Driving in the Alpes-Maritimes on his motorcycle with two other biker companions in 1986, Coluche collided with a heavy weight. Without a helmet, he dies instantly and plunges the whole country into immense grief. In 2013, a scoop was published in a local daily, The Little Nice : journalist Olivier Porri-Santoro reveals the face of the man who accidentally killed Coluche. The truck driver who was driving the heavyweight which hit the 41-year-old French star had agreed to answer the reporter’s question. Albert Ardisson was then 75 years old and expressed his dismay about the tragedy that haunted him and continues to do so.
Albert Ardisson is an ordinary pensioner, petanque lover, great-grandfather. For him it is “a long affair that lasts for thirty years” and who haunts him. It’s not easy to bear the brunt of the death of a man adored throughout the country. So much so that since the tragedy, this truck driver has fallen into a nervous breakdown. He was trying to find ways to divert the subject, such as claiming that he was the father of presenter Thierry Ardisson to cut short questions about the 1986 drama. Moreover, in the article from Petit Niçois, now not found on the Internet , the man, annoyed at the idea of talking about this affair again, will not say more than during his interview just after the facts where he claimed on Antenne 2: “I didn’t see him, he came out. What else do you want me to tell you? I can’t tell you anything else.”
The spotlighting of the driver involved in the death of Coluche has raised many questions in the profession. Asked about Europe 1, the journalist defended himself from trying to make a big deal: “What I wanted to show is that he is a man like the others, that he is the second victim of this accident and that he really suffered from it.“We also ask him if he is not afraid that the driver of the vehicle could again be the target of attacks by fans now that his face has been published in the Nice newspaper, he claims to have done his job, that of the right to know.
It must be said that the sudden disappearance of Coluche has led to many speculations, compiled in the book Coluche, the accident (2006), published by Privé, signed by Jean Depussé and Antoine Casubolo. The idea that the death of the artist would not be an accident is tenacious with the arguments that the investigation contains contradictions, that Coluche could have been the target of the agri-food industry with its charitable association Les Restos of the heart and that he had presented himself for the presidential elections of 1981. But one of his two sons, Marius Colucci had shed his welcome light on the affair on the airwaves of RTL: these rumors arise from the fact that death ” banal” of his father, such a popular individual, is simply not acceptable, as was the case with Lady Diana or Elvis Presley.