Dieuwertje Blok was even more popular than Sinterklaas himself

Maybe Dieuwertje Blok was even more popular than Sinterklaas. Twenty -two years she was presenter of the Sinterklaasjournaal. Always cheerful and compassionate, or with a worried frown for everything that goes wrong on the steamboat and in the Pietenhuis, she guided the believers and former believers through the exciting time full of expectations.

In the 2024 season, the presenter had to let go for the first time because she lost her nose to cancer. She already took into account that the disease might expand (“it’s a guarantee to the nose”). At the end of January she announced that she will never appear on television again. Blok died on Sunday evening at the age of 67. She leaves behind two children, and her husband, radio presenter Peter de Bie.

Dieuwertje Blok (Nederhorst den Berg, 1957), in their own words, enjoyed a carefree and protected youth in a house full of books on the edge of the Spiegelplas: “Shaved knees, dirty pants, we walked around in polder suits” (“(Fidelity2023). Her parents were socialist, father was a local alderman for the PvdA, mother had a UNICEF shop at home where they sold Christmas cards for charity, among other things. Her mother also organized letter writing evenings for Amnesty International. Blok himself was a volunteer for Vluchtelingenwerk for many years and was on the board of a different Jewish noise.

Attitude to life

Blok’s mother and grandparents survived the Second World War in hiding. Furthermore, almost the whole family and circle of friends were murdered by the Nazis. Blok published its Mother’s war diary in 2022, Bearing lightness. When the names occur in it, she always came across the Sobibor and Auschwitz death places. Because of the war, she said in Fidelityshe had learned from home that you should always choose the side of the oppressors. She also learned from the diary that she inherited her mother’s attitude to life: “I never see bears on the road, I have a boundless confidence that everything will be fine and that if something goes wrong, it will eventually be resolved.” That year she gave the speech at the Remembrance Day on Dam Square: “Nice and Puh, I’m still there,” she said in the newspaper: “It didn’t work out, that extermination.”

Father’s side came from a family of historians. Her father Dick Blok was Medievist, professor of the history of the Netherlands and director of the Volkskundig Meertens Institute, immortalized in Voskuils Romancycle The desk. Her mother’s family came from the Amsterdam Jodenhoek and was in the fish. Her grandmother was the well -known variety artist Stella Fontaine. Her mother Henny also went to the variety, but dropped out when she had children. Blok’s one sister became a jazz singer, the other VPRO producer. She was at the local Toneelclub Poefff herself and initially wanted to go to the theater school.

Hippies scene

Blok said he had a boisterous puberty. She said she was hanging around in the hippies scene and that she stole money from her father to buy speed and hashish (Noordhollands Dagblad2009). She came to the TV guide Studio Van de KRO rightly as an image editor and via that job she was asked to become a TV broadcaster in 1980. Her fresh, engaging appearance was a relief in the somewhat stiff Hilversum. She only had to announce the programs briefly, but made so much impression that she got her own fan club and every week post bags full of love letters, proposals and sometimes a brush – because some viewers thought her curls curls too boisterously.

After they enter in an article Free Netherlands In 1985 she said she was atheist, she no longer got any work at the Catholic KRO. So she left for the socialist VARA. Among other things, she made the talk show at Die Omroep 3 Women. She also presented for eight years School TV Weekjournaal. In 1989 she took the switch to the new commercial TV channel RTL, where she 5 hours of show presented and got her own talk show: Dieuwertje. When RTL took her from TV prematurely and offered no other comparable program, Blok went to court. She received one and a half tons of reimbursement.

Because of this, however, in Hilversum she came as hard to be known, so she got less work. Her resume has more than sixty radio and TV programs, yet she stated in interviews that she often had too little work and therefore even had to work in a clothing store. The latter aroused surprise from the customers in the store. When they saw block behind the cash register, they thought they had ended up in a program with a hidden camera. Against Algemeen Dagblad Blok said in 2020: “I never have big viewing figures on my ass. I’m not Linda de Mol. “

Roof

Blok made programs for regional channels AT5 and Omroep West. In 1994 she returned to the KRO with, among other things Breakfast TV and There is more between heaven and earth. She also did a lot of radio, if The morning show and NTR Podium. With the Sinterklaasjournaal By the way, Blok did have impressive viewing figures. The public grew from an average of 750,000 viewers in 2001 to two million in 2023. And the children under the age of six were not even counted. The program was awarded by the TV critics in 2021 with the honorary-nipkow disc.

After the promotions of Kick Out Zwarte Piet, Blackface was increasingly discredited in the TV program from 2011. The program management hesitated for a long time about the abolition of Zwarte Piet, which led to friction among employees and to the departure of some familiar faces. Blok openly expressed himself against Zwarte Piet, causing the relationship with the management to deteriorate. But her love for the program itself remained proud. In 2021 she said in it Noordhollands Dagblad: “The Sinterklaas journal brings me back to the safe world of my childhood. I enjoy going into that imagination and see horses on roofs in my head. A few weeks a year I just had to be in Sinterklaas. “

Her last interview, in de Volkskrant In 2024, about the loss of her nose, which she did reasonably cheerful: “66 years I had a lot of fun and benefited from my appearance […] And now I am becoming a lady without a nose. ” She cited a song from Rowwen Hèze: “We all go up with the nose. But I no longer. “

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