The situation surrounding Jack van Gelder is much worse than initially thought: according to Wilfred Genee, he has misbehaved not once, but several times. “There have been four conversations about it.”
It is beginning to become clear why Hélène Hendriks did not go through the fire to retain Jack van Gelder for her Oranje talk shows on SBS 6. The TV celebrity appears to have misbehaved not once behind the scenes of her program, but several times. And that puts things in a different perspective.
Matthijs from SBS 6
Jack is actually just the Matthijs van Nieuwkerk from SBS 6, says colleague Johan Derksen Today Inside. “Talpa is of course very wary of a new riot. Jack has a short fuse. He actually did exactly the same as Matthijs van Nieuwkerk: spoke to a young editor with a raised voice.”
Wilfred Genee then reveals for the first time: “Not once, just to be clear.”
Johan: “No, a few times. But that’s Jack. I’ve known him for 35 years. I’ve been all over the world with him. A great colleague, but highly flammable. He forgot about it after two minutes and are great friends again, but that someone is bothered by it. Jack is from the old guard, from Mart Smeets, Jansma and me too.”
“You don’t shout!”
Yet Johan never shouts and Jack does, Wilfred emphasizes. “But you don’t do this, Johan. You don’t do this.”
Johan: “No, I don’t have that problem at all, that I insult young people. I don’t have that at all. But Jack does say something to such a boy with an air, like: ‘Hey, when you were born, I was already the anchorman of Studio Sport, right? Would you like to tell me how the world works?’ Then you get things like that, don’t you.”
However, according to Wilfred, things have gotten out of control. “Yes, but Johan, let me reiterate: you also spoke to all the people behind the scenes. This was the fourth conversation that was had about it last week.”
Frequency
Jack has not been fired either, Wilfred emphasizes. “It’s not that he couldn’t come anymore. He could just still come. He just wanted a higher frequency than was offered to him. It’s not that they said: ‘We don’t want to work with you anymore.'”
Johan: “No, they tried to solve it well, but Jack also dug his heels in. I still find it very annoying for the program, because it is more fun to watch with Jack.”
TV authority Tina Nijkamp agrees: “More exciting.”
Anecdotes
Wilfred then reveals something more about the Jack conversations. “There were also people from the Talpa organization there. There are also very funny anecdotes. There was once a confrontation with the editor-in-chief and he said: ‘Jack really has to stop now. It’s really over with the shouting, otherwise you’ll just go home.'”
“Then Jack said: ‘I’m going home’, and then he walked out of the building and walked back in the other side and just sat at the table! Hahaha. What you say: it will probably be over soon for him too.”
Johan: “With Jack, yes, but he does leave a trail of destruction.”
A bit of ego
Talpa hoped that cutting down on Jack would solve the problem. Wilfred: “It was simply said: ‘We’re going to do it a bit in a different frequency, we’re going to see if we can keep it together’, but the important thing is: just try to take it easy. It’s not all that necessary, is it?”
Would Jack have been demoted to the bar in that case? “No. It was just at the table, but I think a little bit of ego came into play at that moment. That conversation also became a bit rude at a certain point, you know.”
