The disadvantage of well-known duos is that you can know everything about them as long as things are going well, but that you are left to your own imagination as soon as they break up. Nick & Simon have just neatly tied off their break. But what drove podcast besties Aaf (Brand Corstius) & Marc-Marie Huybregts apart? They were in a “Nick & Simon-esque situation,” they said. Yes, so one wanted to continue, but the other didn’t. But why, we never hear that. The shards of the break between Gordon & Gavin have been scraped together for days by Evert Santegoeds of Privately. And every shred of new information shines on the site of The Telegraph to be read so intensively (said Santegoeds this week at Show news) that the news about Biden & Trump is fading.
Meanwhile, a new duo has emerged that wants to share their love, life and suffering with us. Olcay Gulsen (42), entrepreneur and program maker and Ruud de Wild (54), radio DJ and artist. They have been a couple for four years and a six-part reality series has now been made about them, Ruud & Olcay, even for the public broadcaster. The producer, Vincent TV, also makes Chateau Meiland, but for commercial broadcasting. That must have to do with the fact that Ruud de Wild switched his radio work from KRO-NCRV to PowNed, and then announced that he also wanted to make television. From that I conclude that this reality show was wanted, desired or initiated by him.
He’s taking us to that scan. You can find that exhibitionistic, but it does show how difficult it is to wait before and after such a check
When she opens the curtains, Olcay sees that the sunlight is perfect for recording her TikTok video. Ruud puts on his socks on the edge of the bed and asks, no, says: “Who cares?” We already know that he is grumpy, has had a “shit night” and is sick of the Japanese where they had dinner the night before. Olcay winks at her TikTok followers that Ruud is grumpy, and proceeds to the order of her daily feed: what am I going to wear and what am I going to do today.
Olcay’s Tiktok channel is viewed by 150,000 people every day. She tells us, the TV viewers, that a decade ago she took to social media to “market herself and sell products.” Ruud barks in between that just as many people used to watch TMF – a youth channel with video clips. “And we didn’t do anything in terms of content there either.” A bedroom chat, but it shows they know what they’re doing. They market how they market themselves and their lives are both means and product.
They do it fairly openly and honestly, and less uninteresting that it may seem. Olcay goes on a ‘surprise visit’ to the food bank, she is an ambassador there. And yes, it is filmed that she also makes a film about it, but Olcay also tells us that poverty is her “first trauma”. Her mother had gambled away her mother’s welfare benefits within a day, and for the rest of the month she had to ask in the teachers’ lounge if there was any leftover bread.
Ruud was diagnosed with colon cancer two years ago, he underwent major surgery and is still recovering. That he pulls away as white as a white behind the wheel of his car, that was not in a script, I assume. His disgust is real when he opens the white envelope containing the annual call for a CT scan. Olcay says in the background that the envelope has been lying on the table unopened for days because he does not dare to open it, but that he has been awake at night because of it. He’s taking us to that scan. You can find that exhibitionistic, but it does show how difficult it is to wait and wait before and after such an inspection. And promise Olcay every day that he won’t die. “You believe in finiteness,” she tells him. “I believe in infinity.” Perhaps the fear of the end keeps this duo together.