats: My day at London’s annual clown church service

It’s a crisp, bright Sunday morning in Bethnal Green. A jogger wearing a beaded turtleneck dodges a pile of pale puke, while up ahead a parade of clowns stop for a photoshoot with a bunch of balloons. 

I am dressed like a clown too, wearing a pastel pink wig, crocheted ruff and white face paint. My friend draws a teardrop on my cheek while we drink Lion’s Mane cacao in a lava lamp themed cafe. This is East London, nothing needs an explanation. 

Although today there actually is one. The 79th Annual Grimaldi Clown Service is taking place at All Saints Church, an eccentric gathering of performers in honour of the “King of Clowns”, Joseph Grimaldi.

The event was established by a photographer named Stan Bult, who founded the Clown’s International Organisation in 1946 after discovering that local clowns were already frequenting Grimaldi’s burial site in Islington.

“All the clowns would meet in February before the circus season started to give thanks, because cirque is dangerous work,” Mattie Faint, trustee of Clowns International, tells Euronews Culture. 

Since then, the event has become a way for clowns old and new to catch-up from across the pond, sharing their colourful looks, personal stories and love for making people smile. 

“I’ve been involved in clowning for about a year now. But prior to that I had heard of this service, and I thought it would be a really good, interesting way to meet other clowns,” Bobby the Clown from Bristol says.

“[The clown service] has been a family tradition. My mom used to come up in the 70s and my cousin was one of the organisers,” Susi Oddball, a juggling clown from Brighton, explains. “Just being here with other talents, it reminds me of all the things that the clowns have done in the past, which is to try to make people laugh and feel comfortable.”

Who was Grimaldi?

Born in 1778, Joseph ‘Joe’ Grimaldi was one of the Regency period’s most famous entertainers.

First appearing as a clown in 1800 at Sadler’s Wells theatre in London, he pioneered the exaggerated face paint and brightly-coloured clothing that would come to define the profession. Prior to this, clowns usually wore scruffy outfits and natural makeup. 

“He elevated the clown from a country bumpkin to a very well-dressed, talented and very funny actor with an iconic white face,” Faint says. 

After touring Europe, Grimaldi’s energetic lifestyle began to take a toll on his body, leading to depression and various physical ailments. He died in 1837, after completing the final chapter of his memoirs that Charles Dickens would later edit. These featured the following quote, now printed on the back of the Grimaldi Service’s pamphlet: 

“Life is a game we are bound to play— 

The wise enjoy it, fools grow sick of it; 

Losers, we find, have the stakes to hisse, 

That winners may laugh, for that’s the trick of it.”

Send in the clowns

The service begins with a congregation of clowns entering the church to ‘Lord of the Dance’, one tapping pews with a giant squishy hammer, others carrying crosses made from balloons.

So much colour and silliness filling what is traditionally a solemn and rule-governed space feels like the perfect encapsulation of clowning; a way to inflate all of life’s seriousness into the absurd. 

Throughout, there are various readings, songs and a moving moment in which candles are lit for clowns from the community that have passed away. 

It’s all surreal in a child-like way, the world through a lens of pure fun and inquisitiveness. These are noticeable traits in everyone I meet, a complete abandon of societal norms and focus instead on embracing goofiness and making magic from the mundane. 

“One day, there was an iron in the bin. So I took it out as a rescue iron, and I just dragged him around. He’s been with me ever since, and now I have to take it everywhere. I even got a tattoo of him,” Tweedy, a 50-year-old clown from Stroud, tells me.

“It’s just about having fun and bringing joy and being mischievous. You get away with so much being a clown, it’s great. You can be really naughty. It’s just like being a kid again. It’s like not growing up.” 

Another clown named Mr. Pineapple Head has made the tropical fruit his thing, wearing a spectacular spinning çizgi. It was an identity inspired many decades ago by a visit to a fruit and veg market. 

“I was holding a pineapple, and there was this silhouette of my dreadlocks poking out of my head and the pineapple in symmetry, and everyone was laughing. It was this moment of, ah!,” Mr. Pineapple explains, adding, “I got a haircut deri years later – you know, you move on to different things in life. But I stuck with the pineapple theme and made a series of hats.”

Not everyone here is a clown – some attendees are artists or cabaret performers, like Belle De Beauvoir and her partner Enrico Touché (who has an incredible umbrella contraption that sprays water.) 

Speaking about what the clown service means to her, Beauvoir says: “It’s the connection in the community, and you can see it here today with everybody coming together just through, I don’t know, joy.”