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Yesterday evening I watched the evening news with Manboy, where a tribute was paid to this man, on the 30th anniversary of his death. 

I’m well aware of my adopted nation’s long-time love affair with Claude Francois. He’s a national icon, and is mpersonated here nearly to the degree that Elvis is in the U.S. Manboy once made me stand with him two hours in the rain to watch such a concert of ‘Claude and the Claudettes’.

I’ve learned over the years that the French, in particular my Manboy, often harbour a passion for this man that transcends all bounds. I’ve learned that while the baker I am buying my bread from looks like a perfectly normal person, he may, hidden by the safety of the pasrty counter, actually be wearing pink furry gogo boots. When there are no customers to serve, he cranks up ‘Alexandrine, Alexandra’, and dances like a schoolgirl, holding his eyes shut tightly as he jump-kicks his chubby, short legs in the air, letting the fantasy have him while it may.

The guy has sold 70 million albums, no small feat for a French artist.

What I didn’t know about Claude Francois, what no one saw fittingly important enough to tell me, after all the conversations I have participated in or been witness to about this man, is the way he died.

That missing piece of information was imparted to me last night, as the anchorman curtly detailed it, with his deadpan-news face after the highly emotional ‘remembering Claude, weeping, and laying flowers on his grave segment’.

(Cue deadpan face/monotone voice)

“Claude Francois was electrocuted by a light bulb that he was trying to change while standing in his filled bathtub.”