Dany Turcotte leaves Tout le monde en parle following joke about Camara
TLMEP #TLMEP
The joke’s over.
Dany Turcotte announced late Thursday afternoon that he is stepping down from Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle after 17 years. During that time, Turcotte has played the role of “fou du roi,” mischievous sidekick to deadpan host Guy A. Lepage.
As such, he took pleasure in poking fun at the show’s wide variety of guests, and offering acerbic parting words on special cards given to guests at the end of their segment.
His jokes didn’t always hit their mark, however. Turcotte, who has often caused controversy over the years, was widely criticized this week following what he later called an “inappropriate” question to Sunday’s star guest, Mamadi Fara Camara .
Camara, who is originally from Guinea, spent six days in jail after being falsely accused of assaulting a police officer on Jan. 28.
The traumatic incident began when the Parc-Extension resident was stopped and ticketed for using his cellphone while driving.
“Are you still going to use your cellphone while driving?” Turcotte asked Camara, following the latter’s devastating testimony recounting his brutal arrest and the hardship he and his pregnant wife have suffered in the time since. (Camara responded that he had not been using his cellphone while driving.)
In a statement on Facebook , Turcotte apologized for the joke, saying he missed his mark and only wanted to make Camara smile. Since then, he said he has received a flurry of “reproaches and hate” on social media.
Monday, on Twitter, he shared a link to a crowdfunding campaign to support Camara. Then on Facebook, he showed a screen grab of a text message exchange in which he apologized to Camara. “No problem, I didn’t take it personally,” Camara replied.
Wednesday, La Presse columnist Hugo Dumas wrote that Turcotte has been fumbling for months , and that he seemed not to have been able to adapt to the show’s more serious tone and live format during the pandemic.
In his Facebook post, Turcotte admitted he has had trouble finding his place on the program since the beginning of the pandemic. “Perturbed by several social media storms over the years, my confidence eroded bit by bit,” he wrote, “and I became paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake.”
He said he is at peace with his decision, and Sunday’s show was his last. In a statement, Radio-Canada explained that Lepage will host the rest of the season alone, and that Turcotte’s tenure on the show will be highlighted later in the season.
In the same statement, Lepage said, “It is with great sadness that I learned today that Dany was resigning. … Our complicity turned into a friendship over the years, and for some time, he has been sharing with me his discomfort in maintaining his role in the context of a pandemic, without an audience, where humour has been rare and strained.
“I totally respect his decision. I’m losing a precious colleague, which hurts, but I’m keeping a friend, which elates me.”
Dany Meloul, director of television at Radio-Canada, said that “Dany (Turcotte) surely deserves a ‘carte chouchou’ for his contribution to the great success of Tout le monde en parle over the years.”
In case there was any doubt, Meloul also reassured fans that the show, which has become “a can’t-miss Sunday rendez-vous where we broach social and cultural topics that reach a wide audience,” will be back again next season.
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