At 80, Michel Drucker already has nearly 60 years of television career behind him. But the host could retire in the summer of 2025, as he confided for the first time this Monday in the columns of the regional daily Var-Morning.
“I would like to go until the end of Delphine Ernotte’s second term [la présidente de France Télévisions](…) after that would be the right time to stop the animation”, explained the host of the program “Vivement dimanche”, whose return to the antenna is scheduled for August 27, on France 3. He had to interrupt his weekly show in February, a few weeks before having a second heart operation.
Courage to unplug
President of the France Télévision group since August 2015, Delphine Ernotte had been reappointed to her post for a second five-year term in the summer of 2020. “I will need a lot of courage to unplug”, concedes Michel Drucker, whose current contract with the public television group runs until 2024, recalling having always wanted “not to fight too much and go to the top”.
This is the first time that the host has mentioned a date for his departure from the small screen, after having once again affirmed a week ago to TV Magazine, the TV supplement of the Figaro, “not knowing the word” retirement. “Being 80 today is not old,” he insisted.
“My anxiety is memory”
Interviewed by Var-Morning in his farmhouse in the Alpilles (Bouches-du-Rhône), Michel Drucker must record the first “Vivement dimanche” of this new season on August 22, at the Gabriel pavilion, in Paris: “I try not to think too much about the first “, he entrusted” I know that one will observe me with the magnifying glass to see if I am gaga or diminished “.
“My anxiety is memory,” he admitted. But “I have the impression that it will be fine. I feel better than when I first came back, where I was on the radar, ”he said, referring to his return to the studio after his first heart operation in 2020.