100 Crimes and a Pint Too Many: The Tragicomic Life of Birmingham’s Charles Paige

I came across this video a few months ago, and didn’t get around to featuring it but it stuck in my mind. Or, rather, the story of Charles Paige did. He was well-known in and around Birmingham (the one in the UK, not the one in Alabama) for being something of a nuisance around the pubs of England’s second city. It's a tale both comedic in parts but ultimately deeply tragic - but for some reason my mind kept wandering back to the life of this hapless, hopeless, half-cut huckster - Mr Charles Paige. The story is brought to life by yourfamilyline, a YouTube channel with an associated website, dedicated to “telling the stories of forgotten lives, and bringing their voices back into the light through detailed research and digital storytelling”. It looks like it’s a one man show, which makes it all the more impressive and has a growing number of subscribers. (The picture used at the top of this post is an AI rendition of Charles Paige and not affiliated with yourfamilyline). Paige was an…