This Saturday, October 12, Patrick Sabatier was the guest on the show We’re doing TV again on RTL, on the occasion of the release of his novel Don’t tell Paul. Discussing his career on the small screen and on the radio, the host recalled a traumatic event: a kidnapping at gunpoint,
It’s an ordeal he won’t soon forget. A successful television and radio host in the 80s, Patrick Sabatier was faced with the downside of fame. At a time when social networks and their share of excesses, such as insults and threats, did not yet exist, it was directly at his home that the flagship face of TF1 experienced the worst: a kidnapping by a man armed.
And “sad memory” that he tells Éric Dussart and Jade on the show’s microphone We’re doing TV again on RTL, this Saturday October 12. “I didn’t think it was a hidden camera at all,” explains the man who hosted Avis de recherche, Atout Cœur and Le Jeu de la vérité. “There was someone who said to me ‘you get in the car’, he knew I was going to RTL”.
“Others had also been kidnapped”
Quickly, Patrick Sabatier understands that his attacker is not after his money: “Under threat, he asked me to take such and such a singer in such and such a show, otherwise he would burn down my apartment.” “Was it to put pressure on you to receive artists?” Eric Dussart is indignant. “We come to this, we take you away…” The 72-year-old author recalls that at “this period”he was “under close protection”: “I was not the only one. Others had also been kidnapped.”
As to whether his attacker “was someone from the entertainment world”, he answers: “No, not even. It was someone who wanted to get someone through. I wasn’t the only one and it took place over several months. After me, there were other people ( …), before me, there were others who were under threat.”. Despite this mishap, Patrick Sabatier believes he was “was very spoiled” in his career. SO “For the time I have left – which I hope is as long as possible – I believe that my life balance is the most important and I do not want to destroy it. I want to spend time with my wife, children and grandchildren” he told TV Mag. However, there is no shortage of proposals: “I’ve been offered radio and TV again recently. I’m proud of it, but I’m in my seventies now. I have to decide who to distribute my time to.”
