Ode to Beau

You probably don't remember it anymore, dear Beau, but I do immensely. I got to be your editor for a new TV show that was supposed to be called RTL Boulevard. We had finished our tasks for the day (few things were nicer than sitting next to you in that corner of our office that had a bar and blue plush carpet, if I remember correctly) and started to tweak the script. It was always the goal of Ewart (now the father of all my children, but back then just ‘my colleague’, although he was immediately a particularly nice one) and me to get you to laugh out loud with our texts.

Anyway, the tasks were done and we had half an hour until the rehearsal. So we smoked. And practiced texts. You were acting in a movie again, I believe it was for Ik Ook Van Jou. A film where your friendship with Antonie Kamerling began. We practiced a dialogue (maybe I'm imagining it, but I even believe I was Antonie) and you told how you responsibly gained those 18 kilos through cashew and pistachio nuts. Because that was what the director wanted and you thought it was quite method acting and thus really cool.

I was close to the love of my life, you had Sally and Bram and Tijn, who were sitting at the Boulevard desk like a little Fokke and Sukke. We laughed, we cried, and yes, we also rolled up our sleeves sometimes. But then the next morning you were already peeking around the corner of the editorial office with a remorseful face and I had forgotten everything again.

What I don't forget? Your feet sticking out from under the production block desk because you were taking a little nap on the floor in that corner. Or that you went to make a sandwich while writing the script and asked me how long celery salad stayed good. I was mainly interested in the question of which fridge you had taken that salad from, because the left fridge was regularly restocked, but in the right one, you could sometimes find a yogurt with a post-it on it with the name of someone who had quit three months earlier. Of course, you had taken it from the right one. Take a deep breath, sit bent for half an hour, and you were back.

When I left Boulevard, I received a magnum bottle of Moët from you. Because that was what you loved to do: reward everyone with a bottle of Moët after hard work. And I got an extra large one. I don't know if that pointed to my thirst for alcoholic pleasures or because you thought I deserved it. I’ll keep it at a hybrid between the two.

Just as work friendships sometimes flatten and fade, ours remains alive. When I see you, I have to laugh and we are back in 2001, in that ugly industrial area (which is of course a pleonasm) where we were reviewing your texts at the beginning of a great adventure and talked about the nutritional value of pistachios. Or were they cashews?

You should tell me that again soon. Because that one time every five years with wine and bitterballen, we keep that going.

And oh yes, was there a moral to this story? Certainly. You must win that Star tonight. For who you were, who you are, and who you will become.