René van der Gijp prefers not to make the talk show Today Inside live. He thinks it is better to record the program an hour earlier. “Then you can get things out of it.”
The men of VI are under heavy fire, because Johan Derksen admitted with a laugh on Tuesday evening that he sometimes put a large candle ‘in’ an unconscious woman in the past. After an extremely fierce media storm about this, the football expert weakened his story last night: he would have only put the candle between her legs.
René is through it
René van der Gijp is finding it increasingly difficult to deal with controversy. Just like a month ago, he wanted to walk out of the show again yesterday. “I don’t give a shit. I’m done with it. Just like that, doesn’t make sense anymore. I don’t feel like it anymore. That’s possible right? So ordinary now. I am done. I’d rather go home, may I?”
It’s too much, René thinks. “It is a sum. I can understand that that John de Mol says: ‘Please stop with that Today Inside.’ Of course I understand that the man thinks that. That man first gets that Ali B and that Jeroen Rietbergen for his choice, then his own son and also this, about which parliamentary questions will be asked immediately.”
no longer live
According to René, there is only one way to continue. “The only solution to this is, and I’m talking about the zeitgeist… At this time, it would be better not to make our program live.”
Colleague Wilfred Genee: “But then you start cutting things out.”
René: “Yes, then you could have removed that.”
Johan: “Yes, but then I think you take a bit of the spontaneity out of the program.”
Rene: “I don’t know. If you do something six times a year, then you have six times less bullshit.”
Johan: “Yes René, but you also had the whole of the Netherlands over you and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss your wig act. We live in a time when the woke and cancel community is massively falling over you at whatever. Everyone is sitting at home waiting for them to think: now we have them!”
swallow jokes
René has less fun making TV. “Yeah, so I think you’d better record this show an hour in advance. Then you always have that with these kinds of things you can say to each other: ‘Take it out, because then it will be shit.’ If you know how I’ve been here for the past five years… I swallow about fifteen jokes a week.”
And pretty funny jokes, René continues. “Then I come home and I tell them to my little one and he laughs at himself. He does say: ‘Dad, don’t tell it on TV, huh?’ I say: ‘No, we’re not going to do that, dude.’”
Dinner guest Özcan Akyol: “Do you already feel limited when you sit here? Then you don’t speak freely?”
Rene: “No. You used to have it going faster, now it’s going slower. You used to be able to just hop-hop, which Prem always did. Say something without thinking. That is no longer possible.”
Live is power
Wilfred doesn’t like semi-live. “Yes, but hello. Wait a second. This program has been around for almost twenty years now. It’s always been like this and it’s the power that we do it live. That we don’t know what we’re doing in advance.”
René: “Yes, but you’re done with the cunt. Then I don’t have to swallow those jokes anymore. Then I can say whatever I want. Then I can just make those jokes, then he can just laugh. And then we take it out of the program! That would be even better!”
Johan: “Yes, then we’ll have a twenty-minute program when we’ve looked at everything. I still think, René: when you get in the car in the evening, you from Dordrecht and I from Drenthe, come here… Then you drive here to talk freely. Otherwise, we’d better stay home if we have to talk with flour in our mouths.”
Just the three of us
The VI men decide that they only want to continue as a trio. Wilfred: “At the moment it escalates now, as it has escalated before, you can’t say that you actually want to go home. That’s part of it. That’s part of what we do. If it ends here, it’s good too.”
Johan: “If John de Mol tells me tomorrow that it went too far, I’ll say: ‘Put Wim Kieft here and I’ll stay at home. Equally good friends.’”
René: “That is not possible, Johan. That won’t work. There are three of us and it always will be.”
Wilfred: “Then we will all stop.”
Johan: “Let’s do it like this René: we’re going to record it, then we’ll take Arie Boomsma as editor-in-chief and she decides what stays in it.”
