Jean-Pierre Pernaut died on March 2, 2022, at the age of 71. After successfully fighting prostate cancer in 2018, the famous TF1 13H presenter suffered from lung cancer – the right had been cured but the left was inoperable due to his too fragile health. While he was undergoing radiotherapy sessions, he finally had heart surgery. Complications arose and Jean-Pierre Pernaut was plunged into a deep coma before losing his life. A disappearance that marks the whole of France. But it is above all his loved ones who suffer. Wednesday March 9, 2022, a week after the tragedy, many of them gathered for his funeral at the Sainte-Clotilde basilica, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. If his wife and now widow Nathalie Marquay proved worthy, their son Tom could not contain his emotions…
Bernard Montiel had already revealed it: the charming 18-year-old brunette had spoken moving words during the ceremony. In the columns of the magazine Gala currently on newsstands, part of the speech is shared. Tom spoke first, “in a cathedral silence“. For two minutes, he expressed his pain and paid a beautiful tribute to his late dad. “Thank you for being a smiling, generous, ambitious, caring father, very funny and sometimes even stupid. Thank you for introducing me to motorsport, a family passion that I will continue with Olivier. We never lacked anything daddy“, launched the young Tom, student in a business school in Lille. And to address these last words to Jean-Pierre Pernaut, after having burst into tears : “I never said it in your eyes, because it’s hard to tell between men, but I love you daddy.“
A poignant speech which did not fail to move the family, the relatives but also the many personalities who made the trip. And especially realized without teleprompter. Another fine tribute to his father who, in thirty-three years on the air, has never used one.
Faced with this painful ordeal, Tom can count on the support of his sister Lou (19), but also of Julia and Olivier, born of the love of his father with his ex-wife Dominique Bonnet.