Tasting in the cell and cigarettes in class... The life of Valérie Damidot before fame

Alexis Patri 2:42 p.m., March 09, 2022

INTERVIEW

His joie de vivre made the success of the M6 

show , which revealed him to the general public.

But what was the life of Valérie Damidot, currently on the poster of 

, like before fame?

This is what Lisa-Marie Marques reveals on Wednesday by painting the “pre-fame” portrait of the journalist and guest host of the

.

A sequence that Valérie Damidot welcomes with "Oh my God!"

laughing. 

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Valérie Damidot grew up in Argenteuil, in the suburbs of Paris.

To help their daughter overcome her great shyness, her parents challenge her: go alone to the newsstand to buy her

.

"You can't imagine what it meant to me at that age!", recalls Valérie Damidot, imitating the fear of the shy child she was at the idea of ​​talking to the newsagent.

“I ate my little BNs quietly in my little cell”

Alone, Valérie Damidot was also sometimes when, on her way home from school, she joined the police station where her police father worked.

And snack time was atypical to say the least.

"I was little, in CP, because afterwards I managed to get back by bus on my own. I went on foot to the police station of the city where I was at school", she specifies. .

Either my father was there, or he wasn't there, or he was investigating.

Either way, I was either put in his office or (if he was in his office) in a small custody cell to eat my snack."

"The thugs were in the other cell, they didn't put me in the thugs' cell!"

jokes the TV host.

"My father was a cop, he wasn't crazy either! Sometimes it's compatible, but in this case, no. But yes, I ate my little BNs quietly in my little cell."

A school like no other

Later, Valérie Damidot is educated in an experimental high school.

The teenager familiarizes herself with teachers, calls them by their first names and even has the right to smoke in class.

"It was a great school called Le cours des Petits Champs," she explains at the microphone of Europe 1. "The director Marc Birraux had decided to make a school for people who did not like the school. I did second, first and final classes there. We smoked cigarettes in class and everyone thought it was normal. It was a different time, I'm very old!"

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What especially marked the former high school student is that the teachers were not only teachers.

"Eric, my English teacher, was also a writer and wrote articles in

", she takes as an example.

"Gilles, my French teacher, did film scripts. It was another way of approaching teaching."

Meeting with Charly and Lulu

Valérie Damidot gets her baccalaureate the second time, after having forgotten to wake up the first time.

She studied at the Sorbonne, which she quickly left to enter a communication box where she took care of the boat William Saurin.

Many odd jobs followed: canvassing, selling jet skis and snowmobiles, running a horse club, a press relations company, then a salad bar.

Valérie Damidot meets the animators of 

, Charly and Lulu there.

"They came to eat at my house, they worked at Dechavanne which was really next door. I was in the 17th arrondissement. We became friends like that", explains the guest host of

.

"They are the ones who got me into TV later on. They left Dechavanne to go to Arthur, they were setting up a show and they called me. That's how I got started. 

Steven Seagal's helping hand

Show after show, where she worked on castings and in the editorial staff, Valérie Damidot's TV career was confirmed.

She then tries to join the team of the TF1 show, 

.

She promises producer Alexia Laroche-Joubert an interview with the American actor passing through Paris Steven Seagal, whom a friend of hers knows.

Valérie Damidot explains to the star that she will be fired if he refuses the interview.

He accepts, she is engaged.

In parallel with her work for

, Valérie Damidot develops with a friend a passion for decoration and trips to Ikea in an Austin Mini.

He was then prompted with the idea of ​​applying for the casting of a new program being prepared by M6: 

.

A show that she will play from 2006 to 2015.