Marcel van Roosmalen does not see himself as a coward after his lackluster TV confrontation with Angela de Jong. “That is my character, that I think: I just take it kindly.”
Marcel van Roosmalen has been writing really nasty columns about Angela de Jong for years and years, but she sat next to him last week in the talk show Marcel & Gijs. Expectations were very high, but when Angela looks him straight in the eye, Marcel suddenly turns out not to be so mean anymore.
Blood on the pan
Critics think Marcel is cowardly, but how does he see it himself? How does he look back on their meeting? “Yes, quite fascinating. In retrospect you always think: how should I have handled it? The viewer still wants blood on the pan,” he looks back this weekend in the podcast Another Day Extra.
Co-host Gijs Groenteman: “Yes, the viewer wants a fight. The viewer wants a fight.”
Marcel: “And he wants to scream. He just wants: it doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you’re unreasonable. But yes, well, that is my character, I think: well, I just take it kindly.”
Pig in oil
Marcel wanted to be nice. “And then people think it’s much too soon… Then you’re a coward. Because: ‘You have a big mouth on paper and now you crumble if you’re wrong!’ Well, you’re just trying to make your arguments in a calm manner. But that’s all slipping away. It’s a pig in oil. Everything slides off her.”
Gijs: “And she is looking at you with such a look: what else do you have?”
Marcel: “Yes, and then you have nothing left. Then you think: I really don’t feel like convincing you anymore.”
Distraught
Gijs got nervous about Angela. “It made me so distraught that I started making all sorts of language mistakes. I made whoppers of language mistakes, I don’t know what I was doing. Anyway, I do think that we have put up a brave fight against Angela de Jong.”
Marcel: “I’m not that dissatisfied at all.”
Gijs: “I am not that dissatisfied at all.”
‘she quacks’
Afterwards, Gijs talked with Angela for a long time about the NPO bobo Frans Klein who switched to Talpa. “She says: ‘Oh oh oh, how cleverly he played it?’ And: ‘Oh oh oh, will it go to Talpa?’ And: ‘Oh oh oh, what a hard time he has made for himself.’ She is, of course, aware of all the gossip. She knows nothing, but she makes everything out.”
Marcel: “She goes through everything.”
Gijs: “It’s a woman, you throw in a quarter and she starts talking. It’s an incredibly cozy chatter. Someone you can talk to very well. Furthermore, it is of course a block of granite. You don’t break through it and you can’t move it. But we spent a lot of minutes here with her and just having fun, didn’t we?”
‘She smelled good’
Marcel agrees. “Certainly. She smelled good, she had on a very nice outfit. She says, “I’m wearing purple tonight.” She has seven different packages. Her great hero at the Algemeen Dagblad is Hans Nijhuis. She has really made her the ironclad housewife she already was. He has recognized and acknowledged her in housewifery.”
Gijs: “The writing housewife.”
Marcel: “Yes, the writing housewife.”