 Grimaldi became "easily the most popular English entertainer of his day". The Victoria and Albert Museum and the actor Simon Callow have both concluded that no other Clown achieved Grimaldi's level of fame. Richard Findlater, author of a 1955 Grimaldi biography, commented: "Here is Joey the Clown, the first of 10,000 Joeys who took their name from him; here is the genius of English fun, in the holiday splendour of his reign at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden ... during his lifetime [Grimaldi] was generally acclaimed as the funniest and best-loved man in the British theatre." A later biographer, Andrew McConnell Stott, wrote that "Joey had been the first great experiment in comic persona, and by shifting the emphasis of clowning from tricks and pratfalls to characterisation, satire and a full sense of personhood, he had established himself as the spiritual father of all those later comedians whose humour stems first and foremost from a strong sense of identity."
