Mr Bean plays Rowan Atkinson

Mr Bean plays Rowan Atkinson

It’s a blessed relief that Mr Bean doesn’t speak. For if he did, we commoners wouldn’t understand a word of what he’s saying. Because not only did he earn a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Newcastle University to begin with, he followed that up with a MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen’s College, Oxford, with his thesis talking of the application of the self-tuning control.

Clearly no laughing matter, considering we see enough of his mechanical/electrical prowess when it comes to automobile racing and how he held the top slot in TopGear’s Man in a Reasonably Priced Car for a long, long time. No, clearly Rowan Atkinson, CBE, is a genius, a man without equal.

After starting off with BBC Radio, Atkinson first came into the limelight with the very popular Not the Nine O’ Clock News, before starring in the runaway hit, Blackadder. It was with Blackadder that Atkinson started to turn into a household name in the United Kingdom. And even that wasn’t when he peaked. That came later with the half-hour special called Mr Bean, the silent, bumbling fool who never quite seemed to comprehend the extent of his own fool-hardy stupidity and instead, who went on to make several more television specials and eventually, feature films, and brought us a new, modern version of a Buster Keaton meets the Tramp. Even though Atkinson acknowledged Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot as his main inspiration behind the Mr Bean character, what the word saw was a genuinely foolish, but extremely loveable man who just couldn’t get things right – repeatedly.

And Mr Bean continued, undeterred, without ever losing hope, knowing that eventually it will all be alright – and honestly speaking, that is what makes the character so loveable to viewers and fans all across the globe. Eventually, Mr Bean earned such tremendous popularity from all over the world that the man behind it, Rowan Atkinson, faded away from peoples’ collective consciousness, leading the character to become the man itself. Very few performers have perhaps been able to earn this place in the annals of performance history – with Charlie Chaplin’s the Tramp being the other such personality that comes to mind. No longer is the man a master of electrical engineering, no longer is a he sharp, innovative wit who could take satire and his acting skills to new heights, no, he was simply the bumbling fool Mr Bean whose entire life was a series of skits where he basically falls down, hurts himself, makes a fool of himself, causes irritation to people all around him – but in the end, comes out OK from all these situations, only to get into a new one to make us laugh one more time.

And therefore, in the 2012 London Olympics’ opening ceremony, we’ll never really know who was playing the piano in the London Philharmonic’s “Chariots of Fire” performance – in all probability it wasn’t Rowan Atkinson, clearly it was Mr Bean.

It has always been Mr Bean. Who’s this Rowan guy I keep talking of?

Courtesy : Artpickles