Actor Benoît Poelvoorde's call to Belgians "Grow a beard for Belgium"

Maybe celebrities shouldn't get involved in politics, but they often do and sometimes perhaps needs must.

That must surely have been the thinking behind Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde's rather novel suggestion for solving his country's political deadlock.

He has called on his fellow countrymen to refrain from shaving until a new government has been formed.

Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde (screenshot RTL television)

Belgium has been politically deadlocked and without an elected government for almost seven months.

National elections last June saw the Flemish centre-right separatist party, Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance, NVA) emerge as the largest parliamentary party.

But the country has been in a political crisis ever since as negotiations to form a new government have been deadlocked in spite of attempts by Johan Vande Lanotte, a mediator appointed the country's king, Albert II, to enable parties to reach a deal.

In the meantime Belgium has been governed by a caretaker government under the previous prime minister Yves Leterme, he of French national anthem fame.

This week Poelvoorde appeared on Belgium's RTL television in a 30-second clip with to urge those (men) watching to refrain from shaving until politicians finally managed to form a government.

"Don't be surprised by the hair," an unshaven Poelvoorde says in the video.

"I've decided - on the initiative of my colleague- not to shave for as long as Belgium is without a government," he continues, dragging (the very bearded) RTL film critic Nicolas Buytaers in front of the camera alongside him.

"If everyone else does the same, then the politicians will realise that we're all united.

"It was his idea (he motions to Buytaers) and I think it's a fabulous one," asserts Poelvoorde.

"Let's keep our beards until Belgium rises again."



All right so it's perhaps one of the oddest proposals to have been put forward so far in the country's search for an end to its political stalemate.

But it's entirely in keeping with the character of the French-speaking Poelvoorde, who is just as famous in France as he is in his own country.

Whether anyone will actually take his idea seriously is surely doubtful, but at the very least it has raised a smile - at home and abroad - at a time when, as France's Europe 1 radio says, the political impasse is a causing a sense of weariness among Belgians.

Belgium is a country of almost 11 million people with a Dutch-speaking majority and a French-speaking minority separated into Flanders and Wallonia respectively.

There's also another, much smaller, German-speaking minority.

The differences between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking communities have often been at the heart of the country's political divide and are very much part of the reason for its current problems in establishing agreement over an elected national government.