Philippe Geluck was born on May 7, 1954, in Brussels. His father, Didier Geluck, was a communist activist and press cartoonist working under the pseudonym “Diluck,” while his mother studied classical singing at the Conservatory. His parents met in an amateur theater troupe, and it was within this creative and artistic environment that his vocation emerged at an early age.
His father and older brother introduced him as a child to authors such as Jean-Jacques Sempé, Tomi Ungerer, Saul Steinberg, Chaval, Siné and Reiser, as well as to the magazine Bizarre and the satirical newspaper Hara-Kiri. In 1972, he enrolled at INSAS, which led him to perform on the stage of the National Theatre of Belgium from 1975 onward. There, he appeared in productions such as Romeo and Juliet, The Threepenny Opera, and Faust. In 1982, he created the one-man show Un certain plume by Henri Michaux, which met with considerable success.
From 1978 onward, he became the host of sharp-witted comedic programs on the Belgian broadcaster RTBF, creating shows such as Lollipop, L'Esprit de famille, L'Empire des médias, and Les Imbuvables. Between 1988 and 1999, he was part of the teams behind Le Jeu des dictionnaires and La Semaine infernale. In 1991, he received the award for Funniest Television Program at the Rose d'Or de Montreux.
But one creation in particular would make him world famous. On March 22, 1983, commissioned by the major Belgian newspaper Le Soir, he created Le Chat, a comic strip character whose popularity would continue to grow far beyond the borders of the French-speaking world. The Cat is an anthropomorphic, stylized figure with deliberately awkward and stereotypical features, whose humor oscillates between puns, wordplay, and a delightfully absurd and metaphysical philosophy. Between March 26 and June 9, 2021, twenty monumental bronze statues of Le Chat were exhibited along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Since 1996, he has regularly appeared on the programs of Laurent Ruquier, and since September 1999, he has collaborated on Vivement Dimanche Prochain alongside Michel Drucker on France 2.
Actor, writer, painter, and sculptor, Philippe Geluck is far more than a press cartoonist: for more than forty years, he has embodied a certain idea of Francophone humor — at once popular, intelligent, and insolent.
Philippe Geluck seized this prison door with the same joyful freedom and mischievous spirit that have defined Le Chat for over four decades. Upon this worn white surface, chipped away by time, he installed his universe as though it had always belonged there — naturally, irresistibly.
For perhaps that is Geluck’s true genius on this door: understanding that humor is the most formidable form of resistance against confinement. “The prison for handsome guys? You’re in it!”, “The guard is as nice as a prison door,” “Free Geluck,” “I am free to think whatever I want to sing”… Every sentence is a joke, yet every joke is also a small victory over the absurdity of the world.
