The comic is a candidate
The lights go down, the band strikes up, and the pudgy, red-nosed man in striped overalls trots onstage dragging a battered suitcase. France's favorite comedian Michel Colucciknown better as Colucheis opening his nightly act at Paris' Théâtre du Gymnase. "Hey," Coluche begins in his usual patois, "we've negotiated a fantastic deal with the Soviets: we give them all our wheat, and they let us keep our coal." The son of an Italian immigrant house painter, Coluche, 36, has now become something more than a nightclub satirist puncturing the pretensions of politicians and diplomats in the...