Nicolai Poliakoff, better remembered as Coco the Clown, died on this day in 1974.
Born in Latvia in 1900 to a very poor family, the young Nicolai started his performing career, singing for money at the local theatre to avoid starvation after his father was conscripted to the Russian army to fight in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05).
He ran away at age 8, travelling over 300 miles into the depths of Belarus to join the circus telling the circus owner he was an orphan. Put under the charge of Vitaly Lazarenko an acrobat and clown who was later to become a major star in post communist Russia.
Later in his career Nicolai served with the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps of the British Army in World War II, going on to appear as Coco with the Bertram Mills Circus for many years. His clown persona had two distinctive visual features that endeared him to TV audiences: his enormous boots, and his trick hair with hinges in the centre parting, allowing it to lift when he was surprised.
On 25th September 1974 he passed away in Peterborough after a short illness and was laid to rest in St Mary's Church, Woodnewton in Northamptonshire.
Coco the Clown, arguably the most famous clown in the United Kingdom in the mid-20th century, was a genius and a total master of his trade.
Coco on a hospital visit with his son in 1971
I vaguely remember going to see the great man perform in person at a circus in the Bournemouth area of the UK back in the early 1960s.
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