What happened to the midgets from Fort Boyard?
Or were they dwarves? Or hobbits? And what’s an elf? Either way we know it’s not been great since one was eaten by a tiger, prompting the show’s cancellation
Reporting by gameshow correspondent Cha Llenge
It’s a question that goes through millions of brains every single day. What happened to the little fellas from Fort Boyard?
The pair’s little legs stomping their way around the 19th century fort are ingrained in Britain’s cultural hive mind and it’s probably fair to say that they’ve been in the top five celebrity midgets for a couple decades, moving down a spot when Peter Dinklage got famous but back up again when Verne Troyer died.
Alongside Melinda Messenger — exceptional pair of tits — and Leslie Grantham — him who played Dirty Den on Eastenders — the dwarves were an integral part of the show’s team, appearing to open doors at Grantham’s curt instruction and at the end of every challenge in adorable miniature sailor outfits to drag contestants to the next task.
Jacques and Jules were portrayed by Pierre Lapedit and Thierry Lebeouf respectively — both French presumably hence why they don’t say anything during the programme — and they would conclude each episode by using their short arms to empty a cauldron of coins onto scales, measuring the team’s final score.
It was at the conclusion of one fairly typical episode that one diabolical mistake by the show’s production team would cost one midget his life and end the show’s five-year run.
After Leslie Grantham had given his customary order of “Monique, the tiger’s head if you please” to his exotic big cat handler and the team’s final coin count had been confirmed, one tiger was left unaccounted for.
The tiger — a seven-year-old male named Ting-Tang — then managed to somehow evade the attentions of all the crew and even the famously hawk-eyed gaze of Messenger.
Mercifully, only microphones caught the moment that five inches of Bengal tiger tooth secured itself to Lapedit’s collarbone.
The recordings capture a frenzy of action: French-tinged screams, grunts from Grantham as he attempted to wrestle the beast and the sound of gold on stone as the animal’s tail upturned the coin cauldron.
Within moments the animal had shrugged off Grantham’s choke hold and had whisked away Lapedit’s small frame to the room where contestants would do that challenge where their heads are exposed to all sorts of bugs while they search for clues, using no hands the whole time.
Strongman La Boule had been the closest in pursuit of predator and prey, making him the first to witness the gruesome scene in the challenge room. So horrified was he by the sight of Lapedit’s mangled, lifeless remains that he immediately used his pugil-style stick to cave in the tiger’s skull.
Unsurprisingly a fatal tiger attack was enough to confirm the show’s swift cancellation and Messenger’s impeccable bosom would barely grace British television screens again — perhaps the greatest casualty of the whole sorry saga.
Nearly two decades after the show’s tragic final episode we secured an interview with Lapedit’s aerially-challenged co-star and best friend.
“In France we have this saying: ‘creme de la creme.’ I don’t know if you’ve heard it before but it means the cream of the cream, or something that’s the best. That’s exactly what Pierre was,” said Lebeouf in a stereotypical Gallic twang.
“So many times we told the production team that having the number of tigers they did on set was destined to end in disaster, especially for me and Pierre as we are slightly shorter than an average midget. Think Frodo in comparison to Gimli, that’s our sort of height.
“The way they handled them was, as we say in France, a disgrâce. Leslie used to be king of the castle on that production and could get away with what he wanted: one day he got Monique to drug Ying-Yang so he could put his head in the beast’s mouth all just to impress Melinda.
“People think he was somehow the hero by trying to wrestle the animal that day. Non, his reckless behaviour cost Pierre his life just as much as Ying-Yang’s natural blood lust,” said the petit homme.
After work on Fort Boyard came to its natural conclusion, Lebeouf had considerable success filling a number of stereotypical roles for midgets in Hollywood.
He was the dwarf tossed by rowdy Stratton Oakmont traders in Wolf of Wall Street, was stunt double to Warwick Davies’ Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter series and also played Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings when Peter Jackson required a wide shot of Middle Earth.
“I did, how you might say, tres bon in the film industry,” says Lebeouf as he slurps down his second frog leg.
“However the loss of my best friend at the jaws of that tiger still haunts my dreams. That’s why I started the Showbiz Midgets Guild for the Proper Handling of Big Cats on Set.”
The guild advocates for the safe handling of all animals in film and TV where dwarves are involved in the production and also runs workshops where the little chaps can learn self-defence from animal attacks with comically small weapons.
The work of the guild may well be pretty pointless — there has only ever been one other recorded animal attack on a midget during a production when one got swallowed whole by a snake after he fell asleep on set — but if just one more halfling evades death on set, Lebeouf will see his work as worth it.
“Perhaps one day the image of Pierre’s 5cm collarbone snapping like a dry twig in the beast’s mouth will no longer be etched on my brain.
“And maybe if I make things safer for the smallest in showbiz, Fort Boyard might return to UK TVs — that would be the result everyone in Britain has been dreaming of for years.”
