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Jean-Pierre Elkabbach was one of the greatest French interviewers. He died on Tuesday October 3, at the age of 86.
In 60 years of political history, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach has interviewed all French leaders, and revolutionized the interview exercise. On radio as on television, the Elkabbach style was first and foremost a tone, and a sense of formula, from the first seconds. “Hello Marine Le Pen. You have no shame ?“, he said in particular to the politician, now an MP.
“Sports” interviews
Nine years later, former minister André Vallini remembers their exchange, which has become cult. “It’s true that the interviews with him were sporty. It lasted about 15 minutes, we came out almost sweating. It was really a fight“, he remembers. “I retain incredible energy, the desire to always have the best”, comments Nathalie Saint-Cricq, political columnist at France Télévisions. Elkabbach also demonstrated his method and his nerve with the greats of this world, such as Yasser Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin.
“It was a mixture of courtesy, deference at times, and impertinence. He was going to find out what we didn’t necessarily want to tell him“, analyzes François Hollande, former President of the Republic.