An officially recorded divorce. Guillaume Meurice was dismissed from Radio France for “serious misconduct” on Tuesday June 11, 2024. A decision which would be justified by “repeated disloyalty” according to Sibyle Veil, the director of the “round house”, while the comedian repeated his controversial joke about Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, on France Inter. The next day, the man published a letter on social networks in which he expressed his love for radio and his fears about its future.
An intimate relationship
“Today, my heart is heavy. Not because of our forced separation, nor because of the way our story ends. If I am so sad, it is to leave you like this, led by souls of such few scruples”, he wrote. His “Letter to France (Inter)”, addressed to the radio as if it were a person, opens with the comedian’s first memories of the station, which his parents seemed to listen to regularly. “It was you who taught me satire, freedom of tone, irreverence”he notes.
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Then, the 42-year-old man spoke about his “first meeting” with her, 12 years ago now, joining Frédéric Lopez’s show in 2012 We’re all going to go through it. A story which then continued with the arrival in the “merry troop” by Charline Vanhoenacker, where he claims to have “lived the most beautiful pages of our common adventure” for ten years. He here greeted “a rare media space” where it was possible to make fun of the dominants for an hour a day.
A system denounced
But, “it was obviously too much”, expresses Guillaume Meurice, referring here to the forced passage of the show on a weekly basis. The rest of his letter thus denounces the influence of “people of power” at Radio France, whose case linked to his dismissal would have at least had the merit “to expose their brutality to broad daylight”, drawing a parallel with police violence during demonstrations. In his eyes, now, “some jokes will sound like career choices” on these waves.
Finally, the comedian more generally denounced the proposed merger of France Télévisions and Radio France, leading according to him to its privatization. In response, Laurence Bloch, the future ex-director of Radio France, published a few hours later a message on X (Twitter) where she denounces the posture of the artist who would not have taken into consideration injured listeners by his joke. Guillaume Meurice could have “just expressing regret”she lamented.
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