Chris Depasquale

 Have you seen the movie Chasing Amy? In it, the secret of success of a chap who produces a comic strip is revealed: the cartoon characters are based on real live people. The cartoonist pays these people just for being themselves, so he can continue to draw creative inspiration from them.

                Over the years there has been much speculation that this, too, is the secret of success of the television cartoon, The Simpsons: the characters are based on real people. It seems likely that this is the case; I for one, can identify at least three British Grandmasters who are exactly like Homer Simpson, if not in looks, at least in philosophical outlook.

                I can now reveal one secret of the show that has puzzled Simpsons’ fans for years: who is the character Krusty the Clown based on? Those crazy Americans have speculated on everybody from Al Jolson to David Letterman, but the answer is none other than Australian Grandmaster Darryl Johansen.  

                  Johansen (pictured) spends the working week going from school to school trying to entertain children who have signed up for chess classes. He doesn’t actually like children: he just does it for the money. He beetles around from one gig to the next in a beaten up old jalopy with the horsepower of a Shetland pony, and only manages to stop the classrooms turning into riot scenes because children of all ages have always been drawn to the clown-like visage and wardrobe he sports. 

                Johansen is a real-life Krusty the Clown (pictured), large as life and half as natural. The royalty payments he receives from the producers of The Simpsons go a long way towards explaining how this person, living in a nation where chess players are about as highly regarded as American lawyers and English cricketers, has survived all these years without any visible means of support.

                School in Australia breaks up in the third week of December and recommences in February, so Krusty Johansen had to find a paying gig somewhere in this period. As any self-respecting clown would do, he joined the circus. The particular circus he joined went by the unusual name of the Australian Chess Championship (ACC) ...