In the summer of 2021, Jean-Pierre Pernaut underwent lung cancer surgery in complete secrecy. Only his close entourage was aware, including his wife Nathalie Marquay, who managed to cover their tracks by sharing photos of the journalist as if he was serenely on vacation. Together they also decided to take a radical measure so that he remains anonymous at the time of his hospitalization. A way for Lou and Tom’s dad to protect himself from any buzz, which would only have brought him additional stress. So he took a false identity.
“Because I didn’t want my medical file to go everywhere“, he explains in an interview with Paris Match, published this Thursday, December 2, 2021. A little sleight of hand that is not unlike that of Michel Drucker before him. A year earlier, in 2020, the host of France 2 had also opted for a new name when he had to undergo heart surgery.
On the strength of his 30-year career, Jean-Pierre Pernaut has however not been able to keep his anonymity entirely, but as he emphasizes, everything has always been carried out with benevolence. “That said, the hospital staff recognized me and I discovered extraordinary people, who fight to give the sick people something to eat. My pains were complicated to manage, but in the face it was only smiles and incentives to put into perspective, because there was inevitably worse sufferings than mine in an adjoining room“, he confides gratefully.
If his operation went well, Jean-Pierre Pernaut is not yet out of the woods. Indeed, a month later, the doctors told him that his left lung was sick this time. It is now a larger tumor that cannot be operated on. The 71-year-old journalist has therefore been receiving radiotherapy for several weeks.