Political columnist with biting chronicles, Philippe Alexandre worked for RTL for 30 years.
The journalist Philippe Alexandre, former political columnist at RTL known for the bite of his chronicles and author of numerous works, sometimes controversial, died Monday morning at the age of 90 in Le Touquet, his family announced to AFP.
“Philippe Alexandre passed away peacefully this morning,” said one of his two daughters, Agnès Alexandre-Collier, in a message sent to AFP with the agreement of his sister and mother-in-law, the journalist. and writer Béatrix de l’Aulnoit.
Columnist at RTL from 1969 to 1996 also worked on television alongside Serge July, “he will be buried in the cemetery of Le Touquet”, in Pas-de-Calais, this Saturday.
Dreaded by politicians
A “purely political” journalist with the air of Inspector Colombo, Philippe Alexandre was a “pioneer of radio scratching hair and drypoint lines”, said his accomplice on television, co-founder of ReleaseSerge July.
His columns on RTL, listened to every morning by hundreds of thousands of listeners, were feared by politicians on all sides. Some of them “can translate moods, bad faith, excesses, he declared to the Figaro in 2016. But isn’t this the function of an editorialist?
Born in Paris on March 14, 1932 into a family of Jewish origin, whose story he told in My tribe more than French (2017), he started in journalism in 1951 as an editor at Combat. He joined RTL in 1969 after going through The liberated Oise, French days, The New Candid or The Literary Figaro.
“The man with libel trials as numerous as his political works” as Le Monde described him, spared no head of state. He claimed that the Élysée had asked for his resignation in 1982 “to appease François Mitterrand to whom my chronicles gave hives”.
Several signed books
On television, from 1989 to 1992, he co-hosted the political show Debate on TF1, with Serge July and Michèle Cotta, then, in the 1990s, Sunday night on France 3 with Christine Ockrent and Serge July, which earned him frequent parodies in the Guignols from the Infoon Canal+.
He left RTL in 1996, after the merger of the Compagnie luxembourgeoise de télédiffusion (CLT) with the German group Bertelsmann.
Having become a political columnist for BFM, France 3 and various magazines, Philippe Alexandre has published some twenty books, including Countryside landscapes (on the 1988 presidential election, Today award), Too many taxes kill jobs (2005) or Dictionary lovers of politics” (2011).
He co-wrote several books with his companion Béatrix de l’Aulnoit, including a pamphlet against Martine Aubry, “La Dame des 35 heures” (2002), which provoked the fury of the socialist leader.