BVIt happened: Erik Van Looy did not survive his first final round in ‘De Slimste Mens’ in the Netherlands. In the final, he blocked on a question about primes and went down like that. With his head held high and with the colors of the Belgian flag on his eye patch. “I might have won with two eyes,” laughed Erik, who immediately has the certainty of his successful passage in the TV quiz that he will be allowed to tour the Netherlands in January 2024 with his hall show ‘Addicted’.
“Of course it is and will always be the Netherlands. Big, bigger, biggest”, Van Looy responds to the less pleasant news of his elimination, but also to the surprisingly good news that he will be touring. “It’s a pity that it’s over in ‘De Slimste Mens’, but it’s nice that I can make a sequel to my indoor shows at our neighbors. That is precisely why I am very happy that there was such a positive response to my participation in the Slimste Mens. The ratings have not dropped. On the contrary, with 2.6 million viewers, they have even increased (laughs). And I’m already being asked for the talk shows over there. I was already at RTL-4 last weekend. All very funny’. Van Looy’s success in ‘De Slimste Mens’ also has consequences for his agenda. “Next year I will be touring the Netherlands with my hall show Verlaafd. There are already 10 performances scheduled. We don’t start too far across the border, so that I can still go home in the evening. If all goes well, we’ll see. The good thing is that you don’t have to. I already have a job,” said Erik.
The fact that he had to give up on the first final day of ‘De Slimste Mens’ is still a bit of a pain. “I had an off day”, Erik frankly admits. “Maybe I was a bit overconfident by challenging an entire country with that Belgian eye patch. However, I had every chance, because in the final I had to compete against actor and musician Guido Spek, whom I had sent for a walk last week. But I was not relaxed at all in the final and waited in vain for a request to give him a fatal blow. And then I got a question about prime numbers. The light immediately went out. Math-primes-stop, it flashed through my head. Stupid, because as a presenter I may have asked a question about prime numbers five or six times. That’s not difficult. But the math trauma of my childhood proved stronger than my TV experience. On top of that, I also lost seconds because I labeled Liam Neeson Irish, and he’s a Northern Irishman. I didn’t hit, but got a hit. Maybe I was just that little bit more tired. Because of that eye surgery, because of the circumstances. If you have a slump like that, you must be lucky. So I didn’t. Played badly and deserved to go home. The end of a very nice story.”
“After my passage as a participant in ‘De Slimste Mens’ in the Netherlands, the respect for all participants here and there has only increased”, Erik concludes. “After twenty years I have once again felt how much tension is involved as a candidate. Especially if, like me, you really like to win and you’re busy with lists and stuff. I can definitely draw a line under that now. The end of a beautiful story.”
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