As A Comedic Device
- Custard pies thrown or pushed into the face are a comedic device used by clowns in many circus performances.
- Custard pies are also employed in practical jokes for harmless fun.
- The practice of 'flanning', or 'pieing' - throwing custard pies into the faces of public figures as a sign of disapproval - is well-known; its victims include designer Karl Lagerfeld, American singer Kenny Rogers, former Dutch finance minister Gerrit Zalm and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
- The American billionaire Bill Gates was once filmed being struck in the face with a custard pie while attending a conference. The attackers, who described themselves as 'pie terrorists', were later fined.
- In the movie Bugsy Malone, the "splurge guns" fire custard.
- Other films notable for pie fight sequences include Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century, Beach Party, The Great Race and Smashing Time.
- UK Saturday morning programme Tiswas had custard pies as a regular feature, they even had a character called 'The phantom flan flinger' a masked man who pied people.
- The World Custard Pie Throwing Championships take place annually in the village of Coxheath in Kent, England.
Read more about this topic: Custard Pie
Famous quotes containing the word device:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)