Though Belgians have changed the world in countless ways, many people, particularly in Britain, struggle to name any. With Limburg’s Luca Brecel winning the world snooker crown, there is at least one globally recognisable person, to the relief of Geoff Meade
Ever been stumped by that old party game in which you have to name ten famous Belgians?
You might run out of steam after identifying Eddy Merckx, Jacques Brel and Kevin De Bruyne.
Then someone dares to suggest that Hercule Poirot and Tintin don’t count because they don’t exist, which is a bit harsh, especially as Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes are universally acknowledged treasures despite also being condemned as fictitious.
Anyway, whoever is on your personal list of Belgians, there’s now a newly globally famous kid on the block and, by whatever yardstick you use to measure real fame, he’s suddenly right up there, in the spotlight, not just for five minutes but for all time.
His name is Luca Brecel, recently crowned as World Snooker Champion after demolishing titans including the UK legend Ronnie ‘The Rocket’ O’Sullivan on his way to the title.
Luca’s been dubbed the ‘Belgian Bullet’ by the Brits because of his quick-fire playing style and deadly accuracy on the table.
I prefer the corny but unavoidable soubriquet ‘Snooker Luca’, but whatever you call him, the key thing is not the snooker per se but the glory reflected on this nation by one of its own, whatever the field of endeavour.
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To make the grade, the fame must be lasting, and Luca joins a list of Belgian notables, some long dead, some very much alive and some eternal (Poirot and Tintin) because his world championship title wasn’t a fluke. He’s been impressing his snooker peers since turning professional as a young teenager, but it’s taken years of graft to get his game together sufficiently to cut through consistently at the highest level.
Luca was interviewed in this magazine in September last year because he’s been an emerging star in Belgium for ages. But even those few months ago, no one was predicting him becoming the world number one or anything like it so soon.
In fact, since the world snooker championship was launched in the UK nearly 100 years ago, it’s been overwhelmingly a British-dominated game. Despite a great array of impressive professionals from elsewhere, there have only occasionally been non-UK world champions so far, from Ireland, Canada and Australia.
So when Snooker Luca triumphed, and the crowds in the Crucible theatre in Sheffield, England, went wild, the television and radio commentators were at pains to point out that the Belgian was the first snooker player from mainland Europe to reach the top in the game’s history.
Luca Brecel after winning...
Which raised, if only momentarily, the following question: is this stunning result another unforeseen negative (for the UK) consequence of Brexit?
Probably not. In 2017 Luca had already been hailed as the first player from mainland Europe to win a ranking event when he clinched that year’s Chinese snooker championship – and the Chinese have some formidable players themselves.
Stoking snooker fervour
Roll on to 2023 and here he was, back in Sheffield competing for the world title, having previously been knocked out in the first round of the same tournament five times.
This time, not only did he get through to the second round, but he went on to beat the best in the business, often after trailing far behind and having to work his way back into contention. It was gripping stuff, unless snooker bores you, in which case I urge you to keep reading because this article is supposed to be about lists of famous Belgians.
The first thing Luca did after winning the title and picking up a cash prize of £500,000 (€575,891) was to say he hoped he’d raised excitement levels about snooker back home – a goal comprehensively achieved a few days later when he posted a picture of the red Ferrari he’d just bought with half his championship pay packet.
Belgian enthusiasm for snooker has been growing for many decades in fact, thanks to international television coverage of the game (it can’t honestly really be called a sport because it’s too sedentary). At the same time, the number of snooker halls in Brussels seems to have been falling for some time, despite some very handy professional Belgian players maintaining interest.
But Luca is the first of them who can claim a place on a list of famous Belgians.
This brings me back to my point: is there a single, official list of famous Belgians?
Not really, because who would decide who qualifies?
That doesn’t stop people from challenging us long-serving ex-pat residents of this country to name some famous Belgians apart from Poirot, Tintin and that bloke who wrote the Inspector Maigret books.
These days there are plenty of online lists of famous people from Belgium and many other nations if you’re interested. However, it wasn’t so long ago that foreign diplomats based in Brussels used to rely on laminated cards given to them by their embassies bearing the names of worthy Belgian citizens.
The aim back then obviously was to avoid diplomats getting caught in tricky cocktail party conversations when one of the Belgian hosts suddenly asks: “What do you think of Frimout? Such a fine example to us all!”
At that point, the confident but ignorant diplomatic could start bluffing about Frimout’s post-modernistic influence in the context of a shifting societal vortex vis-à-vis the underlying crypto-political maelstrom. Said diplomatic might even, after a third glass of Veuve Clicquot, claim to have at least one of Frimout’s paintings. “Ah, Free-moo! Yes, indeed! What a legacy! Such a credit to, um, ah, to the entire Belgian nation and um, such brilliance, such vision in one so…um…”
Hopefully, by then a tray of mini-sausage rolls might have appeared to save the day and change the subject.
The more cautious option, on hearing the name, would be to rush to the bathroom to check whether Frimout is one of those included on your particular embassy’s laminated list.
And of course, he is, and always will be, because astrophysicist Dirk Frimout, still going strong at 82, was an astronaut and the first Belgian in space and will never lose his stature.
Diplomatic cheat notes
The only time I had a peek at one of these lists was more than 20 years ago when a diplomat hosting a party for journalists turned the tables on the guests and challenged us to try to name the 19 famous Belgians that his ambassador had decided merited a place on the list which he admitted had frequently saved him embarrassment in Belgian social circles.
None of us could name them all. Far from it: the list didn’t include 1970s punk-pop idol Plastic Bertrand, and certainly not Luca Brecel, and although it didn’t mention Poirot or Tintin it did include the fictional comic book stars Suske and Wiske.
Most of us couldn’t get beyond Magritte, Merckx and, of course, Toots Thielemans, who used to play at magnificent Sunday brunch sessions at the Sheraton hotel at Zaventem airport decades ago (was his harmonica drowned out by the noise of incoming and outgoing flights? Not at all – it turns out that triple glazed windows are exponentially more sound-proof than double glazed ones).
I like to think diplomats still keep such lists concealed in a jacket pocket or handbag, updating them when, as now, a Luca Brecel or equivalent joins the realms of the Belgian great and good.
In the meantime, here’s the full list of those 19 Belgian names which at least one foreign embassy thought its staff should be familiar when if they cropped up in polite conversation on the drinks-and-nibbles circuit in Brussels back in 2001.
You get extra points if you know who they are or were and what they do or did: Rene Magritte, Jean-Michel Saive, Jean ‘Toots’ Thielemans, Ulla Werbrouck, Jacques Brel, Helmut Lotti, Dirk Frimout, Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery, Thierry Boutsen, Ivo Van Damme, Will Tura, Hugo Claus, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Raymond Ceulemans, Eddie Merckx, Adolphe Sax, Jaco Van Dormael, Victora Horta, Suske and Wiske.
