Post a Comment On: The Dreamcast Junkyard

[Image] Recently we published the second part of our series in which we've been searching for the identity of the mystery man who fronted the European Dreamcast advertising campaign. There is almost nothing online detailing who this guy was, and considering his face was everywhere during a brief period in late 1999, it drove me to distraction that it was documented nowhere. Until now.
I can't accurately convey how much time I've spent trying to find the actor who portrayed The Barber (you could check out In Search Of The Barber: Part One and Part Two to get an idea, though), but now I'm overjoyed to announce that yes, we've found him. And the way we found him was every bit as interesting as the rest of this whole saga, to be honest - a true tale of the Dreamcast community coming together to overcome insurmountable odds. It goes a little something like this...
After reading In Search Of The Barber: Part Two, Nicolas Oberlé left the following comment:
"Not sure if it will help you in your search, but I found something related to the Barber in an old French Dreamcast magazine. In the 'letters to editor' pages, someone claiming to be the main actor of the advert was congratulating the magazine's team. He wrote that his name was Pierrot (nickname for Pierre), and that he was living in Marseille. There was also a picture of him in front of one of the advert poster." - Nicolas Oberlé
Naturally I was extremely interested to know more, so I took a screenshot of Nicolas' comment and posted it to social media. I wasn't expecting anything (probably a few more unfollows from people sick to death of me tweeting about this shit, if I'm honest), but the responses yielded a massive breakthrough. Friend of the Junkyard and custodian of Dreamcast Live Pcwzrd replied with the following image of the aforementioned magazine letter, along with the translation from French: [Image] [Image] Mere minutes later, Twitter friend Arnaud responded with the following Earth-shattering tweet: [Image] A quick search on Facebook lead me straight to the equivalent of No Man's Sky's centre of the universe: The Barber is French actor and comedian Pierre Santino. Ladies and gentlemen, the search is over. We have found him through the power of the internet and social media. All of my searching, emails, tweets, research, internet archaeology...it all leads here, to this point. These are the words I never thought I'd type: we have found The Barber. His name is Pierre Santino. He is alive and well, and completely oblivious to this almost obsessive search for his identity here at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Here are some cool shots showing his versatile acting portfolio: [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image]
I have reached out Mr Santino for comment and will endeavour to try to get an interview with him...but even if he declines, I can now rest knowing that my search is over. We found The Barber.

Thanks to everyone who read this saga, everyone who replied to my emails and tweets and most of all to Pcwzrd, Arnaud and Nicolas Oberlé.

Update
Since posting this article, I have spoken with Mr Santino and he has agreed to do an interview with us! He doesn't speak English very well so I have reached out to a friend who speaks French to see what we can work out. In the mean time, here's how he responded to my message depicting his image adorning my games room:

[Image] Endorsement from the man himself. It doesn't get any better than this.
Update Two
The interview with Pierre Santino can be found here.