A salaciously wacked-out French singer and national treasure of France. Perhaps most well-known for his song Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus, he is also responsible for the hilarious song Bonnie et Clyde, with Brigitte Bardot. You haven't lived until you've heard it.

The rather ugly Serge died in 1991.

Serge Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginsburg in 1928 in Paris.

His father, a Russian musician, came to France after the 1917 Revolution.

There could be many anecdotes about his life and his deep sense of provocation, but my favourite is this one:

When the Parisian Police was asked by the Nazis to force the Jews to wear the Yellow Star, Serge Gainsbourg rushed to the Prefecture in order to be the first to get it. Some say he would actually have liked anybody in France to spoil the Nazis efforts by wearing the Yellow Star: Atheists (like him), Catholics... He kept it during the whole war, even though as a student in art, he worked with German painters with some of whom he eventually became good friends.

This did neither prevent Serge Gainsbourg to issue his "Rock around the Bunker" album 30 years later nor to end his life with his girlfriend Bambu (and mother of his son Lucien), which is known to be an illegitimate daughter the Nazi General Von Paulus had after escaping in Asia.