Gaul with a sudden urge

You probably saw the story in the world media, a few weeks ago, about the French actor Gérard Depardieu at the start of a flight from Dublin to Paris.

He informed the cabin crew that he had an urgent need to pee. Since the plane was taking off, the toilets were out of bounds. So, Depardieu was obliged to pee into a plastic bottle. But this recipient turned out to be far too small for his voluminous production of piss… so you can imagine the uncontrolled splashes and the subsequent mess.

My readers are no doubt familiar with the cunning little Gaul named Asterix, and his bulky but immensely powerful companion Obelix.

Obelix is a hearty eater, with a constant yearning for wild pig. At a single sitting, he's capable of consuming, all on his own, several baked boars. In October last year, I mentioned this meat in my blog post entitled Celtic cooking [display].

Getting back to the Depardieu incident, the actor had been in Ireland for the shooting of a film about these heroic Gauls. As in a previous movie, Depardieu was playing Obelix, and his fellow-actor Edouard Baer was playing Asterix. Well, they've just released a French-language video in which Obelix, at the start of a plane flight, is beset by a sudden urge to eat roast boar (in French, sanglier).

An excellent publicity gimmick for the forthcoming film! Besides, here's a nice CNN interview concerning the notorious Depardieu incident:

In a totally different domain, here's a curious photo that shows a wild boar, on a beach in Brittany (home of Asterix and Obelix), about to be taken for a ride on a quad bike.

Are they about to prepare a Celtic banquet? Not exactly. It's one of a dozen or so dead bodies of wild boars that were no doubt poisoned by toxic hydrogen sulfide gas emitted by a thick layer of decaying seaweeds. The seaweeds thrive at the outlet of a stream that is polluted by nitrates used abundantly by local farmers… many of whom raise domestic pigs.