The presenter and writer Bernard Pivot, who got millions of French people reading thanks to his show “Apostrophes”, died Monday in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the age of 89, his daughter Cécile Pivot announced to afp .
A book in one hand, his pair of glasses in the other, Bernard Pivot also presented the program “Bouillon de culture” and organized from 1985 the Dicos d’or, a spelling championship which quickly became international.
Entering the Goncourt Academy in 2004, he became its president in 2014 and withdrew at the end of 2019. Bernard Pivot, who turned 89 on Sunday May 5, 2024, had the idea of ”Apostrophes” in 1974. The first issue was broadcast for the first time on Antenne 2 on January 10, 1975.
This show that he hosts live, after Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 1, is unbeatable on Friday evenings. We laugh a lot, we compete with each other, we smoke and we drink, we insult each other, we kiss each other. The public loves it, book sales follow.
The Matzneff affair
“Apostrophes” lasted fifteen years, from 1975 to 1990, and was followed by millions of viewers. Certain extracts still have great success on the internet. Thus, when the Gabriel Matzneff affair arose in January 2020, an author who benefited from great indulgence while he had sexual relations with minors, we rewatched a lot of a show from March 1990 on which the writer was a guest .
With thirty years of hindsight, the sequence is shocking. “Today, morality comes before literature. Morally, it’s progress,” defends Bernard Pivot.
After the end of “Apostrophes”, he created “Bouillon de culture”, still on public service, with a broader horizon than books. Born in Lyon on May 5, 1935, Bernard Pivot was also known to be an enlightened wine lover and a football fan, in particular of AS Saint-Etienne.
afp/lan
