French television news reader and broadcaster widely known simply by his initials, JPP. The regular presenter of station TF1’s lunchtime news bulletin, 13 Heures (1pm) between 1988 and 2020, Pernaut’s combination of avuncular personality and authoritative delivery made him one of France’s most popular news readers.
Also editor-in-chief of the bulletin, Pernaut long promoted a deliberate policy of trivial content in each edition, usually running items about local culture and traditional crafts towards the end of the broadcast. This approach won him a regular audience of between seven and eight million for 13 Heures, a considerable figure for a lunchtime news programme.
From 1991 to 2010 he was the longtime presenter of Combien ça coûte ? (How much does that cost?), a monthly consumer programme, again on TF1. Since 1988 Pernaut also served on the board of directors of TF1 Group as a representative of the firm’s employees.
Pernaut published his best-selling memoirs, Pour tout vous dire…. (To tell you everything… ), in 2005. Shortly before that, he published two volumes of Les magnifiques métiers de l’artisanat (Splendid trades of the craft industry), which were glossy, but informative, tomes devoted to the subjects which have made his news bulletins so distinctive.
On 23 June 2007, he married Nathalie Marquay, Miss France 1987, actress and television host, whom he met on the night of the Miss France 2002 pageant. They have two children together. He is also the father of two children he had with his previous wife, Dominique Bonnet.
In September 2018, he announced that he had prostate cancer, which forced him to take time off from TF17’s newscast. He retired on 18 December 2020 at age 70. In May 2021, he was diagnosed with a lung cancer and was operated at Georges-Pompidou Hospital Paris in July. At the beginning 2022, he was victim of 4 small strokes (due to Covid vaccin?) and then operated again (open-heart). He died on 2 March 2022.
Link to Wikipedia biography