“My friends call me the pen nympho because I say yes to everything,” she jokes. It is a fact: Philippe Caverivière is everywhere. Every morning, at the microphone of RTLdelivers a caustic chronicle of which an abridged version is later broadcast in M6around 1:20 p.m. She continues to put her pen at the service of Nicholas Canteloup for him Canteloup C daily TF1. And, starting on Saturday, he will officiate at what a time!France 2’s new Saturday night talk show presented by Lea Salame.
“The rhythm is going to be intense this year”, fears the comedian who fills his agenda up to this point because he is “afraid that it will not last long”. The young man in his fifties, however, has something to reassure himself: during the summer transfer market, his phone did not stop ringing. Among all the proposals, he chose to remain faithful to the second channel. “Because the public had begun to know me in this niche”, justifies him who has become a familiar face for viewers thanks to We are live where he has served for the past two seasons.
“I owe Laurent Ruquier for opening the doors of television to me,” he admits. Likewise, Philippe Caverivière was “terrified” at the idea of announcing that he would stay in the second part of France 2’s Saturday night that the host had just left. “For twenty days, I found an excuse every day not to call him,” he admits. And then on July 20, I ended up calling him. Laurent was very elegant, he told me to fly alone, that he was happy for me. The big class. »
“I am forgiven because I have a GO head and ball collars”
Léa Salamé claims to have established a great “complicity” with Philippe Caverivière in recent months. “My priority was to keep it. It literally blew up last year during the presidential elections, whether on RTL or France 2. Today, it’s one of those that goes the furthest. We think: “He is not going to make this valve, he is not going to dare”. And there he goes, ”says the journalist.
“There is something human and tender in evil, believes the interested party. They forgive me because I have a GO head [gentil organisateur] and ball necklaces. “A judgment of appearances that is not out of place: the comedian has worked for a long time at Club Med. “There they let you go on stage even if you are bad and you become a little less bad. We play the show a little bit and tell ourselves that it’s great, an audience that laughs, ”he explains.
Philippe Caverivière does not embellish his memories. “I found myself in the worst Club Med in the world: I wanted to go to the West Indies and landed in Dieulefit (Drôme). It was an Ehpad, the people were very old. At that time, he was responsible for land sports – “When people are over 80 years old, we don’t do triathlons, we are more into petanque” -, and there he had a decisive match, that of Nicolás Canteloup. “I was GO, I saw him on stage and I wrote him a little,” he sums up.
“The only responsibility in humor is to be funny”
It is he who, nine years later, will take off his artistic career. In 2002, while his resume had been completed by a bad experience in the real estate sector-“I sunk an agency”-and another in restoration-“I sunk a restaurant”-, he sees Nicolás Canteloup on television. “I wrote back to him. He received me generously. First at Rire et chansons, then at Europe 1 from 2005 to 2020. We stopped at a one-sided decision by Vincent Bolloré. Then Thomas Sotto came looking for me for RTL.»
Going from backstage to in front of the cameras, Philippe Caverivière has made a name for himself in humor, synonymous with screeching valves, vitriolic jokes, sarcastic arrows. Is there one you regret? He reflected a little: “Once, Nicolás Canteloup called me to inform me of the death of Abbé Pierre. I replied: “Fuck AIDS”. He said, “Great, I’ll do it in [Fabien] Barthez”. I tried to talk him out of it. He did it on the microphone, imitating Barthez… There was a lot of laughter anyway, but my mother yelled at me.”
He thinks that “the only responsibility” when it comes to humor, “is to be funny”. He says that, recently, the question of evoking the Nice attack – whose trial is currently being held in Paris – was raised in a chronicle. “I decided not to talk about it. I was too excited, I didn’t have the distance to try to laugh. Too cool, too violent. The kids, all of that…”
“Making humor is simply taking distance from misfortune”
“A valve is a gamble. You never know if it’s going to be fun,” she continues. Especially when the main source of inspiration is current events. “There are few fun facts. I try to step aside and not be in the dark. This morning [le 13 septembre, jour de notre entretien], I made Line Renaud die during the interview, but I did it with bullshit and a lot of humanity. Life is unpleasant, humor is just taking distance from misfortune. »
He does this knowingly. His vocation as an animator dates back to when he was 4 years old. “I lost my sister Sophie to cancer. I thought it was good to make my mother laugh. It was a way of reacting to a heavy environment at home”, he confesses. This is also the reason for his participation together with the leo association which supports sick children and raises funds for pediatric cancer research. “It allows me to resume a lost fight, not having lost it completely. With my little notoriety, I can get in touch with many artists. He gives the example of Louane who “sent a very nice video to a little boy”, of Christophe Maé who “spent a moment on Facetime with a child”, of Kendji Girac who responds to all requests in the middle of the day.
“It stings where it burns, but we know he’s a good guy”
Scroll through photos of children and teens on your phone. We see joyful scenes of boat rides, dinners on the terrace, games in the sun. He tells us the stories these smiles don’t tell: this little boy who’s now in remission, this little boy who’s gone, this one who’s living out his dream, standing behind a DJ’s decks as each of the steps of he is a pain…
“Despite their illness, these children are happy. They keep smiling in the biggest fight in history. It’s polite to be gay. So when I get to RTL every morning, I make it a point to eat the potato,” she says. Christophe Dechavanne, which is part of the epoque Quelle! and only recently did I meet him by calling him a “benevolent man”. “He is in the verbal violence of the subject, it stings where he burns, but we know that he is a good guy. »
Upon his arrival at RTL, Philippe Caverivière received an avalanche of negative comments. “People thought my humor was a bit raunchy, then they saw that I was slapping all over the place and maybe more complex than they thought. Even in Ruquier the public got used to it and ended up saying “Hey, here’s the other idiot, but he’s nice”. »