The reason that Merel Ek was so diligently looking for a diarrhea inhibitor during her stay in Curaçao is because she feared a Catherine Keyl-like diarrhea attack on television.
Diarrhea on holiday is not a rarity. Unfamiliar food, tropical climate, other bacteria in the water: the gastrointestinal tract does not always react kindly to it. Merel Ek suffered from it during her stay in Curaçao, and at a time when she could least afford it: just before a live television broadcast of Today Inside.
Corendon diarrhea
The solution was simple but urgent: a diarrhea inhibitor. Medicines such as loperamide slow down intestinal movements and that is effective, but you must take them on time. Merel treated it as a crisis situation: she sent a message in the Today Inside group chat asking if anyone had a diarrhea inhibitor on hand.
A cry for help that did not go unnoticed, because Wilfred Genee simply revealed it live on television. This is how the entire watching Netherlands came to know that Merel Ek was backstage looking for medication and why. The big question that many viewers had in the meantime is: what was actually going on? Was it because of the food at the Corendon resort?
The thin one on TV
Merel came back to it last night The Orange Summer. “This happened once on Curacao and then not again. It was only in the morning. I then took such an inhibitor before the broadcast to be on the safe side, because I thought: it will happen to me once before the broadcast, but it was not necessary.”
It is not an unfounded fear in the TV profession: Catherine Keyl suffered from diarrhea attacks for years during her performances at Omroep MAX. Those are now over. “By adjusting my diet, things have already improved enormously. But I have to avoid stress as much as possible. The tension of those live broadcasts was deadly.”