Rue Rabelais, Amboise.

François Rabelais (1494–1553) was, and still is, a much-loved eccentric thought of with affection. He was a writer, doctor, philosopher and monk.

Rabelais was born near Chinon, not far from Amboise. His father was a successful lawyer. You do wonder what he thought of his son who was famous for dirty jokes and bawdy songs. No-one was safe from his funny, mocking, provocative satires. An avant-garde inventor of fantasy and of the grotesque, his laugh out loud crude language still shocks five hundred years later. His comic masterpieces are about two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel whose adventures are littered with crude scatological humour. Rabelais gave the world its ‘gargantuan’ appetite and its ‘Rabelaisian’ sense of humour.