Jean-François Mercier (born 19 July 1967) is a

comedian A comedian (feminine comedienne) or comic is a person who seeks to entertainment, entertain an audience by making them laughter, laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolishly (as in slapstick), or employing prop c ...

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

and

television host A television presenter (or television host, some become a "television personality") is a person who introduces or hosts television programs, often serving as a mediator for the program and the audience. It is common for people who garnered fam ...

from

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, Canada. Mercier's comedy features his scruffy appearance and mixes social criticism with vulgarity, curse words and expressions of

anger Anger, also known as wrath ( ; ) or rage (emotion), rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong, uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt, or threat. A person experiencing anger will often experie ...

. Self-nicknamed ''Le Gros Cave'' ( French for ''fat dumbass'') he gained recognition through TV show appearances in ''The Mike Ward Show'' in the early 2000s, where he played a recurring character known as 'The Frustrated Guy'. Mercier later had his own

one-man show A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show, one-woman show, or one-person show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieti ...

, appeared several times at

's French comedy festival '' Just For Laughs'' and was one of the screenwriters of TV show ''

Les Bougon ''Les Bougon - c'est aussi ça la vie!'' is a Quebec sitcom broadcast by Radio-Canada from 2004 to 2006, written by François Avard and Jean-François Mercier and produced by Fabienne Larouche. The show won three Gémeaux in 2004. The show's ...

''. Starting in 2010, he hosted his

late-night talk show A late-night talk show is a genre of talk show, originating in the American Media, United States. It is generally structured around humorous monologues about the day's news, guest interviews, comedy sketches and music performances. It is charact ...

''Un gars le soir'' (''One guy at night'') at V. In the late 1990s, he was hired as an

actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

in the short-lived

tabloid talk show A tabloid talk show is a subgenre of the talk show genre that emphasizes controversial and sensationalistic topical subject matter. The subgenre originated in the United States and achieved peak viewership from the mid-1980s through the end of th ...

''Black out'', where he appeared as a common man in the audience trying to spark controversy. In 2011, Mercier stood as an

independent candidate An independent politician or non-affiliated politician is a politician not affiliated with any political party or bureaucratic association. There are numerous reasons why someone may stand for office as an independent. Some politicians have polit ...

in the Canadian federal election in the riding of

Chambly—Borduas Chambly—Borduas (also previously known as Chambly and Chambly—Verchères) was a federal electoral district in the province of Quebec, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1867 to 1935, and from 1968 to 2015. ...

. One of his electoral promises was to add a second Mercier bridge, since he and the bridge shared the same

surname In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give ...

. In a 24 April 2011 '' Journal de Montréal'' poll, 15% of the voters of the Chambly-Borduas riding had the intention to vote for Mercier, polling higher than the Liberal and

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

candidates. The

Bloc Québécois The Bloc Québécois (, , BQ) is a centre-left politics, centre-left and list of federal political parties in Canada, federal political party in Canada devoted to Quebec nationalism, Quebecois nationalism, social democracy, and the promotion o ...

MP Yves Lessard denounced Mercier's campaign as "a sad use of democracy". Mercier finished third with 11% of the vote, beating both the Liberal and

candidates, though losing to NDP's Matthew Dubé.

References

External links

* 1967 births Living people Canadian stand-up comedians Comedians from Montreal {{Canada-comedian-stub