Noël Godin, famous Belgian pie-thrower, dies at 80

Noël Godin, the Belgian anarchist artist and humorist famous for his cream pie attacks on public figures, has died at the age of 80. He passed away on Sunday in Brussels.

Godin, often using the pseudonym Georges Le Gloupier, became an international figure through his practice of “entartage” (pieing), which he used as a tool of political and social satire to target individuals he deemed overly vain or pretentious. His first notable target was the writer Marguerite Duras in 1969.

Among his most famous targets were philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom he reportedly pied eight times, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whom he hit in 1998 in Brussels. Other high-profile figures targeted by Godin or his associates included Jean-Luc Godard, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Patrick Bruel. He described his method as a form of “burlesque pacifism,” aiming to strike at the ego rather than the physical body of his victims.