"Les 12 Coups de midi", a good shot for TF1 for 12 years

• The TF1 game

  Les 12 Coups de midi

  celebrates its 12th anniversary.

  The first issue aired on June 28, 2010.

• For the occasion, 56 emblematic midday masters were invited to participate, from this Sunday, June 26, in the

  Masters

  .

  The best of them will be qualified for two prime times titled

  Le Combat des maîtres

  , broadcast on July 2 and 9.

• “There are mechanical elements that will be completely different, warns host Jean-Luc Reichmann.

  In the first five minutes of each bonus, there will be "the guillotine", which will immediately eliminate one of the finalists.

  »

Nearly 4,350 broadcasts, more than 12,000 candidates – including 574 midday masters – and 15 million euros in winnings distributed in total... Another figure: it's been 12 years since

have rained stars and great audiences on TF1.

The channel saw things big for this anniversary with two weeks of specials.

From this Sunday, 56 emblematic midday masters will come and try their luck at

, on the usual midday time slot.

The seven winners of this first week will face off during a prime time, entitled

, Saturday, July 2.

Rebelote the following week with seven other winners to crown, on July 6 from 9:10 p.m., “the greatest master of masters”.

“There are mechanical elements that will be completely different, warns Jean-Luc Reichmann.

In the first five minutes of each bonus, there will be "the guillotine", which will immediately eliminate one of the finalists.

»

Christian Quesada “zapped”

Each of the two evenings will be an opportunity to open the show's memory box, to rediscover funny or moving sequences, to relive the highlights.

Christian Quesada will be absent from this retrospective.

The man who was one of the big winners of the

, with some 200 entries to his name, was sentenced in 2020 to three years in prison for corruption of minors, possession and dissemination of child pornography images.

“I zapped it.

It's my worst memory, ”simply declared Jean-Luc Reichmann during the press conference.

The host, on the other hand, readily recounted the genesis of the show by tracing his story to the spring of 2010. At the time, he successfully hosted

.

Then, Nagui arrived in direct competition on France 2 with

.

Audiences for TF1's game have begun to crumble.

“I was told that it was perhaps necessary to think of a new concept for the following school year.

I replied that we shouldn't wait, that we had to do it before the summer – it was May, ”says Jean-Luc Reichmann.

Virginie Calmels, the president of the production company Endemol then suggests that she be careful.

"I turned around and said to him: 'With you, it's attention to the margin'", laughs the presenter.

A game created in five weeks

Jean-François Lancelier, then director of programs at TF1, offered to rework an Argentinian concept,

, which had already been adapted on the channel five years earlier under the title

, with Lagaf' at the controls.

“We created everything in five weeks, the decor, the interactivity…, explains Jean-Luc Reichmann.

We added the mysterious star and the masterstroke that didn't exist.

On June 28, 2010, the very first issue of

was on the air.

The show was almost called

,

,

shot ,

… “I like to play with words, underlines the host.

I have a sacrosanct horror of being late, so I have cuckoo clocks everywhere, clocks at home that irritate everyone.

When my son was little, he said "It's the couscous of noon".

Suddenly, the title seemed obvious.

A stroke of genius.

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• Jean-Luc Reichmann

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• The 12 strokes of noon

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