So, Jack van Gelder lets his pent-up frustration out. After bashing Hélène Hendriks in the newspaper, she reacted sadly and now he is back with a major TV interview.
It doesn’t deserve the beauty prize how Jack van Gelder was pulled off at the Hélène Hendriks show. Officially, the editors no longer wanted to continue with him and Hélène would have tried to keep him on board, but in the end everyone knows how it works: it is her show and so she simply has the final say.
Jack goes wild
So Jack is disappointed and he showed that last night in a major interview with The Telegraph. “It was of course not nice to be shrouded in such a way, after a TV career of 54 years. I actually think it was about the fact that I did not have the right political color for the program. And that I perhaps became too serious.”
He feels pushed aside, he said in the newspaper. “Hélène and I got along very well. But I will tell you very honestly: I am disappointed in her. I have hardly heard from her anymore. I find that difficult.”
VI lashes out
The men of Today Inside support Hélène. “Jack has really gone off track now,” says Johan Derksen. “I was really very pro-Jack, right, that he was with Hélène. I never understood why Talpa got rid of him there. He had a few outbursts of anger, but oh well, I don’t mind that so much. We also have that between us here sometimes.”
“But now he is going to criticize Hélène Hendriks because she never called. That is not true in the first place, but Hélène Hendriks really stuck her neck out here to keep him at the table. She had a battle with the editorial staff, with the management. They did everything they could to keep him at the table.”
‘This is not allowed’
René van der Gijp also supports Hélène. “If he can’t blame anyone for all this, it’s Hélène. She had so much patience with that man. Anyone else would have been done with him long ago, with all that calling, all that fussing and all that bullshit. Hélène has so much patience, that girl, seriously. He called her sixteen times a day!”
TV authority Tina Nijkamp: “This is just a kick from him. This is just not okay.”
Johan: “He shouldn’t have done this. He is now just frustrated that he is no longer asked to do anything, but that may also have a reason.”
Hélène sad
Hélène is sad, she lets her know The Telegraph. She says she did call him in the last week of April. “To be honest, this hurts a bit, especially considering our past and good relationship.”
Jack then says again: “I only now see that she called me on April 29, but I was apparently unreachable at the time. If she had called again or sent a text message, this miscommunication would not have occurred.”
TV interview
To calm things down, Jack sat in on a big live interview late last night Show news. “It was your own wish to come live with us on the broadcast so that you were in control. Do you have that little confidence?” said presenter Dyantha Brooks.
Jack: “No, well, the wish… Let me be clear: you called me asking if I wanted to be on the air, but I want to be live and not possibly cut. I just want to say what I want to say. That can best be done live and that can be done for as long as you want it.”
In the summer
It has been taken out of context by ‘headmakers’, according to Jack. “That will then be unpacked. What I am disappointed with is that in March I asked: ‘Maybe I can join De Oranjezondag one day, because you are talking about me being able to join the World Cup in the summer.’ I didn’t get an answer to that at that time.”
“She was between two walls: me on the one hand and the editors who no longer wanted to continue with me because they thought about the content of the program in a different way. Then suddenly the message came via social media that football people were coming along who I had never seen at the table: Theo Jansen and Youri Mulder. I didn’t know anything yet.”
‘She knew better’
Jack is disappointed that Hélène was not open about it. “While I think she might have known better. The last person I want to be angry with is Hélène. We have always had fantastic contact with each other from the very beginning. She did nothing at all and tried in every way to keep me involved, but I was a bit pissed off by the editors.”
“I may have overestimated her situation – that’s my fault – that she could have banged her paws on the table a lot more than she might have done, to say, ‘Guys, I’m presenting the program and I just want him there.’ I’m a little disappointed in that, but I’m not angry with her at all.”
Sad
How does Jack feel about hurting Hélène? “What do you think I have? That I like to say goodbye to my career in this way? I have done 150 broadcasts in three years. Do you think I like to be put away like this? It is painful for everyone and everything.”
He concludes: “I hope she also understands that it has all hurt me and that it is strange when it is said: ‘You can join us in the summer’, and then you read in the newspaper who is coming along, yes, then it hurts me too. I feel a bit let down.”
