Last week Malta was shocked by the news that comedian and radio personality Charles Clews had died aged 89. The country was in mourning for it had lost one of its most loved personalities ever.

‘It’s a pity I was not around in your time, the time of the Stage Commandos, the Radju Muskettieri,’ I told Charles Clews one day while I was giving him a lift home following one of the Ħallina Minnek! programmes.
It was one of his favourite programmes, where the accented Mr Brown used to be very well-prepared. I used to sit next to him, having a cue marked specifically and he would ‘introduce’ me into the joke he would be recounting.
Before kicking off the programme we used to tell one joke after the other and it wasn’t uncommon for producer Charles Abela Mizzi to ‘admonish’ Charles: ‘Charles, we’re about to start!’
I enjoyed taking him home, either in Cospicua, Marsascala and lately in Fgura. He would recount sketches, jokes and tell me about other actors who have now formed an angelic company, and who I am sure waited for Charles eagerly and with open arms.
He used to mention Johnny Catania with whom he was like ‘the pail and the rope’ or as we say in Maltese Id-Di u d-Do. And what about Nestu Laiviera, Freddie Underwood, Ġuża Caruana, Rita Borg, Karmenu Gruppetta, Armando Urso, Johnny Navarro and Nosì Ghirlando. The latter was the first Karmena Abdilla, which comedy was Charles’s baby. According to the late Vitorin Galea this comedy was staged at least 100 times. I was fortunate enough to take part a number of times.
After Karmena Abdilla came It-Tieġ ta’ Karmena Abdilla, followed by Il-Honeymoon ta’ Karmena Abdilla…
…We’d finally arrive home without realising that time had flown. Every so often his wife Annie would come knocking on the car window, as we used to get carried away. Annie and Charles were so in love with each other. Many a time our discussion would revolve around the family and I realised what a real family man Charles was.
I recall the time when we took part in a film together. I played a sergeant major and Charles was the general. I felt in awe, he looked ‘so real’. In fact Ġemma Portelli told him: ‘You look real!’ ‘Am I not real?’ he answered unhesitatingly. Some 12 years ago I was invited to Australia and before leaving I asked Charles to help me out with some sketches, which he did willingly. And he asked me to pass on his greetings to the Maltese in Australia. Once a show was over, I would tell the audience I had a special greeting from Charles Clews and the audience would burst into applause.
The last time I was with Charles on a programme, together with my wife Veronica, we were discussing Ġemma Portelli. After the programme he turned on me and said ‘I’m next’. He was proud of his age; he was 88 at the time.
I recall when one day we were participating in a programme together with Vitorin Galea. Charles said that Johnny Catania was in Malta and he wanted to see his old friend Laurie Bellizzi. We agreed to pick up Johnny from Msida. Can you imagine these three characters together in the same car, and me having to drive them? Finally we got to the home where Laurie resided. He was on an armchair. He looked at them. I stood back, holding back my own tears.
There were no words. Only the sobs and gulps of friends hugging and embracing each other tightly.
On Thursday, with Charles’s death, the last bead was torn from the chain of a good number of actors of particular standing and of a special era.
An actor is born, a comedian is born and not becomes one. Charles was one such actor, a comedian.
I cannot imagine the welcome he received from the other actors, friends, his son and his ‘supposed enemy’ of a mother-in-law who departed this world before him.
A few days before he died I was near him. He looked tired. We spoke for a short while. We smiled to each other and I sang him a short piece from the Radju Muskettieri anthem.
It was time for him to rest and with his son Alan I helped him upstairs. I pressed his hand, he smiled at me, and I left…
…Taking with me all these wonderful memories.
Thanks Charles.

