Ah, Gargamel.... When will you ever learn? You're the Smurf scriptwriters' bitch, and they will happily pimp you out as a man-whore to those little blue bastards FOREVER. Wile E. Coyote stands more chance of catching the Roadrunner than you do of taking out even one of those little blue fuckwits - plus the coyote will not get as hurt as you, as humiliated as you, and he will come off looking smarter than you. Your writers hate you Gargamel, they treat you like shit. Go work for J. K. Rowling, at least you might get to hurt someone there.
Gargamel is a hunched over middle aged wizard, who lives in what's called by everyone, including himself, a hovel - though a stone house with a tower is above the caliber of most peasants. Gargamel is commonly seen wearing red shoes and a patched black robe, with a never-used hood. He also hates the Smurfs. Actually that's not accurate: He loathes them. I don't know why, but I'd say it's a safe bet that they deserve his hatred.
Originally Gargamel wanted to eat the Smurfs, but when he was summoned to visit his godfather, the powerful sorcerer Balthazar, he found and appropriated a book telling how Smurfs can be turned to gold (this spell works differently depending on dramatic necessity. It also makes the cartoon more acceptable to flaky parents who can't handle some inter-species rivalry). I don't think this was particularly bad of Gargamel - Balthazar didn't believe Smurfs were real (Balthazar, despite being powerful, is not quite as intimidating as Gargamel, who has pure evil malicious hate to drive him on).
Gargamel is not a bad wizard. Though he does mess up occasionally he is pretty hardcore when it comes to spells - he managed to create Smurfette out of clay as a trap: She was primed to explode (This might not have been intentional but it would have been useful) and wipe out the Smurf village, and is probably the only time a suicide bomber has been in a childrens cartoon. The rest of the magical community doesn't like Gargamel much, thinking him obsessed with the fairy tales of the Smurfs, however we know he is right. Gargamel also has masses of magical artifacts floating around his house, and if Papa Smurf doesn't have something he needs he sends one of his little blue criminals to pilfer the item from Gargamel. No wonder Gargamel hates them. They even ran off with one of his seven league boots once, and so he had to go after them with only one boot to get it back.
Speaking of hating the Smurfs, another reason he probably hates them is because they torment his poor, poor cat. Azrael is mangy and flea-bitten but he would be nice enough if Smurfs didn't keep tricking him into getting hurt. Gargamel takes out his frustration on Azrael sometimes, which isn't nice, but on the other hand the damn cat should be stopping those little bastards from stealing Gargamel's stuff all the time.
In later cartoons Gargamel was found foisted with an apprentice called Scruple, who was basically a shorter, useless version of Gargamel. He was sent to Gargamel for being a bastard in wizard school. I don't know who got the worse end of the deal - Probably Gargamel, as usual. He should have just cut the little shit's head off and boiled it.
Poor Gargamel. Maybe we can send him a nuclear warhead?
What real life information there is: Gargamel was voiced by Paul Winchell.