Bernard Pivot

Bernard Pivot ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}; 5 May 1935 – 6 May 2024) was a French journalist, interviewer and host of cultural television programmes. He was chairman of the Académie Goncourt from 2014 to 2020.<ref>Bernard Pivot président de l'Académie Goncourt: "Le destin ne se refuse pas" Template:Webarchive, L'Express.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Biography

Pivot was born in Lyon on 5 May 1935,Template:Cn the son of two grocers. During World War II his father, Charles Pivot, was taken prisoner and his mother moved the family home to the village of Quincié-en-Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot started school. In 1945 his father was released and the reunited family returned to Lyon. At age 10 Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school where he discovered a passion for sport, while he was more average at traditional school subjects, except French and history.Template:Cn

After starting law studies in Lyon Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) in Paris, where he met his future wife, Monique.Template:Cn He graduated second in his class. After an internship at Le Progrès in Lyon, he studied economic journalism for a full year, and then joined the Figaro Littéraire in 1958.Template:Cn

In 1970 he hosted a humorous daily radio programme . In 1971 the Figaro Littéraire closed and Pivot joined Le Figaro. He left in 1974 after a disagreement with Jean d'Ormesson. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber invited him to start a new project, which led to the creation of a new magazine, Lire, a year later. Meanwhile, he had begun hosting a television programme in April 1973 called Template:Ill on the First Channel of the ORTF. In 1974, the ORTF was dissolved and Pivot started his Apostrophes programme. Apostrophes was first broadcast on Antenne 2 on 10 January 1975, and ran until 1990.<ref>Chronicle by Susan Heller Anderson Template:Webarchive, The New York Times.</ref><ref>French TV Show on Books Is Ending Template:Webarchive, The New York Times.</ref> Pivot then created Bouillon de culture, with the aim of broadening people's interests beyond reading. However, he eventually returned to books.<ref>ARTS ABROAD; Adopting a Country, Then Crashing Its Best-Seller List Template:Webarchive, The New York Times.</ref>

Pivot died of cancer in Neuilly-sur-Seine, on 6 May 2024, at the age of 89.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Spelling championships

File:Bernard Pivot.png

Bernard Pivot, centre, in Saint-Symphorien-de-Lay in the 1980s. His father, Charles, is to the right, wearing a tricolour ribbon.

In 1985, Pivot created the Championnats d'orthographe ("Spelling Championships") with linguist Micheline Sommant,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which in 1992 became Championnats mondiaux d'orthographe ("World Spelling Championships"), then the Dicos d'or ("Golden Dictionaries") in 1993.Template:Cn

Pivot and James Lipton

James Lipton was inspired to create Inside the Actors Studio by a chance viewing of a Pivot programme on cable TV. Lipton adapted Pivot's use of a Proust Questionnaire to one that he himself used at the end of each episode of Inside the Actors Studio.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

However, the question "If God exists, what would you like Him to tell you when you're dead?" was considered potentially offensive to US audiences and replaced by a more acceptable "If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?"Template:Cn

Pivot became aware that Lipton was inspired by his questionnaire and invited him to appear on the final episode of Bouillon de culture.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Television work

• Template:Ill (1973–1974)<ref name="AcadGonc">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Apostrophes (1975–1990)<ref name="AcadGonc" />
• Bouillon de culture (1991–2001)<ref name="AcadGonc" />
• Template:Ill (2002–2006)<ref name="AcadGonc" />

Defence of paedophilia

On 26 November 1973, Pivot invited the paedophile novelist Tony Duvert onto his show Ouvrez les guillemets. Duvert refused, letting his editor and supporters Jérôme Lindon and Alain Robbe-Grillet promote his book.<ref>Ouvrez les guillemets : émission du 26 novembre 1973, INA.</ref>

