Harry Mens had an eventful week after a bizarre interview with Catherine Keyl. Nieuwe Revu came up with an original approach: call Mart Smeets, because he will turn eighty in the same month.
The gentlemen do not have much in common, but the fact that they were both born in January 1947 was an advantage New Revu enough reason to call Mart Smeets to ask what he thinks of the latest controversy surrounding Harry Mens. The magazine called him and the result is devastating: Mat appears to be disgusted with Harry.
Publicity for Harry
Catherine Keyl gave her good friend Harry’s program a lot of attention last week. She announced their conversation in Business Class as her ‘most bizarre interview ever’, generating more publicity than the program had had in years.
What viewers saw was a conversation in which Harry expressed his old-fashioned views about women. The program attracted only 16,000 viewers that morning, but the interview was subsequently widely covered in programs such as RTL Tonight, RTL Boulevard and Shownieuws.
What does Mart think?
What does Mart Smeets think of it all? Nieuwe Revu called him with their month of birth as a basis: both gentlemen will turn eighty in January. “Harry who? I don’t know that man, I have no idea who that is. Oh, he from that poorly viewed Sunday morning program. Then I have a face,” he sneers.
“Is he, like me, born in January 1947? Then we will indeed both be 80 in January. I may have watched that program for half a minute in my life and then thought: this is nonsense. He does what he does and I do what I do. We don’t get in each other’s way and I am not going to openly criticize or praise him.”
‘Stop it!’
Does Mart also have no opinion about the riot surrounding Catherine? “The current affairs surrounding the fuss surrounding Catherine Keyl? Oh well, stop it, you don’t call that current affairs, do you? Is that important for the Netherlands to know? No, right?”
“Current affairs are something completely different. The disease in Africa that they can hardly get a handle on, the tension around the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, that is current affairs. Not two people bickering on television.”