For many years now, Jacques Legros has been Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s faithful joker on the TF1 newscast. As soon as the summer holidays arrived, the journalist took over the reins of the 1 p.m. newspaper. A status that has always suited him and thanks to which he was able to devote himself to other projects. It is also for a new book that the journalist is in the news today. Indeed, he decided to take stock of his long career with Behind the screen: 40 years at the heart of the media, to be published next October 5 by Éditions du Rocher. And through its pages, Jacques Legros was obliged to evoke Jean-Pierre Pernaut, who died last March.
It is on this occasion that we learn that all has not been rosy between these two pundits of information. “To have been his joker for 24 years without a single editorial clash is a source of pride. But I know that he was itching to comment on my diary. He never spoke to me directly. The editors have always been able to spare the susceptibilities. Except once…“, writes Jacques Legros in an extract that Entertainment TV was able to obtain.
It was in 2020, during the first confinement, the joker of Jean-Pierre Pernaut had then almost ended up exploding. “We had therefore installed an automatic mini-studio in his home. But he wanted to keep the leading role and asked the team more than necessary. (…) For my part, I never knew what he was going to talk about. He was reluctant to share. He wanted more and more to take control of the whole newspaper. (…) I was starting to boil inside, until one day I broke out, gathered my stuff and started back to the parking lot and my car. Since he wanted to do the newspaper for me, let him come and do it! (…) I learned afterwards that with this mini-studio at home, it was not the Chronicle of a confined what he planned to do, but the entire newspaper, his love, his passion, his thing, his life. I came back, of course…“, he recalls in his book.
We weren’t friends, but neither enemies
A short chapter that does not paint the most flattering portrait of the popular JPP. But Jacques Legros fully assumes. “We weren’t friends, but neither were we enemies. I would just say that our relationship was more distant and less smooth than one might have imagined. His presence was rarely heavy. Except at the end, at the time of confinement. Our relationship then became strained. No doubt he must have felt deep inside him the end of his adventure at 1 p.m. He had hardened. He had been ill“, he explained after being contacted by our colleagues.
Jacques Legros imagines that his remarks could be taken badly by the faithful of the deceased journalist but, through his work, he claims to have simply wanted “tell the truth“.”His sense of information was unique in the world. But like any character, he had his excesses and his weak points. Some would probably have preferred me to be smoother…“, he conceded.