"Curiosity led me to travel alone at a very early age. Before that, during the Occupation and then after the war, we lived in Montauban in the Tarnet-Garonne region. Our travel was limited to the surrounding area, the marvellous Bas-Quercy, which we discovered in a Peugeot, a 'family' car, because we were four brothers; a big cocoon carefully driven by my father, with my mother at his side.
Then my passion for journalism led to my first trip abroad. When I was 15, I won a grant from the Fondation Zellidja for a study trip I wanted to devote to the British press. This grant, which still exists, is not richly endowed, which is very clever, because it encourages you to make do. So I travelled by hitchhiking to meet publishers in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin. For a long time, hitchhiking was my only way of travelling, a practice that could not have been more rewarding.
I covered the assassination of John Kennedy, but know nothing about Dallas other than its police station.
Three years later, in 1954, I was lucky enough to get another scholarship, this time to study in the United States. And then came the big trip, crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, a symphony: the sea, the unknown, meeting new people and arriving at 4am in New York harbour... Amazement at the skyscrapers! I arrived two months before the start of the academic year to go to Hollywood to study American cinema. My first contact with America was a diagonal journey from New York to Los Angeles, then back to my university in Virginia, all by hitchhiking. This journey shaped my life.
I celebrated my 18th birthday on the road and it was in cars and lorries that I first got to know this country. Americans are quick to tell stories. So, when you get into a vehicle, each time a character is revealed, the life of a family takes shape. For a young Frenchman with no command of the language, it was an extraordinary learning experience. You can't spend 8 hours in the cab of a lorry without conversing; so slang, accents, everything is learnt quickly to listen and understand who are these men and women with whom you share a long moment and with whom you have no common reference.
I was made very welcome and often put up as a guest - it was love at first sight. I also slept in ditches and got the thumbs up from a tornado in Oklahoma: adventure with a capital A! When I returned to Paris, I was 20 years old and perfectly bilingual, a rarity at the time. Naturally, the editorial departments made the most of this experience, which gradually led me to specialise in the United States. For France-Soir, then later Five columns on the front pageI must have made a hundred return trips between Paris and New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.
One habit I picked up during this period has never left me: the obsession with being late. When we travel as a family, I knowingly lie about the departure time by putting it forward by two hours. I know it horrifies everyone, but it's sick! Today, I prefer the train to the plane for the comfort, the interlude, the inspiration it still provides. But I put the boat above all else: not the liner, not the billionaire's yacht, but a pretty sailing boat with a few cabins. The space, the wind, the lapping... The sea is the journey.
KEY DATES
1954-1956
Travel and study in the United States.
1959
Major reporter for France-Soir.
1985 à 2000
RTL programme director, then vice-president of the station.
2003
Publication by Albin Michel of Tomber sept fois, se relever huit, an account of her depression.
2005
Launches the Direct 8 channel, now C8, with Vincent Bolloré.
HIS NEWS
No need to mince your words, C8, Wednesdays at 12.30am.
Philippe Labro's moodI Télé, Mondays at 11.40am.
Philippe Labro's weekDirect Matin every Friday.
