"I was frightened, I hope it didn't happen. Hands clasped on the heart, shining eyes, Michel Drucker savored the ovation of the public, standing up. Four years after having launched himself on the stage with "Seul… avec vous", the first show played 130 times, the 77-year-old neo-actor is once again confronting the stage and the audience with "Entre vous et moi". A new show that he will run on the roads in the coming months before settling, at the start of the school year, at the Bouffes Parisiens. Thursday evening, he was in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne), his first Ile-de-France region. Its audience, loyal, too.
He is the one he wants to meet when he goes "from the hall to the stage", with him he wants to share his memories, numerous, he who started television in 1964 ... A longevity which Michel Drucker enjoys immediately, mischievously mixing it with the news: "Everyone wants to retire, not me, I am the ideal active senior for Macron, I set my pivotal age at 90 years. "
Drucker returns. But this time, exit the red Sunday sofa, this benchmark so reassuring for the anxious that it is, present in the first. He sits on small white cubes. Exit also the white shirt, it is in black that it presents itself. Exit, finally, the big screen dressed as a television set from the 1960s, supporting a myriad of archives. There is a screen, but it is reduced and vertical, the smartphone format. And if he always uses it to support his stories, he approaches it differently.
A dive into his memories
First because he talks to her. It's "Between you and me", that is, but it's also between him and him. He was forty years younger. Not a Mélenchon hologram, no, an animated image with which he dialogues at times. Eph legs, curved suit, perfect brushing, his double questions him about his future. A self-interview, the process is skilful to delve into the memory archives and extract memories and files.
The same goes for his journalistic failures - "the fire is circumcised" - or his moments of overheating in contact with humorists of the time. Putting on small glasses, he imitates Desproges welcoming vitriol the guests of "Champs-Elysées": "And here is Gainsbourg ... He's the only genius who looks like a trash can." "
Or Les Nuls and their provocative humor served at a prime time on the same program: "Stéphanie de Monaco who is currently recording in a Paris studio declares: I have one foot in Paris and another in Monaco . We complain about the Lyonnais ”. In his mouth, it's tasty. As when he starts to speak "djeun", evoking the "ieuv" and the "keums", offbeat and fun.
Emotion, self-deprecation and nostalgia
After a lesson on how to congratulate an artist whose performance we did not like - if he tells you that you were "amazing", it's a bad sign - he puts on some anecdotes lived with fans. This Madame Matisse, always dressed in green, in love with him for ages that he sees one day disembarking with furniture and children to settle in his house. This mother who asked her to audition her daughter's pan on the train or even those lovers who wed their hugs on her shows ... The price of glory.
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But Drucker is also the many crossed stars. And anecdotes with them, he also has a spade. Funny - Tom Jones, the "sex bomb", stuffing his crotch with cotton at the start - or poignant, Madame Bérégovoy became speechless after the death of her husband. Less present than in the first, emotion and nostalgia are there.
Before a review of the great disappeared for a kind of celestial ride in the company of stars parading on the screen - "the dead are invisible, not absent", he slips quoting Hugo - he confirms that he knows how to show self-mockery, anticipating his own death. "Courage to the one who's going to have my obituary," he says, "he must get started now. "
He prefers to stick to it and offers a press review of the United welcoming his departure. He reads the titles, supporting images: "Here Paris: Michel Drucker is still dead again", "Detective: Michel Drucker was the father of Jeanne Calmant". The room is folded. If he imitates here and there, Michel Drucker is not really an actor. A storyteller rather. And the public wants more. As a reminder - the man definitely has a job - he offers his "hit": Johnny Hallyday, and his many anecdotes. With imitation in the key. This one, he keeps getting better and better.
"He has fishing anyway!"
A room that rises and greets the artist. Michel Drucker reunites his faithful, often like him, "senior", he immediately noted. An audience that "did not shy away from pleasure", like the breath Monique came with her daughter, Sandrine, 52 years old. "He is a legend, he has known people, intervenes the latter, I found him great. "
"I found that it lacked a little consistency, tempers their neighbor, Jeanne-Marie. The side we see all the missing, we thought we were Caesar, but I admit that his imitations of Johnny are not bad. "I had seen the first one, I preferred this one," says Sandrine. We felt him more present, we feel that he wants to be with us, we feel that he is sensitive. "
"He is a witness to his time, he has so much empathy and kindness, which is rare today," adds Monique. Me, he reconciles me with humanity. Further, Suzanne, 84, came with her daughter as well. "We grew up and grew old together him and me, everything he says, I saw or lived," breathes Suzanne. But he does not age. "I thought he was great," said her daughter. We were taken by the story, he still has the fishing! "