René van der Gijp thinks that Johan Derksen is looking increasingly gray. The football analyst was not present in Today Inside yesterday, but it was about him. “Of course he doesn’t look good.”
Today Inside had to make a broadcast without Johan Derksen last night and that doesn’t happen often. “I have been working with him for twenty years now and the only time he has missed it is when he fell down the stairs, which normally takes six months for a person to recover,” says colleague Wilfred Genee.
Separate bird
Johan actually just wanted to come to the studio, says Wilfred. “He also got into the car first and then we said: ‘Johan, act normal, dude, you are really very sick.’ Then he happily went home again.”
René van der Gijp then speaks highly of Johan. “It is a very special bird, but it is really the only one in the Netherlands that can carry a program. I’m 100 percent sure of that. He’s really alone in that. I also sometimes find myself a little bothered by him, you know.”
Phenomenon
Oh what then? René: “I also had a few words with him a few times, but I really appreciate him. I really think it’s a phenomenon. Truly an absolute phenomenon.”
Wilfred laughs: “He’s not dead by the way, is he, just to be clear, ladies and gentlemen.”
René does notice that Johan is getting older at the age of 74. “We do know that he sometimes sits there in the corner where we sit and then he really sits like that, doesn’t he (asleep, ed.)? Then André walks in like: ‘One more minute!’ Then he wakes up with a fright and then he sits there again and nothing is wrong.”
Grey
René thinks that Johan should watch his health. “Obviously he doesn’t look good. He’s gray. If you have only eaten two brown sandwiches for sixteen years, you will not look any better.”
Johan used to be colossally fat and therefore adopted that diet. René: “Of course the man is just manic, that should be clear. Not a big deal, maybe I am too. In Zeist then there was a bowl of fruit every day, right? Then he saw a kiwi and thought: you know what, I’m going to try it anyway.”
Sick of kiwi
A lot of kiwis went into Johan’s then. “I saw him standing there, peeling kiwi and he eats that kiwi and thought to himself: that’s goddamn delicious man. He thinks: you know what, I’ll have another one. Then he ate six kiwis, but that body is not used to kiwis, but to two brown sandwiches.”
He concludes: “At a certain point I see him turn completely white and he goes to the shit house and he really spent half an hour there. haha. They thought in Zeist that there was a tsunami!”
