Presenter Philippe Bouvard will cut the microphone in January, after 60 years on RTL

Aged 94, the radio man wants to break a record for longevity after sixty years on the airwaves.

It is time for his retirement. Radio journalist Philippe Bouvard, 94, announced Sunday June 23 that he would cut off the microphone in January 2025, on the occasion of his sixtieth anniversary on the air. This is’“a world record”according to the RTL station, where the nonagenarian still writes a weekly column.

“There is a temptation, which is not a temptation of laziness, but a temptation of record, it is to go until January 1st, it will not be bad enough, and then to listen to the others and to be silent”explained Philippe Bouvard on Sunday on RTL, in reference to the retirement that he refused for a long time.

“Because on January 1, I will have established the double record that I hoped for, that is to say 60 years of radio and 60 years of RTL”, justified the one who started in 1965 at Radio Luxembourg, which became RTL in 1966, before launching “Les Grosses têtes” there in 1977 and making it the most listened to program in France.

In a press release, the M6 ​​group’s radio station praised his emblematic figure and his “world record” for “the host who has done the most seasons on a station”. His career “revolutionized radio”, said the president of RTL, Régis Ravanas, quoted in the press release. “We understand his choice, but (…) Philippe knows that he belongs forever to the RTL family,” he argued.

After 37 years of hosting “Grosses têtes”, Philippe Bouvard reluctantly left his place in 2014 to Laurent Ruquier, called to rejuvenate the show, which he did not “never listened to it since”as he explained in December to Var-Morning. RTL then entrusted him with “Allô Bouvard”, broadcast on weekends until summer 2020. Philippe Bouvard has also written a column in the monthly VSD for four years.