Google UK says 'Hello to Jason Isaacs'

Google 'Jason Isaacs' and you'll be greeted -- literally, if you're the great man himself -- with a cheery message at the top of the page: 'Hello to Jason Isaacs'.

This may pass unnoticed to most fans of the Harry Potter star, but listeners of BBC Radio 5 Live's Film Review show will instantly clock the significance -- and likely reply with their own rumbustious greeting.

'Hello to Jason Isaacs' is a meme on the rise, started by 5 Live presenter Simon Mayo and his resident film critic Mark Kermode, who say hello to the stubbly thesp every week, whether he's on the show or not. An avid listener of the show's podcast (and schoolboy chum of Kermode), wherever he is in the world, whenever's he's listening, Isaacs shouts out a hearty, "Hello boys!" when he hears it.

The disjointed greeting has spread around the world -- Isaacs is regularly accosted by people saying hello -- to become a kind of trans-media graffiti. A British guy who works making funny CNN clips for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno regularly sneaks one in, as this Facebook album documents. A presenter at an English language station in Prague recently signed off his programme with the greeting.

Now it seems a humorous coder at Google is paying tribute to the hunkily versatile character actor with his own personalised search results. It looks as though it's someone at the Big G's London Googleplex, as the result only appears on google.co.uk.

Isaacs is best known for his role as the oleaginous Lucius Malfoy in the Potter films, but has also put in sterling work in Black Hawk Down, Peter Pan, The West Wing and The Curse of Steptoe, among many other films and TV programmes. He was frequently mocked by Mayo and Kermode for his recent role as rugged PI Jackson Brodie in the BBC's Case Histories -- a part that involved him taking his shirt off an implausible number of times.

On last Friday's show, Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, said hello to Isaacs, adding a passive-aggressive comment about Isaacs' "beautiful calligraphy" and telling him he loved him. It was pretty awkward.

Have you ever said hello to Jason Isaacs? Add your own greeting in the comments below, or over on CNET UK's meme-loving Facebook page.