Xavier Niel’s show was a great troll

Xavier Niel has built his image on the fact of not being a billionaire like the others. Always relaxed, capable of clashing with anonymous people on Twitter and a fervent defender of “purchasing power”, facing competitors presented as big bad capitalists, the boss of Free is a personality without equal in France, with admirers and detractors.

On Wednesday, September 18, Numerama attended “the first and last date of his world tour”which took place at the Olympia. For an hour and a half, Xavier Niel told countless jokes, recounted his career in a parodic manner and brought in various guests from the web, in order to remind people that he was really not like the other bosses (and to carry out a great self-promotion operation).

A big mess, often very funny

Why did Xavier Niel have the idea of ​​doing the Olympia? To promote his book A real desire to cause trouble, which will be released on September 25. According to our information, the content of his show remained secret until the fateful date, including among some of his close collaborators.

With the help of a prompter, Xavier Niel pretended to be Gad Elmaleh for one evening, in a show that was truly successful on several occasions.

The boss of Free quickly set the tone by reading tweets from his haters, not sparing himself with insults, then gave his audience his first piece of advice: “to go to prison”gradually beginning to tell his story. The rare moments of seriousness were surrounded by surprising jokes, such as when Xavier Niel indicated “no longer wants the Internet since he saw the Inoxtag documentary” or called Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci losers, since they never created startups.

Officially, Xavier Niel’s show was called “How to become a billionaire?”. The only one on stage was composed of 4 humorous parts supposed to tell the career of the boss of Free with jokes and anecdotes from his book. One of the guidelines of the show was the broadcast of very successful mini-video sketches, including Léna Situations in charge of dressing Xavier Niel (who dared to wear the Batman costume), Squeezie who tries to fix his Freebox or fake Brut journalists who follow Xavier Niel into the catacombs, where we discover his Satanist leanings. Xavier Niel’s authors knew how to play on many popular references, notably by citing Oussama Ammar, by mocking the Free Mobile network or by claiming to have learned from the boss of Pfizer, Xavier Niel’s buddy, that Covid was a conspiracy: “Covid doesn’t exist, they only did it to sell vaccines, the idiots believed in it”

From XavierMeDoit20Balles.com to Nadiya: jokes all evening

While it has happened to learn interesting things about Xavier Niel (such as the intimidation received by his close relations after the announcement of Free Mobile or his relationship with the political world, which he strongly criticized), the billionaire has rarely been serious. He has several times congratulated himself on what he has brought to France, while offering a somewhat too simplistic speech on the link between desire and success, but he himself acknowledged that it was impossible to become a billionaire in an hour. Everything suggests that this one-man show was above all a joke between friends that became reality, with a room full in just a few hours.

To thank the people who made the trip, Xavier Niel decided to offer them 20 euros and pizzas. He first distributed a few boxes in the room, before announcing the launch of the site xaviermedoit20balles.com, which really exists, to claim a 20 euro discount on your Free bill with your ticket number.

The only announcement of the evening: the price of the 2 euro package will not change

Amidst introspection about his life and jokes, Xavier Niel nevertheless made an announcement on September 18: the price of the 2 euro package will not increase: “We will never change the price of the 2 euro package. I will not increase it while I am alive”This is the first time that the boss of Free has made a definitive commitment on the prices of his offers, while the previous promise was valid until 2027 (the most teasing will note that he has not promised anything on the 19.99 euro package).

After yet another comedy sketch about the behind the scenes of the creation of his Minitel business, with a disguised Xavier Niel wearing a wig, then a very self-centered advert about his ability to buy companies in 2 seconds, while being scammed by the CPF account, Xavier Niel ended his show… with a Nadiya concert. We still don’t know how to become a billionaire, but we definitely know how to get trolled.