The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (song)

"The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" is a popular British music hall song of the 19th century, written in 1891 or 1892 by Fred Gilbert (Frederick Younge Gilbert, 1850 - 1903), a theatrical agent who had begun to write comic songs as a sideline some twenty years previously.

The song was popularised by singer and comedian Charles Coborn, and quickly became a staple of his act, performed on tour in different languages throughout the world. Coborn confirmed that Gilbert's inspiration was the gambler and confidence trickster Charles Wells. Wells was reported to have won one-and-a-half million francs at the Monte Carlo casino, using the profits from previous fraud. (Some sources claim that he died penniless in 1926 but recent research suggests that this is not entirely accurate). However, others suggested as the model include Joseph Jagger (see Men who broke the bank at Monte Carlo) and Kenneth MacKenzie Clark, father of famed art historian Kenneth Clark. Coborn writes that he was acquainted with Gilbert, and it is thus likely that his account is correct.

Coborn claims in his 1928 autobiography that to the best of his recollection he first sang the song in 'the latter part of 1891.' An advertisement in a London newspaper suggests, however, that he first performed it in public in mid-February 1892. The song remained popular from the 1890s until the late 1940s, and is still referenced in popular culture today.

Songwriter Fred Gilbert never achieved comparable success with any subsequent composition. In 1898 he moved to the coastal village of Sandgate, Kent, after contracting tuberculosis. He died there, or nearby, in 1903. (Some published works give his place of death as Eltham, south-east London, but this is an error. The General Register Office index to deaths shows his place of death to be in the former registration district of Elham, Kent, in which Sandgate was situated). Upon his death his estate was valued at £8.

Financier George Soros was called "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" in 1992, following the infamous Black Wednesday which saw Britain's exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

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