For three years, Gerard Vives was Vincent Lagaf’s sidekick in The right price, on TF1. A new experience for the former star of the cult AB Productions series, The Girls Next Door, where he played the role of the eccentric sports teacher. Many years later, he keeps a sacred memory. Especially thathe almost lost his life on the set of the show… Facing Jordan De Luxe for Entertainment TVhe tells.
His mission was to write the sketches in which he participated in front of the cameras and a hilarious audience. One fine day in 2010, he staged himself with a huge digger. And this is the drama. “JI have a very big accident. They lift me up to 3 meters and then at 5 meters, they make me turn and the cable breaks. And I crash“, he remembers. And to make a clarification that sends shivers down the spine: “Normally, I don’t have to be there anymore.“
This terrible fall, the winner of I’m a celebrity get me out of here remembers it like it was yesterday… or almost. “A big shock. I see myself in the air. But I don’t remember when I crash. I wake up afterwards when I’m revived. I don’t really understand, since the memory came back little by little quite quickly, he confides twelve years later. But I felt like I was on a plateau. I remember very well, I’m sure The right price. I am on the ground. They put a neck brace on me. They’re immobilizing me because they don’t know if my spine has broken, etc. I can’t feel my legs. I feel there is somethingbut I can’t figure it out.“
Traumatized by the accident, Gérard Vivès still wanted to return to the show very quickly, just to “show that i’m here“, he says. Three months after the fall, here he is back, “not necessarily in great condition“, especially psychologically.”It’s maybe six, eight months after the shock arrives. I am not not well in my head. I cry quite easily. I don’t feel well without knowing why and I think it’s the brain, the unconscious that says: ‘Normally, you shouldn’t be here anymore’. The relationship to death, all of this means that it’s a depression. It’s just a realization“, he declares today with hindsight. For his part, Vincent Lagaf ‘revealed to have “almost killed” his comrade. Since then, Gérard Vivès has dumped to buy a castle in the Nièvre. A new life far from the spotlight…