In January 1975, Yves Berger, the literary director of Éditions Grasset and Pierre Sabbagh's cultural adviser on the 2nd channel of French television, persuaded Jacqueline Baudrier, in charge of the 1st channel, to replace Marc Gilbert's Italics with Pivot's Ouvrez les guillemets talk show.<ref>Édouard Brasey, L'effet Pivot, Éditions Ramsay, 1987, p.</ref> On 30 May 1975, he received Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita on Apostrophes; on 12 December 1976, Michel Foucault, who criticised psychoanalysis and "contractual sexuality" based on consent or non-consent, with René Schérer, Guy Hocquenghem and François Châtelet; on 14 October 1983, Renaud Camus, defender of the paedophile cause;<ref>L’Infini, Gallimard, n° 59, automne 1997, "La Question pédophile".</ref> on 23 April 1982, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who described having ambiguous relations with children in kindergarten;<ref>Est-ce que l'INA a fait disparaître les propos de Daniel Cohn-Bendit sur la sexualité des enfants ? Template:Webarchive, Libération.</ref> on 2 March 1990, Gabriel Matzneff, a noted paedophile<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> whose book Mes amours décomposés was highly criticised;<ref>Quand l'attrait de Gabriel Matzneff pour les jeunes enfants était dénoncé chez Pivot Template:Webarchive, Les Inrocks.</ref> on 23 February 2001, Catherine Dolto, to talk about the legalisation of paedophilia on Bouillon de Culture; and in 2005, Michel Tournier, whose references to paedophilia were published in La Pléiade in 2017.<ref>Michel Tournier sous la loupe de Bernard Pivot Template:Webarchive, Le Figaro.</ref>

On 17 March 2013, Pivot defended Alexandre Postel's book Un homme effacé, which described a man who owns explicit pictures of children on his computer,<ref>Journal du dimanche Arrêté sur imagesTemplate:Dead link, Le JDD.</ref> and on 30 October 2016, La Mauvaise vie by Frédéric Mitterrand, as a "brave book, very brave, a kind of secular confession where each confession, as in Georges Perec's "Je me souviens…", starts with "Je regrette…".<ref>Frédéric Mitterrand : "Je regrette…", la chronique de Bernard Pivot Template:Webarchive, Le Journal du Dimanche.</ref>

In 2017, neuropsychiatrist Louis Masquin, in the Catholic magazine La Croix, described the introduction of paedophilic literature on French television in Pivot's shows as the "reflection of the "paedophile adventure", "considered approximately normal".<ref>Le lent changement de regard de la société sur la pédophilie Template:Webarchive, La Croix.</ref>

In 2019, Pivot wrote on Twitter that "cardinals, bishops and priests who rape children don't believe in heaven or hell", criticising the influence of the Vatican II reform. In September 2019, he declared on Twitter: "In my generation, boys looked for little Swedish girls who had the reputation of being more open than French girls. I imagine our surprise, our fear, if we had approached a Greta Thunberg". Julien Bayou, from the environmentalist party Europe Écologie – Les Verts, replied: "You're talking about a minor" and French feminist Caroline de Haas asked him to delete his post,<ref>Greta Thunberg's defiance upsets the patriarchy – and it's wonderful Template:Webarchive, The Guardian.</ref> something he refused to do.<ref>Bernard Pivot assume son tweet sexiste sur Greta Thunberg Template:Webarchive, Huffington Post.</ref> He was immediately defended by far-right essayist Éric Zemmour.<ref>Discours d'Eric Zemmour à la convention de la droite Template:Webarchive, Adoxa.</ref> In December, Pivot apologised for allowing Gabriel Matzneff to describe his relationships with teenage girls and boys on his literary talk shows without challenging him.<ref>"French publishing boss claims she was groomed at age 14 by acclaimed author" Template:Webarchive, The Guardian.</ref>

In July 2021, Pivot posted a tweet about actress Françoise Arnoul, who had just died, in which he remarked that "young people in the 1950s dreamed about her breasts. But the ones seen in The Wreck were not hers. She confessed it to me on a broadcast. Still a minor, she was not allowed to be filmed naked."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

External links

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