The China Mail - Laughs, scandals, politics? France's most shocking TV host moves on

Although the 50-year-old is bowing out after 14 years of hosting TPMP, which stands for "Touche Pas a Mon Poste" ("Don't Touch My TV Set"), the Paris-born celebrity has never featured so prominently in the national spotlight.

His future has become a subject of almost daily speculation, following repeated reports that he has political ambitions and admires entertainers-turned-leaders such as Beppe Grillo in Italy or Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky.

"Journalists do their job like I pick my nose," Hanouna said about the media speculation during a February edition of TPMP, a bearpit of entertainment, current affairs and stunts that media experts say regularly spreads disinformation.

Given his influence over his millions of young, working-class fans, who admire his crude humour and swagger, the self-confessed populist has become a target of left-wing political parties and critics.

Earlier this month, sympathisers leapt to the defence of the son of Jewish Tunisian immigrants after he was featured on a poster from the hard-left France Unbowed party that critics said recycled anti-Semitic tropes.

In further news that lit up social media, the multi-millionaire was reported by magazine Paris Match last week to be dating President Emmanuel Macron's 41-year-old step-daughter Tiphaine -- despite being an outspoken critic of the French leader.

The magazine, which published a photo of the pair eating together, described it as "an improbable alliance between a woman of reason and a provocateur."

Hanouna stated this week that he was "single", without directly addressing the issue.

- Media darlings -

The man nicknamed "Baba", who grew up in Paris' northeast suburbs and retains the area's distinctive accent, began his career as a clownish character and comedian on French radio in the early 2000s before moving on to national TV.

In one clip still doing the rounds, he can be seen thrusting his nose into a dog's private parts.

He began TPMP in 2010 on France 4 before transferring it to private channel D8, which would become C8 under the ownership of conservative media magnate Vincent Bollore, a key patron of Hanouna and far-right politicians.

Flanked by co-hosts and pundits, whom he calls his "darlings", Hanouna leads TPMP in a casual but sometimes aggressive style, always looking to latch on to news items that will create clashes and "le buzz" online.

The penultimate edition of TPMP on Tuesday night featured a segment on whether women should be allowed to wear Islamic headscarves while doing competitive sport, with 90 percent of viewers voting against it in a poll.

Hanouna says the key to attracting audiences that peaked at 2.5 million people a night is reflecting issues that people care about.

"Everytime you take the side of the people, you cause upset. And we take it pretty much all the time," he explained to viewers in February.

- Homophobia? -

Since March 3, he has been obliged to broadcast TPMP on the internet after he almost single-handedly caused C8's licence to be revoked by the French media regulator, taking the channel off the air.

The channel had been fined 7.6 million euros ($8.2 million) over TPMP.

The biggest of them -- a record -- was for an extraordinary shouting match broadcast in November 2022 that saw Hanouna call left-wing MP Louis Boyard, a former pundit on his show, a "shit" and a "buffoon".

C8 was fined three million euros over a 2017 sketch which was judged to be homophobic after Hanouna placed an advert for gay hook-ups then broadcast the conversations with respondents live.

Philippe Moreau Chevrolet, a communications expert, told AFP that Hanouna had become a sort of French version of US podcaster Joe Rogan, with a similar appeal to working-class voters who increasingly vote far-right.

"From the end of 2022, there was a big change, with a far more political output close to the far-right," he told AFP.

A book about Hanouna earlier this year by leftwing researcher Claire Secail accused him of being a demagogic populist at the head of "an entreprise of disinformation that threatens the foundations of our democracy".

After the end of TPMP, Hanouna is apparently destined for privately-owned TV channel M6 and Fun Radio later this year -- but journalists there have protested his arrival and reported special restrictions in his contract that could be a source of friction.

"I'll be the one who decides, no-one else," he said this week about his future programmes.

P.Deng--ThChM