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)

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.”