Jackie Berroyer is a man of words, of music, and of a little of both. “With me, things come from the ears (…) I feel the rhythm. If the rhythm is not right, it means I’ve been lazy. I have to pay attention to that, to sense the musicality of the writing.”

The son of a construction worker and homemaker, Jacques Berroyer was raised in the working-class Maison Blanche district of Reims in eastern France. With no inclination for brawling, “Jackie” became the clown of his gang. A little by chance, the dilettante music-lover became a rock critic for young iconoclastic magazines, first Charlie Hebdo, then Hara-Kiri. He was soon bringing his colloquial style to a variety of columns, cartoon books, films, plays, and novels. It took him a single scene in Cédric Klapisch’s Le Péril Jeune to explode as an actor. Ever since, French directors and audiences can’t get enough of him. In the mid-90s, the golden era of Canal+, he had a regular slot playing the receptionist on primetime TV talkshow Nulle Part Ailleurs. 

Throughout, Jackie preserved his youthful non-conformism: “the flaw of hierarchy is that the superior is right and the subordinate wrong, even when the opposite is true.” Irredeemably free, Jackie Berroyer explains how he slipped into becoming a writer in Transmission.

Thomas Baumgartner

A young man of radio, Thomas Baumgartner worked at Radio France and ARTE Radio before presenting shows on Radio France Culture (Les passagers de la nuit, L’atelier du son, Supersonic), then becoming editorial director at Radio Nova (2016-2018). He has since created his own podcast studio, wave.audio, which produces content, notably for leading daily newspaper Le Monde.