Agitation laughs no more

PERHAPS the first ever stand-up comedian in TT, Ramdeen Ramjattan, better known as John Agitation, died on Monday after ailing for some time. He was 90.

Yesterday Ramjattan’s daughter Marissa Sammy said in a release that her father was taken to the Sangre Grande Hospital on Monday, and died several hours later.

People who attended his shows from the fifties to the eighties would have been falling off their chairs with laughter during any of Agitation’s offerings, both as an MC and as a comedian.

“Well, tonnerre!” was his signature start to all of his performances. Then he would get into a mix of his comical take on current affairs, and his sheer wit.

Agitation, who was born on July 24, 1927 in Boundialsingh Trace, Caratal, was also a storyteller.

After graduating from the Progressive Educational Institute he was a civil servant. He was introduced into the comedy arena in 1951 at 24, when one Landy de Montbrun took him to do his thing for a Queen’s Park Oval audience. This feat made him one of the first non-white comedians to perform at the Oval, and after a very enthusiastic reception from the crowd, his career took off. Performing under the name John Agitation, taken from a character in a script he had written for a church bazaar, he became a popular comedian from the 1950s while holding a full-time job. It was reported that he was also the first comedian in the Commonwealth to win an election when he won a 1989 by-election in the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation for the Guaico-Cumuto district. Agitation was a regular on Radio Trinidad, with the Horace James Comedy Hour, Sunday Serenade (hosted by Sam Ghany), and the Aunty Kay Children’s Show. Off stage, he spent his time as a citrus farmer cultivating ten acres of land in Cumuto, a rural, still-forested area with a large population of agouti and brocket deer, and throughout his life he was an avid hunter. He farmed oranges, mandarins, tangelos, portugals and grapefruit on his ten-acre estate.

Agitation’s comic career, which spanned more than five decades, took him to many places, performing at many venues as the headline act, and often to sold-out shows. But despite his many commitments, he continued giving his service to many community events. After he announced his retirement from public life, he continued to serve at the request of communities, churches, orphanages and homes for the aged, and performed occasionally until his death.

For his service to the country he was the recipient of the Hummingbird Silver Medal in 2002 in the sphere of entertainment.

His daughter described him as a committed public servant, a skilful hunter, a community worker and most of all a family man.