That was two and a half years ago… On January 11, 2021, Georges Pernoud, the flagship host of “Thalassa”, died at the age of 73 after several years of battling Alzheimer’s disease. A disappearance which had obviously upset several leading figures of the small screen like Laurent Bignolas, his former collaborator, who had wanted to pay tribute to him during an interview granted to the Parisian : “All the trips, all the meetings that I have made thanks to Georges … I have gained in depth, in the head, in the heart”, had estimated the replacement for William Leymergie. And to continue: “It was a bon vivant. We nicknamed him Balou, like the bear in the Jungle Book because he scratched his back and loved honey”.
Invited on the set of “Chez Jordan” this Monday, June 5, 2023, Laurent Bignolas once again wanted to talk about the years he spent working alongside Georges Pernoud as part of the co-hosting of “Thalassa alongside Sabine Quindoux… A three-way activity during the 2011-2022 season which was not easy at first, the creator of France 3’s sea magazine having been used to hosting this program alone since 1975.
“We didn’t always agree, he had certainties and then we put a bit of paranoia in his head by telling him that I was coming to replace him. I told him ‘but no, on the contrary. I was told that you had to be replaced, but I don’t want that. I spoke to him very clearly. (…) He did not understand it because he always defended himself tooth and nail to maintain his teams and he perhaps had difficulty understanding that we could help him . He was often very alone and not always helped. There were a lot of profiteers who turned around him, but I didn’t want to be part of it, ”said Laurent Bignolas facing Jordan De Luxe.
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“He was losing his bearings”
The journalist then bounced back evoking the departure of Georges Pernoud from “Thalassa” in 2017, then his death in 2021, a few years later. “Do you think it’s something to do with the show that he’s dead?” “, then asked Jordan de Luxe to his guest of the day.
A question to which Laurent Bignolas answered in all transparency: “Very sincerely, yes. He was losing his bearings (…). He told me ‘it’s my Thalassa thing, I don’t know how to do anything else’. (…) And it’s obvious that when you take that away from him, some are not very elegant to say goodbye to him and I think it was a trauma for him. »
LZ