End of a TV era: Thomas Gottschalk lets “Wetten, dass…?” behind. Really the last time?
The last time, really the last time! The very last time! Thomas Gottschalk (73) never tires of announcing that he is finally done with “Wetten,dass..?”. Now only the show would come from Offenburg on November 25th (8:15 p.m., ZDF), his 154th “Wetten,dass..?” show. That was it then! He says.
Not the first farewell to “Wetten, dass..?”
He’s broken up with him several times. It stopped for the first time in 1992 – five years after it started and 36 broadcasts. He was 42 and switched to RTL, for career reasons or because (even) more money was involved, or both. He was serious then, but it wasn’t to be taken so seriously because he came back in 1994.
On April 1, 2006, he announced his resignation again. The audience was shocked and gasped when ZDF reported that it was an April Fool’s joke.
Then Gottschalk announced in February 2011 that he was quitting. And this time he was dead serious. There was “a shadow over the show” that didn’t allow him to “find his way back to his good mood.” There was a serious accident in one of his shows, but that happened later.
Ten years later he resurfaced. “Bet that..?” had experienced an unprecedented fall in ratings with his successor Markus Lanz (54) and had since been discontinued, when the ZDF producers realized that they could put on another show for Gottschalk’s 70th birthday. Just one, in honor of its brilliant presenter. It was broadcast on November 6, 2021 and had a sensational audience of 14.46 million TV viewers. The ZDF giants were over the moon.
And because it was so nice, there was another one on November 19, 2022, which again had a viewing audience of over ten million viewers. So now for the very last time “Bet, that..?” with Thomas Gottschalk.
Decades of dream ratings for ZDF
By the time he’s done with this show, there will be 154 shows that have been watched by a total of over two billion television viewers. For decades he gave his station ZDF dream ratings of between 20 and ten million viewers, although he never reached the “Wetten, dass…?” record of 23.8 million set by show creator Frank Elstner (81). It wasn’t possible to do more than that, (previously) only the German national football team came above it with games like the 2014 World Cup final (34.65 million) or the 1990 World Cup final (28.66 million).
Thomas Gottschalk is now 73. It’s hard to believe that Germany’s cheekiest sunny boy is getting on in years. But unfortunately that’s how it is. When he took over from Frank Elstner in 1987, he was Germany’s blonde, curly prince charming. His repartee, “a kind of rhetorical cunnilingus” (“Der Spiegel”), enchanted young and old alike; the “FAZ” named him “the favorite of grandmothers and teenagers.”
“Bet that…?” became a triumph for the next decades, which shaped Thomas Gottschalk as the greatest German entertainer because he managed to gather entire families in front of the television on Saturday evenings like in front of a campfire, because he casually pulled out the best entertainment.
Everyone wanted to sit on the couch with him
When he was once asked about the secret of his preparation, he told the “Abendzeitung”: “I have five contestants who do things that no one needs. I have five guests that everyone likes to see. And I have a funny suit with a traditional touch, We’re making a show out of it. What should I prepare for?” That’s how he did it right from the start, since he started in 1987: “I was dressed stupidly and had a stupid hairstyle. That hasn’t changed to this day. That’s what you call continuity.”
“Bet that..?” Frank Elstner had already pushed him to a super show. Thomas Gottschalk just had to add the highlights, and he did so with a light hand. Everyone wanted to sit on the couch with him and – if necessary – fool around with him. World stars such as Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Robbie Williams, Céline Dion, Tina Turner, Bryan Adams, Cher, Michael Bublé, Lionel Richie, Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and politicians such as Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder came.
Bets that are still unforgettable today
The audience loved the bizarre bets, like that of a farmer who, in 2007, recognized his cows simply by the smacking noises they made when eating apples. Or that of a strong Austrian who managed to tear up 50 Viennese telephone books, each 1,000 pages long, within 2:30 minutes. In 1987, a man and his three friends were able to blow over a VW bus. Or a betting candidate stacked 55 washing machines into a pyramid within five minutes. And in a bet by a man who wanted to lick a dog bowl full of water faster than his Labrador, the dog won…
A bet made by entertainer Stefan Raab (57) had consequences: in 2003, he promised to ride down a bobsleigh track on a wok if he lost his bet. Although he won his bet, he still kept his promise. This idea gave rise to the Wok World Cup, which still takes place today.
Gottschalk’s bets when he lost another bet will also be remembered: he went to a brothel as Santa Claus, had himself dipped from head to toe in mustard or, in January 2007, climbed into the ice-cold Lake Constance wearing a bright green Borat thong .
The talk with Götz George (1938-2016) in 1998, who shouted at Gottschalk, wasn’t so funny: “The senior teacher keeps coming through to you. (…) Let’s talk about the film, it’s more important to me than that, what you’re talking about (…) I have to represent a film that doesn’t really fit into this group.” The audience didn’t want to hear that and booed George.
In 2003 there was another exchange of blows. George: “You know little about acting.” Gottschalk: “Do we want to start arguing again?” George: “I don’t just sit on a couch for 40 years and annoy people.” Gottschalk: “As a serious actor, you can’t ruin the mood here.” This time the banter was staged.
The crayon bet will also go down in the annals of the show. In 1988, a disguised editor at the satirical magazine Titanic bet he could tell the color of crayons by their taste. He won – and admitted the fraud on the air. He had peered under the rim of the blackout glasses.
An accident that changed everything
The tragic low point of “Wetten,dass..?” was the accident of acting student Samuel Koch (36), who fell badly in December 2010 while trying to somersault over a moving car on jumping stilts. The broadcast was canceled and Koch has been paralyzed from the neck down since the fall. The accident caused Thomas Gottschalk to resign in 2011. He then came back, but only for three shows.
In an interview with “Zeit” He explained that it was “not the case that ZDF is now running after me and saying, for God’s sake, you can’t say goodbye yet. If that had happened, I might have said: All right, then I’ll do another show. ” This time it’s a farewell forever, also a bit of an “escape. Before I just create shitstorms because I grab women by the knee, I’d better stop.”
He feels “a certain fear” of going against the spirit of the times. “I’m now considered the father of men’s jokes, which I never wanted to be. For a while now, I’ve been seen as an old, white man who hasn’t understood anything. I don’t want to draw attention to my old age. According to the motto: He said stupid things again.”
He once said: “If my hairstyle still holds up, then I have no reason to stop, even if I’m long past my own sell-by date.” The curls have now been trimmed for her age. Actually, it’s a shame!