During the war years Boby's mathematical career was brought to an abrupt halt, however, when the occupying German forces sent him off to work in a forced labour camp in the Austrian town of Linz in 1942. While French chanson star Georges Brassens accepted his lot in the labour camps, Boby rebelled set up his own one-man resistance and made a daring escape one night. Travelling under a series of false identities – including the pseudonym Robert Foulcan (!) – Boby spent seven months on the run and finally managed to join his family in France in May 1944.

Boby eventually moved on the port of La Ciotat near Marseilles where he re-invented himself as a deep-sea diver, hiding out from the German military police several leagues under. Meanwhile, Boby transformed his genius for mathematics into a way with words, publishing a collection of poetry and a treatise on the art of punning. He also tried his hand at songwriting, offering his first efforts to singers passing through the south of France. Boby even made a special trip to Juan-les-Pins to present his work to the famous French chanson troupe Les Frères Jacques. But the foursome were frightened off by the complexity of Boby's songs and the elaborate puns and wordplay in his lyrics. At the end of the war Boby came out of hiding in La Ciotat and in 1946 he married Colette Maclaud, who went on to become the mother of his two children (Ticha and Jacky).

Shortly after their wedding Boby and Colette moved up to Paris where they opened a boutique selling household linen and baby clothes. However, years way ahead of the baby-boom, the couple's business failed to take off – and Boby ended up shutting up shop and getting a divorce! Moving on to earn his living as a TV aerial installer, Boby began to devote more and more time to songwriting. After climbing across the Paris roofs installing antennae by day, the burgeoning songwriter would sit up late into the night composing.

Boby got his first break in 1956 when the French actor Bourvil teamed up with Gilles Grangier to shoot a film called "Poisson d’avril". The film starred Pierre Dux, Maurice Biraud, Denise Grey and comic newcomer Louis de Funès. And it was decided that Bourvil should break into song at one point in the film. Boby had happened to become friendly with Bourvil's accordionist, Etienne Lorin, and it was he who suggested using Boby's song "Aragon et Castille". The film failed to make much of an impact on French cinema screens and "Aragon et Castille" passed largely unnoticed. But this marked the start of Boby's professional songwriting career nonetheless.

Boby soon went on to take centre stage, launching a singing career at a well-known Parisian cabaret called "Le Cheval d’or" (where he performed on the same bill as a host of leading French music stars such as Anne Sylvestre, Raymond Devos, Ricet Barrier and Georges Brassens. With his wrestler's physique, his imperfect elocution and his songs' complicated puns and wordplay, Boby Lapointe did not exactly appear destined to become a cabaret hit. However, Boby went down a storm with French audiences and he soon went from being a lowly support act to the Cheval d'Or's headlining star. Indeed, the public soon started flocking to applaud the bearded wonder's "monkey antics" on a nightly basis.

French film director François Truffaut happened to find himself in the audience at the "Cheval d'Or" one night and fell instantly under Boby's spell. In fact, Truffaut ended up rushing backstage after the show to offer Boby the role of the singing bartender in his film "Tirez sur le pianiste" (starring Charles Aznavour as the famous piano-player). Boby sang two numbers in the film - "Framboise" and "Marcelle". But when Truffaut watched the rushes and heard Boby's muffled diction he decided to sub-title the songs (thus inventing karaoke years before the Japanese!)

It was while working on Truffaut's film set that Boby met another significant player in his career, Philippe Weil, who signed him up to perform at another leading Parisian cabaret, "Les Trois Baudets". In 1960 and 1961 Boby made his first impact on the French charts, scoring hits with "Marcelle", "Le poisson Fa", "Bobo Léon" and "Aragon et Castille".

Boby's career continued to go from strength to strength and from this point on he began performing tours and concerts with the renowned French chanson star Georges Brassens. Boby's syntactical gymnastics and verbal juggling delighted audiences up and down the country. Meanwhile, off stage Boby's wild fantasy and over-excited imagination got him into various scrapes. Having already proved he had no head for business, Boby nevertheless insisted on opening his own "café-concert", Le Cadran Bleu on rue de la Huchette. However, Le Cadran Bleu soon went the way of Boby's former boutique bringing Boby to the point of bankruptcy shortly after its opening. Brassens played the Good Samaritan, stepping in to assume part of the singer's debts and also helped him find a series of odd jobs to keep the wolf from the door. Lucien Morisse, programme director of Europe 1, also lent a hand, helping Boby get a new record deal with AZ Disques. But by the mid-60s France was in full "yéyé" (rock'n'roll) mode. And Boby's 'one-man' band style seemed increasingly out of date and old-fashioned.

Boby turned towards the cinema instead, landing roles in Claude Sautet's films "Max et les ferrailleurs" (as a demented half-wit) and "Les choses de la vie" (as a cattle truck-driver). Meanwhile, Joe Dassin, a specialist of sentimental hits, persuaded Boby to sign a new deal with Fontana/Philips and set himself up as his producer. The result of Dassin's intervention was that Boby set off on tour to promote his (final) album "Comprend qui peut". The album featured a famous illustration by French 'naïf' artist Maurice Ghiglion-Green on the cover, picturing Boby in a stripy sailor's shirt burying his nose in a bunch of daisies. (The iconic image would go down in history as Lapointe's signature look!)

Boby finally succumbed to cancer on 29 June 1972, dying at home in Pézenas surrounded by his family and friends. A few months earlier he had performed his final swan song at Le Bobino in Paris, supporting Pierre Perret, one of his most fervent admirers in concert. Perret maintains that Lapointe's death still leaves a void at the heart of the French music world and admits that "on nights when I miss Boby's jokes and camaraderie I find myself pretending he's still here. I put one of his old records on and listen to his songs and it's like the old devil's in the room with me carrying on as normal!"

Nostalgia for Boby Lapointe and his witty punning ditties was a feeling shared amongst friends and contemporaries such as Brassens, Raymond Devos and Ricet Barrier. What's more, Lapointe has also been cited as a formative influence by a whole generation of younger music stars such as Wally, Stellla, Marka and Arthur H. Like "Alexandre le Bienheureux" in cinema or "Zazie" in French literature, Lapointe was a true original whose work left an indelible mark on French music history.

Philips paid tribute to the singer after his death, releasing a special posthumous anthology of his work. And in 2002 – on the 30th anniversary of his death – a group of young music stars got together in the studio to record covers of old Lapointe favourites. Highlights of the special tribute album entitled "Bobby Tutti Frutti" include Clarika's cover of "Comprend qui peut" and CharlElie's striking version of "La peinture à l’huile".

April 2002