Francis Lalanne, Luc Ferry, Cyril Hanouna: celebrities paid a last tribute to the Bogdanoff brothers

Two identical hearses, two light oak coffins side by side. The funeral of the Bogdanoff brothers, who died of Covid six days apart, gathered relatives and hundreds of people on Monday at the Madeleine church in Paris. Singer Francis Lalanne, who became a spokesperson for antivax and arrived without a mask, writer Raphaël Enthoven, former minister Luc Ferry and hosts Cyril Hanouna and Julien Lepers were also among the relatives who came to say goodbye to Igor and Grichka, the the most famous twins of French television, known for their science fiction program “Temps X” on TF1.

Nearly a thousand anonymous people were also present for this popular funeral open to all, before a burial on Wednesday in the strictest privacy in the cemetery of Saint-Lary (Gers), the village of their birth. The mass began around 3 p.m. at the Madeleine church, where Johnny Hallyday’s funeral took place in December 2017. On the mass booklet, a photo of the twins, with this sentence attributed to them: “In the universe nothing is impossible!”.

“Igor and Grichka scanned the sky. Their science guided them to the existence of God”, underlined the priest in his homily. “You are gone, but forever alive in our hearts”, Amélie de Bourbon-Parme said later, addressing her ex-husband Igor Bogdanoff and father of her children. A family friend, posing as an astrophysicist, regretted that the Bogdanoff brothers’ research had been controversial, pointing out that “it hurt them when they were great scientists”.

In the various speeches of family members and relatives, no allusion was made to the reasons for their death. Unvaccinated, Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff fell ill with Covid around December 15, they were then hospitalized and quickly placed in intensive care in an artificial coma.

“Things got worse. It’s fate. They couldn’t be separated any longer… They were very surrounded in the hospital! Until the end, they were giving each other news to a few rooms in ‘difference…”, confided last week Amélie de Bourbon-Parme. Igor Bogdanoff died last Monday at the age of 72, less than a week after his brother Grichka.

The twins had their heyday in the 1980s with a futuristic science fiction TV show, before being criticized for the credibility of their work and taunted for their transformed physique which they themselves described “extraterrestrial”.