Moderator: Man without a master plan: Hugo Egon Balder becomes 75

Hugo Egon Balder once, it was many years ago, shot with Walter Giller, one of the great stars of the German post -war film. Balder remembers it well, it was the time when he was titled as a “titty balder” and “Lord of the Möpse” because he moderated the bizarre erotic game show “Tutti Frutti”. Some would possibly be desperate or at least emigrated.

But Walter Giller saw it differently, so Balder recalls. “He said to me that he envies me.” Why is that? “You can now do what you want. They think all of you are stupid anyway.”

In retrospect, one may give the wise character of character. Balder’s career was by no means to end with “Tutti Frutti” (1990-1992), but actually only really started. Like no other, he stands for anarchic TV entertainment today. He will be 75 years old on Saturday (March 22nd).

He gave up smoking

He is currently doing better than his 70th five years ago, he says to the German Press Agency. Balder gave up smoking in August. It was a trigger that his wife asked him if he couldn’t even stop coughing. Then it was over with the smoke – after 62 years. “From one second to the other,” he says.

Balder is generally quite good at checking off things. One of his favorite words is “doesn’t matter”, because “Walls” is a lot. If a door goes, another opens. This is also why you can get some time to understand the ramifications of your career. He was born in West Berlin (as Egon Hugo Balder). He believes that he may have inherited his humor from father Egon Friedrich, who was a textile merchant. Mother Gerda was Jew and had survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Balder became an actor, musician, co -founder a rock band, moderator, cabaret artist, producer and partner of a pub in Hamburg, after many years in Cologne. In addition, he sang a hit over a pantyus (“Elvira, pick up your tights, I no longer sleep with you. And also take your mother with you, what’s it about me?”).

“You anorexic ferret”

“There was never a master plan,” says Balder. “When I was very young, I really wanted to be a pianist because I thought I was the best musician ever. Then I was at the Schiller Theater and wanted to be the greatest character actor ever.” At Radio Luxemburg, in which he moderated from 1979, he learned to work commercially and to entertain people. “It stayed with it and in itself I want it to this to this day,” he says.

In 1988 RTL “Nothing Nothing Nothing Nothing?!”, A big nonsense with a long -term bitchy between Balder and Hella von Sinnen (66) (“You anorexic ferret”, “You fat snail”), with the tarts. Several other shows followed. Balder’s best idea was probably “brilliantly wrong”, which began in 2003 at Sat.1. Comedians puzzle about curious questions – and thus defy many changes in the TV market. It was not until 2023 that the show celebrated a comeback again, now at RTLZWEI.

That he would have canceled a show and annoyed himself afterwards? Balder cannot serve with that. Rather, it was the other way around: he had been persuaded to show shows that he suspected that they were not a good star. Among other things, he presented a program in which celebrities passed through in a kind of real variant of the game “Ships sink”. “I don’t think the Guido Cantz boat has not lost until the end,” says Balder. “It was pure chaos.”

It used to be more hotel bar

Law that everything used to be better, you won’t hear from Balder. He sees the matter pragmatic: It’s like that. For example, that today there is a rather puritan approach in the entertainment industry. “Today it is the case that in 90 percent of the cases you separate after a production quite quickly. Almost everyone goes home,” he says. “It used to be different. We sat on a hotel bar for a long time and a lot flowed.” Is that good or bad? Answer: “I don’t know. It’s just like that.”

What he doesn’t really know is whether “ingeniously next to it” will really be his last television show. “Of course I think: what’s new at the age of 75?” He says. “But on the other hand you never know.” Sitting around is not for him.

Balder is currently on the road with its own stage program. It is entitled “Just don’t tell it !!”. It contains a lot of biographical. Among other things, he also explains the game rules of “Tutti Frutti” that nobody once understood. Somehow it was about “country points”.

“I think that after explaining that, nobody understands it,” says Balder. “But it doesn’t matter.” Walter Giller would certainly like it.