Mariëlle Tweebeeke always appears in her program Nieuwsuur with the same pen. There is an emergency plan for if she forgets that thing once, but in principle she can’t live without it. “It’s a gift.”
During election time, Mariëlle Tweebeeke is one of the most feared interviewers. She already has a lot of razor-sharp TV interviews to her name and in the run-up to the elections, Dilan Yesilgöz and Henri Bontenbal, among others, will have to be on her mat. It is important for the presenter that she can fall back on her pen.
“Why that pen?”
Eva Jinek has Mariëlle sitting at the table and asks the presenter about it. “Mariëlle, from the moment you work as a journalist, 25 years ago, you have one attribute with you, and that’s your pen,” she says in Eva.
Mariëlle then says: “He’s still in my bag.”
Eva: “But you are not working now. You always have it with you and it is always the same pen. Why this pen? What does it do for you?”
Not just attribute
Mariëlle does not want to be too booming about it. “Yes, dear, that pen … it’s just very simple: I use it. You also have a pen here.”
Eva: “Yes, but from me it can be every pen, I don’t care!”
Mariëlle: “Yes, I underline, I hear something on my ear. I think or hear something in a report that I have not been able to see and just finished. Then I write it down. People always think it is an attribute, but I use it. It is true: I love my own pen.”
Lucky thing
Why does Mariëlle prefer it? “It is a gift that I once received from my parents. It is also a nice pen. I will not mention the name, but it is on top of the world.”
Eva: “It’s a very nice pen. That’s right, yes. It has become a bit of a lucky thing of course. A ritual to have it with you. Have you ever experienced that you didn’t have it with you when you needed it?”
Spat
If Mariëlle forgets her pen, an emergency plan comes into effect. “At Nieuwsuur we have a cupboard and there we have a somewhat simpler, but also reasonably beautiful pen and it is kept for me when I have forgotten my own pen. It will also do well. I actually don’t mind that it should be so bad that I get completely out of my actions if I don’t have it.”
Eva: “You don’t want to go back home to get it?”
Mariëlle: “No, no, that is not possible.”