This is what Robert ten Brink tells RTL News. Of course, even though it was the 30th time, he liked this year’s program recordings. “Yes, it’s really a very nice program to make. Now I also think: It’s wonderful and great. But maybe I’ll think about it differently in a few months, and there will come a time when I’ll say: It was great.”
It is therefore not certain how long All You Need will be able to be seen on television. “I don’t know if I want to continue with All You Need for years to come, that’s uncertain. But what is certain in life?”
“Weird and Wonderful Moments”
Well, that evening on television there is still All You Need Is Love, a Christmas hit that has been good for millions of viewers for years. “The joke is that people ask me every year: what are you going to do this year? So I say: Yes, just like last year. It’s not surprising, it’s always the fixed values of love and family happiness that come back, allowing us to experience the most bizarre and wonderful moments.”
And they ensure that every year hundreds of thousands of Dutch people shed a tear on the couch. Even in the Ten Brink house. Because even if not everyone would expect it, the family – and therefore Robert himself – watches All You Need every Christmas Eve. “Last changes were on Thursday, then we quickly do our last shopping on Friday and the family gets together on Saturday. Every year we eat the same thing: stew. And in the first shopping block of All You Need we get tarte tatin.”
“Daughters don’t want to know anything in advance”
“And yes, sometimes I yell at the television that it could have been mounted a little better, very annoying. But it’s especially nice to watch the full picture on the sofa with the family. My daughters never want to know in advance what’s on into the episode. They really want to let loose in the ‘bad cry moment.'”
That moment is guaranteed tonight, says Ten Brink. And yet you never see the presenter himself with a tear in the photo. “No, I don’t want to. I’m not important at the time, so I shouldn’t be there crying. But of course I’ve had to swallow hard for the last few years. Not just me, the camera crew, production and publishers too. , it was so intense again. Or how beautiful, how special.”
If Ten Brink can remember anything special from his first episode? “Well, not really. I just remember we had a table full of bachelors. We really thought of them as a special kind of race and gave them hot soup for comfort. But in general everything was different then than it is now. See how ‘we were all: so awkward and awkward in shoulder pads.”
Even the work on the program was very different then, Ten Brink looks back. “We had no cell phones, no mobile internet. On the way we always had lodgings with us to call the editors at a gas pump, how things had gone with the shoot. And everyone was still smoking, everywhere. It was a completely different world .”
“Whole surprises were made”
Also, publishers were getting envelopes full of mail, with people doing the craziest things just to get noticed. “We’ve received tens of thousands of letters over the last thirty years. But we’ve also received crafts, whole surprises have been made in hopes of being selected. Now we receive emails all year round, but it’s still hard to choose who should be in the selection.” “episode coming. We always keep in mind that we are not an emergency service, but an entertainment program”.
And although Ten Brink also works on other programs every year, most still recognize him as Doctor Love. “Sometimes I get a little tired of that nickname. Then I think: yes, now we know. I only take two love pills a day, often answer standard.”
“Fortunately, most of them just call me Robert on the street. And that always increases during this Christmas season, then people look at me in amazement when I cycle around Amsterdam. But hey: I live somewhere too.”
Meanwhile – no doubt – many marriages have been concluded thanks to the intervention of Ten Brink and the children born of All You Need Is Love. But it doesn’t always go well. Because after 30 years, Ten Brink still faces surprises during the recordings. “But it’s not necessarily wrong, because something only goes wrong if you know in advance how it’s supposed to go. And we don’t. So if someone says ‘no’ to a request for love, that’s what it is.
After 30 years, this is also my biggest lesson from the life of All You Need: everything always goes differently than you planned in advance.”
The 30th Christmas special of All You Need is Love can be seen on RTL4 tonight from 20.00.
