Merde! The Artist's Jean Dujardin was in a French boyband

Oh, look! It's Jean Dujardin, Golden Globe winner and star of Oscar-frontrunner The Artist, wearing a tight orange t-shirt and singing on top of a mountain with a fat guy! I hear that's how Clooney got started.
I hate to be like one of those awful Angus Deayton BBC programmes which snort and sneer at successful people doing menial entertainment jobs before they became famous, but DAYUM. This video - helpfully unearthed by @Jellyfish62 - shows Dujardin as part of comedy trio 'Nous C Nous', a product of French talent show Graines de star (French to English translation: The *Shrugs* Factor).

That's not particularly embarrassing in itself, but... well, this video is. There's no way around it: Jean Dujardin - the man tipped for Oscar success next month with the most critically-acclaimed film of the year - is cavorting around on a mountaintop in a bright orange t-shirt, claiming his name is "Axel" and grinding with his overweight singing partner in a jacuzzi.



This won't come as much of a surprise to our Parisian readers (hello, both of you!), nor will the fact that Dujardin has a history in character comedy in both movies and TV. In fact, the more I read up on him, the more I'm convinced he's the French Sacha Baron Cohen: an immensely talented, charismatic guy with a great chin, who just likes to dick around given half the chance. I can relate to a chap like that.

Here's a trailer for Dujardin's premiere comedy vehicle, pre-Hollywood fame: a surf dude parody called 'Brice de Nice'. This would appear to be his 'Ali G Indahouse', but that can't be confirmed at present time.



He even performed the soundtrack himself. Maybe he's actually the French Dennis Waterman.