Niels van Baarlen, sidekick in the morning show of Radio 538, accuses Angela de Jong of cowardice. According to him, she dares to write everything down, but: “She doesn’t dare face a Peter Gillis!”
Angela de Jong is known as perhaps the most fearless woman in the Dutch media landscape. For example, she recently even sat down next to Marcel van Roosmalen, the man who has been targeting her for years and always writes very mean columns about her. Yet Radio 538 sidekick Niels van Baarlen still thinks she’s a bit cowardly.
Gaston bashing
According to Niels, it is very easy to put people down in a column. “There is nothing as easy as sawing someone off completely by the legs from behind a computer,” he says in De 538 Ochtend.
He also puts his hand in his bosom. “For example, we once had a broadcast on Gaston Starreveld a long time ago… We didn’t know him, we had never seen him, but we completely razed him to the ground. And then we once went on a trip from the Postcode Lottery to Inzell, to ice skating.”
Cut off at ankles
How did it go? Niels: “He was there as a host to receive people. Later that day he came to us and he had heard that on the transmitter.”
Colleague Rick Romijn: “Then he said: ‘You don’t know me at all, but you cut me off by the ankles.’”
Niels: “Yes, ‘but you don’t know who I am’. And then we had such a very nice afternoon and evening with that man. A super nice guy. You just feel really bad about it, don’t you, when someone says that to you.”
‘Angela is cowardly’
This is what Angela de Jong actually does day in and day out, says Niels. “That is what Angela de Jong does, of course. Behind that pen it is very easy to write about everything that it is shit, but she also does not dare to face Peter Gillis.
But she was also with Marcel & Gijs, wasn’t she? “This is also a safe situation, isn’t it? They don’t measure each other there on television either. You hope for that, but in the end you end up saving each other there.”