Hans Kraay jr. and Tina Nijkamp sat together at Renze Klamer’s talk show table last night. At one point there was an awkward silence. “We’ve had a bit of a mess.”
Tina Nijkamp was the manager of Hans Kraay jr in her time as channel boss of SBS 6. Yesterday, many years later, they sat together at Renze Klamer’s talk show table. She as the Angela de Jong of the ratings, he to discuss football. “Do you also follow Tina, Hans?” Renze asks at one point.
Small inconvenience
Hans replies in agreement. “Yes, I’ve followed Tina all my life. Tina has been my boss. At SBS, quite a long time ago.”
Renze: “And? Was that fun?”
A telling silence follows. Hans: “That was quite fun.”
Renze laughing: “I saw two looks at me at the same time.”
Tina: “It was great fun. We did have one hiccup.”
Hans: “Yes, we had a little bit of trouble.”
Renze: “Should we talk about it further?”
Hans: “No.”
Conflict over VI
Well, luckily Tina thinks otherwise. “Well, that was about… Well, let’s just throw it on the table then! I think you even described it in your book, but that doesn’t matter either. It just is. It was like this: the men of VI have of course been around for a long time and they were on RTL for a very long time.”
She continues: “Hans joined them every week. That program became more and more successful and I thought: I think Hans is employed by us and we pay his salary and now he is at RTL every week. I wasn’t too happy about that. At one point there was a very large poster at the Amsterdam Arena, with Hans also on it, as ‘the faces of VI’.”
A little too hot
Tina then exploded. “Then I thought: yes, this is too much for me, so I had a conversation and I said: ‘Yes, of course this is not possible.’ I can’t do program management at RTL either. Of course it doesn’t work that way. That’s how it went.”
Hans confirms that story. “Back then I was only allowed to join once a month or not at all for six months. I had a lot of clothes on Tina, because I had been doing this for years and years.”
Tina wanted VI
Hans was surprised that Tina then made an attempt to bring in the men from VI. “Tina is from tak-tak-tak-tv, so very fast. She is actually the predecessor of TikTok and short, short, short. She did not like extensive talk shows, so she thought Veronica Inside with Johan, René, Wilfred and me was actually too long.”
He concludes: “Until she calls me all at once and says: ‘Their contract is about to expire, can’t you arrange for Johan to come to the table here soon? Because I want that program!’”
