Tim den Besten immediately assured Berget Lewis that he is not a racist when he found her in Eva Jinek’s studio on Friday evening. “I come in and I say: ‘I’m not a racist, am I!’”
It caused quite a commotion last summer: Tim den Besten spontaneously sang an outdated Sinterklaas song on television when he saw his good friend Nicolaas Veul pass by on a boat during Pride in Amsterdam. “Yes, Sint-Nicolaas is now arriving by boat! Sinterklaasje, come in with your servant!”
Wild beast Tim
In addition to taking the word “servant” out of this traditional nursery rhyme, Tim’s singing also caused discomfort because there were black people on the boat. People who did not know that Tim sang this because he saw his good friend, therefore concluded that this was a racist statement, but it was not at all.
Still, Tim went deep, deep through the dust on national radio. Crying too. Crying my eyes out. “They say that I also called ‘Piet’ to people, while I shouted ‘S10!’ That song… I’m ashamed, but I just really didn’t do the rest. Then you just get a lot of DMs, like: ‘You are a wild beast’ and ‘You are just like your ancestors’.”
‘I’m not a racist’
Tim is still busy with this riot. He also immediately apologized on Friday evening when he found Berget Lewis in Eva Jinek’s studio. “I had a little two-week riot last year. I had just… I hadn’t seen Berget for a while, I come in and I say: ‘I’m not a racist, am I!’”, he confesses.
Berget: “Yes, right!”
Tim: “Because… I had sung a Sinterklaas song that contained a word that we no longer use. I accidentally did that, live on TV, in the Gay Pride broadcast on NPO 1. Then I cried very hard on the radio afterwards.”
All wrong
Table guest Ruud Gullit surprised: “Oh, was that you?”
Tim: “That was me. It was very weird. So at first I had accidentally sung that song, which I think we should no longer do at all, but in the reaction of Nicolaas who was on the boat, I had in my head: Saint Nicholas is arriving by boat.”
It generated a lot of response. “Then people said: ‘What the f*ck… Sinterklaas is just… It’s our country! They come to our country, we can sing what we want!’ Then after that I had apologized and cried really hard, and then people said, “You don’t have to say sorry!” It was all wrong.”
Nice column
While Tim was reviled by people who considered him a racist, Özcan Akyol passionately defended him. “Eus then wrote a very nice column; I also thanked him for that. And then my mother sent Eus – very embarrassingly – a message to thank him.”
He concludes: “I thought the worst thing was that people thought I was a racist. I just couldn’t stomach that. That false feeling that I am such a person and that if people didn’t get to the end of the story and would still think I am like that.”