Paris (AFP)

When he was little, he was called Mimi. Later, it was Chouchou. One day, he chose Michou. Dressed in blue from head to toe, Michou, who died Sunday at the age of 88, was an essential figure in Montmartre, thanks to his famous Parisian cabaret transformist.

Every evening, for sixty years, he was on stage to launch the show that made him famous.

Long before the fashion of "drag queens", Michou paved the way in France for entertainment transformism by offering the first post-war spectacle made up of men dressing up as women to caricature the stars of the time.

Since 1956, his tiny cabaret, which has become an international benchmark in this area and which inspired "La Cage aux folles" by Jean Poiret, has never been empty.

Outrageously made up, his "Michettes" entertained each evening, on the smallest stage in Paris, the customers interpreting after dinner the stars of the moment, "but without making fun!" Said Michou to AFP.

"We don't ape them. There is never vulgarity. I have always wanted to," added the man with the eternally blue silhouette, matching glasses and permanent blonde recognizable among all.

"There is a lot of respect in our cartoons. We adore our victims and they know it well. Dalida loved coming to see herself more delusional than ever!", Said "the most famous homosexual in France", in his words.

"I am popular and that makes me very happy. I am fortunate to be a notorious and loved homosexual. Everywhere, I am recognized and greeted with great kindness", underlined this exuberant "guy from the North", follower of self-mockery, landed in Paris at 17 in 1948.

For Mardi-Gras 1956, Michel Catty for civil status, who then managed a simple bar at 80 rue des Martyrs, launched a challenge to two friends: to dress up as famous women for an evening.

- End of cabaret -

Michou chooses Brigitte Bardot. The success was immediate: the next day, the trio started again, soon joined by other "Michettes", waiters and bartenders before swapping the apron each evening for their light clothes, wigs and false eyelashes.

"At the time, you had to be unconscious and ambitious!" Says Michou. "I finally had no problems and the machine was launched. For a long time, I dreamed of a party place where we really have fun. I had finally found the recipe!".

Michou, the most popular icon of Parisian nights, and his cabaret have become French symbols, as popular as the Moulin Rouge, the Lido and the Crazy Horse.

An exuberant style show biz figure, Michou, knighted of the Legion of Honor in 2005, has never forgotten his modest origins: he invited the elderly from Montmartre to his cabaret every month.

For his 80th birthday, this great champagne lover (his "fountain of youth", two bottles a day) had organized a show on the stage of the Trianon in Paris. Many personalities, from Jean Paul Gaultier to Nana Mouskouri, had responded to celebrate "the blue prince of Montmartre", the title of his memoirs published in late 2017.

He revealed his last wishes there: to be buried in a blue coffin and for the cabaret in his name to stop at his death.

"I want this house to disappear with me. It may seem pretentious, but the cabaret will not survive me," he said at 87.

From Michou, Jacques Brel, who was one of his closest friends, once said to songwriter Bernard Dimey: "I love him very much, because he is a man, a real man and that in life, we don't meet so much. "

© 2020 AFP