TV has changed the life of Arielle Boulin-Prat. However, nothing predestined the professor of classics to make a career on the small screen. It was in 1986 that she took her first steps on Antenne 2 in Numbers and Letters, the game hosted by Patrice Laffont.
Arriving to replace Max Favalelli, Arielle Boulin-Prat directs the letters section while her sidekick Bertrand Renard (present since 1975) arbitrates the figures against the candidates. A cult duo who will then accompany Laurent Romejko, the new host of the show in 1992. Millions of followers will follow the game daily, broadcast since 2006 on France 3.
But, after 36 and 47 years of good and loyal service (on fixed-term contracts), Arielle Boulin-Prat and Bertrand Renard have not been reappointed to their role as referees for Figures and Letters, now on France 3 on weekends . In a press release released last August, the famous duo revealed the reasons for their departure. “France Télévisions demanded a drop in our salary of around 60% and refused to grant us the CDI that we had the audacity to claim”.
Further, the two colleagues of Laurent Romejko affirm that they were thanked by the public service group. “In short, far from wanting to leave or leave the show, it is France Télévisions, where we have worked for so long, that chooses to separate from us, to act alone on a break that has never been asked of it”, they specify in this press release.
If the tandem has been replaced by Stéphane Crosnier and Blandine Maire, what becomes of Arielle Boulin-Prat today? Last August, the former French teacher confided her sentence after this brutal eviction. “We are despised and mistreated”, she confided in revealing the repercussions on her health to our colleagues. “I lost 5 kilos and I can’t sleep anymore”.
Despite their departure, Arielle Boulin-Prat remained close to Bertrand Renard, but also to Laurent Romejko and Patrice Laffont. “We often call each other, they support us,” she assured the set of Daily last September. However, there is indeed a facilitator with whom the current has not passed.
A few days before her 69th birthday, this Sunday, October 23, the wife of actor Éric Prat was honored in a portrait for Liberation where she confided in her accomplice Bertrand Renard without tongue in cheek. According to them, the animator Max Meynier (1991-1992) was “horrible” with them and “played it personally”. Today, this bad memory is far behind Arielle Boulin-Prat who lives in Colombes. She continues her commitment to associations, politics and ecology in the commune of Hauts-de-Seine.