“What is it that revolts you?” asked him Paris Match few years ago. To which Michel Sardou replied: “Injustice, misery”. This distress which affects those who are hungry and cold, the former singer still does not accept … A certain Coluche denounced it already thirty-five years ago. At the time, he probably did not suspect, by launching his call for a “free canteen”, that the Restos du cœur would become an essential institution, distributing an increasing number of meals year after year …
We are then in the middle of the 1980s. Many artists are involved in the fight against famine in Africa, by recording Renaud’s song. Ethiopia. The entertainer, who animates There will be something for everyone on Europe 1, receives a number of calls from people in France who say they are in poverty. So much so that, on September 26, 1985, he launched into an improvised tirade: “Yes, sometimes, there are brands that hear me, […] if there are people who are interested in sponsoring a free canteen that we could start doing in Paris and then spread out in the big cities of France, we are ready to help a company like that, which would make a restaurant which would initially have as an ambition to make 2,000 or 3,000 covers per day for free ”.
Noble idea and ambitious project. Only, the money is slow! On October 14, the Restaurants du cœur association was officially declared in the prefecture, but the cash desks were empty. Despite the energy deployed by Coluche, the donations did not arrive. Even if his friends say they are ready to help him voluntarily, they do not take out their checkbook. Except Michel Sardou!
However, the story started badly between the two men. On stage, Coluche has long made fun of the singer “réac” of I am for… the death penalty. So much so that one day, Sardou calls him to let him go: “If you have things to say to me, do it to my face!” »The meeting of the two artists turns into a real friendly love at first sight!
It is true that the two men quickly become inseparable. Sardou, who claims to be right-wing, appreciates the nerve of this anar which is not cold in the eyes. He admires this loud mouth who does not hesitate to say aloud what others think softly. And when his friend sometimes goes too far, he is always there to stand up for him.
Sardou therefore does not hesitate to support the charity project of the other Michel from the start. “When Coluche created the Restos du cœur, I was one of the first to follow it”, he revealed in 2012. Generous, the singer spontaneously gives “ten bricks” (100,000 francs) to his friend to launch the association, as he told Mireille Dumas in Who are you Michel Sardou?
The interpreter of Love sickness having saved this beautiful project, from then on, everything is linked … In December 1985, TF1 broadcasts live a special program bringing together artists, politicians and sportsmen while the first “restaurant” opens, under a tent in a vacant lot from Gennevilliers. Fifteen days later, around 20 regional branches were set up distributing 60,000 meals until March. From the association’s first campaign, which ends in the spring, 5,000 volunteers will have provided no less than 8.5 million meals. In 2020, there are 73,000 volunteers for 136 million meals allocated! A terrible observation that still saddens Michel Sardou: “At the time, I could never have imagined that there would be more and more people” …
But we must go further. In January 1986, Coluche asked Jean-Jacques Goldman if he could compose a support title in a box on Canal +. In three days, the musician lays The Song of the Restos. This record, which will become the hymn of the Enfoirés, sells like hot cakes and generates a tremendous inflow of money …
When, on June 19, 1986, Michel Sardou learned of Coluche’s death in a motorcycle accident following a collision with a truck, he was devastated. Véronique Colucci, the wife of the deceased comedian, then imagines bringing together under the term “Enfoirés”, the favorite expression of her husband, artists around a show in order to raise money to continue her work. action. Michel accepts immediately, like Jean-Jacques Goldman, Johnny Hallyday, Eddy Mitchell and Véronique Sanson. The very first Enfoirés tour takes place from November 6 to 14, 1989. Seven concerts in Lyon, Vitrolles, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Paris and Lille where the artists sing songs for a good cause, with the portrait of Coluche in the background. In homage to his missing friend, Michel Sardou will repeat the experience in 1998, 2004 and 2005.
If, today, there are still restaurants open throughout France to welcome the most disadvantaged, we must say thank you to this generous donor, who saved the “canteens” of Coluche from shipwreck …
Clara MARGAUX, Valérie EDMOND
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