![]() ![]() With his short dark hair and friendly face, Batchelor may have simply offered a physical resemblance to Bean in the eyes of his Iranian guards. Which is what most visual comedians are about: Stan Laurel, Chaplin, Benny Hill." ![]() "The essence of Mr Bean is that he's entirely selfish and self-centred and doesn't actually acknowledge the outside world," he said. As Stephen Fry once memorably said of Atkinson: "It is as if God had an extra jar of comic talent, and for a joke gave it to a nerdy, anoraked northern chemist." Atkinson himself has said he based Bean on his nine-year-old self. Mainly, however, Bean was the result of decades of the comic studying himself. One of the many ironies in this story is that Atkinson says his quintessentially British creation was in part inspired by a French comic character, Monsieur Hulot, invented by French actor, director, writer and producer Jacques Tati, who released a series of films, including Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. If Mr Bean has become an inadvertent ambassador for the British personality, it is uncomfortable not just for Batchelor, but for millions of us. Resplendent in geeky tweed, the Mini-driving Mr Bean increasingly seems to be a symbol of Britishness around the globe. And if you ask a non-Brit to describe Mr Bean, these are the words they deliver back: hapless, awkward, self-conscious, childlike, disaster-prone. The lastest Bean film, Mr Bean's Holiday, is a global smash hit, No 1 in 21 countries and top of the international box office. Mr Bean is one of the most successful British cultural exports ever: since the first Bean TV show was broadcast in 1990, its 14 half-hour programmes have been sold to more than 200 TV territories worldwide and shown on more than 50 airlines. "I asked the interpreter what was going on and he said: 'They think you look like Mr Bean.' They were trying to make me feel like a fool, hoping that I would give away secrets to prove that I wasn't." making me feel about three inches tall," he told the Mirror. "All I could make out in their language were the words 'Mr Bean'. But what really seemed to enrage the 20-year-old Royal Navy operator maintainer was his interrogation. Singled out by his captors in the mistaken belief he was the navigator of the British vessel that had supposedly strayed into Iranian waters, Arthur Batchelor was blindfolded, tied with plastic handcuffs and kept in solitary confinement for days. T he young sailor was subjected to an ordeal he found "beyond terrifying". ![]()
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