Noël Godin

Noël Godin (13 September 1945 – 23 August 2026), nicknamed L'Entarteur

His pieing of famous persons started in 1969 with Marguerite Duras and continued throughout his life. His targets included writers, comedians, actors, musicians, audience members, clergymen, presenters, businessmen and politicians. Former minister and future French president Nicolas Sarkozy was pied in 1997, and he hit his most famous target, Bill Gates, in 1998, which increased his notoriety beyond the Francophone world. His favourite and most frequent target was public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, whose reactions (and Godin's systematic pieings of him) became satirised and ridiculed in the media.

He was described as "the French-speaking world's best-known prankster." Godin made up most of his articles

Pieing Method Godin insisted he was non-violent and was careful to use only soft pies (purchased from local bakeries) made of cream and sponge cake that would not physically hurt his victims. He said his humor could be traced back to Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, the Marx Brothers, Norman Wisdom, and the radical "yippies" of the Youth International Party. Godin tended not to pick Belgian victims, as he insisted that few would notice if he did. , the filmmaker Jean Delannoy (1988) Lévy's violent reactions Remarking upon the stunt, he said:

It has now been thirty-three years since I undertook a pastry crusade, in homage to the comedian Alphonse Allais, against personalities who take themselves very, very, very seriously After bombarding Gates, Godin allegedly said, "My work here is done."

In September 2023, outside the European Commission in Brussels, he claimed to have pelted Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary with a pie. Bernard-Henri Lévy (at least eight times, including 1985, 1994, 2015) Jean-Pierre Elkabbach (1994) Priests at Nantes Cathedral (1996) Nicolas Sarkozy (1997) Jean-Pierre Chevènement (2002) Benjamin Castaldi (2001) Doc Gynéco (2007) Michael O'Leary (2023)

Books Anthologie de la subversion carabinée, L'âge d'homme, 1989, (philosophical study of political freedom), updated and expanded edition, 2008 Zig zig boum boum, Le Veilleur, Toulouse, 1994 Crème et châtiment : mémoire d'un entarteur, Albin Michel, 1995 , Godin par Godin, Yellow Now, 2001, Armons-nous les uns les autres! (novel), Flammarion, 2003, Entartons, entartons les pompeux cornichons!, Flammarion, 2005, (The story of all his pieings).