The squabble continues between the emblematic animators of the “Big Heads”. Bouvard shot his arrows again, Ruquier hopes he will age better than him…
By Marc Fourny
© LOIC VENANCE / AFP
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VS’is a duel that never ends… Philippe Bouvard, 93, once again fired point-blank at Laurent Ruquier, his successor at the head of the Big heads on RTL for nine years now. Guest on the show At Jordan’s on C8, the former host did not hide his bitterness and his animosity against his famous replacement, whose program he is boycotting. “I never listened. Never. Because I said to myself, “If it’s good, it will hurt me and if it’s bad, it will hurt me too”. “And to add:” Laurent Ruquier, it’s nothing for me. I have really known more interesting people. »
Animosity that dates back to the year 2000, when Bouvard was briefly fired from the Big heads and finds a place on Europe 1, in particular as a columnist in the competing program We’re going to get embarrassed by Laurent Ruquier. “I liked him when he was an outside host. And especially when he was presenting shows, where he really had a certain talent, he continued. And then it went wrong when he wanted to make me pay when I arrived at Europe 1, where he officiated, the fact that I had been overshadowing him for years, and that he had never been able to overtake me and even make half of my audience…”
READ ALSOLaurent Ruquier: “The Big Heads” until 2027The person concerned replied a few days later in tv-magazine, with the biting style that we know him, but also a touch of weariness… “He’s been repeating this for eight years, I have nothing to say, it’s pathetic, he confided. This is nothing new! I just hope that in 33 years, when I’m his age, I’ll be less mean and have a better memory than him. And to add that he still continues to have respect for his career. “I’m still in awe of what he’s done. Unlike him, I don’t change my mind. »
“I have no successor”
Philippe Bouvard never really accepted his second departure from the Big heads, in 2014, a program that he brilliantly shaped and hosted for thirty-six years… Despite his age, he could still see himself staying a year or two longer. And above all, he did not really appreciate being replaced by the one who, according to him, had received him so badly for a time on Europe 1 – he accused him of cutting his interventions during the editing.
“I have no successor,” he asserted peremptorily in TV Magazine in 2014. I have nothing to transmit. I simply imagine that whoever will succeed me will have enough original and personal ideas not to take up mine…” And five years later, he gave the substance of his thoughts in Free lunch “I must be the only one in the history of radio who has been replaced by someone who had been trying to catch up with him for years, he complained. We don’t have the same cultural references at all. We are on two different planets. “The pill is definitely hard to pass…