According to Boos, Otjes already had that comic talent as a child when he lived in a working-class neighborhood in Amsterdam. “He was a scrappy little guy and he had to fend for himself among older and stronger boys for whom he was prey. He got out of that by playing the bully. He became a mascot for those boys.”
Journalist Robert Vinkenborg, the youngest of the quartet, also grew up with Otjes. “He was also a childhood hero for me,” says Vinkenborg, who saw Otjes on TV as a child in series such as Hamelen and Q&Q. Vinkenborg became friends with Otjes when he interviewed him as a young reporter for a local newspaper.
“That conversation lasted well into the night. He considered himself much more of a stage actor than a television actor. That was actually his great love. I thought that was a very interesting side of him. We shared that passion.”
Scion from an underlying, artisanal era
For example, he performed the solo performance From the Diary of a Madman by Gogoli, directed by the Czech Vera Baréšová. That performance even took him to Poland, where he was decorated by the Ministry of Culture.
“He was truly an artistic jack-of-all-trades,” says Ko Boos. “He always had a pen and paper in his pocket. He would sit on a terrace and observe the society around him: sketching, writing. A descendant of an underlying, artisanal era.”
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