Jean-Marie Bigard, 66, said Wednesday on BFMTV that he could be "tempted" by a presidential candidacy of 2022 to "represent the people" with "a sincere voice that would not belong to any political party" .
The comedian, who qualifies the current ministers of "tocards" ("Parliament and government, that ends up lying , like lying", he says), had already invited himself on the political scene 18 months ago by supporting the movement of yellow vests. Then during the municipal elections in Paris by supporting the showman Marcel Campion (0.4% of the vote on March 15).
Many other comedians around the world have tried their luck. Sometimes with success as in Ukraine where Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president in 2019. In 2015, Jimmy Morales had been brought to the head of Guatemala by defending an anti-corruption program ... before being himself implicated for (between others) corruption. A quick tour without the slightest reminder: the animator-humorist ends his mandate last January, unable to represent himself. And in France? Comical forays into the political arena have been hitherto unsuccessful adventures. Even the most successful: the story of a guy, Coluche, who ran for president in 1981 ...
Candidate for "pestilential erections"
In a France which turns - painfully, but with a little carelessness - the page of the Thirty Glorious, he became the indisputable public entertainer n ° 1, with the help of sketches of plumes or bleeding, depending on the mood.
Precisely, it is difficult to probe this Thursday, October 30, 1980. Gag? Provocation ? Coluche, who has just celebrated his 36th birthday, summoned the press to the Théâtre du Gymnase (Paris Xe), to confirm his candidacy for "pestilential erections", announced ten days earlier. A “social joke”, he sums up. Microphone, camera or pen in hand, they are a hundred wondering if it is bacon or pig. Which end to take this Schmilblick?
There is indeed a sign: the comic added a checkered liquette to his traditional overalls, and tied a scarf around his neck, like others the tie. He will be, he says, the "candidate of roller skaters, fagots, negroes, old people who have retired from m ..., unemployed, filthy, haired ..."
"Ass in the ass" of politicians
Well, the case is heard, it's a somewhat rude hoax, even a publicity stunt from his manager, the fearsome Paul Lederman. Except that the discourse hardens: if he launches out, affirms the former kid from Montrouge by forcing his banter of Parisian titi, it is for "those who undergo politics and for whom we do nothing". "As for thirty years, we vote for competent and intelligent people, I suggest that we vote this time for an imbecile who knows nothing about it, that is to say me." "A" con "coupled with a" professional abstainer ", assumes one who has not attended the ballot boxes since his bulletin" Mitterrand "in the presidential election of 1965.
Political Newsletter
Every day, political news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
The journalists listen and then laugh, in turn incredulous and conquered in front of this new candidate who claims to be the only one "having no reason to lie". “Half of the politicians are worthless. The others are ready for anything, ”cingle Coluche, who understands their“ cum in the ass ”. The campaign slogan, on the other hand, is less corrosive: “Before me, France was cut in half. Now it will be folded in four. "
The press conference lasted a good hour, between valves and digressions. "Coluchism" set sail for April 26, 1981, where the first round of the ballot will be played. Six months ! The longest campaign in the history of the Republic. We'll have to keep busy while waiting for the promised revenge between Giscard and Mitterrand. With Coluche in hair to be scratched, time will seem shorter, that's already it.
Spinning, listening, harassment
But how did this funny idea come about? Starting with a layoff: in early 1980, Coluche was fired from RMC after being kicked out of Europe 1 for his profanity and his unwelcome remarks about the host of the Elysée Palace. In the house filled with Colucci friends, the idea was threaded between the joints and the corpses of bottles. "The only way to express yourself everywhere and without hindrance, to make fun of the mouth of Giscard and others, is to present yourself for the presidential election", would have slipped Romain Goupil, former leader of May 1968, now a pillar of feverish nights in the rue Gazan (Paris XIV).
Other happy drilles complete the picture: artists (Michel Sardou, Eddy Mitchell, Gérard Lanvin, Patrick Dewaere, the Splendid gang, Reiser…), intellectuals (the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari …) And some libertarian or leftist activists. Charlie Hebdo will serve as a propaganda tool!
