86 The Economist October 9th 2021
Obituary Bernard Tapie
Inthespringof1985,BernardTapieappearedina newFrench
television programme, “Le jeu de la vérité” (Game of Truth). It
usually starred entertainers such as Alain Delon and Elton John;
Mr Tapie was the first businessman to take part. A painful auster
ity plan was squeezing the economy. On the show he took calls
from factory owners who had lost their businesses, from workers
cast out of their jobs. None of them could quite believe what had
happened. Firm, yet trying to be fair, he listened carefully before
replying. And then it was his turn to bare his soul, for intimate rev
elation was what “Le jeu de la vérité” was really all about.
Stepping onto the stage, he swayed gently to the beat. His
threepiece was more a costume than a suit: the jacket a little boxy,
the plum square peaking out of his pocket like a tongue in search
of a kiss. His tie gleamed pearlypink, and his buoyant chestnut
hair shone brighter than Julio Iglesias’s. He closed his eyes and
stretched out an arm. “J’aurais voulu être un artiste,” he crooned.
“Pour pouvoir faire mon numéro...” Standing before a roselit,
double white staircase that ascended who knew where, he seemed
to be wearing lip gloss.
Born in 1943 under the German occupation, he grew up with his
younger brother in a flat with mean little windows, the upper part
of a small twostorey house in a suburb of Paris. Not as bluecollar
as neighbouring La Courneuve, nor as weighed down by history as
Drancy to the south, where France’s Jews were rounded up before
being deported to extermination camps in Germany and Poland,
Le Bourget was home to France’s first civilian airport. Like many of
the newly prosperous travellers who passed through, without
looking up, on their way into the city, from an early age he wanted
out. In a school photograph, pals drape an arm about his shoulders
as he puffs out his chest with attitude.
To some he was Robin Hood in a blazer, to others a shorttrou
sered Antichrist. A born ringleader, he was often in trouble. Laterhe would boast of having an engineering degree, but he barely fin
ished high school. He wanted to be Jean Gabin, star of the Moulin
Rouge and lover of Marlene Dietrich. This gosse de banlieue, the
boy from the wrong side of the tracks, poured his energy into get
ting gigs singing at clubs while selling tvs on the side. His first
single, “Je ne crois plus les filles” (I don’t believe girls anymore),
did quite well, but the next two were a flop.
What he was good at, he found, was hustling and making mon
ey. In his 20s he had his first tax audit, his first bankruptcy (of a
small business that sold hifi and home appliances), and his first
runin with the authorities (while driving an untaxed Lamborghi
ni). Starting with two companies that made paper, he moved into
buying distressed businesses, sometimes for as little as one franc,
stripping out the assets and letting them founder or turn over and
rise up again. He even starred in a tvad for one of his firms, a bat
terymaker called Wonder. In the clip he moves like a tornado
through an office. “What keeps Tapie going?” the tagline asks.
“Me? I run on Wonder!” In the final seconds, an assistant takes out
his batteries and he keels over. As he hits the floor, he winks.
Success brought him to the attention of bankers, politicians
and opportunists. Sport, with television, was the new nexus of
power, not only in France but wherever young men and women
hungered for a different kind of hero. Backed by his bank, state
owned Crédit Lyonnais, he bought Adidas, a sportsshoe brand
with a great history, but which had fallen on hard times. Within
two years he had started to turn it around. He restored a long, ele
gant sailing yacht, and in 1988 it made the fastest monohull cross
ing of the Atlantic. The Tour de France cycling race was won twice
by a team sponsored by his firm, La Vie Claire, a chain of shops
selling health products. At the same time, Olympique de Marseille
(om), his football club, began its bid to win the French champion
ship four years in a row. In 1993, on the second attempt, om beat
the favourites, acMilan, 10 in a surprising final, the first time a
French team had ever won the European Champions League. As he
stumbled onto the pitch, he wiped away tears.
Marseille is a city of immigrants. As his reputation grew among
the Marseillais, it was inevitable that he began to interest the
country’s most powerful politicians. Gaston Defferre, the mayor of
Marseille, was a close friend of the socialist president François
Mitterrand. When the two men, the intellectual president and the
performercapitalist, met for the first time for lunch, they talked
for nearly four hours. He persuaded him to run for office. His bra
vura attack in a television debate (where else) on the National
Front leader, JeanMarie Le Pen, proved his political nous.
Naming him urbanaffairs minister to address the malaise in
poor areas of high unemployment was inspired. Ever the perform
er, he would head into the banlieues, and shout at those who
watched him from behind closed windows. “Come on down. And
I’ll tell you what the plan is.”
Mitterrand was impressed by his energy. But when weakening,
physically and politically, the aged president was no longer able to
protect him. Having witnessed how a workingclass outsider
could confound the established French system of politics and pa
tronage, many both on the left and the right were glad to see him
brought low, first by charges of corruption and matchfixing in
football, then by more than 20 years of litigation with Crédit Lyon
nais over the sale of his shares in Adidas, and by the collapse of
much of his business empire. He even went to prison.From the ashes
Marina Zenovich, who spent three years following him for her
documentary, “Who Is Bernard Tapie?”, says he had the “charming
good looks of Warren Beatty, the bravado of Donald Trump, the
charisma of Bill Clinton. And he fell from grace like O.J. Simpson.”
The day he died, his eldest son, Stéphane, who knew him better
than most, posted a photo on Instagram of the two of them, mic in
hand, jamming together onstage: “Au revoir mon Phénix.”nCoeur de lionBernard Tapie, French entrepreneur, crooner and football
magnate, died on October 3rd, aged 78