It’s a duel that never ends… Philippe Bouvard, 93, again shot Laurent Ruquier, his successor at the head of the Big Heads on RTL for nine years now. Invited to the show Chez Jordan on C8, the former host did not hide his bitterness and his animosity against his famous replacement, whose show he is boycotting. “I never listened. Never. Because I said to myself, “If it’s good, it will hurt me and if it’s bad, it will hurt me too”. “And to add:” Laurent Ruquier, it’s nothing for me. I have really known more interesting people. »

Animosity that dates back to the year 2000, when Bouvard was briefly kicked out of Les Grosses Têtes and found a place on Europe 1, notably as a columnist in the competing program On va s’gêner by Laurent Ruquier. “I liked him when he was an outside entertainer. And especially when he was presenting shows, where he really had a certain talent, he continued. And then it went wrong when he wanted to make me pay when I arrived at Europe 1, where he officiated, the fact that I had been overshadowing him for years, and that he had never been able to overtake me and even make half of my audience…”

Philippe Bouvard never really accepted his second departure from Les Grosses Têtes, in 2014, a program that he brilliantly shaped and hosted for thirty-six years… Despite his age, he still saw himself staying a year or two from more. And above all, he did not really appreciate being replaced by the one who, according to him, had received him so badly for a time on Europe 1 – he accused him of cutting his editing interventions.

“I have no successor, he said peremptorily in TV Mag in 2014. I have nothing to pass on. I just imagine that whoever will succeed me will have enough original and personal ideas not to take mine…” And five years later, he gave the bottom of his thought in Midi Libre: “I must be the only one in the story of the radio that was replaced by the one who had been trying to catch up with him for years, he cursed. We don’t have the same cultural references at all. We are on two different planets. “The pill is definitely hard to pass…