Paul de Leeuw fired a woman because he thought her shoes were ugly, Henk Westbroek reveals. She ignored a warning from the TV star. “I was summarily expelled.”
Is the bear loose? Suddenly a lot of strange stories about Paul de Leeuw are coming out. Not only did he verbally abuse a director in a children’s hospital, he also chased Erben Wennemars away from the TV world. Angela de Jong thinks it’s all scandalous. And Victor Vlam calls for fines and sanctions for Paul.
Wrong shoes
Henk Westbroek now reveals that Paul fired a woman because he thought her shoes were ugly. “I never had anything to do with him. Well, indirectly, because I produced Children for Children for ten years and at one point I had all kinds of assistants,” says the singer in his podcast Another Podcast.
One of those assistants came from one of Paul’s productions. Didn’t she think that was a nice job? Henk quotes her: “Yes, but he summarily dismissed me. I was wearing the wrong shoes.”
Immediately
According to that woman, Paul was unrelenting. “He had told me the day before that he thought my shoes were terribly ugly and that he would immediately fire me if I wore them again the next day,” Henk quotes her.
She took Paul’s criticism with a grain of salt, but he turned out to be deadly serious. “He was always a bit upset, so the next day I put those shoes on. I was sent home, I was fired, because I was still wearing those same shoes.”
Creative people
Henk thinks it’s so absurd. “It is said that creative people often swear and rant, but I was in Het Goede Doel with someone who was very good at swearing and ranting, but people never get better if you swear at them,” said the singer, who seems to be referring to former colleague Henk Temming.
Co-host Jelmer Gussinklo is not surprised about the bad experiences with Paul. “I worked at VARA and then he sat in the office next to us and it was just standard that every Monday you heard things being thrown next to us.”
Rocket explodes
Paul always behaved terribly aggressively in the office, according to Jelmer. “There was shouting as if a rocket had just exploded and there was a failed moon landing. But then the viewing figures were not good enough on Saturday and then he went completely crazy.”
Not normal, he thinks. “I thought it was very funny, but yeah…”