INTERVIEW
My mother, God and Sylvie Vartan. This is the title chosen by the lawyer and radio man Roland Perez for his first novel, an autobiography in which he tells the treatment of clubfoot which disabled him much of his childhood, to the point that he did not walk before the age of seven, and at the end of an obstacle course led by his mother against the advice of all the doctors she had consulted. Roland Perez explains Sunday at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet in the show There is not just one life in life the role played, in spite of herself, Sylvie Vartan in her recovery.
Roland Perez’s mother consults all the doctors in Paris, without anyone telling her that she can treat her son. Until he was told the name of Mr. Vergepoche, a bonesetter. But when the mother goes to his house, the man has been dead for several months. Faced with the tears of Roland Perez and his mother, Madame Vergepoche agrees to reproduce the treatment administered by her husband for 30 years. She has assisted him for all these years, but does not guarantee results.
“Sylvie Vartan is going to be the rock to which little Roland will cling”
Madame Vergepoche announces that she will make several corsets, splints, and that it will be very restrictive and very painful for the child, who will have to live permanently lying down, for an indefinite time. To support all this, Roland Perez will have to be installed in his bed in the middle, in front of the TV.
“The treatment is very heavy and very expensive, my father will even have to work at night to pay for it”, remembers Roland Perez on Europe 1. “Madame Vergepoche is going to tell my mother that, in the treatment, there will have to be a derivative. And so, she is going to ask her what little Roland is interested in. And there, my mother, very naively, will tell him that I’m interested in a record that my sister has, of a young singer who has just arrived and who is called Sylvie Vartan. “
“I see Madame Vergepoche again, who stiffened a bit, planted her eyes in my mother’s eyes,” he continues. The dead bonesetter’s wife replies to the worried mother: “Well, it’s not Mozart. But that’s okay Madam. Sylvie Vartan is going to be his best friend. She is part of the treatment. Sylvie Vartan is going to be the rock. which little Roland will cling to. You will have to bring him all the iconography of Sylvie Vartan. He will need all of her records, her shows, her broadcasts. Roland will have to be able to concentrate on that. Because 18 months in a bed without moving is a long time. “
An iconography at the time still rather thin, Sylvie Vartan starting her career. But the mother does so with determination. And the passion of the young Roland Perez for Sylvie Vartan allows him to support the treatment. 18 months later, he took his first steps, at the age of seven. The child then becomes a regular on TV shows, where he sings and dances in variety shows. He bumps into Sylvie Vartan there, without daring to speak to her. Once an adult (and a lawyer), he even becomes the singer’s legal advisor, without telling her the adoration he had for her as a child, nor the key role she played in his life. The artist does not discover it until years later, from the mouth of the TV host Sophie Davant.
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