Joe (Id-Dulli) Farrugia

How do you say goodbye to a man who was not just a friend but a national treasure?
His jokes and songs routine kept the morale of his workmates high during the wartime bombardments at the Drydocks. His touring Stage Commandos and Radju Muskettieri kept the Maltese laughing for decades. His writings and sketches introduced the rudiments of humour and gradually developed it into an artform. Perhaps at first misunderstood, his rich array of characters, and they are legion, define an innate Malteseness of style making them intrinsically humane but never coarse. An exemplary family person, for whom wife and children never strayed far from his immediate plans, Charles Clews never considered using a seemingly vulgar phrase or situation. And when lesser comics did, it made him sad.
Half-way through Mill-Barumbara, a radio programme consisting of his sketches and listeners’ jokes turned into sketches, the late Victor Galdes asked me to start coordinating the scripts of the incoming jokes. I was still in my teens but the Guv had told him to ask me even though at the time Charles and I were practically meeting three times a week. While on stage he would improvise, in real life he always played by the rules. He wanted things right, and would argue, and even write to the press over the spelling, or meaning of a single word, however obscure.
On stage and radio, however, his immersion into character was total. In Charles Abela Mizzi’s ingenious word-game Ħallina Minnek! I was placed middle, flanked by the debuting Joe Id-Dulli Farrugia, left and Mr Brown on my right. Clews’s Brown was so impeccable. At a given moment you’d sense the most subtle of changes occurring; a facial grimace, a change in posture… From then on whatever you say to the man, even if it’s during an interval, the riposte is sheer Mr Brown.
I was first killed by Charles in the 1950s, when as a young boy nanna took me to a summer open-air thingy in Gżira where the Waterfront Hotel now stands. Various acts followed one another on an intimate stage (one had Charles Cassano rapidly drawing figurative pictures which represented famous songs known to the audience). The highlight involved a big man in glasses wearing a mackintosh raincoat, flattened trilby hat and carrying a small wooden case; and a small chubby fellow dressed like a schoolboy complete with striped tie. The raincoat man asked the questions, the boy gave stupid answers. The audience was in stitches. Charles’s figure always compelled him to take “the shoulder” (spalla) part and when Johnny Catania emigrated, the other Johnny, Navarro, fitted cosily in.
Charles was not always easy to work with on stage. The epitome of perfection, he would not easily suffer the ill-prepared or the fool. First to arrive backstage he would go over the cues, and props and exit lines, till it felt like he was bordering on panic. Of course he would be nursing the adrenalin so that it would gush out to effect at the appropriate time. During rehearsals of one of his more serious works, Dar Fuq ir-Ramel, one of the first, if not the first, locally made TV drama, in which I was cast opposite Sandra Davis, I asked him whether his exacting urgency helped with the other cast members. I’m not sure whether he understood my comment. What I got back was a lecture about “our responsibilities to the audience”. It was to theatre what the Hippocratic Oath is to the medical profession. It summed up the man and his mission from which he never faltered.
We are aware that no man is indispensable. However, it’s also true that some are irreplaceable. No one has come along to replace Navarro, or Vitorin Galea, or Charles Arrigo, or Galdes. I think it’s a safe bet that no one will ever replace Charles Clews. This humane joke-machine possessed that rare magic; that indefinable something called genius. Charles was blessed with it. He didn’t just stand on a stage, or in a studio, he did not just take
part in a comedy, or programme… wherever he was, when he opened his mouth, he owned it.

Tony Cassar Darien

It is so sad to hear of someone’s demise, more so when that someone is a person you have either known or heard about.
I first came to know Charles Clews when, as a 10-year-old, I used to take part as a singer during representations by the Stage Commandos, mainly at the Radio City theatre in Ħamrun.
Later on I found myself interpreting the part of the teacher/bridesmaid in Charles’s production of Karmena Abdilla. I used to be referred to not as the teacher but as ċiċer by the then Karmena Abdilla, interpreted by the late Vitorin Galea.
Eventually, when this play was produced by Eileen Montesin, I took part in the same production as Perpetwa (the groom’s sister). Karmena Abdilla, which was written by Charles Clews, was considered by many as his masterpiece and it not only toured the various theatres in Malta and Gozo but had the same success in Australia when performed to the Maltese community.
For a number of months Charles was one of the panel of six in the radio programme Ħallina Minnek!, presented and produced by Charles Abela Mizzi. Charles Clews’s character in this production was that of an English soldier who deserted his regiment, eventually marrying a Maltese. All of us in that production, and I am sure the listeners too, were so entertained by the hilarious way he spoke in broken Maltese and English.
Charles was very methodical in his approach to stage representations, at times somewhat nervous until the show got off. He was a family man and his numerous jokes, (mostly centred on his kunjata whom he respected so much) were always clean.
One of his favourite jokes was that of his wedding anniversary when his wife wanted to celebrate the day by eating out. Charles obliged by telling her they were going to eat out, taking a table out into the courtyard (fil-bitħa).

Josephine Zammit Cordina

Charles (stage name Charlie) Clews was the most popular broadcaster of comedy shows in his own time. All he had to go by was his talent, hard work and an impeccable work ethic. He had no personal managers, gag-writers or promoters. Yet he always maintained a high standard of entertaining radio programmes and stage shows and was loved by all the Maltese.
For convenience people recognise Charles as a top comedian but he was much more than that. In the war blitz over the dockyards he was responsible for keeping up the workers’ morale with shows during lunch break. This was the Allies’ policy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had instructed Noel Coward to go and sing Mad Dogs and Englishmen to the gunners while they were firing their guns.
Charles was the Malta equivalent. He garnered his material from the numerous BBC Radio comedy shows. Ted Ray, Arthur Askey and George Formby inspired his writing. There was no way the Maltese audience could sing along in English with George Formby. So Charles used to write Maltese lyrics to the established wartime tunes. I still remember parts of Maħbuba Katie Sejjer Insiefer to the tune of You Are My Sunshine.
In the 1950s and 1960s emigration was the solution of endemic unemployment. Charles was again responsible to keep up a high morale for those left behind. Grass widows stayed tuned to Rediffusion programmes, especially where Charles wrote the scripts and interpreted iconic comedy characters like Mabli l-Kuntistabbli.
The dockyard wartime comedy company Stage Commandos took to the newly-built Radio City Opera House in Ħamrun. They could afford to produce lavish musical comedies and variety shows where Charles was always one of the stars. The typical programme always included a three-act musical comedy, like Żeża tal-Flagship, followed by one hour of variety show where Charles would sing and do stand-up comedy.
The genius of Charles was his scriptwriting. He was a prolific creator of unforgettable characters like Karmena Abdilla and all sorts of commonplace human situations like the emigrant calling his mother in Malta on the phone and assuring her that the rain is not affecting him as he is indoors.
The passing away of Charlie Clews marks the end of an era of popular theatre; what
is affectionately known,
in the diminutive, as teatrin.
His broadcasting standards will never be equalled as he always scripted every word. He was a stickler for precision and as a programme producer demanded unmitigated seriousness from his fellow actors.
He is remembered fondly by all who took part with him. He was the gentleman par excellence of post-war Maltese theatre.

