Rob Geus’ production team has managed to partially bring Johan Derksen to his knees in Today Inside. He withdraws a number of statements about his program. “No manipulation.”
Rob Geus and the maker of his program The Hygiene Police, John van den Heuvel, have been reprimanded by the judge for making secret recordings in a sauna. Johan Derksen happens to know that sauna owner from podcast recordings and has been standing up for him for some time now. He also receives information from him.
Cheating
Rob’s working method causes Johan annoyance and last Friday there was an outburst in Today Inside. There Johan shouted that Rob would be tampering with monsters, that viewer fraud would take place and that Talpa would have to put him on guard. And Rob and John were furious about that again. “Libel and slander!” they shouted.
Yesterday on his good friend Gordon’s radio show, John more or less threatened to take action against Johan – he portrayed him as a Joe Biden-like senile man – and apparently that helped. Johan arrived yesterday Today Inside partly backtracked on his statements about the Hygiene Police.
What does Johan say?
According to Johan, the bottom line is that he used the wrong words. “I got involved in it quite by chance. I was in the sauna because John de Bever and Kees had a podcast there and the recordings were there. I bump into a gentleman and he says: ‘What I experienced here this week, Mr. Derksen, is unbelievable.'”
After the judge’s slap on the fingers, Johan expects Rob and John to go all out in that sauna. “Of course he is now going to stick the sauna all over the wallpaper about what is wrong, and he cannot do anything about it. He can recreate such a sauna with AI, so they can go in any direction.”
Monsters
According to Johan, the sauna boss is furious. “They had been very angry lately, because he had also found out that things had not gone well with the samples. They had been sent to the laboratory, but they also included samples from a hotel in Maastricht. I said to them: ‘Those samples have been manipulated.'”
“And John van den Heuvel and the lady who is the chef there were angry about that. They explained and she was right: ‘You manipulate people consciously. Then you fool things. We were sloppy. We made a mistake, which also resulted in samples coming from that hotel, but we did not do that consciously.’”
Page gone
Wilfred Genee is friends with John and explains: “So it was a whole report that had been written. There was one page about that hotel in Maastricht. They thought: if we take that page out, it will look as if we have manipulated the report. Like: hey, a page is missing, how is that possible? They just left that page in place.”
Johan: “Well, they didn’t know that page was there. They heard that from the laboratory.”
Table guest Job Knoester: “All the fuss arises because you are filming in a sauna with a hidden camera. That is very strange in the first place.”
Uncultivated
Johan agrees. “It’s all very uncivilized what happened, and all in the desire for spectacle and viewing figures. I also say to that woman (John’s colleague Marijke Schaaphok, ed.): ‘Well, Talpa will be happy with you, because you made Gordon, that was not to be snooped and people are throwing up on it.'”
“I say: ‘Now you’ve done this with that village idiot with the big mouth, and it’s no joke!’ She had a good answer to that. She says: ‘Well, Talpa has already ordered the second series.’ Yes, then you’ve finished talking, haven’t you?
Not a fan
All in all, Johan relents under the threat of legal action. “A mistake has been made. Yes, then you get that lawyer bullshit. You manipulate consciously, to make a mistake is human.”
Is he now a fan of The Hygiene Police? “No, I am not a fan of Rob Geus nor John van den Heuvel.”
