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The general public knows the host for his role in “Sacred Evening”, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” or even the Miss France evening. But he very rarely lifts the veil on his life before television.
A monument of French radio and television. Jean-Pierre Foucault was one of Frédéric Lopez’s guests on his show “Un Dimanche à la campagne”, alongside comedian Arnaud Tsamère and singer Anggun.
More accustomed to questioning than to opening up, Jean-Pierre Foucault agreed to talk about his childhood in Marseille, his early career but also the love story between his parents. Her father, a resistance fighter, saved her Jewish mother by hiding her, her nephew and her niece in a boarding house in Marseille. “Misfortune and distress have created their happiness”he rightly summarized. He lived a happy but strict childhood. And it was very young, at the age of 14, that his life changed.
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«My father was an importer/exporter of fruits and vegetables. One day, on February 19 or 20, he left for Algeria to, my mother told me, check the company’s accounts. And on February 22, 1962, he was shot in the back and once in the neck in the street. We don’t know why, I never knew why.” says Jean-Pierre Foucault. A story which has the merit of surprising, but also and above all of moving its companions. Anggun, sitting to his right, couldn’t help but let out a moan of compassion.
For a certain moment, those around Jean-Pierre Foucault made him believe it was a car accident. “I imagined he was going to come back, on crutches, I don’t know. I waited for the door to open and my father to come limping in. And he didn’t come back.”underlined the host. “That’s how, at 14, I suddenly became an adult. My heart has hardenedhe explained.
My father died for nothing
Jean-Pierre Foucault
A feeling reinforced by his mother’s behavior, telling him to sit in his father’s place around the dining room table. “I became someone else, including at school. That’s why I started clowning, to avoid being asked the eternal question “why was your father shot in the street?”it was like that non-stop”he recalled with annoyance before adopting a more tender tone, full of emotion: “In fact he helped me… to do my job.”
He therefore obtained the status of “ward of the nation”. “What hurt me the most in my teenage life, and probably my sisters too, was when I received my ward of the nation card.” On it was his father’s name. On the other hand, the words “death for France” had been crossed out by an official. “So my father died for nothing. And this card I threw away. I wanted to show France that I didn’t need to be adopted by them. I’ll manage on my own.”
