“The octopus has almost become a symbol of pop culture”

After working on the Nolife channel, this video game fan adapted the Quebec show “Les Recettes pompettes” for YouTube. He presents “Crac-crac”, an exploration of sexuality broadcast by Canal +.

Where does your nickname come from, Monsieur Poulpe?

These are friends who called me like that in college. I was already making videos, comics, writing songs, playing, suddenly I had a sprawling artistic activity, and at the same time I always seemed very soft physically.

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Do you have other nicknames?

My relatives sometimes call me “Poulpy” or “Poulpon”. It is affectionate. To make it concrete, I also have a nice pink octopus tattooed on my stomach. But rest assured, there is no split-personality story behind this.

Do you never feel in competition with your animal mascot?

No, but when the show “Les Recette pompettes” started, I had a lot of press, and I had dethroned the animal on Google Images. When you typed “octopus”, I was the first to appear. It lasted a month, but it was still a great victory.

How do you analyze the current craze around the octopus?

The animal is graphically very interesting with all its arms. It is this visual side more than intelligence that attracts creatives, geeks. Suddenly, it is found in many different genres, cartoons for children, horror. The big bad of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean has an octopus head. The little invaders of the game Space Invaders also look like poorly made octopus. It has almost become a symbol of pop culture, like Darth Vader’s helmet. Now the trend is for cute and sweet octopus. But maybe he’ll be mean again in a little while.

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Do you claim the qualities of octopus?

Ben, the adaptation. Fingers that stick out. Ink, I put ink everywhere for my job, if we want to raise the debate a little.

And the camouflage side?

Sometimes, I am so encrusted in my sofa watching series or films that indeed, I can take a little color; in any case I follow the shape, that’s for sure. I imagine you are going to talk about Paul the octopus, who made predictions for football matches?

Yes…

Little anecdote: in fact he died during the World Cup in I don’t know what year [2010], I was at Large Journal [sur Canal+]. And Antoine de Caunes had this kind of horrible idea that characterizes him, he said to me: “Wait, Paul the octopus is dead, you just have to replace him for the predictions.” “ I found myself in an aquarium in Marne-la-Vallée. I was in a suit, with weights, at the bottom of a 5-meter-deep tank and I recorded lots of predictions.

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