Disappeared on July 14, 2025 at the age of 76 from liver cancer, Thierry Ardisson had anticipated the organization of his funeral to the smallest detail. True to himself, the iconoclastic host, a major figure in the French audiovisual landscape, had wished a last farewell to his image: free, grand, orchestrated with precision. “The day I feel the end approaching, I will decide all the details for my burial”he had entrusted last May to Parisianon the occasion of the publication of his autobiography The man in black.
The host had already prepared everything
He already mentioned his wish to see his three wives, his relatives, his friends: “I would like the three women I married are there. My family too. My friends”. In The pointhe went further, adding: “I want incense, choir children … The total! I already have all the playlist in mind”. Among the chosen songs? Lazarus DE DAVID BOWIE YOU In My Life Beatles, in the version declared by Sean Connery.
Whoever revolutionized the talk show and the interview also assumed a frontal lucidity in the face of the end of life … on France Inter, in the morning of Léa Salamé, he had declared: “I want to see death arriving opposite, not that she takes me by surprise”. And add: “I am not afraid of death physically. Especially since we are voting in France a law to shorten sufferings, and that suits me very well …”.
When will Thierry Ardisson’s funeral take place?
His wife, journalist Audrey Crespo-Mara, confirmed to AFP that her last moments took place in dignity and unity: “Thierry left as he lived. As a courageous and free man. With his children and mine, we were united around him. Until his last breath”. The funeral of the man in black will take place this Thursday, July 17 at 4:30 p.m., at the Saint-Roch church, in Paris, and access will be “Reserved for guests”. Burial will be done then “In the strictest intimacy”.
All his relatives cannot however be present … Christine Bravo, a former accomplice that has become distant, explained to Parisian Why she wouldn’t make the trip. “I am in Corsica. But I will go to his grave regularly to tell him the piapias of Parisian life, with our common friend the producer Philippe Thuillier”, she said with emotion, before adding: “Because I understand that he wanted to be buried in the south, far from media bustle. One of the last paradoxes of this great Parisian”.