Three years after having treated his prostate cancer, Jean-Pierre Pernaut is back in hospitals. The former TV news host of 1 p.m. on TF1 suffers from lung cancer. He learned it last summer, but the news was announced publicly only recently, in November 2021. The right lung healed, the left lung now affected, the husband of Nathalie Marquay gives himself as never before on the disease . Monday, November 29, 2021, on the air RTL Midi, at the microphone of Pascal Praud, the journalist of 71 years confides.
“I’m in great shape, well, I exaggerate when I say that because you have to keep your spirits up“, he launches, always positive. And if he speaks often now and in an uninhibited manner, it is also and above all to raise awareness among the French. This lung cancer”comes 80% from tobacco“, assures Jean-Pierre Pernaut.”All my life I have smoked, he regrets. Well, I fell into the trap.“The cigarette has been an integral part of its existence, forone to two packs a day for fifty years, just that. Today, Jean-Pierre Pernaut is seized with remorse: “I say it, I was just stupid …“
His story is that of many others. And it is precisely to prevent the disease from setting in that he testifies. “Stop smoking!“, he launches as a warning to RTL listeners. An advice he has already heard from his brother doctor who has it”yelled at“all his life. In the documentary Life after broadcast on C8 Thursday, December 9, 2021 and that our colleagues from Parisian watched, Jean-Pierre Pernaut already evoked his regrets on the subject: “For years I have been told ‘quit smoking, quit smoking’. I smoked a lot. And then, I was discovered a little disease that happens to people who smoke. I found myself a little lung cancer. It is the first time that I speak about it.“
Finally, his trigger was illness. “The day I quit, I didn’t notice it. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since July 5th. I did not put a patch. I don’t miss tobacco, he announced. I should have stopped longer ago. It is a question of will. I was afraid of breathing badly, of coughing, of gaining weight. Well, I gained three kilos in three months. I promise I’ll go to the gym.“This lung cancer had the same effect on his daughter Lou Pernaut (18) who,”after four years of addiction“, she also quit smoking last September.