Paul de Leeuw made fun of the Matthijs van Nieuwkerk issue in his annual Sinterklaas show. He suddenly started shouting at a colleague: “How can that be!”
Matthijs van Nieuwkerk will enter the history books as a successful presenter with a black edge. He has been exposed by the Volkskrant as a studio executioner and as a result all his television work is currently on hold. Colleague Paul de Leeuw made a number of jokes about this yesterday in his program Sint & De Leeuw.
Studio borrowed
Paul started his show by noting that there was no budget for his own set. “Sinterklaas, we are in a special setting. Most of the money from the NPO has gone to Qatar in recent months, for the World Cup, so there was no money for the studio, but luckily we were allowed to borrow the studio from the program makers of Even Tot Hier!”
Sinterklaas Hans Kesting then: “What a wonderful world that is, isn’t it, that television world?”
‘On your knees!’
Paul: “Yes, we give each other the l… Everything!”
Sint: “Yes, the light in the eyes, I would say. Should I get down on my knees or not? No no! Have you gone mad! We’re not going to do that! No no no no! But it is ‘Mister Sinterklaas’ for you!”
Reference is made here to the incident in which Matthijs yelled at an employee that he should actually get down on his knees to say ‘sorry, mister Van Nieuwkerk’.
Angry Paul
Paul gets ‘angry’ at a production employee a little later in the broadcast, because he can’t find something on the autocue. “I had a rhyme, didn’t I? I had a rhyme. Hey? Flush. Well, that’s weird. I’ll look that up then. That was about ‘it’s a stranger for sure’. Is that rhyme further on or not?”
Raising his voice: “How is that possible!”
Paul then laughs: “You were shocked, weren’t you? Ohhh! You already wanted to text: ‘He gets angry, he gets angry!’”
Remarkable
Telegraaf reporter Jordi Versteegden finds it striking that Paul is poking fun at Matthijs, he says in the podcast Strictly Private. “I wanted to unpack this piece, because I hear stories in the corridors – and I don’t know if it’s true – that Paul de Leeuw could sometimes go on a violent rampage behind the scenes.”
Colleague Evert Santegoeds then: “I assume so and you can see that in that fantastic documentary that I went back to watch recently, De Entertainer, and you can see that in it too. I have to tell you honestly that he has gathered a team around him that can take a beating and with which he has been working for years.”
He concludes: “I have not heard any complaints or stories about Paul de Leeuw as about Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.”
