Culture & Arts 2 min read 1h ago

Belgian Pie-Thrower Godin Dies at 80

Belgian comedian Noël Godin, known as 'l'entarteur' for hurling pies at celebrities, died on Sunday 23 August aged 80.
His partner announced the death to AFP on Monday; no cause of death has been disclosed.
His targets over the years included Bill Gates, Nicolas Sarkozy, Bernard-Henry Lévy, and Marguerite Duras.

Noël Godin, the Belgian comedian who spent decades launching custard pies at some of the world's most recognisable public figures, has died at the age of 80. His partner confirmed the news on Monday, stating that he had passed away on Sunday 23 August.

A singular provocateur

Known by his alias Georges Le Gloupier and celebrated under the sobriquet l'entarteur — the pie-thrower — Godin built a singular reputation in European cultural life as a self-styled anarchist and anti-conformist. He described himself variously as a jester, a modern-day guerrilla against censorship, and a subversive committed to puncturing pomposity wherever he found it. He was, in his own telling, an empêcheur de tourner en rond: someone who refuses to let the world turn as smoothly as those in power might wish.

A roll-call of targets

The list of his victims reads like a conspectus of late-twentieth-century European public life. The philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, novelist Marguerite Duras, television journalist Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, choreographer Maurice Béjart, and singer Patrick Bruel were among those captured on camera — pie-splattered and momentarily undignified — over the course of his long career. His interventions regularly made the front pages, precisely because his targets were figures who rarely found themselves at a loss.

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Death confirmed, cause unspecified

No cause of death has been disclosed. His partner communicated the news to the Agence France-Presse on Monday, the day after he died. Godin was 80. His passing closes the chapter on a particular strain of anarchic performance culture that thrived in French-speaking Europe, a world that also recently lost veteran French broadcaster Philippe Bouvard. Whether anyone will step into Godin's uniquely flour-dusted shoes remains, for now, an open question.

##NoëlGodin ##Belgium ##Satire

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