Alfred Biolek is dead. The television presenter, book author and lawyer died at the age of 87, as his adopted son announced. The former TV presenter and talk show host fell asleep peacefully in his Cologne apartment. Biolek had been in poor health for a long time.
Biolek studied law in Freiburg, Munich and Vienna, where he had his first stage appearances in the student cabaret “Das Trojanische Pferdchen”. He graduated with the third best exam of his class in Baden-Württemberg and joined the ZDF legal department in 1963 as a legal advisor.
There, however, Biolek soon turned to editorial work in the entertainment sector and finally decided against administrative work despite being appointed deputy head of entertainment. In 1970 he switched to Munich-based film and television production company Bavaria, for which he produced programs primarily for WDR. His breakthrough as a producer came in 1974 with Rudi Carrells Successful show “On the running belt”.
During his time in Munich, Biolek changed from a conservative lawyer with temporary CDU membership to a liberal bohemian. As such, he did not want to lead a life as a “permanent employee” – in 1977 he became a freelancer for the WDR. In February 1978 he presented his first episode of “Bio’s Bahnhof” on the ARD program, which quickly made him popular.
The program’s recipe for success included the mix of big and small stars, interesting contemporaries, music, parody and clowning. In the following years he established himself as an empathetic talk host. In 1991 his entertainment show “Boulevard Bio” went on air, which was highly praised for its successful mixture of guests and topics from the most diverse areas of life and society, and which brought Alfred Biolek top reviews and awards. Among others, Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Britney Spears were guests.
Biolek consolidated his reputation as a passionate cook from 1994 to 2007 with the ARD hit show “Alfredissimo”, in which he talked shop with celebrities from culture, politics and sport at the stove, presented his own creations and did not neglect the cultivated communication. His cookbooks such as “Meine Rezepte” (1995) were also bestsellers.
Biolek struggled with his homosexuality for a long time. It wasn’t until he was about 30 that he admitted to himself that he was gay. He never spoke about it in public. His outing was done by someone else: the filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim announced in an RTL program in 1991 that Biolek was “extremely gay”. At first he felt it was “unfair”, but later he was happy about it: “I received a blow that hurt a lot, but somewhere this blow released a tension that was gone afterwards.”
In 2010, he suffered severe skull injuries when he fell off a spiral staircase and fell into a coma. Since then he had lived quite withdrawn in Cologne.