Charles Wardell

"Spuggy the Clown, who has died aged 82, was principal clown with Billy Smart’s Circus during the 1960s.


His real name was Charles Wardell. Born in Leeds on April 10 1931, he was adopted as a baby by a travelling showman known as Newcastle Jack Taylor, a prize fighter who lugged his own boxing booth round traditional fairs in the north of England.







Young Charles left school as soon as he could to enlist in the Army and, from 1948 to 1953, served as a sergeant in the Green Howards in Suez, Malaya and Austria.


Returning to Britain, he began his career as a comedy act at working men’s clubs and as a children’s entertainer at Warner’s holiday camps, before a chance meeting with Ronnie Smart, son of the circus tycoon, led to his joining Billy Smart’s New World Circus as a clown in 1962. He took his circus name Spuggy from the nickname — “Spuggy-legs” (“spuggy” is Yorkshire slang for “sparrow”) — that had been bestowed on him by his mates in the Army."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10236111/Spuggy-the-Clown.html