This Tuesday, December 27, C8 broadcast The Great Bluff: 30 years already. A program that returns to the cult program presented by Patrick Sébastien. On this occasion, the host also confided in the tragic death of his son, Sébastien Boutot.
A drama at the origin of a cult show. Patrick Sebastian is one of the best-known animators of the PAF. Present on television for more than thirty years, he presented many programs that marked the history of the small screen. But in 1990, when he was at the helm of the show Sébastien, c’est fou!, broadcast for four years on TF1, Patrick Sébastien had to face a tragedy that would upset the rest of his career.
“My son’s accident takes place in 1990, I resume the 91 season and I hold on, I hold on, I hold on until the moment when I take the backlash in the face, that is to say that I can no longer. It’s me who says: ‘I quit’ and for everyone, I’m dead”said the host on the show The Grand Bluff: 30 years already on C8. Shortly after leaving Sébastien, it’s crazy! in 1992, he then had a brilliant idea: “There is an empty summer when all the same I continue to do shows and it was during these shows that the idea of the Grand Bluff came to me, which will revive everything behind “.
Patrick Sébastien: “I always had in my subconscious the fact that it was not him”
And this idea came to him after making a difficult decision related to the death of his son. “My son killed himself on a motorbike in July 1990 and I didn’t want to recognize the body at the morgue, which meant that I always had in my subconscious, as I hadn’t seen it, the fact that it wasn’t him. It’s very stupid. And for years, and even still, when I see a biker passing by, dressed in black leather with a helmet, I can’t help but think: ‘Maybe it’s him’“.
And during a summer evening, when he has just stopped at a service station, Patrick Sébastien sees a biker arrive “dressed in leather, with the helmet”. The host then said to himself once again that it could be his son. “The biker takes off his helmet, he has a beard and I have this kind of stupid reflex to look at him and say to myself: ‘Take off your beard, I recognized you’. And getting back in the car, I said to myself: ‘That’s an idea, I’m going to dress up, I’m going to go see people who know me and when they are going to freak out, we remove the thing’“. In Le Grand Bluff, Patrick Sébastien thus metamorphosed with the help of wigs, contact lenses and false teeth in order to trap his fellow animators such as Jean-Pierre Foucault, Michel Drucker or even Philippe Risoli.