René van der Gijp stood up for Özcan Akyol the day before yesterday, but yesterday he already sounded very different. “The story he told me doesn’t seem to be true either.”
It is perhaps the biggest mistake in Özcan Akyol’s media career: publicly throwing his ‘close friend’ Matthijs van Nieuwkerk under the bus because he saw a video showing a side of the presenter that he did not know. After weeks, that howl video turns out to be just a fragment from an old DWDD documentary and is very innocent.
Another video?
Many people cannot believe that Eus has made such a fuss about such a mild film. There was a lot of confusion about this the day before yesterday in Today Inside: both Wilfred Genee and René van der Gijp had been in contact with Eus, and they both heard a completely different story from their VI colleague.
According to Wilfred, Eus had admitted to him that he indeed meant that mild fragment, but René shouted: “This is not the video. There are three or four people who worked at DWDD (…) and they have the video, they keep it to themselves and when Matthijs possibly announces his return in six or seven months, then it will happen.”
“Do you still get it?”
A day later, last night, things are very different again. Wilfred Genee in Today Inside: “Do you still understand Eus’s story? About that tape? Or don’t you understand it either? Not really all that anymore, right?”
Johan Derksen previously lost confidence in Özcan and says: “No. It is a Babylonian confusion of tongues and you cannot get out of it.”
Then René van der Gijp shows that he is no longer so sure about Eus: “He was telling me about those four people here at that Media Park, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
‘Very weird’
Wilfred agrees that he has just heard something different from Eus. “He told me it was the video on the internet.”
Johan: “I think the most striking thing about the whole thing is not that the video is not there, but that he drops his best friend. I find that strange.”
Wilfred: “He can tell us on Monday when he is there and then we will be done with it. Then we will wrap it up and not talk about it anymore.”
Liar?
Is Eus’ story about those three or four vengeful former DWDD members correct? “He didn’t explain it to me that way yesterday, but that’s possible,” says Wilfred RTL Boulevard. “What I do know is the story that René said, that there are a number of editors ready to release much more if necessary.”
Luuk Ikink thinks it is a strange story that there would suddenly be another secret film. “That’s not right, is it? Because Eus has always said that those images go around! That is at odds with them keeping it to themselves.”
Unimaginable
What a strange thing, says TV expert Rob Goossens. “Even that there is a group of revenge-seeking former employees who are trying to blackmail Matthijs van Nieuwkerk into a kind of pension by withholding images… I can’t really imagine it.”
And Bram Moszkowicz in Show news: “I think it’s such a hypocritical story from Eus. What Matthijs did that evening is not that bad at all. Matthijs has a nice friend, let me leave it at that.”