François Pirette

Francois Pirette, whose real name is Thierry Van Cauberg, born on 7 February 1963, is a Belgian Walloon comedian originally from Jemappes (in the municipality of Mons). His career began on the eve of his twentieth birthday at the RTBF in radio on 9 January 1983. He had been hired as a student worker as a switchboard operator during weekends before being promoted to head his own Sunday program, in which he offered telephone pranks for nearly 10 years. He wrote his first one-man show in 1992. In 1994, he went to France and joined the team of the radio program Rien a cirer on France Inter with Laurent Ruquier. In 1996, he returned to Belgium and wrote his second one-man show: J'ai tres bien connu Chose.

In 2004, he left the RTBF and joined the private channel RTL-TVI, which offered him his own quarterly program: the Pirette show, in which he produced sketches and parodies. In 2012, the channel offered him a monthly "show-program" called Les gens d'en bas, recorded at the "On Air Studio" in Mons. To celebrate his 30 years of career, he organized a tour called C'etait trop 30 ans, which he played throughout Wallonia and in Brussels from February to December 2014. In spring 2018, he went on tour for 2 months with his show Francois Pirette fait son comic'out.

His shows take the form of sketches in which he embodies various characters depicting Belgian society, largely inspired by his native region and his own family. He became famous with characters such as Amedee, an octogenarian living in a retirement home; la maman de Nathalie, a caricature of the Belgian middle-class housewife; Nathalie, a teenager; and la maman de Kevin, the best-known character among Belgians, from the very famous sketch J'ai tres bien connu Chose. He has also created sketches addressing community tensions in Belgium and political problems. His show Asile politique, broadcast on 18 December 2007 on RTL-TVI, gathered an average of 950,000 Belgians.