Antoine de Caunes is a novelist, actor, film director and television presenter. His greatest talent, however, may well be his ability to keep a straight face. It’s a skill he’s making use of as he lists the guests appearing in a special edition of his show Eurotrash. “There is this guy named Human Nature who transforms himself into different animals, and he will transform himself into a unicorn,” he says, his face betraying no glimmer of smirk. “It’s very spectacular, it’s not just a guy in some makeup. Really spectacular.”
After some thought, Antoine continues: “We have the Spanish psychic that can read the future in vegetables and fruits…”
At this point, the face of the man sitting next to Antoine, his co-host, the fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, lights up. He has remembered another guest: “We have a guy who does something, not sex, with his dick …”
“Voila: Pricasso!” says Antoine, triumphantly. “He is the most brilliant artist, who is doing some portraits with his dick. He’s painting a portrait of Jean Paul.”
The EU referendum has brought us its share of heated debate about the economy, immigration and trade. As of next Friday, it also brings a reprise of a gaudy, wry and very human television show: Eurotrash. First shown on Channel 4 in 1993, the programme was part of a lurid flowering in broadcasting – see also music show The Word – that became known as “post-pub TV”.
From singing dogs to the Schrobenhausen Asparagus Queen, erotic performers to chefs, Eurotrash combed the continent (and occasionally the world) for the outrageous, the eccentric and the entertaining. A mix of studio guests, location reportage and bits to camera, the show had an air of spontaneity, a risque humour and a bright, DIY aesthetic. It cost a lot to make – reportedly £500,000 per hour – but then, as Dolly Parton memorably said, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap. Nor was it money ill spent; at its peak the programme secured a 20% audience share for its timeslot.
The show had some favourite characters in its 16 series. Lolo Ferrari and Eddy Wally will both be remembered in a retrospective segment of this week’s EU referendum-themed show. Wally, who died this year, was a Flemish singer who wouldn’t stop singing (“A nightmare to interview,” says Antoine). Lolo, a French dancer, was a “sweet, beautiful” character, encouraged by her husband to have dramatic breast augmentation; she killed herself in 2000. Both also fondly remember Mr Penguin, a man from Belgium who so loved the flightless birds that he dressed as one.
Beyond the stories, it was the partnership of De Caunes (screen persona: twinkling, cynical wit) and Gaultier (wide-eyed ingenue) that elevated the show into something special. “Banter” is now a debased concept, but the infectious humour that still passes between 62-year-old Antoine (brown leather jacket, jeans) and 64-year-old Jean Paul (black suit, black-and-white polka-dot tie) is the product of a natural, long-standing rapport.
Friends for nearly 40 years, they socialised on the Paris club scene of the early 1980s. A favourite haunt then was Le Palace, a club that broke the rules of what the pair remember as an inflexible Parisian social order. “It was a nice, creative time in Paris in the 1980s,” remembers Jean Paul. “The Palace was the only club that was a little like English clubs, with the mixing of different social classes.” (It also provided the theme of Jean Paul’s 2016 couture collection.)
As their careers developed, the pair kept up a friendship. When Channel 4 sought a new magazine programme after De Caunes’s success on pacy music show Rapido, producer Peter Stuart, an American living in Europe, tapped into their chemistry. “He said: ‘Why don’t we do something about all these strange characters that would show the Brits that Europe is an interesting place?’” remembers Antoine. “And because he has a very sick mind he came up with this idea.”
For Gaultier, the proposal came at a transitional point in his life. “My partner died,” he says. “This became like a recreation, like going back to school, doing stupid things. For me, it was like therapy because I’m shy, though maybe it doesn’t look like it. It gave me confidence and I was having fun.”
The scene in the studio today suggests that still holds true. Despite brutal deadlines (the show is being shot in one day), high spirits remain intact as the pair shoot their links and sketches. In principle, this one-off special attempts to help the viewer decide their position on the EU: whether to leave (represented by the cynical De Caunes persona) or remain (enthusiastic Jean Paul). In practice, we watch as Ukrainian pop stars NikitA and six back-up dancers perform a dance routine based on the video of their 2011 hit Verevki, in which the pair walk naked around a supermarket. Later, Antoine and Jean Paul reprise popular roles as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles (Jean Paul: “She is a style inspiration”) and Eddie Izzard pops by to deliver some surreal recommendations on where to visit in Europe.
More serious comment comes with a discussion of European member nations. It is illustrated by a map, as Antoine points out, “painted on the body of a semi-naked contortionist. Just to keep things interesting …” A dancer dressed in marabou feathers walks across the set with a card promising a “European fun tax”.
It’s all entertaining stuff, the pair regularly corpsing, and occasionally being reprimanded by Stuart (on directing duties) for sounding too French. But does Eurotrash – birthed in the pre-internet era – still have a place, now eccentricity and titillation are accessible to anyone? Times have changed to the point where dogs doing tricks and people with “unique talents” are the stuff of primetime TV.
Antoine doesn’t deny the world has changed, but maintains that Eurotrash has a part to play. “You can get anything now,” he says, “except without the point of view. With Eurotrash, we are the editors. We care for these people, their stories are interesting. It’s not just freaky, showbizzy.”
De Caunes – these days the anchor of French news and talk show Le Grand Journal – doesn’t like the idea of trash and doesn’t watch TV. Still, he says Eurotrash operates in a different world from, say, TV talent shows. “I don’t like the idea of exploiting what people have, or putting them on show,” he says. “I know it is a goofy show, but the point of Eurotrash is not to make fun of them but to have fun with them. I don’t look at people as circus animals.”
Both Antoine and Jean Paul are adamant that, while Eurotrash works in England, it would never be tolerated in their native France, a “very, very serious” place where self-mockery is inadmissible.
“Brits have an irony about themselves which the French don’t have,” says Jean Paul. “Maybe that’s it! You like yourselves, so you can criticise yourselves. But at the same time you have a view of what is funny about you, and cultivate it.”
The same might equally be said of Antoine and Jean Paul, fluent in a very British line in self-deprecation. They have no difficulties with celebrity, they explain, or with being recognised, as they enter their own very strange spotlight once again.
“Perhaps people look at Jean Paul because he is blond,” says Antoine.
“People look at him because he is good-looking,” says Jean Paul.
“We have been around for a while,” decides Antoine, “and people look at us like something that has been around. Like a piece of furniture…”
Jean-Paul hoots with laughter: “Like an antique!”
Eurotrash airs on Friday 17 June at 9pm on Channel 4
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