Among the deputies met after the death Tuesday of the most famous interviewer, the socialist Jérôme Guedj remembers that “he forced you to go beyond what you almost wanted to prepare and say.”
Some MPs have lost their tempers in the face of the one that everyone simply calls “Elkabbach”. Others, drops of sweat. “We never forget his first interview with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, remembers socialist deputy Jérôme Guedj. We mess around a little, it’s like entering a historical monument, it’s impressive. We try to be on level terms because, in any case, we know that otherwise we’re going to get a nice but harsh blow all the same.” Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, known for never sparing his interlocutors, died on Tuesday October 3 at the age of 86.
>> Death of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach: from the “shame” of Le Pen to the “brain” of Marchais, seven cult sequences from an “outstanding interviewer”
Despite the risk of being beaten, the socialist deputy returned several times to Jean-Pierre Elkabbach’s set to learn. “He forced you to step away from what you almost wanted to prepare and say, and to be yourself. I saw that on both sides of the Europe 1 table, we were both talking with our hands because we are a bit very Mediterranean, he and I. And so it also creates a form of warmth, of expressiveness which gave depth to the interviews.”
“The sting hurt”
Renaissance MP Karl Olive also tasted it. The former mayor of Poissy has entered the ring several times. “When I arrived on set, the first thing he said to me before the credits was ‘we don’t squirm here, so you don’t squirm, you get straight to the point’. So we didn’t get lost in the conjunctures, in the coordination conjunctions, we had to get straight to the point with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. There was a lot of complicity, a lot of goodwill before the interview, during the interview, often, we didn’t see it coming, but the sting hurt.”
But other deputies, who did not know him personally, are less complimentary. “Marine Le Pen, are you not ashamed? Sorry, you are not ashamed. You have no regrets?”can we hear in one of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach’s best-known interviews. “He really got her back on track, he had this way of doing things which was very effective, recognizes the Insoumis Antoine Léaument. We weren’t very happy when it fell on us, the Insoumis. He was always trying to ask political questions rather than substantive questions, to make the person present make a mistake.”
“It’s a way of doing journalism that isn’t the one that interests me the most.”
Antoine Léaument, LFI deputyat franceinfo
Fair play, the president of the National Rally Marine Le Pen greets on “wise observer” with an incisive style and freedom of tone which “will be remembered”.
At the National Assembly, deputies remember Jean-Pierre Elkabbach – Report by Victoria Koussa