The A-Team
Season 2 SABC3 (*193) 12:00 Action
The brains on action show The A-Team (1983-1987) have to be balanced with brawn and very few characters are as iconic as gold chain-wearing, afraidof-flying BA “Bad Attitude” Baracus (played by Mr T). But did you know that Mr T’s most famous phrase “I pity the fool” isn’t actually from the show?
Despite BA calling everyone fools, “I pity the fool” is from his role as boxer Clubber Lang in Rocky 3 (1982). “People get it mistaken because of the time overlap,” says Mr T. “Sly Stallone wrote it for the movie but then The A Team came out the next year. I’m glad to still be popular.” The 66-year- old really is a military veteran. He enlisted in the army and Military Police Corps in 1975 after being kicked out of Praire View University for bad behaviour and fighting. His real name is Laurence Tureaud but he has been called Mr T since he was 18. “I was old enough to fight and die for my country, to vote – I was tired of being called ‘boy’, so I ordained myself Mr T. Now the first word out of everybody’s mouth is Mr, a sign of respect my father didn’t get,” he says Sports-mad Mr T earned a scholarship for wrestling and American football and he tried out for the Green Bay Packers. A knee injury stopped his sport career and he became a bouncer. He’s been a WWE wrestling fan since the ’80s and was inducted into the Hall Of Fame in 2014. Mr T still has his real gold chains – they weighed 20kg. He took them off in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina, saying that “it would be disrespectful to wear it while helping these people who have lost everything”.