Ivo Niehe has collected the most memorable stories about his encounters with artists, royals and other special people in the book The After Party (Personal Stories About What You Never Got To See), which will be released on Thursday. He sees it as a nice end to more than forty years TV Show. “I no longer need to be in the picture as a presenter,” he tells NU.nl.
Prince’s performance that almost went wrong, the critical Mies Bouwman, the warm bond with Johnny Kraaijkamp Sr. and Sir Peter Ustinov. In his TV program, the 76-year-old Niehe experienced special things.
When the TV Show stopped on January 1 last year, he was already writing his book. “I had no real intention of publishing another book, because I know that times have changed so much. For my first book, I was in Sonja Barend’s show on Saturday evening with four million viewers. After that, the books could not be touched. drag. Maybe now it will blend in with the crowd.”
Still came The After Party there. Niehe describes in detail events from years ago. He did it almost completely by heart. “If only I had written it down. Someone may point out a detail that is not correct. These have been great events that I am only now enjoying.”
While writing, the presenter and TV maker came to that realization. “You want the interview to be good and to put it together immediately at home. So I always drove home immediately after the conversations, because it was work.”
Speaking at Johnny Kraaijkamp’s funeral
Niehe was known for his meticulous preparation and an excellent team of people around him. But also for his patience: like with Grace Jones with whom he had a remote interview in the middle of the night. The pop diva kept him waiting until 4:30 am. “But her opening sentence was: ‘I just have a completely different sense of time’. That makes up for it.”
In those years, the presenter visited the biggest stars on earth. “Back then you could still film at someone’s house. You can forget that now. Nowadays all stars also have their own channel on social media. And it was in their contract: promotion obligation, one for each country. Then you soon end up with someone who speaks his languages and has many viewers.”
Occasionally Niehe was surprised that he could do it, all those people speak. Because Niehe describes himself as a loner who doesn’t make contact very easily. “But when I walked into David Bowie or Oprah Winfrey, I knew: this is going to be fun. I don’t know what that magic is. Bowie and George Michael even wanted to put the interview I had with them on their DVD.”
Sometimes a friendship developed with someone. He exchanged phone numbers with actress Mia Farrow. Astronaut Wubbo Ockels asked him to drop by from his deathbed. And at the funeral of entertainer Kraaijkamp sr. Niehe gave a speech. “Those are moments when I think: it has meaning that I’m here.”
Niehe no longer sits at talk show tables
‘BN’er, you should not want to be‘, his book could also have been called. “If you make a faux pas now, it will be on social media forever. When I was a commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1984 and was spooning out too much information in between and even during the songs, it wrote AD on Monday morning ‘De disaster Niehe’. I totally agreed with that, but that was the end of it. Now you’re a trending topic for a very long time.”
The TV world no longer has the mystique and inaccessibility of the past. In Niehe’s time, only he and Sonja Barend had a talk show. Nowadays every channel has one and we won’t see Niehe there anymore. “I’ve been hiding for seven years because I want to keep control. Bee DWDD you got another fifteen minutes. Now you’re sitting with six.”
“As a celebrity you are the last to act and in the meantime you have to have an opinion about everything. You always see the same people. I find it incomprehensible that in a small country like the Netherlands so many identical programs can be seen at the same time. That doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Niehe wanted out of the ratings race
Keeping control is a common thread, he notes. Against the live broadcasts of the TV Show he always looked up. “I slept badly the night before and before the broadcast I always wondered if we had something ready if things went wrong. That went so far. Once we were live, I had no problem with it anymore.”
In the theater he rediscovered himself. “There I saw someone who comes close to who I want to be with. I was at my most vulnerable, but also rowdy. With TV you develop a personality that you will meet. The decent man, I say in an oversimplified way.”
Niehe wanted out of the ratings race and so stopped TV Show early 2022 after more than forty years. “In recent years we started looking for guests who we knew would score. I don’t like that as much. Now I have a program full of art and culture on Sunday morning and I can update the portrait of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. That is such a relief.”
‘I wanted people to have a positive image of me’
Now if he were to portray himself on the TV Showway, what question would he ask himself? There is a moment of silence, but then he says: “Why did you find it so important that people have a positive image of you? With all those years of experience and while you really have balance in your private life. Why is that important?”
“On the other hand, I would like to be completely out of the picture now. I do want to keep making. The creative process is the best. I always give that advice to other presenters: become a program maker. That is the route to keep it up for a long time.”
Niehe is therefore still full of plans and two documentaries are planned. “My life motto is derived from a statement by the French actor and singer Yves Montand: I keep dreaming with my eyes open.”
