Imaginary interview with Pierre Dac
by Charactorium · Pierre Dac (1893 — 1975) · Performing Arts · Literature · 6 min read
London, one evening in 1943, in the hushed corridors of Bush House. Between two recordings for the BBC, a small man with a mischievous look and a neatly trimmed mustache sets his text down on a wooden table. Pierre Dac agrees to talk, on condition, he warns, that he is never taken entirely seriously.
—How did the idea of a "Society of Crackpots" of which you proclaimed yourself president come about?
You see, I always thought that seriousness was a contagious disease from which France needed to be vaccinated. In 1936, on the radio, I launched La Société des Loufoques, and I naturally took the presidency, for lack of a competitor crazy enough to challenge me. Loufoque is not stupidity; it's logic pushed until it tips over. Two years later, in 1938, I founded L'Os à moelle, a weekly entirely devoted to nonsense: fake classified ads, impossible recipes, a serial whose end no one knew, myself included. People laughed, and I felt I was doing a public service. They called me irresponsible. I replied that that was precisely my responsibility.
Loufoque is not stupidity; it's logic pushed until it tips over.
—What was a typical day like when you were creating this kind of absurdity?
I confess without shame that I got up very late. A chansonnier who comes home at two in the morning cannot decently open his eyes before noon; that would be lacking professional rigor. The morning: coffee and newspapers — I read the serious press to find inspiration, because nothing is funnier than a news item taken literally. The afternoon: I wrote — an article for L'Os à moelle, a song, a dialogue. In the evening, finally, I went on stage at the cabarets of Montmartre, in a neat suit, pressed shirt, sometimes a hat. That elegance mattered: the more sober my attire, the crazier my texts could be. Contrast, sir, that's the secret of a well-worn calembour.
—You had to abandon everything in 1940. What remains of that moment?
In 1940, I was made to understand that a Jew named André Isaac no longer had the right to make anyone laugh. I saw my Société des Loufoques dissolved by a stroke of the pen by people who, themselves, never joked. So I wanted to leave, to reach London. It was an ordeal of which I still find no comic side: several attempts via Spain, arrest, then months of detention at the Miranda de Ebro camp, and Barcelona afterwards. There I learned that the absurd could cease to be funny and simply become the backdrop. It was only in 1943 that I finally set foot in London. I was alive, thin, and furiously determined to use the only weapon I had left: laughter.
I learned that the absurd could cease to be funny and simply become the backdrop.
—Once in London, how did you come to confront Philippe Henriot at the microphone?
I was put before a BBC microphone, right here at Bush House, for Les Français parlent aux Français. On the other side, on Vichy's airwaves, there was Philippe Henriot, the beautiful voice of propaganda, who could make treason sound melodious. One day, he attacked me by name. I could have replied with a speech; I chose to reply in song, because a man you make laugh is already half disarmed. I sang to him: "And that's why your daughter is mute, Molière would say if he were still here. You've fallen very low, Monsieur Henriot." Our jousts became a duel that listeners followed from one station to another. My nonsense, this time, had a very precise meaning.
A man you make laugh is already half disarmed.
—What did that microphone represent for a disarmed man, exiled, with no other power?
That microphone was my rifle, sir, and I held it dearer than my life. Consider that at the same moment, in occupied homes, families leaned over their TSF sets, ear pressed close, volume as low as possible to avoid being heard by neighbors. My voice arrived there, in that dimness, over the jamming. I told myself that Vichy's propaganda wanted to extinguish hope, and my task was to rekindle a little every evening. I wrote for them: "Frenchmen, I speak to you from London, the city where hope never died, where freedom found refuge." Resisting through humor is not frivolous; it is refusing the enemy the right to steal even our laughter.
That microphone was my rifle, sir, and I held it dearer than my life.
—You were already decorated from the Great War. Did that soldier's past weigh on your commitment?
It is often forgotten, but I wore the uniform long before the microphone. Mobilized in 1914, wounded, I earned the Croix de Guerre — a little metal thing pinned on the chest that reminds you you might no longer have one. So I had already paid my dues to the fatherland when, in 1940, it claimed I was no longer worthy of it. So you understand my anger. Joining General de Gaulle's Free France was not for me a late conversion, but an act of loyalty. I had defended France with weapons; I would defend her again, with songs. The caliber changes, the intention remains.
—After the war, how did that outsized serial, Signé Furax, come about?
At the Liberation, I found Paris again and a brilliant accomplice, Francis Blanche. Together, starting in 1951, we committed Signé Furax, a radio serial that was supposed to last a few weeks and lasted for years — more than a thousand episodes, if one dares to count. We wrote in the afternoon, with two voices, two pens, in an escalation of wordplay of which we were the first delighted victims. There was the Boudu, grotesque plots, twists we sometimes invented the day before for the next day. Millions of listeners followed it like a religion. With Francis, we had found the rare happiness of making someone laugh who makes you laugh in return: perfect collaboration is a duel where both win.
Perfect collaboration is a duel where both win.
—What, in your opinion, made this four-handed work so fruitful?
The secret, you see, is that Francis Blanche and I never sought to be right, only to be wrong in the funniest way possible. We started from a perfectly serious espionage situation and derailed it, pun after pun, into total absurdity. The radio serial is a cruel art: each episode must end on a threat, otherwise the listener goes to bed peacefully, which is a crime. We continued later with Bons baisers de partout, another burlesque spy saga. Radio allowed everything, because the listener built the sets in his own head. We only provided the voices and the vertigo. The rest, he imagined better than we could have filmed it.
—In 1965, you ran for president. Seriously?
Most seriously, which was the whole joke. In 1965, I announced my candidacy for the Élysée on the radio under the banner of the Movement Order and Novelty, whose initials, if you listen closely, form a word of great philosophical import. My platform promised the impossible with an aplomb that many real candidates might envy: it was a farce, yes, but a farce that held up a mirror. For what is a campaign, if not a nonsense that no one dares call by that name? I subverted the forms of seriousness — the rally, the slogan, the promise — to show how inherently comical they are. People laughed a lot. I hope a few also reflected.
What is a campaign, if not a nonsense that no one dares call by that name?
—Your aphorisms, these "thoughts," have the form of wisdom but do the opposite. Why this subversion?
Because wisdom, sir, too often has a grave voice and a raised finger. The aphorism claims to enclose a truth in a sentence; I enclose a trap. In 1972, I collected my Pensées, where I enjoy imitating the form of the proverb to explode it from within. For instance: "Those who know nothing always know as much as those who know no more than they do." It means nothing, and yet it leaves you pensive for three seconds — those three seconds are my work. The calembour and nonsense are not the enemy of thought; they are its cleansing. First you laugh, then you doubt. That, I believe, is the proper order of things.
First you laugh, then you doubt. That is the proper order of things.
—If you could imagine being read a century from now, what would you want to remain of you?
That is a question I can only answer in the conditional, for predicting the future is the only profession where one is never fired for incompetence. If I were still read, I would like this to be remembered: from L'Os à moelle to the London microphone, I always believed that laughter was a serious thing, perhaps the most serious of all. I may have been taken for a whimsical fellow; I spent my life defending, under the loufoque, the freedom of the mind. When I rest in the Montparnasse Cemetery, I hope a passerby will smile at my stone instead of sighing. That would be my finest decoration — after the Croix de Guerre, of course, to which I remain sentimentally attached.
I always believed that laughter was a serious thing, perhaps the most serious of all.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Pierre Dac's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.