José Miguel Agrelot

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José Miguel Agrelot — Don Cholito

Date of birth

April 21, 1927

Date of death

January 28, 2004 (natural causes)

Education

University of Puerto Rico Bachelor's degree in Arts.

Occupation

Radio show host and comedian.

Nicknames

Don Cholito
The man of the 1,000 voices

Remarks

Held a Guinness World Record for the longest running still active radio show.

Giuseppe Michel Agrelot (April 21, 1927 – January 28, 2004) was a Puerto Rican radio and television show host and a comedian better known as José Miguel Agrelot or Don Cholito. Agrelot, of Italian descent, was a Puerto Rican media icon.

1 Biography
2 See also
3 External link
4 References

[edit] Biography

Agrelot started working on radio stations when he was 14. At that time, he was employed by Don Tomas Muñiz, who was the father of Tommy Muñiz. That was the period when he started playing his now classic character of Torito. Agrelot worked on a show named El Colegio de la Alegría (The School of Joy). Soon after, he moved himself and his Torito character to rival radio station WKAQ-FM, where he starred alongside (future best friend) Luis Vigoreaux in a show named Torito & Company. He received a Bachelors Degree in Arts, from the University of Puerto Rico where he was a member of Phi Sigma Alpha.

Agrelot's show with Vigoreaux had wild success, and they toured cities with a large Latin American population in the United States, bringing their show to theaters all over the states. Torito returned to El Colegio de la Alegría when that show made its transition to television.

Agrelot also performed in shows in Spain, Mexico and Argentina. He had extended tours of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. In 1969, he recorded a comedy album with one of the most important Latin American record labels of the time, Velvet Records. The album's title was El Sabor de la Vida (The Flavor of Life).

Apart from interventions in a few commercials, Agrelot's credits in Puerto Rican TV included:

El Colegio de la Alegria (The School of Joy)
El Profesor Colgate (The Colgate Professor)
La Criada Malcriada (The Nasty Maid)
El Especial de Corona (The Corona Special)
Desafiando a los Genios (Challenging The Geniuses)
Haciendo Historia (Making History)
El Show del Mediodia (The Midday show, as Don Cholito, another legendary character of his)
Parece Increible (It Seems Incredible)
Ja ja, Ji ji, Jo jo con Agrelot

Agrelot has an area of the theme park Parque De Las Ciencias in Bayamón named after his Torito character. La Ciudad de Torito, or Torito's City was inaugurated in 1988. In 2003, his radio show, Alegre Despertar (Joyful Awakening), held the world's record for the longest running still active radio show, running non-stop for 53 years (Rambling With Gambling ran on New York's WOR Radio for 75 years but ceased in 2000). This made Agrelot the second person from Puerto Rico, after Wilfredo Benitez, to join the Guinness Book of World Records.

This avid autograph signer had also written comedy books and performed comedy bits in a ring with Muhammad Ali for TV and both posed for the cover of one of his publications. He was also an avid sports fan, particularly of the Criollos de Caguas baseball team. As a matter of a fact, although people named José are commonly nicknamed Cheo, it was after he began calling baseball player José Cruz Cheo Cruz on television, that the general public began to know Cruz as Cheo Cruz. Agrelot and Cruz sustained a friendship until Agrelot died. The Coliseum of Puerto Rico was renamed the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot (José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum) in his honor, shortly before he died.