Narcy Calamatta

The sad demise of my great friend Charles Clews denotes the end of an era. Charles can be considered to be the first of part-time contributors to the broadcasting scene in Malta. Suffice it to say that when in 1947
I had started participating in children’s programmes, Charles had already been an established name on the cable radio. With his team of Radju Muskettieri (The Radio Musketeers) Charles had the important task of entertaining the listeners. To put you into perspective, the post-war radio was still bereft of many types of programmes. For example radio drama had to wait for a few years. It was also the era of the great British comedy, while in his own right Charles created the Maltese radio comedy.
During that period, when listeners had very little to amuse them, Charles and his friends used to keep the Maltese islands laughing. Persons of a certain age can still hum some of his limericks and funny songs. It is understood that there are a number of recordings with his comical sketches and I hope that Radio Malta will broadcast a series of programmes with this material. I shall venture to state that Charles had invented the radio comedy “wheel”. Later on, others would try to give the impression that they had reinvented the wheel, but the honour goes to Charles alone. In fact, what had been achieved in the 1940s was a great step forward and I find it silly of certain persons not to give due regard to the difficult task faced by broadcasters during the initial stages when none of us had any other whom to copy or follow. In this regard it is quite fair to mention his friends and collaborators, namely Johnny Catania, Ġemma Portelli, Vitorin Galea, Johnny Navarro, Terry L. Bencini, Josette Ciappara, Nosì Ghirlando and Ġuża Caruana.
Following World War II, when many Maltese migrated to Australia, they took with them the memories of their island, including Charles’s comedies, so much so that he was invited to go Down Under to bring back happy memories and nostalgia to our far-off brothers. I know that the general practice is that after the death of a person only the good deeds and actions are mentioned. But with Charles this was the case even during his lifetime, ever since I first knew him. As far as I am aware there had never been anything wrong or bad to say about Charles. He was a true gentleman.
Charles was an inspiration to many. He was the author of scripts, lyrics and jokes. There was no internet and books were very limited. Thus Charles could not copy any of his material. He was the prime comedian for many years, stretching up to as the late 1970s. Even in his senior years Charles had his weekly page in It-Torċa, which only stopped when he had to go to hospital. This page had started in 1959 and was still going strong in 2008, a record 49 years.
I had been planning to organise a special event for his 90th birthday, but it was not to be. Perhaps some of the modern comedians and singers can get together to honour our friend. I shall be more than ready and happy to help in such a noble gesture.

Frans H. Said

I got to know Charles Clews from afar, through his radio programmes on the now defunct Rediffusion service where together with his colleagues he used to present the humorous programme Radju Muskettieri.
It was a very popular programme and people used to eagerly wait for it to be broadcast in the evening. Other well-known actors used to take part in the programme but his closest partner was Johnny Catania.
I got the opportunity to get to know him better when I invited him to take part in one of my quiz programmes on Radju Malta together with some other actors. One of the things I used to note was that he always used to come half an hour before the recording started… that is how professional he was… and he always came prepared with the script.
He used to play the role of a British Army deserter in Malta and who didn’t want to go back to the UK because he was afraid his colleagues would not be pleased with him. I can still hear the broken English accent he used, and which used to go down very well with the listeners.
Apart from his professionalism, the most important thing, however, was that whenever some “naughty” actors branched into very innocent double sense jokes, I never saw him participate or prolong the joke.
The dedication to his family was impressive. Despite the heavy workload, he used to live for his family, for the stage and for his listeners.
He was extremely professional. One of the plays which made history in Maltese theatre is Karmena Abdilla. Nowadays, when one goes abroad one looks out for a musical. In those days the public was on the lookout for Karmena Abdilla, which was staged a number of times.
That play was unique… breaking the record for the number of repeats put up here in Malta. I think I would be correct to say that it is still the record- breaker because it was staged both in the original version and, eventually, in a slightly more modern version than that of Nosì Ghirlando various times.
I would like to end my tribute by using the words of Alberto Moravia, who, during his friend’s funeral, said: “When an artiste dies, part of a country dies with him.”

Charles Abela Mizzi

Source: Weekender, February 7, 2009