lit a candle 1d agoBill Gates, 1998. That moment changed what people thought was possible.
Their story
Noël Godin was born on 13 September 1945 in Liège, Belgium, to a lawyer father and a pious mother. He attended the Catholic primary school Saint-Maur at Cointe and secondary studies with the Salesians of Don Bosco, discovering cinema and reading early, including the film magazine Positif. At the University…
Noël Godin was born on 13 September 1945 in Liège, Belgium, to a lawyer father and a pious mother. He attended the Catholic primary school Saint-Maur at Cointe and secondary studies with the Salesians of Don Bosco, discovering cinema and reading early, including the film magazine Positif. At the University of Liège he was expelled after emptying a pot of glue over a law lecturer associated with drafting constitutional text for the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. French accounts also link an early November 1968 glue or pudding attack on reactionary professor Marcel De Corte to the same rebellious streak.
He worked at a small Belgian Catholic League film magazine, Friends of Film, inventing outrageous fake articles (among them a claim that Louis Armstrong had been a cannibal, and a wholly invented blind Thai filmmaker whose film an Asian specialist once tried to locate). He later wrote anarcho-literary columns for Siné Hebdo (rubric "L'Entarteur littéraire"), Psikopat, La Mèche, Zélium, CQFD, Siné Mensuel and related outlets. As an actor he appeared in Jan Bucquoy's Sexual Life of the Belgians (1994) and Camping Cosmos. In the 1998 documentary Homo Cinematographicus he said he wanted life to be an action film and a burlesque comedy of nothing but highlights.
Godin's lasting fame came from entartage: soft cream-and-sponge pies bought from bakeries, pressed to the faces of people he judged vain, powerful, or "pompeux cornichons." He insisted the practice was non-violent. The first celebrated pie was Marguerite Duras in 1969. Over more than five decades he and accomplices hit Maurice Béjart, Jean-Luc Godard (who laughed it off at Cannes), Marco Ferreri, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, Nicolas Sarkozy (1997, via accomplices while Godin stayed back to avoid recognition), Bill Gates in Brussels on 4 February 1998 (his most famous coup, after which he was widely quoted saying his work was done), Quebec politicians including Jean Charest (2003, with his wife Sylvie Van Hiel also throwing a pie), Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, and Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary (claimed 2023). His favourite recurring target was Bernard-Henri Lévy, pied at least seven or eight times. Filmed reactions, including a 1985 Liège incident in which Lévy struck back verbally and physically, became French media folklore and inspired Renaud's song L'Entarté.
In 1995 he published the autobiography Crème et châtiment (Cream and Punishment) and received the Grand prix de l'humour noir, reportedly pieing himself at the ceremony. In 1996 he received the prix de la dent dure. Other books include Anthologie de la subversion carabinée (1989; expanded 2008), Godin par Godin (2001), the novel Armons-nous les uns les autres! (2003), and Entartons, entartons les pompeux cornichons! (2005). A criminal conviction followed the pieing of former minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement. He lived in modest circumstances in northern Brussels with cats and his partner. He died in Brussels on 23 August 2026, aged 80. Sylvie Broodthaers confirmed the death to AFP/Belga. Cause of death was not made public in the open sources used for this memorial. RTBF aired the documentary Noël Godin, profession entarteur after his death.
This memorial is for Belgian anarchist comedian, writer, actor and pie thrower Noël Godin (1945-2026), also known as L'Entarteur and Georges le Gloupier. It is not for other people named Godin, and not for Josep Grau or other pie activists who shared tactics but not this biography.
Biography adapted from EN/FR Wikipedia; Telegraph 2026-08-29; NPR 2026-08-30; Brussels Times; RTBF; Le Monde/AFP; LA Times 1997; First Monday 1998; NYT 1998.
In their own words
“My work here is done.”
Widely attributed remark after the 1998 Bill Gates pieing (EN Wikipedia citing secondary reportage; reported catchphrase).
“He takes himself monstrously seriously [...] He is totally in love with himself to the most spectacular degree of imbecility.”
On Bernard-Henri Lévy, quoted in The Telegraph obituary.
“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.”
On the Sarkozy-era campaign (Le Monde / AFP citation chain via EN Wikipedia).
“We only attack the wicked... the great and the wicked.”
LA Times 1997 paraphrase of his targeting rule, also cited via NPR.
“Entartons les pompeux cornichons!”
Catchphrase tradition associated with his 2005 book title and public persona (FR press).
Yes. Comedy as resistance. That's rare now.