INTERVIEW. Laurent Baffie: “People are my business, I like to put them in the spotlight”

La Dépêche du Midi: Is your show, “Laurent Baffie asks questions”, the translation of your priesthood over all these years?

Laurent Baffie: Yes, but the particularity of this show, which refers to a book that I wrote a few years ago, is that I ask myself questions that no one asks. There were 500 but I don’t do them all on stage! I took the best, I added sketches, interactivity, improvisations and it created a show.

You talk about improvisation, is that the most important thing in your work?

It’s my added value, my little touch. I like contact with people, and I like people, I think it shows. And those who come to see me like me. And when I’m in Toulouse as elsewhere, I like to put them in the spotlight because it’s my business. And the people change every show, so it’s never the same show. I deal with what I call the daily market. Every time, I do things that I never did the day before, it’s fun for us on stage, and people are amazed.

Freedom of expression is essential to you. Are there new spaces to practice it?

Essential for me but the space of freedom is restricted so I take refuge on stage and a little on social networks. That said, on the networks you cannot do anything, you are very quickly censored. But the advantage is that I’m my own boss, I’ve always worked like that and it suits me very well.

Social networks are celebrating you with this viral video of people you bump into in the street…

Yes, I pushed a friend like that, without knowing that it was going to become a “trend” and it got 40 million views on Insta, and 50 million on TikTok, it’s incredible! Kids play this in the playgrounds.

Your last hidden cameras have changed, a pair of glasses has appeared…

Yes, it’s a gift from heaven, these glasses, it changed the end of my career! Before, it was two camera operators, a sound engineer, cars, it cost an arm and a leg and if the hidden camera wasn’t good it went in the trash! Whereas there, we put on a pair of glasses, we look at people and they are well framed. Then a friend wears a second pair of glasses, it creates a reverse shot, it’s extraordinary. And thanks to these hidden cameras, I reveal the kindness of people, because they are actually nice. There are those who I can also annoy when I set shit traps for them… Some people yell but then laugh because they recognize me.

So, that’s it, Laurent Baffie is immortal?

Unfortunately no, but let’s say that I was discovered by a younger generation thanks to that. But I don’t feel nostalgic. The Ardisson period was great and I received it recently for a podcast I record regularly. Thierry is 75 and I’m 66, we did this thing (“Everyone talks about it” on France 2 from 1998 to 2006, editor’s note), it’s behind us and it’s very good like that. We lived through the last period where people didn’t go out to watch a TV program whereas now no one cares, we can watch everything on replay or listen to podcasts, no one gets stuck in front of their TV.

Your news is really abundant…

Yes, I have just published “Le Nouveau dico de Lolo” in which I give 1,000 definitions of words like “Bistrot: place where the word ”last” loses all its meaning”, “Cashier: box that smells bad when you the coward” or “Repartee: lively response which closes the flaps and opens the doors”. This is the tenth book I’ve published and I’ve sold a million of them between all, and for the dunce that I was at school, it’s a bit of pride. Furthermore, I’m starting to put together a new one-man show; I’m giving myself a year to write it.

I continue the hidden cameras, the “Eat and Drink” shows on YouTube, the podcasts called “Coloscopy” because Chancel did “Radioscopy”, but I go further in the interview. I received Alban Ivanov, Camille Lellouche, Bernard Campan, Caroline Vigneaux and soon Alyson Wheeler, Élodie Frégé…