venta

Over the course of this weekend, I have finally resolved something which has been puzzling me slightly (but not quite enough to force me to look it up) for years.

I have long been confused about the name Bergerac. I'm vaguely aware that it should be preceded by the names Cyrano and de, and that it relates to a character on the television in the 70s or 80s. I'm aware noses are involved. I've never quite managed to make sense of things people have said about Bergerac.

On Thursday, I heard the first ten minutes of Will Smith[*] on radio 4, presenting "The Tao of Bergerac". Which is a comedy series, only I didn't find it at all funny, hence only hearing ten minutes. Anyway, in that ten minutes one thing became apparent: DI Bergerac, a Jersey detective, has the first name Jim.

Which was good, because it led to a sudden revelation: DI Jim Bergerac and Cyrano de Bergerac are different people. Which was good, because I thought Cyrano de Bergerac was a historial figure, and thus unlikely to be solving crimes in late nineteenth century Jersey. It did give me another problem, though. Who exactly was Cyrano ? I wasn't even sure whether he was a historical figure or a fictional character.

A bit of poking about on line reveals that actually... well, kind of both. He was a 17thC playwright, but is now mostly known via various more-or-less fictional plays and stories written around his life. In the best known of which he is portrayed as having a very large nose - this formed the basis of the plot for the film Roxanne, which I believe I saw many years ago. Cyrano has absolutely nothing to do with the TV detective.

So that's that all sorted out then. All I need to work out now is why I was so convinced that the name Simone de Beauvoir was strongly linked with Cyrano de Bergerac in my mind. Since she lived 300 years later, I'm guessing they probably weren't a couple after all.

[*] That's Will Smith the Jersey-born Bergerac obsessive, not the Fresh Prince guy.