Gaston Lagaffe Gaston was hired - somewhat mysteriously - as an office junior at the offices of the Journal de Spirou (the real-life publication in which the strip appeared), having wandered in cluelessly. The strip usually focuses on his efforts to avoid doing any work, and indulge instead in hobbies or naps while all around him panic over deadlines, lost mail and contracts. Initially, Gaston was an irritating simpleton, but he developed a genial personality and sense of humour. Common sense however always eludes him, and he has an almost supernatural ability to cause disasters ("gaffes") to which he reacts with his catchphrase: "M'enfin!" ("What the...?"). His job involves chiefly dealing with readers' mail. The ever-growing piles of unanswered letters ("courrier en retard") and the attempts of Fantasio and Léon Prunelle to make him deal with it or to retrieve documentation are recurring themes of the comic.
Gaston's age is a mystery – Franquin himself confessed that he neither knew nor indeed wanted to know it. Although Gaston has a job, a car and his own place, he often acts like a young teenager. In the publication of Dossier Franquin Franquin had said that Gaston is a boy in his late teens but certainly not in his twenties. He is invariably dressed in a tight polo-necked green jumper and blue-jeans, and worn-out espadrilles. It is said that his appearance was originally based on that of Yvan Delporte, editor of the Journal de Spirou at that time. Also, in his first gags, Gaston was an avid cigarette smoker, but his habit was slowly phased out.
Gaston alternates between phases of extreme laziness, when it is near impossible to wake him up, and hyper-activity, when he creates various machines or plays with office furniture. Over the years, he has experimented with cooking, rocket science, music, electronics, decorating, telecommunication, chemistry and many other hobbies, all with uniformly catastrophic results. His Peter Pan-like refusal to grow up and care about his work makes him very endearing, while his antics account for half the stress experienced by his unfortunate co-workers.
Gaston's disregard for authority or even public safety are not confined to his office — they occasionally threaten the entire city. He is not above covering road signs with advertising posters or even snowmen, reasoning that it is the only decent use that they have — being oblivious to the chaos and accidents that covering the road signs cause.