For nearly six decades, Noël Godin had an unusual way of making his feelings about powerful and famous people known: He threw pies in their faces.
The Belgian writer, critic, actor and self-described anarchist became internationally famous after ambushing Bill Gates with a cream pie in Brussels in 1998.
But Gates was just one of many public figures targeted by Godin, who turned the humble pastry into his signature form of protest.
Godin died Sunday, Aug. 23, at age 80, his partner, Sylvie Broodthaers, confirmed to the Belga news agency. He was a resident of Brussels and was born in Liège, Belgium.
The Man Behind the Pies
Godin began his unusual campaign in 1969, when he targeted French novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras. Over the following decades, his list of targets grew to include some of the biggest names in entertainment, politics and culture.
Among them were filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, singer Patrick Bruel, journalist Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, French politician Nicolas Sarkozy and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom Godin or his accomplices targeted at least seven times.
He operated under the flamboyant pseudonym Georges Le Gloupier, and the attacks became known in French as entartage, essentially the art of pieing someone.
Godin presented the practice as a form of harmless disrespect aimed at people he considered pompous or overly self-important. He said the pies were soft and designed not to cause physical injury, and his inspiration came from sources ranging from the Marx Brothers and Wile E. Coyote to the radical politics of the 1960s.
In other words, Godin wasn’t trying to hurt his victims.
He wanted to knock them off their pedestals.
Then He Pies Bill Gates
Godin’s most famous target was Gates, 70.
On Feb. 4, 1998, Gates was in Brussels for meetings with Belgian business and government leaders when Godin and members of his group ambushed him.
Gates was hit in the face with a cream pie, leaving his glasses and suit covered in the dessert. Police arrested two people in connection with the incident, and Microsoft confirmed that Godin was responsible for the pie attack.
The incident quickly became an international spectacle.
Television networks reportedly competed for photographs of Gates covered in cream, with some offering thousands of dollars for the images.
And Gates, to his credit, apparently didn’t respond with the fury one might expect from one of the world’s most powerful businessmen.
A Microsoft spokeswoman said Gates was surprised but handled the incident with some grace. His biggest complaint, she said, was that the pie wasn’t very tasty.
For Godin, the Gates attack was something of a career highlight.
It Was More Than a Prank
The stranger Godin’s career became, the more seriously he appeared to take the philosophy behind it.
In a 1998 interview with First Monday, Godin was described as a Belgian author who had made Gates the 25th famous victim of his pie-throwing campaign. His targets weren’t selected at random: He focused on people he believed represented power, celebrity or self-importance.
His methods were deliberately theatrical.
The attacks involved accomplices, elaborate planning and quick escapes. Godin’s followers reportedly adopted the same playful spirit, using the cry “Gloup! Gloup! Gloup!” as part of the performances.
He also wrote about his philosophy in books, including Crème et châtiment: mémoire d’un entarteur, a memoir about his life as a pie thrower.
That combination of performance art, political protest and slapstick made Godin difficult to categorize.
Bill Gates Was Far From His Only Famous Victim
Godin’s career stretched well beyond the 1998 Gates incident.
His victims included people from the worlds of cinema, politics, television and philosophy. Godard was among those targeted, while Lévy became one of Godin’s most frequent victims.
The attacks sometimes became almost a running joke.
Lévy, 77, was reportedly pied multiple times, while Godin’s antics became so well known around European cultural events that the prospect of being targeted by him was part of the spectacle itself. A 2011 Guardian retrospective described Godin as someone who had transformed the custard pie into a political art form.
And he kept going.
One of his final reported targets was Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, whom Godin said he pied outside the European Commission in Brussels in September 2023.
By then, Godin had been throwing pies at public figures for more than 50 years.
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