Patrice Laffont

I was going to write about new Korean Netflix show The Influencer this afternoon, but I’ve just been hit with the news that the host, actor and producer Patrice Laffont died this morning two weeks shy of his 85th birthday so I’ll save it for the weekend (it’s good).

We of course knew him best as the host of Fort Boyard during the 1990s. As with many long-running shows, you probably liked the era you grew up with it the best, and for the 13-year-old me chancing across it on TV5, Patrice and Cendrine will probably always be the show’s most iconic pairing. There was palpable excitement at the prospect of the two of them reuniting to take on the Fort as one of two 35th anniversary specials set to be broadcast later in the year, even if there is always going to be a question mark on what sort of games you could expect an 84 year-old to be playing. That episode when it goes out will, I expect, be poignant.

But of course there is more to his work than a decade hosting Fort Boyard, alongside his film and theatre acting work, we’ll know him also as the original long-time host and eventually producer of Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, host of French Pyramid/Password mash-up Pyramide and a rather surprising turn (until someone told us of his love of card games) as the dealer/host of a poker tournament show on French channel D8.

Here’s the legendary episode from 1997 where pan-European boyband World’s Apart took on the fort mainly in English:

Edit: The 35th anniversary special episode he is a contestant in has been moved up to next Wednesday night (14th August), a documentary tribute is set to go out in September.