Presenter Harry de Winter from Oss passed away on Tuesday evening. He turned 73 years old. De Winter, known from the TV program Wintertime, suffered from asbestos cancer.
De Winter was born in Oss in 1949. His father worked at Organon and invented the contraceptive pill there in the 1960s. De Winter only found out about this when his father died and Organon issued a press release stating that, he said in the AD. “Until then he made it seem like he just worked with a team on it.”
He studied economics at the University of Amsterdam. To be able to leave Oss, he said about that choice. “Yes, any excuse to get away from Oss.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, De Winter led production house IDTV and as producer was responsible for well-regarded games such as Lingo and Boggle and drama series such as Pleidooi and Oud Geld.
At Wintertime, De Winter spoke to some 180 prominent people from the Netherlands and abroad, including Maarten van Rossem, Chantal Janzen and Hedy d’Ancona and international celebrities such as Cliff Richard and Salman Rushdie.
In April, the last episode of Wintertime, then presented by Jeroen Pauw, was shown. In it, De Winter talked about his illness asbestos cancer. “It’s kind of young. 72 just isn’t old enough.”
He said he was trying to stretch his life as long as possible, but not at all costs. “I’m not going to go through an agony of years in a hospice or a hospital bed, or in my living room with six caregivers. Then I’ll take matters into my own hands.”
De Winter will be buried in a private circle. His father, who barely survived World War II and was in Auschwitz, is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Oss. It is unknown whether his son also opted for this.
In 2000, Omroep Brabant spoke extensively with Harry de Winter and his father, who invented the pill at Organon, in the program: In the clouds. Below is the video of that program.
