Merel Westrik is preparing for a departure from the program that Coen Swijnenberg and Sander Lantinga make on radio station JOE. She is very tired. “For me it is unsustainable.”
It seems that Merel Westrik will not be part of the team of De Coen & Sander Show on radio station JOE for much longer. Her alarm goes off every working day at 3:45 am, after which she reads the news from 6:00 am to 10:00 am. The presenter has been doing it for two years now, but is now suing de Volkskrant that she is ‘chronically broke’. She’s broken.
‘Unsustainable’
Merel really doesn’t think it’s possible to keep it up. “Sometimes I don’t really know whether something happened this morning, the day before or last week. It’s like living in another dimension.”
When asked whether it can still be maintained, she answers honestly: “I think the honest answer is that ultimately it is not sustainable for me. I see people who do this for a long time that they have a very solid routine of going to bed at eight o’clock in the evening. I never go to bed at eight o’clock.”
Four hours of sleep
It won’t be half past eight at the earliest, says Merel. “Very occasionally. Usually, if the evening is nice, I think: it’s a shame to go to sleep now. Then it can sometimes be eleven o’clock or half past twelve. And then you only sleep four hours. That’s not enough.”
She continues: “I don’t notice that in the morning, because then something has to be done. Then there is a deadline, and you have to reduce a news item to five sentences. I always manage that, because there is pressure. But around twelve o’clock I collapse. Billie (her 4-year-old daughter, ed.) comes home from school at two o’clock, so then I can lie down for a while.”
Afternoon nap
A short afternoon nap like that gets Merel through the day. “I have to be on the schoolyard at two o’clock. It sometimes feels like I’m on another planet.”
She continues: “I initially thought: this is ideal. Because then I go to work in the morning. Then Billie comes home from school. And then the whole day is open to me. But that whole day that was still ahead of me in my mind is often covered in a blanket of fog.”
Unclear
Anyway: Merel needed that radio contract after her failed transfer from RTL Nieuws to Net5’s Ladies Night. “I found it very difficult to get myself moving. Then I thought: I actually need structure. There just has to be something solid. Furthermore, I am not someone with a plan or a dot on the horizon.”
“For me, everything comes in waves. I have often talked about this with Eva (Jinek, ed.). Eva already had a goal: her own talk show. And then you know that everything you do is aimed at that. With me it is much more unclear.”