This summer, we learned of the disappearance of the last announcers in Europe. They officiated on RTL tvi. Did this move you?
“I’m not in Belgium often anymore and I hardly watch television anymore. I didn’t know that there was still some. I did television 45-50 years ago. It has evolved a lot Since then, it is an element of our lives that has changed enormously. Television is much less important in people’s lives Today, when a couple moves in, the last device they buy is the television. At the time, on the other hand, it was an essential element, the only one that brought the whole family together. We came home from work and sat around the screen.
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Was it a ritual?
“The family would choose a channel and we would watch all the programs in a row. There was no remote control, no one wanted to get up to change the channel. This was the case when Télé Luxembourg arrived in Belgium before becoming RTL. Popular, commercial channel, with series and films, people chose us and never changed. In this case, the announcer was a necessary person. Today, there are plenty of screens and we no longer need to wait in front of our TV for an announcer to say what we are going to see. It is perhaps a profession that has disappeared, but it has. rightly so, because he was no longer useful as before.”
In the 70s and 80s, announcers were still very popular with viewers…
“We were super popular. The management of the commercial channel exploited us, but not in a bad way, to make us little stars. We went to sign autographs. We traveled on special trains. There were crowds of people who screamed our name We never saved anyone or the world but we were very important to people, especially to those who were alone. As there are communities on Facebook today, we kept them company. , what struck me the most was the number of letters I received from people who told me that I kept them company. It was a real role and, we can say, important.
Were you part of their family?
“In a way. At the restaurant, I do everything so that no one recognizes me anymore because I live another life and I have other interests. But there are people who recognize me and come up to me. They tell me: ‘you have no idea what I watched you, and how you were so present in our life with television. There is a difference between my consideration for this profession and what it brought to people’. . I realize that we shouldn’t look down on all that, because we had to play an important role.”
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Everything you have done in television, could you have done without this experience as a announcer?
“No, because I did television by chance. I won a competition, by chance. I had no idea about television, I was just looking for a nice, easy job that suited me well. When I When I started out, it was easy. You had to sit down and rehearse everything that people were going to see on the screen. As I had a very good memory, I did theater and I was curious by nature. It was simple… But quickly, I knew that I wasn’t going to do that all the time. It turned out that RTL started producing with the big games, the children’s show Citron Grenadine. , then cinema shows, variety shows and talk shows. These were opportunities that I seized. I stopped broadcasting in the early 90s, after 20 years, to devote myself to broadcasting. production. It fascinated me. I loved thinking about new shows, setting them up, organizing them, looking for ways to do them. I especially loved being able to do that. . Today there are so many shows being made that don’t work. At the end of the day, we throw out the people who do them when it’s not their fault. Maybe it’s the show that’s not good.”
It’s also a question of talent, because you have still smelled incredible things. You are behind two audience records at RTL: Viva Italia, and the 10 years of RTL TVI at Forest National…
“Viva Italia is a story of the heart. At the beginning of the 80s, there was at Villa Lovigny, just before RTL left Luxembourg for Brussels, this program for Italians in Belgium. They were the first adherents to the spirit of our channel, family and popular I was asked to do the history of the immigration of Italians to Belgium and a large popular program with all the famous Italians. great show and one that worked! It’s one of the biggest audience successes. The 10th anniversary of RTL-TVi was also great. I like bringing people together, laughing, remembering good memories. little original things in the productions.”
You were also behind Télévie…
“I took part in it a lot, but Jean-Charles De Keyser was the father of Télévie. When he said that we were going to do a sort of Telethon, we asked ourselves how to do it with our limited means? produced until 2005-2006 This year, I was in Belgium on the evening of Télévie. I watched it even though I hadn’t seen it for years. in tune with the times. It had a tone, magnificent lighting, good production and presenters who were as they should be in 2024. We had to dare to dust off and clean Télévie.”
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If you had to do it again, would you do everything the same?
“All the same! It was wonderful to have had the chance to do this job. I was a normal girl with a normal future and I had more. Doses of affection, incredible encounters, magnificent situations. When film artists, like Michel Serrault, came, there was a meal and I found myself sitting next to these people. In the end, fortunately, I went to make documentaries and I produced lots of things. above all, I wanted to live my life. It was time for me to leave, to finally be thrown out.”
