I was strolling through the streets of the Saint-Germain-des-Pres area in Paris looking for Serge Gainsbourg’s graffiti-covered home when I first saw it. It was a simple picture in a coffee house window of a guy in a trilby hat. Underneath was his name, Charlie Winston. Once I had noticed it, I saw it all over the city.
Now, my French is pretty shambolic but I know enough to know that Charlie Winston doesn’t sound particularly Parisian. The thing that added to my intrigue was that on a recent visit to good old England I hadn’t seen anything about him at all. This seemed odd because a little research revealed that Charlie is huge over here in France — huge with a capital H.
Born in Cornwall, England in 1978 he grew up in Suffolk where his parents ran a pub. His brother is fellow muso Tom Baxter. Charlie is, in fact, the face of Charlie Winston And The Oxymorons who released their debut album in 2007. In 2008 their cover of the old Spencer Davis Group song “I’m A Man” was used in a Volkswagen advert and featured a singing dog.
Now we have Hobo, an album that has almost outsold croissants in France as it reached number one, stayed in the top ten for over four months, and achieved platinum status in the process. Staring at me from its cover is that now familiar picture of Charlie, avec le hat, gazing forlornly at the camera.
Perhaps that look is him wondering why the hell he isn’t as big in the UK as well. Or perhaps it is a sort of Gallic shrug revealing that he doesn’t really care and is simply enjoying and appreciating the success that the French are heaping on him.
Hobo includes his highly successful single “Like A Hobo”. This hit number one in France and neighbouring Belgium where it stayed in the top ten for eleven and fifteen weeks respectively. So what’s it all about? To answer it, Eurorock set out to investigate just why a bloke from Suffolk is splattered around Paris like the graffiti on poor old Serge’s house.
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