My husband, Arthur Pedlar, who has died aged 89, was a clown with an international reputation. Although his main occupation until he retired at 65 was managing a shop – Wayfarer’s Arts in Southport, which sold modern Scandinavian furniture – it was through clowning that he found his greatest satisfaction.
Born in Southport, the eldest child of Margaret (nee Mercy), a housewife and former nurse, and Vyvian Pedlar, a banker, Royal Navy air reservist, actor, singer and dancer and founder of Wayfarer’s Arts, he inherited from his father a love of greasepaint.
As a child Arthur was inspired by the great American clown Emmett Kelly, whose hobo character was to influence his first clown persona. He learned to play the clarinet and ride a unicycle, which he financed by selling miniature ships in bottles. (He made The Guinness Book of Records for having made the smallest ship-in-a-bottle, in 1956, in a 2.38cm by 0.9cm medical phial. The ship had three masts, five sails and three flags.) As a pupil at Leighton Park school in Reading, he first thought up a short routine and discovered that he could “communicate silently with an audience”.
After national service (1951-53), he joined a troupe of English clowns for a season at the Cirque Medrano in Paris. There, he had the opportunity of “stooging” for Buster Keaton. However, after nine months he refused an invitation to join the show’s tour of France and returned to Southport to help his father and aunt in the family shop. Nevertheless, as Vercoe (his middle name), he continued to clown whenever he could. It was when he was appearing as part of a show put on by the Magic Circle at Chichester Festival Theatre, that I (then Valerie Robinson, the daughter of a magician) met him. We married in 1968 and our children, Joe, born in 1970, and Elinor, in 1972, were adopted as babies.
Arthur travelled widely, whether performing, lecturing, teaching, visiting circuses or attending clown conventions. He was thrilled to be part of a show at the Leningrad Circus in 1991, and for many years taught at the clown camps held at La Crosse, Wisconsin. He joined the World Clown Association, becoming their President from 2003 to 04, and was a member of Clowns International and the Holy Fools.
Although not a talkative man, Arthur loved sharing his knowledge about great clowns of the past, explaining that good clowning was not simply a matter of slapstick, but that it required both skill and thought.
He is survived by me, Joe and Elinor, our grandsons Patrick and Jamie, and his sister, Angela.