This crazy support committee must give birth to a program. It will be the end of marriage and the economy, the drug released, the right to throw stones at the blind or not to wash their hands any more. Mocking conformism and politics pays off. Eight, 10 and soon 16% (early December) of French people approve the clown's application for overalls. Is mystification escaping him? Some people around him find that he is doing too much, that he takes this adventure far too seriously, especially in his quest for 500 sponsorships or his attempts to unite the small candidates under his banner.
By force, the populist twist of his punchlines takes precedence over their humor. " One for all, all rotten ! To vote for me is to vote against politics ”, he proclaims. The media also get tired, while the real "match" between the left and the right is finally settling. "I will stop playing politics when politics stop making me laugh," he warned. But Coluche disturbs and the politicians no longer laugh at all. Spinning, eavesdropping, harassment ... The Giscard power places it under close surveillance, leaks its old misconduct. At Mitterrand's too, we are worried about the voices that would be missing. Emissaries are sent to encourage him to give up.
A law bears his name
The candidacy flutters ... or the thigh. On March 16, after a false hunger strike - "It's starting to swell me," he admits -, Coluche throws in the towel, takes a stand for the socialist, before a final pirouette: "Have fun but without me. "
Wink of the story that has not yet been written: Coluche will play four years later in "Fou de guerre" (by Dino Risi), his last film before his disappearance on a motorbike in June 1986. In the casting , he appears alongside the Italian actor-humorist… Beppe Grillo. The man who, in 2009, launched the fiercely anti-system 5-star movement, which would ultimately triumph in the 2018 elections in the Boot.
After his setbacks in the presidential election, Coluche had affirmed that he would never touch "politics again, too dangerous ..." But politics, she remembered him, with the law known as Coluche, passed on October 20, 1988 , ie two years after the death of the founder of Restos du Coeur in the winter of 1985. This provision of the finance law, which has been renewed every year for thirty years, consists of a "tax niche" allowing part of the capped donations to be tax exempt. charities, up to 50% originally, but up to 75% since the Borloo law of 2005. A law that has helped boost the generosity of the French towards those who are "cold or hungry".
Pierre Dac, the forerunner in 1965
We are not serious when we are 71… Pierre Dac, the most famous humorist in the country, launched out in February 1965 in the presidential adventure. " Times are hard ! Vote Soft! "He lets go to launch the" Unified Wave Movement ", his springboard to the Elysee. Did you say wacky? That's good, it's Dac who invented the word, from louchébem, butchers' slang (he is also the creator of the Schmilblick, which Coluche will take up).
You have to believe that he has matured his coup… de Mou: a year earlier, Dac founded the “laughing party” with his partner Francis Blanche, the incontrovertible “Maître Folace” of Tontons Flingueurs. Their sketches make France of the Thirty Glorious years curl, but this time it is a question of having it voted: it will be in December, and for the first time, the Head of State will be elected by universal suffrage.
The matter is therefore serious, except for Dac Flanqué by Jean Yanne and René Goscinny, designated future ministers, as well as a burlesque tribe (wrestlers, a false Arab sheikh, a false priest). Dac has a press organ dedicated to his farce: the bone marrow, the satirical newspaper he founded in 1938, where he unrolls his funny program. He promises not to dissolve the National Assembly in sulfuric acid, promotes the death penalty ... but suspended, and develops a sort of sunflower diplomacy: "Given the march of the sun, we will try to '' have relations with the East in the morning and with the West in the afternoon, the Middle East being treated from noon to 2 am and by appointment. "
During his press conferences, he adopts the gestures of politicians and speeches as grandiloquent as hollow to better show their emptiness. But the more he amuses France, the less he makes Gaulle laugh. Dac gives up in September, out of loyalty to the General whom he had joined in London in 1943. Rather than admitting his withdrawal under pressure from the Elysée Palace, the former Jewish resistance fighter will get away with yet another pirouette: with Tixier- Vignancour, candidate of the extreme right, he affirmed that the presidential election had found a candidate "more wacky" than him.