Tina Nijkamp left SBS 6 as TV boss in 2011 after her parents and sister died shortly after each other. During that difficult period she was harassed by Marc-Marie Huijbregts.
A personal drama led to the departure of Tina Nijkamp in 2011 as the successful channel boss of SBS 6. Her mother and sister died in quick succession, followed a few months later by her father. All three died of cancer. In the end it was Tina’s lover who pulled the plug on her work; he called SBS to sign her off.
Misbehaving Marc-Marie
In the difficult period prior to that departure, Tina had a very unpleasant experience with Marc-Marie Huijbregts. “I can tell you one thing I didn’t like. That is because when my sister was very bad, I was still the boss of SBS 6. We had just hired Marc-Marie Huijbregts instead of Patricia Paay.”
She continues in the podcast Paul’s House Party: “Marc-Marie was going to take her place and then he was also going to do a show with Beau van Erven Dorens, because Gerard Joling had something with his vocal cords at the time. Well, that went wrong at rehearsals. There was fuss. In any case: I was in Bathmen with my sister and the phone rang: ‘You have to talk to Marc-Marie now.’”
Emergency consultation
Tina actually didn’t want to leave her sister’s sickbed at all. “I then went there, to Marc-Marie, for a kind of emergency work meeting, while I actually wanted to be with my sister, of course, but I went anyway. Then I got there and I only thought when I was sitting there: what am I doing here, I don’t want to be here, I want to be with my sister.”
The bottom line is that Marc-Marie only let her come out of some kind of star behavior. “I thought, what is this about? What are you worried about? About nothing! I already thought so. (…) There was just hassle. That had to be solved and the boss, me then, had to be there to solve that, as it goes, right?”
cat lady
It was all eventually sorted out by Tina. “And then years later he wrote a book… That book was called ‘Pieces’, I remember it very well, I hadn’t bought it myself, because I wasn’t particularly interested in it. Anyway, someone else bought that and said, “You’re in that book!” I said, ‘Oh, well, good.’”
She continues: “And then he described me, knowing that my sister was so ill and he had me come for that interview: ‘That was the nice director of SBS with all kinds of stains on her clothes. Such a cat lady with all kinds of spots.’ I was kind of described there that I thought: well, I don’t recognize myself in this.”
Hurtful
Tina finds it terribly hurtful that Marc-Marie took her away from her sister’s sickbed for a trifle, and then kicked her. “’With those stains on her clothes’… I found that so hurtful. By the way, I don’t like cats at all, because I’m a dog person, but go ahead.”
Patty Brard, who is on the same podcast: “It’s derogatory.”
Presenter Paul Barewijk: “Certainly in that situation.”
Stains
Tina points out that she was in the darkest period of her life. “I think I also had a lot of stains on my clothes, because I think I hadn’t showered for maybe a week. Maybe I had been wearing the same clothes for a week, that could just be. If I have to name someone, I find that hurtful.”
Did they ever say it? “No, I will never see him again. He’ll be very sorry to hear this, but well… I thought it meant a lot. It’s all ‘me, myself and I’. I have problems on the set and then let the boss come, when you know her sister is so sick…”
Patty: “I’m totally in shock, but okay.”
Paul’s House Party
Paul Barewijk’s podcast:
Fragment
The snippet in question: