Upon his return from America and Canada in 1896, Chevalier decided to reduce his music hall appearances owing to the unpredictability and inattentiveness of the genre's audiences, which he came to dislike. From the paying public's point of view, his style of humour had become common place within the music hall. His biggest rival was Gus Elen who had developed a more complex and comical alternative to Chevalier's. Instead, Chevalier decided to concentrate his time on creating comic characters which he used in one-man sketches which he called his "recitals". To keep within the audiences gaze, he still performed occasional coster songs and performed them alongside his characterisations. The characters included a country vicar in "Our Bazaar", a struggling actor in "A Fallen Star", and a west-country peasant in "E Can't Take a Roise out of oi". While none of these pieces earned the kind of success that his coster songs had achieved, Chevalier maintained a successful solo career performing them. His annual engagement at the Queen's Hall in London of twice-daily performances began in 1899 and ran in excess of 1000 performances.