The historical cartoonist of "The World", Plantu, announced at the beginning of the year that he would be retiring at the end of March.
Guest of Isabelle Morizet on Sunday in the program "There is not only one life in life" on Europe 1, he returned to his first publications while he was a salesman at Galeries Lafayette.
It's decided Plantu is retiring.
After nearly half a century spent in Le
Monde
, the cartoonist will be leaving the daily on March 31.
But before having the great career that we know him, Jean Plantureux, his real name, started on the shelves of Galeries Lafayette in the early 1970s. On Sunday, he told Isabelle Morizet in the program
Il n ' it's not just one life in life
, how he entered the newspaper after being a salesman of stools.
"I sold very well," Plantu recalls with a laughing voice.
One of his colleagues and friend had even asked him to "calm down".
"He told me 'Stop! You're just passing through, you're doing this for several months but we're going to stay and you're selling too well'."
One day, Oskar Werner, actor of the film
Jules et Jim
by François Truffaut, passed by his department.
“He left with two stepladders instead of one!” Jokes the designer.
"I am tenacious"
Salesman of stepladders by day and ... press cartoonist by night.
Because when he was not at work, Jean Plantureux read the newspaper and plank to achieve his dream: to join
Le Monde
.
"In the morning before going to work, or even sometimes at night, I would leave my drawings with the keeper of the newspaper. This newspaper impressed me so I said to myself, you never know," he recalls.
Around 11 o'clock, at the time of his break, he called the newspaper headline every day and had for only answer: "no it does not pass today but continue because it is interesting what you do."
But, "tenacious", the young man does not give up.
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Until that day when one of the editors, who had taken him under his wing, called him.
"The cartoon on Vietnam, it will be published shortly," Plantu heard at the end of the receiver.
It was a Saturday in October 1972, a rainy day, and Plantu discovered from the height of his 21 years his sketch on the second page of the daily.
The design depicts a small dove with a question mark in its beak, a reference to negotiations between the United States and Vietnam, then at war.
At that time, "I did not understand that I was entering an environment called press cartoonist", he confides.
Since then, he has made a name for himself and a name known to all.