Jean-Pierre Pernaut gave a long interview to Paris Match when his second lung cancer was made public. In the pages of the weekly, the 71-year-old journalist nevertheless kept smiling as he addressed the disease which befell him for the third time, after prostate cancer affected him in 2018. He made no secret of not to have been stunned for some time on learning that it was going to be necessary to fight again: “I had a little trouble digesting. It’s heavy to hear this news: I took a big hit on the head, without collapsing” he explained. The time to assimilate the news and prepare for the battle, Jean-Pierre Pernaut was not really able to raise the subject with the others, in particular his children with whom he nevertheless spoke of everything without “taboo“nor”shame“: “It is a serious disease that must be taken seriously. I admit it, it was first Nathalie who mentioned it with them.“
The former TF1 JT star has “kept fishing“as he put it so well, because he had had a warrior model before his eyes for a very long time:”My mother has always been a fighter. She wanted to be called a pharmacist, not a pharmacist, even though she was very feminist. I was brought up surrounded by boxes of medicine, with total faith in medicine. My mother taught me never to be sorry for yourself“. Jean-Pierre Pernaut has never done it and out of the question for him to give up.
Jean-Pierre Pernaut refused to let himself be defeated. Yes, the word cancer is scary but it is not insurmountable: “The gaze of others is more complicated to live withhe explained. When I talk about my cancer, the reaction is unanimous: ‘Oh shit!’ It’s entertaining. […] We must arrest people with cancer as short-term deaths. We are cured of cancer, life is beautiful. May it last a long time“. Ironically, the journalist was not swept away by the disease but by complications that arose after a heart operation according to information from Isabelle Morini-Bosc, a close friend of the couple.