Serge Gainsbourg, that evening when he discovered that Jane Birkin was cheating on him: Afterwards he had a “serious drunk”, says a famous witness

Serge Gainsbourg, that evening when he discovered that Jane Birkin was cheating on him: Afterwards he had a “serious drunk”, says a famous witness

Twelve years old. This is the duration of the romance between Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Twelve years during which the couple caused a few scandals, bought many houses and had a little Charlotte, born July 12, 1971, symbol ofa union that will end suddenly in the early 1980s with the overnight departure of Jane Birkin from the marital home. For many French people, Birkinwho would have been 78 years old on December 14could not survive without his Serge. For these same people, Gainsbourg would end up Gainsbarre (the artist's evil and dark double) without his Anglo-Saxon twig. And yet…

As if on a whim, without warning, Jane Birkin ended up piling a few clothes into her wicker bag and leaving the famous house on rue de Verneuil (address of the couple at the time, which has become a museum dedicated to the singer today ) and settled in with Charlotte and Kate (his eldest daughter, born from a previous union, and who died in December 2013) in a suite at the Hilton Suffren hotel in Paris.

“For me it's harder to leave because you are filled with remorse, even if you find that you were right a hundred times to decide this way, remembered the ex-fan of the sixties in September 2022 in a documentary called Jane Birkin and us, broadcast on France 3. I cut the strings. There comes a time, perhaps, when we seek another freedom. Or rather, the other person doesn't want you to change and neither do the situations.”

Worried about seeing Serge Gainsbourg sink, Catherine Deneuve tried, in vain, to patch up the couple. A new failure which will scare Jane away and inspire Serge Gainsbourg to make this remark, published in the press at the time: “I thought I hit the bottom of the pool, and I realized that there was a double bottom. I found myself alone in this billionaire's bachelor pad. What I needed: a platinum girl. I had a golden girl, she got away…” What this whole story doesn't say is for whom! Because there is more than just being fed up with Gainsbourg's abuse behind Jane Birkin's sudden departure. There is a man…

Jane Birkin left Serge Gainsbourg for another artist

November 2024. Common thread guest of Happy Sunday Show by Bruno Guillon on RTL, Philippe Manoeuvre remembered three days of partying alongside Serge Gainsbourg. Three times twenty-four hours during which he will, despite himself, meet Jane Birkin… “We had a moment where we discovered each other, recounted the ex-juror of the New Star. The second evening, Serge said to me: We're going to go to dinner and I'm going to introduce you to Jane. She was dining in a restaurant on rue de Verneuil and when we arrive: surprise, Jane was with Jacques Doillon who was holding her hand… And they didn't have two chairs for us at all.”

An extremely embarrassing moment which Serge Gainsbourg will suddenly put an end to. “Serge took the news quite hard, added Philippe Manoeuvre. He said: well, well, we're not staying then… I just wanted to introduce you to my journalist… We left rue de Verneuil, and there we drank seriously, seriously, SERIOUSly.” When Bruno Guillon asked him if it was at that moment that Serge Gainsbourg had discovered that Jane Birkin was cheating on him with the man who would become the father of their little Lou, Philippe Manoeuvre acquiesced, adding: “Oui. And he took it like a man. He blamed the blow. It was terrible but he didn't want to lose face.”

After Jane and Serge: Jane and Jacques

It seems that Jane Birkin only falls in love on film sets… after falling in love with Serge Gainsbourg on the set of Slogan (Pierre Grimblat -1968), Jane will succumb to the dark charm of director Jacques Doillon, under his leadership, in The Prodigal Daughter. Information confirmed in August 2022 in the columns of Parisian weekend. At the time, Serge Gainsbourg feels the wind turning and takes it very badly. “He knows that the director is courting Jane, that they slept together at the end of July, we read in the weekly's investigation. Complexed by her physique and sickly jealous, Serge is dying to see her fall in love with Jacques Doillon.” Fears quickly confirmed following this spontaneous trip with Philippe Manoeuvre…

Many years after this episode, when she was questioned for the umpteenth time about the ties that united her to the father of her pretty Charlotte, Jane Birkin declared: “I know that whatever I do, I will never be happy without Serge.” Already at the time, when she had to make a choice between the man with the head of cabbage and the director of the Bag of marbles, Jane tortured herself, consumed by love for her two artists : “Is it even possible to live as a threesome?she wrote in her diary, published in 2018. We talked about this last night. We had dinner together and I was so happy with Jacques and Serge. (…) And if Serge could love Jacques, even if they both left, I wouldn't be sad since they would be together, and I know they would be happy…” However, it was Jane who joined her Serge on July 16, 2023, leaving Jacques Doillon to face terrible accusations alone.