“He tried to get me fired several times” already told Pierrette Brès to our colleagues from Var Matin on August 28, 2019. Journalist, horse racing columnist, this pioneer of the small screen returns, at 84, to her rich career with Jordan De Luxe from Tuesday May 2, 2023, on C8 . Always smiling, this former hairdresser never expected to become a famous horse racing columnist on Antenna 2 and remain so for 40 years! It is her immoderate love of horses which, one day, while she is shampooing in a large Parisian salon, will put her foot in the stirrup! Meeting a certain Robert Forget will indeed change his life: “I was intrigued by a client who came to have his hair done with Paris-Turf in his hands (…) I had been passionate about horses since my earliest childhood after growing up in the Camargue so I told him that my dream would be to ride a horse”, explained Pierrette Brès to the Parisian in March 2022. This owner of racing hair then offered her riding lessons which allowed her, at the age of 26, to obtain her rider’s license and to participate in horse races. It was during one of these competitions that the journalist from Paris Match André Lacaze notices her and offers her to join the editorial staff of the Journal Weekend which has just been launched. One thing leading to another, Raymond Marcillac, the head of sports at the ORTF, offered him to become the first woman to host a horse show on television! There, she met Léon Zitrone who, keen on racing, “sought to oust him from the air time and time again”!
“I found myself like a gourd”
For nearly 40 years, she will follow the evolution of the horse racing world and in particular its feminization: “In the end, the only difficulty was the misogyny of the ORTF sports department. I was the only woman! It didn’t scare me though, I didn’t care. , she will confide to Var Matin, in 2019.It was in 2001 that Pierrette Brès retiredhen the broadcast of the Quinté+ goes from France 2 To Canal+. And without regret ! In the meantime, she will have endured the diatribes of Léon Zitrone, Gros Léon as the public nicknamed him. The essential figure of the small screen for having presented the JT from 1959 to 1975 but also programs that have remained cult like Games without borders, Intervilles all the military parades of July 14 or the European coronations. And this man was not the most convenient! Denise Fabre also testified to this at the microphone of Eric Dussart on RTL last January: “The first time I met him, I had just arrived at Cognac-Jay and I was taking the elevator when he arrived next to me. He looked at me he said to me ‘Who are you?'” she explained, mimicking the host’s disdainful tone. Stunned, she had never dared to take the elevator with him again! Ditto for Pierrette Brès who always confided to journalists from the south of France: “One night, Leon Zitrone was doing the 8 p.m. set, and I had to come at the end of the newspaper with my column. But instead of launching me and giving me the floor at the scheduled time, he himself read on the teleprompter what was intended for me! I found myself like a gourd. There was a blank on the air. Afterwards, the boss Jean-Pierre Elkabbach yelled at me and sanctioned me with 15 days of layoff.” An unbearable attitude that the journalist denounces once again this Tuesday, May 2 at the microphone of Jordan De Luxe who will even make him admit that he “was a little slob”!
VF