A five-point look at the career of François De Brigode at the JT.
His first news at 7:30 p.m.
After presenting Ce Soir magazine and several editions of the late evening news, François De Brigode made his official debut on the 7:30 p.m. news, replacing Jacques Bredael on December 1, 1997. “I have changed, he will tell us when we watch the video again twenty-five years later. I don’t really remember that first diary anymore… But you can still feel a little stress in your voice.”
Bye bye Belgium
On December 13, 2006, RTBF created a certain panic among viewers with the broadcast of Bye bye Belgium, a political fiction program which proclaimed that Flanders had unilaterally declared its independence. This is an idea prepared in secret for two years by the magazine team Strip-tease and that François De Brigode agrees to present. A few minutes after the start of the broadcast, the RTBF telephone exchange explodes, scandalized reports rain down… The affair becomes political and De Brigode’s head at the JT hangs by a thread… He will not be fired, but it didn’t go far.
Today, he is still proud to have presented this show. “It was a moment of creation where RTBF dared to do many things. We revealed a reality of the Flemish movement which no longer wanted Belgium. […] When people tell me that I was the first to put ‘fake news’ on the air, I say no: it was a hoax.”
The Dutroux affair
Like many journalists, the kidnapping of Julie and Mélissa then the discovery of their bodies buried in Marc Dutroux’s garden in Sars-la-Buissière on August 17, 1996 marked François De Brigode. “I didn’t experience this period very well, he says in his biography. Firstly because the Dutroux affair tainted my region, my city.” He also mentions the criticism that he is often made of only speaking well of Charleroi. “I talk about cities as they are”, he proclaims.
The attacks at Charlie Hebdo
A series of dramatic events have marked his career, but he admits that it was the Charlie Hebdo attack that struck him the most. “Charlie, it’s my generation, like Hara-Kiri. […] Beyond the journalists, it was above all a spirit that was being assassinated.”
The giggles
Brocarded by André Lamy and Olivier Leborgne in Vote for me for his bad diction – “Vote for me I have a lot of fun! I don’t hide the fact that my caricature makes me laugh. Myself, I tend to make fun of others so I completely accept that people do the same thing to me”he declared in 2017 to Day DH – François De Brigode’s career has also been – fortunately – punctuated by fits of laughter.
The most famous undoubtedly remains the one that happened with this famous Doctor I’m going to say, who repeated “I’m going to say” at every end of a sentence in 2011.
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