The legendary ex-host of Grosses têtes will be 94 years old this December 6. Despite his modest origins, Philippe Bouvard became a millionaire thanks to his immense career as a media man. Although he now shares a 100 square meter penthouse in Cannes with his wife, he has already sold his other houses and the majority of his possessions. In January, the journalist will officially retire from RTL after sixty years on the air.
Philippe Bouvard: Large villa in Cannes, mansion in Paris, Rolls Royce… Before his imminent retirement, he got rid of everything!
The rest after the ad
“Not an end of life, but the beginning of a new existence.“In an interview given in December 2023 to Var-MorningPhilippe Bouvard took the prospect of retirement philosophically. At almost 94 years old this may seem normal but the journalist was, until recently, still very active!
After the forced cessation of Big heads, for the benefit of Laurent Ruquier in 2014 on RTL, the journalist followed up with two animated shows on the same radio. First there was Hello Bouvardbroadcast on weekends until summer 2020. Then The Portraits of Philippe Bouvardon Sunday at 6:40 a.m., which looked back on the great moments that shaped his career.
Last June, RTL announced the end of this event in January 2025, on the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary on the air, a world record. “There is a temptation, which is not a temptation of laziness, but a temptation of record, and that is to go until January 1st, that will not be bad enough, and then to listen to others and do silenceexplained Philippe on RTL, in reference to the retirement he refused for a long time. Because on January 1, I will have established the double record that I hoped for, that is to say sixty years of radio and sixty years of RTL.” It actually started in 1965 at Radio Luxembourg, which became RTL in 1966, before launching there The Big Heads in 1977 and made it the most listened to program in France.
Sometimes, Philippe Bouvard looks at real estate advertisements “just for fun“
Now comes the time for the veteran to retire to his 100 square meter penthouse in downtown Cannes where he lives with his wife of 71 years, Colette, 88. A comfortable but modest property compared to those he occupied in his life. This is how, after having lived there for 32 years, the former host of Les Grosses Têtes and his wife separated in 2016 from their former mansion in the heart of Paris. “I have always had a passion for beautiful houses, he explained to Figaro. Sometimes I look at real estate ads just for fun and I dream. Before I decide to buy a house, I wonder if I could live there. And I imagine myself on a daily basis. I need to feel the waves. So I sit alone in the different rooms and wait.”
Philippe Bouvard notably believed that he had an instinctive disposition for placing furniture and objects and confessed a preference for red, green and mahogany. His favorite quote is from himself: “They say of an uninteresting house that it has beautiful cupboards, just as they say of an ugly woman that she has beautiful eyes..”
-“I am a cripple… in good health”
Philippe also had his requirements: a large, tidy and easily accessible dressing room, no telephone in the rest rooms and always a garden. “The trees have the sedative effect on me that I need and perfectly fulfill the idea that I have of the countryside.” Behind a discreet door, his Directoire period Parisian residence overlooked the greenery of its pink walls. This 300 square meter property, including the basement had a poker room, he sold it with regret: “This house is too big, too heavy. Taxes have reached a confiscatory levelhe justified in 2016 in an interview with Parisian. It pains me, but it's more reasonable.” This sale seems to have marked the beginning of a certain detachment from material things. The same year, during an auction, he also parted with his Rolls Royce Corniche, numerous pieces of furniture, and 200 bottles of grand cru and 4000 pounds.
It must be said that Philippe must ensure an expensive lifestyle with caretaker, butler, driver and secretary. “I am a cripple… in good health, he said ironically to explain it in VSD. A linguistic cripple – I don't speak a foreign language – a domestic cripple, I don't know how to do anything with my ten fingers, I no longer drive. Yes, that means a whole organization around a guy that equals zero.”
Lovers of the sun, the couple now live in a 100 square meter apartment on the Côte-d'Azur. This, after having ceded in 2021 their pharaonic Villa Katouchaof 442 square meters and 3,190 of land, in Cannes. An enormous property which had six bedrooms, a gym, a lounge area, a veranda and a swimming pool. Their daily life now takes place in more functional accommodation, due to Philippe's health and his lack of mobility, he who uses a wheelchair. In November, he was unable to deliver his column entitled Bouvardages has VSD.
He failed three times to obtain his baccalaureate
If the end of his career was never so close, this French media legend can reassure himself by contemplating his extraordinary career. Son of a company director who abandoned him with his mother the day he gave birth, after stealing her jewelry and savings, he failed three times to obtain his baccalaureate. In 1952 he entered the Figaro as a courier, climbing at supersonic speed all the ladders leading to glory.
Although he has recently let go of a good part of his property, he will still leave an inheritance of several million euros. to his two daughters, Dominique (born in 1954) and Nathalie (born in 1964), his four grandchildren and his two great-grandchildren. With this other quote of his own to make them ponder: “Inheritance offers the possibility of receiving in adulthood the sums that were denied to you in your youth.”
