Barely a week ago we were bombarded with radio commercials announcing the reopening of Gert Verhulst’s talk shop. The Four Table would from now on Gert’s table would be called, was the message. Logical, since the title no longer covered the content due to the increasing number of guests at that table. And the end as far as the number of guests was concerned was far from in sight, Verhulst announced in the same commercial. “Who knows, we might end the season with twenty people at the table.”
But look, things can change. On Thursday evening, Verhulst suddenly found himself at his table with only one guest for an intimate tête-à-tête. During the first part of the program, the other guests had to content themselves with a spot among the audience. Verhulst received a royal visit with ‘King Connah’. And that comes with certain privileges.
The intimate setting came at the request of Rousseau himself, he explained. The Vooruit chairman had gone to the studio after a few months of silence about the two reports and the one complaint for inappropriate behavior that had been filed against him. Now that all three had been swept aside by the public prosecutor’s office, it was high time to wear a pristine white shirt and provide explanations about what had really happened in the We Can Dance parking lot or quote from his DMs on Insta.
At least that was what Verhulst had clearly counted on. “You said we could ask you anything. There are no taboos,” he started the interview. As a viewer you moved just a little closer to the edge of your seat. It immediately turned out not to be necessary. “I didn’t understand it that way,” responded Rousseau, who elaborated on that misunderstanding during the conversation that followed by professionally blocking every question about the concrete content of the reports and the complaint that had been filed against him. “I am not going to discuss those specific files. I want to put that behind me,” was the answer each time.
However, Verhulst and his colleagues should have known that it would become a kind of deaf conversation. Rousseau’s passage at Gert’s shining table was the final stage in his large-scale media offensive. Earlier in the day, the written press was allowed to join us, and afterwards Conner was also in the studio To the point passed. A perfectly prepared interview marathon that crushed all hopes of spontaneous answers in advance.
At the end of the conversation, Verhulst – looking for a quote that would be picked up – asked Rousseau to say in front of the whole of Flanders, with his hand on his heart and a look into the camera, that he had not crossed anyone’s boundaries. A statement that Rousseau only came to terms with after some hesitation.
A little bit weird. In the To the pointstudio, he had just said the same thing a few hours earlier.
