This free spirit will have crunched for six decades the political world with ferocity and intelligence. He died at the age of 90.
By Florent Barraco
Published on
– Modified
Link copied
Copy link
Philippe Alexandre was a voice. A slightly pasty mouth, a slow delivery and a limpid phrasing which woke up two generations of listeners. Sixty years of career. More than 8,000 morning editorials. About twenty books, most of them political. This journalist, both an outstanding political analyst, a polemicist before his time, a free spirit to the limit – without ever crossing it –, gave many blows, sometimes received some, but was a popular figure and whose advice was expected and feared. Philippe Alexandre has died at the age of 90, his family has announced.
He admitted it bluntly: politics was a drug for him. Or a woman we love, desire, hate, adore. But of which we never get tired. He published his first paper at the age of 19 at fight, then arrived at RTL in 1969, where he became the voice of the station. For 27 years, every morning, the squinted-eyed man wakes up listeners. His judgments are both listened to and feared. It’s Philippe Alexandre the gunslinger. Where many turn their tongue seven times in formaldehyde, he plunges his pen into acid. Not sectarian for a nail, everyone takes for his rank. The left as the right. “We had to shoot, be neither complacent nor conventional, he told us in 2012 in his Parisian apartment located near the Molière statue, he loves theater (and not just politics). An editorial only lasts three minutes. You have to get to the heart of the matter, even to the flesh. One of his favorite targets? Martine Aubry, then Minister of Employment and Solidarity.
In a rant published with his wife Béatrix de L’Aulnoit in 2002, The Lady of Thirty-Five Hours (ed. Robert Laffont), he knocks out this “mother emptory”, “blaster of the poor”, “imperial bureaucrat”, who “is as sacred as these peaceful ruminants who cross the streets of Bombay in the middle of the crowd”. The work, although a little excessive – we have known since that the 35 hours were the idea of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and of the right before –, is a hit and establishes the reputation of the journalist. A reputation and comments that will often bring him to court for defamation – he was one of the first to question the suicide of Robert Boulin.
“Caouètes” and “pear”
In parallel with an important radio and written press career, Alexandre knows the general public notoriety with his participation in major political television programs, in particular with his friend Serge July, boss at the time of Release. The debates, frank, but never stormy, were arbitrated by Christine Ockrent. A program parodied by The horns of info where Alexandre and July discussed the problems of the world around good “caouètes” and a small “pear”. Glory !
And a few setbacks. In 1996, the love story with RTL ends. Divorce is turbulent. Philippe Alexandre thunders to defend his “independence” – RTL was about to merge with the German giant Bertelsmann; his employers denounce his greed. The rebound is more difficult: the journalist analyzes the upheavals of French politics and pours his gall into the regional daily press. His books are still selling well, including his excellent Politics lovers dictionary (Plon), where he fired his last arrows. All his life, he will have made Orgon’s phrase his own in Tartuffe “To enrage the world is my greatest joy. »