Victor Borge

Victor Borge (January 3, 1909 – December 23, 2000) was a humorist, entertainer and world-class pianist affectionately known as the Clown Prince of Denmark and the Great Dane. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark as Børge Rosenbaum and died in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA. Among Victor's other famous routines is the phonetic punctuation routine, in which he recites a story, with full punctuation (comma, period, exclamation mark, etc.) as onomatopoetic sounds. Another is his inflationary language, where he incremented numbers embedded in words, whether they are visible or not ("before" becomes "befive", "once upon a time" becomes "twice upon a time", "Don Juan" is "Don Two" etc). Borge used physical and visual elements in his live and televised performances. He would play a strange-sounding piano tune from sheet music, looking increasingly confused; turning the sheet upside down, he would then play the actual tune, flashing a joyful smile of accomplishment to the audience. (He had, at first, been literally playing the actual tune upside down.) When his energetic playing of another song would cause him to fall off the piano bench, he would open the seat lid, take out the two ends of an automotive seat-belt, and buckle himself onto the bench, for 'safety.' He also enjoyed interacting with the audience. Seeing an interested person in the front row, he would ask them, "Do you like piano music?" When they said they did, Borge would take the sheet music from his piano, say "Here," and give it to them. Waiting for the laughter to die down, he then said, "That'll be $1.95" (or whatever the current price might be). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.