Luis de Alba

Luis de Alba (born March 7, 1945 in Veracruz) is a Mexican comedian, famous for his character "El Pirrurris" (the presumptuous son of a millionaire).

His most famous TV program was "El mundo de Luis de Alba", "Luis de Alba's World", where "El Pirrurris" and other characters regularly appeared. After this program was canceled he spent many years away from television but retransmissions of the show were popular. In 2004 he came back portraying the "Pirrurris" once again in one of Jorge Ortiz de Pinedo's adult-oriented comedy shows, set in a primary school where the students are played by adult actors. In 2005 he got a new show where he plays the "Pirrurris" as well as his other characters.

Characters

"El Pirrurris"

This character is difficult to understand for non-Mexicans. Created sometime in the 1970s, the character is a very rich and young man with a haircut similar to that used by the Beatles in their early years and depicts the stereotype of a so-called "fresa". He enjoys deprecating low- to middle-class people with illusions of grandeur, airs of importance, bad taste, and colorful slang. Such people are pejoratively called "nacos". The "Pirrurris" refined the ridicule of nacos into "nacology", the study of the "naco". Sitting behind a desk, he would explain the "naco" to his audience in scientific terms.

So viewers would not take his remarks seriously, the character's locution and mannerisms are a parody of the so-called "juniors", the pompous young sons of upper-class Mexicans, known for their tendency to dismiss anyone else as a "naco". He frequently refers to his millionaire "papi" and expresses amazement at the most mundane problems faced by normal people. Incredibly narcissistic, he explains that his name comes from the mathematical constant Pi and "rorro" (slang for handsome), in that he is "3.1416 times handsome".

"Pirrurris" has become a common Mexican epithet for someone who looks down on others, or acts as if one were above one's real economic station. Mexican leftist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador has used the term on different occasions to refer to his right-wing political opponents.