A fan of the original ‘Mr Bean’ series has discovered the hilarious hidden joke in the soundtrack

31 January 2022, 16:29 | Updated: 31 January 2022, 16:40

Mr Bean -Choir Theme (1990-1995)

By Maddy Shaw Roberts

If you’ve always wondered what the choir are singing about in the choral opening theme to ‘Mr Bean’… wonder no more.

Before Howard Goodall composed the introductory theme Mr Bean, a piece of choral church music might have seemed a peculiar choice to score a comedy sitcom. Now, it’s one of the abiding TV melodies, even voted to No.49 last year in Classic FM’s TV Music Countdown.

And a couple of years ago, a fan of the classic show discovered a recurring joke in the opening lyrics.

From the beginning of episode two onwards, Mr Bean, played by Rowan Atkinson, falls from the sky in a beam of light.

As Bean falls, a choir sings out the line ‘Ecce homo qui est faba’, which translates into English as ‘Behold the man who is a bean’.

There are other Easter eggs which include the choir singing ‘end of part one’ and ‘part two’, as well as ‘Farewell, man who is a bean’ at the end of each episode.

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Occasionally, fans of the show will twig, and share the moment they realised the meaning behind Goodall’s Latin lyrics.

And sometimes, Goodall will respond. “Honest truth is I didn’t realise this was a secret,” he tweeted a few years ago, in response to a diverted fan. “I am delighted to have caused some glee though, all these years later.”

A few years ago, Rowan Atkinson revealed a big secret about his famous 2012 Olympics performance on Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast, admitting that the entire performance was prerecorded.

He said: “The only thing we could do was to prerecord the whole thing so Simon Rattle was waving his arms about just as I was, miming to the music.”