It was the time when France 3, which was called FR3, was a very young channel and the viewer felt almost in the wind by daring to skip the 8pm news show on the other two existing channels. The “8pm Games”, counter-programming and winning move, a meeting place for our provinces as they still called it, from 1976 to 1987.
“Good evening Strasbourg!” Jean-Pierre Descombes, who died this Sunday at the age of 76, from Parkinson’s disease, in the Cher where he lived, was not the host, but much better, the man on the ground who twirled in the audience to hold out his microphone to the candidates, at ease like a skater in the middle of the crowd and sometimes in the wind. He was also a youngster, 29 at the start of the game and moved up from his province. The native of Romans-sur-Isère was always right in the middle of this FR3 tour de France.
In Paris, in the studio, the host – Maurice Favières then Marc Menant – and especially the referee Maître Capello reigned supreme. The latter – the linguist Jacques Capelovici, honored professor – put 100 francs into “le nourrain”, the little pink piggy bank when a candidate did not find the right answer to these general knowledge questions. It was necessary to find the right word to complete a sentence but it was often Maître Capello who regaled with his witticisms.
His talent: cheering up a crowd and putting them at ease.
Jean-Pierre Descombes embodied the link, or the binder in the sauce. Every evening a city, and always this young man in a suit and with impeccable blow-dry who came out of his box in the middle of the audience. Humble, with an affable smile, like a movie face or a perfect supporting role. Curiously, Jean-Pierre Descombes had a career in reverse, as he recounts in his autobiography published in 2004, “How not to succeed on television, from the sets to the backstage”.
After his fantastic 1980s, also marked by “Les petits Papiers de Noël” on FR3 with stratospheric audiences at the time, he left the airwaves but not the television. The cathode people did not lose sight of him since he became the room driver for Jean-Pierre Foucault in “Sacrée Soirée”. Cheering up a crowd and putting them at ease, that was his talent. And perhaps his Achilles heel. He never took the spotlight. He remained one among the audience, never made a star. His Dolby stereo voiceover also brought joy to “Le Juste Prix” and “Une famille en or” still on TF 1, the channel that offered him a second career, but no longer in the foreground.
He has experienced everything, from “Schmilblick” to “Intervilles”. He will attempt a brief comeback with the “Jeux de 20 heures” in 1996 and will be invited to Hanouna’s, who knows his classics when it comes to talking about the history of television. Just as the cities of the “Jeux de 20 heures” fought over the man who knew how to whisper in the ears of the crowds, Jean-Pierre Descombes has brought his good humor and his talents as a juggler who knows how to stay in his place and respect that of others to many trade fairs, fairs and supermarkets.
While ill, he also participated in a video clip to fight against medical desertification in the provinces that became regions and then territories, in Cher, his home state. “Doctors, I’m the first to need them,” he said. If there was ever a “normal President”, Jean-Pierre Descombes was the most normal and modest presenter in the history of PAF. He is part of the small number who enter the collective memory of a generation. Because at 8 p.m. in 1976 there was not much to do or see. So from Lille to Rodez he would come, unroll, attract, host and practice this beautiful profession: giving others a voice.
