Celebrated French YouTuber and prankster Rémi Gaillard suffered a cardiac episode while driving between his home town of Montpellier (Hérault) and Sommières (Gard) last May.
During his subsequent hospitalisation, messages of support poured in from everyone from French politicians and artists, to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
The latter confessed to being a huge fan of his videos and gags
News of his illness also prompted renewed interest in his career, following a lengthy hiatus from the internet.
Rémi Gaillard is a household name in French comedy, and currently boasts more than 7.4 million subscribers on YouTube.
He carved out a name for himself in the early 2000s by performing pranks on unsuspecting members of the public, insisting: “C’est en faisant n’importe quoi que l’on devient n’importe qui” (‘It is by doing whatever that we become whoever’).
Gaillard was born on February 7, 1975 to an engineer father and a secretary mother. His parents divorced when he was four.
He was a mediocre student who failed at his Baccalauréat four times, but a talented footballer who was a striker for Entente Cressoise in the French lower division.
Obsessed with Christophe Dechavanne, a French TV and radio presenter and programme producer, Gaillard actually got the idea for his performance style while watching another TV favourite, presenter Julien Courbet.
Hidden cameras
“One of Courbet’s shows broadcast these hidden cameras with Pascal Sellem [a French actor and comedian]. It motivated me. No offence to Mr Sellem, but I thought that anybody could make that sort of TV,” he said, explaining how it all started.
His ambition was initially thwarted when his showreels received a string of rejections. He claims one idea was even copied by Dechavanne for one of his programmes.
Instead, he released them on the internet.
His first pranks saw him gatecrash high-profile sporting moments, the most famous of which was when he joined FC Lorient’s players on the pitch as they celebrated their victory at the 2002 Coupe de France. Dressed in the club’s shirt, he managed to hold the trophy and even received congratulations from then-president Jacques Chirac, who told him he had played very well.
The idea then evolved into pranking other unsuspecting members of the public, often dressed as an animal or video game character.
He would madden motorists, for example, crawling down public roads in a snail costume, or race around supermarkets dressed as Pac-Man being pursued by coloured ghosts.
“It’s pretty simple. I can’t walk into a place without thinking: ‘What can be the stupidest thing to do here?’” he said in an interview for French media Le Crayon.
Internet sensation
His videos have attracted millions of views, making him one of France’s first internet sensations, and his n’importe qui approach was translated to a film of the same name in 2014.
Gaillard slowly lost momentum in the 2010s, overtaken by comics who used YouTube in a slicker way rather than simply to repost old videos.
His content gradually fell out of fashion too, frequently criticised for being too beauf, the French term for unsophisticated or crass.
Two videos, called Free Sex and Dog, were singled out for criticism. In these, he pranked women by mimicking sexual acts against their wishes. Feminist magazine Madmoizelle described it as a trivialisation of sexual assault while other said it contributed to ‘rape culture’.
He was also accused of plagiarism by British comic Dom Joly, who said Gaillard’s snail stunt too closely resembled the one on his hit series Trigger Happy TV.
For his part, Gaillard claimed the practice was common among comedians and produced clips showing that he, in turn, had been copied in the Netherlands, Brazil, Canada and Australia.
Over time, his pranks became more sporadic.
UFO
One, involving a UFO on TF1 in 2021, harked back to Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama. Another involved a fake robbery of Back to the Future’s DeLorean DMC-12 car in 2022.
Gaillard has also used his fame to champion animal rights issues following the death of his dog in 2012.
“When he died, it left me in pieces. It was a real turning point in my life,” he told 20 Minutes.
One of his most famous political stunts saw him live for five days and four nights in a cage to denounce the poor treatment of animals. In the process, he raised €200,000 for the Société protectrice des animaux, France’s oldest animal protection association.
He also founded Anymal, his own association, to create refuges for animals. It spawned three festivals from 2017 to 2019.
In 2020, Gaillard ran for mayor of Montpellier as an independent. His poster campaign claimed: “Yes We Clown” – a play on Barack Obama’s famous “Yes We Can” campaign in 2008. “Vote for a real clown. Vote ‘n'importe qui” the text read below. He won 9.58% of the vote.
Six months ago, Gaillard’s YouTube channel released a video called Epilogue, in which he is seen burying the logos of many social media platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram with a shovel.
Many have speculated it could be notification of his official retirement and a desire to return to n’importe qui anonymity.
Most popular pranks
Kangaroo
93 million views
Dressed in a kangaroo outfit, Gaillard ‘escapes’ from a wildlife park and wreaks havoc with his hopping, including splashing a woman in a puddle and showering a holidaymaker with sand on the beach
Mario Kart
80 million views
Gaillard brings the hit Nintendo computer game to life racing real-life drivers on the streets of France with a go-kart, oversized moustache and ready supply of bananas, occasionally pursued by police officers…
Pac-Man
75 million views
A return to the gaming world for Gaillard – this time as a life-size Pac-Man taking on a maze of supermarket aisles to the bewilderment of shoppers, before being taken down by an irate golfer
What they say about him
“There really is a Rémi Gaillard phenomenon. He's a prime example of someone who is revealed by the internet after failing to make it through the traditional media.”
Marc Eychenne, then editorial director of Dailymotion, in 2009.
“I found these videos vile. It qualifies as sexual assault. This is what many women go through every day. This man behind it is a sick b**tard and does not make me laugh at all.”
French journalist, TV presenter and politician Audrey Pulvar, on Gaillard’s Free Sex pranks
“I have contacted him repeatedly over the past 10 years to ask him to stop stealing my material. No answer [...]. I think he’s a comedy thief.”
Dom Joly on Twitter in 2017
